Application Essay Excerpts

Two related problems with similar solutions. That’s what I faced upon arriving to my Riyadh office to manage financial transactions for the Department of Defense. First: Chad, who had inadvertently incurred a $187k debt to the U.S. government. Second: the office itself, which had enabled that mistake. Solving both problems required me to think creatively while considering others’ needs...

When I applied early decision to Barnard I hadn’t visited any other schools, and only reluctantly considered applying anywhere else. At 18, I would have found it hard to articulate why, but once I stepped on Barnard’s campus, it just felt right...

From the time that I was four years old and watched the Seoul Olympiad on television, I knew that I wanted to be an Olympian like Flo-Jo. I was a good runner, and I’d always been told that with enough hard work anything is possible...

When I was a sophomore at Hong Kong International School I indulged my love of water and fascination with marine life on a school-sponsored scuba diving trip in the Philippines. However, I had a problem: I am paralytically terrified of sharks. Even today, I am irrationally unable to get into a swimming pool in the dark, and I make my husband stand in front of me as shark-bait when we wade in the ocean...

Once I visited the photo archive, I knew that something had to be done. A NewsCorp newspaper was letting their photos lay fallow, wasting current and potential resources, when by digitizing those photos and selling the originals, the newspaper could cut costs and drive revenue...

I was not a natural consulting analyst. When I started I had excellent research skills, but I was only experienced with trends and analysis in History. I had no idea what made a company competitive, or how to effect change to make it so. It took me a year of painful trial and error to get a handle on the Company’s three major project deliverables: identifying and profiling companies for acquisition, developing business and strategic plans, and writing research papers...

The most important thing to me is to be a good friend and family member. I believe that the way in which a person treats loved ones is the best measure of his or her character...

I met a CIA recruiter during the Columbia University non-profit job fair. At the time I thought I wanted to be a museum curator, so I was looking at museums, archives, and libraries. I was standing at the New York Public Library booth, when a man started asking everyone in line what languages they spoke...

My experience working with struggling and growing companies at Winterberry Group showed me that I love to fix things. I love to find solutions to difficult problems, and two years at NewsCore--a fledgling news wire which leverages the assets of News Corporation to provide a low-cost alternative to extant third party content providers such as the Associated Press--has shown me that there is a potential solution to one of our age’s thorniest problems: the profitability of traditional news outlets...

Growing up, my family moved around a fair amount. Approximately every four or five years we’d pick up and move to a new city, and in one instance, a new hemisphere. This forced us to serve as each other’s main, and in many cases exclusive source of support and socialization as we experienced new places and cultures. This peripatetic childhood and adolescence meant that the foundation of my life has been my immediate family...