Application Essay Excerpts

For as long as I can remember, I have been a perfectionist. I kept my room neat and tidy; I became upset whenever I missed a word on a spelling test. I distinctly remember my fourth grade teacher handing out a state-issued standardized test and saying with a sly smile, “Don’t worry; this won’t determine whether you get into college.” Up until that point I had never thought about the future beyond which I games I would play with my friends after school...

According to Winston Churchill, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Taking that into consideration, I failed 2 classes my junior year of high school. This was more than an obstacle or hardship; this event was a complete 360 for my life. I didn’t just fail a few classes; I failed to apply myself in every other aspect of my life because I felt there was nothing left without my grades...

I love to read. While some of that reading includes my weekly dose of Nick Kristof’s Op-Eds, a daily visit to CNBC in order to check on the economy and, of course, my school work, a fair amount of my reading comes from less conventional sources. Though I have examined Kant’s deontology and Mill’s harm principle, my most desired words of wisdom come from the works of Berry, Evans, and Karabell...

The turkey grows cold. Well, their turkey does. Mine is long gone. As a five year-old, I paid attention to nothing else, so it had little chance to outlast everyone else’s dinner...

My dad sat in an armchair as the rest of the family eagerly hovered around him.“All right Camille, it’s your turn”, he said to my younger sister.“The boy and the bus turn into butterflies!” And so the next frame of the cartoon was added...

6 cats, 4 dogs, 2 llamas, 3 horses, 6 hens, and 3 roosters (my neighbors loved this). These are, all in all, the many animals to pass through the Powers household. Maybe it’s just that my mom loves animals. Or maybe it’s the fact that my parents and my older brother lived on a farm in New Jersey before I was born...

Armed with a red pen and a scrupulous mentality, I spent my first year of high school hunting grammatical errors and story angles; however, the nights of editing and composing were only peripheral to my experience as the associate editor of my school’s newspaper...

Every summer, I imagined the day when I would be able to make the switch from camper to counselor at my beloved diabetes camp. I dreamed of the joys and rewards of being a counselor, connecting with as many children as I could and easing the burden of their disease in the weeks we would share together, as so many counselors had done for me over the years...

At the age of three, I knew exactly what I was going to do with my life.“What are your future plans, Christina?” my mom asked, camera in hand and a knowing smile on her face...

It dawned upon me that they would never know. It was a late summer afternoon as I swayed on those swings. The little girl cried out as her brother threw sand at her, and they laughed as she chased him around the playground. They would carry on their days unaware that I had helped fix a problem that impacted their futures. I used to be like them too: carefree, innocent, and unaware of the problems around me...