College Application Essay Examples

Applying to colleges means having an essay for show and tell. Here are two examples that you could read to grasp an idea on what you could write for your college application:


Example 1:

If string theory is really true, then the entire world is made up of strings, and I cannot tie a single one. This past summer, I applied for my very first job at a small, busy bakery and cafe in my neighborhood. I knew that if I were hired there, I would learn how to use a cash register, prepare sandwiches, and take cake orders. I imagined that my biggest struggle would be catering to demanding New Yorkers, but I never thought that it would be the benign act of tying a box that would become both my biggest obstacle and greatest teacher.

On my first day of work in late August, one of the bakery’s employees hastily explained the procedure. It seemed simple: wrap the string around your hand, then wrap it three times around the box both ways, and knot it. I recited the anthem in my head, “three times, turn it, three times, knot” until it became my mantra. After observing multiple employees, it was clear that anyone tying the box could complete it in a matter of seconds. For weeks, I labored endlessly, only to watch the strong and small pieces of my pride unravel each time I tried.

As I rushed to discreetly shove half-tied cake boxes into plastic bags, I could not help but wonder what was wrong with me. I have learned Mozart arias, memorized the functional groups in organic chemistry, and calculated the anti-derivatives of functions that I will probably never use in real life—all with a modest amount of energy. For some reason though, after a month’s effort, tying string around a cake box still left me in a quandary.

As the weeks progressed, my skills slowly began to improve. Of course there were days when I just wanted to throw all of the string in the trash and use Scotch tape; this sense of defeat was neither welcome nor wanted, but remarks like “Oh, you must be new” from snarky customers catapulted my determination to greater heights.

It should be more difficult to develop an internal pulse and sense of legato in a piece of music than it is to find the necessary rhythm required to tie a box, but this seemingly trivial task has clearly proven not to be trivial at all. The difficulties that I encountered trying to keep a single knot intact are proof of this. The lack of cooperation between my coordination and my understanding left me frazzled, but the satisfaction I felt when I successfully tied my first box was almost as great as any I had felt before.

Scientists developing string theory say that string can exist in a straight line, but it can also bend, oscillate, or break apart. I am thankful that the string I work with is not quite as temperamental, but I still cringe when someone asks for a chocolate mandel bread. Supposedly, the string suggested in string theory is responsible for unifying general relativity with quantum physics. The only thing I am responsible for when I use string is delivering someone’s pie to them without the box falling apart. Tying a cake box may not be quantum physics, but it is just as crucial to holding together what matters.

I am beginning to realize that I should not be ashamed if it takes me longer to learn. I persist, and I continue to tie boxes every weekend at work. Even though I occasionally backslide into feelings of exasperation, I always rewrap the string around my hand and start over because I have learned that the most gratifying victories come from tenacity. If the universe really is comprised of strings, I am confident that I will be able to tie them together, even if I do have to keep my fingers crossed that my knots hold up.



Example 2:

Before even touching the camera, I made a list of some of the photographs I would take: web covered with water, grimace reflected in the calculator screen, hand holding a tiny round mirror where just my eye is visible, cat’s striped underbelly as he jumps toward the lens, manhole covers, hand holding a translucent section of orange, pinkies partaking of a pinkie swear, midsection with jeans, hair held outside ways at arm’s length, bottom of foot, soap on face. This, I think is akin to a formation of self. Perhaps I have had the revelations even if the photos are never taken.

I already know the dual strains the biographers will talk about, strains twisting through a life. The combination is embodied here: I write joyfully, in the margin of my lab book, beside a diagram of a beaker, “Isolated it today, Beautiful wispy strands, spider webs suspended below the surface, delicate tendrils, cloudy white, lyrical, elegant DNA! This is DNA! So beautiful!”

I should have been a Renaissance woman. It kills me to choose a field (to choose between the sciences and the humanities!). My mind roams, I wide-eyed, into infinite caverns and loops. I should fly! Let me devour the air, dissolve everything into my bloodstream, learn!

The elements are boundless, but, if asked to isolate them, I can see tangles around medicine and writing. The trick will be to integrate them into a whole, and then maybe I can take the photograph. Aahh, is it already there, no? Can’t you see it? I invoke the Daedalus in me, everything that has gone into making me, hoping it will be my liberation.

Music is one such element. The experience of plying in an orchestra from the inside is an investigation into subjectivity. It is reminiscent of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: the more one knows the speed of a particle, the less one knows its position. Namely the position of the observer matters and affects the substance of the observation; even science is embracing embodiment. I see splashes of bright rain in violin arpeggios fading away in singed circles, a clarinet solo fades blue to black, and a flute harmony leaves us moving sideways, a pregnant silence, the trumpets interrupt with the smell of lightning. Perhaps in the audience you would sense something else.

I think of rowing as meditation. Pshoow, huh, aaah; pshoow, huh, aaah. I can close my eyes and still hear it. We glide over reflected sky… and lean. And defy the request for “leadership positions,” laugh at it, because it misses the entire point, that we are integral, one organism. I hear the oars cut the water, shunk shunk; there are no leaders.

Once I heard an echo from all quarters. “Do not rush,” said the conductor, “follow the baton.” “Do not rush,” said the coach, “watch the body in front of you.” Do not rush. I write about characters’ words: how they use words, how they manipulate them, how they create their own realities; words used dangerously, flippantly, talking at cross purposes, deliberately being vague; the nature of talking, of words and realities. Perhaps mine has been a flight of fancy too. But, come on, it’s in the words, a person, a locus, somewhere in the words. It’s all words. I love the words. I should be a writer, but I will be a doctor, and out of the philosophical tension I will create a self.