08 Seniors: Will you post your winning essays?

<p>Hey Class of 2008! So you're done with the college application process, and have already deposited (hopefully) with the school of your choice.</p>

<p>I think I speak for myself and the rest of my class as well as those classes below me (09 and higher) when I say that we're a little stressed about the whole college app process for next year.</p>

<p>Especially the ESSAYS!! So if you could help us, we would all be incredibly grateful.</p>

<p>If you want to do something for this charity case, please post: </p>

<p>A) a list of acceptances/rejections and whether you think your essays affected the decision positively/negatively or had no effect.</p>

<p>B) Essay prompt(s) for each college</p>

<p>C) Either your essay(s), a link to them somewhere else, or your email address if it's ok for us to ask you to send them to us.</p>

<p>If you're uncomfortable posting essays, please at least describe/summarize them.</p>

<p>Thanks again! We really appreciate this! Good luck to all seniors next year!!</p>

<p>you can find A and B quite easily on the internet...</p>

<p>For A all you have to do is look through decision threads on this site, and for B you simply have to go to the university's website</p>

<p>Dartmouth and Berkeley acceptances. Yale (although my second essay was horrible. I'm not sharing that one), Cornell, and Tufts rejections. PM me if you want to see it.</p>

<p>I would put they suck! If you really want them I'll send it in order to show you, how not to write an personal statement. lol</p>

<p>Good luck Grad 09s, I hope this helps. If you want to see my other essays, PM me. I'm not posting them because my tests/marks are pretty bad and they probably overwhelmed the suckiness/awesomeness of my essays. </p>

<p>A) I was rejected pretty much across the board, but I got into Emerson. The essay probably helped, but I was pretty qualified for Emerson, I think. </p>

<p>B) 1. Much of the work that students do at Emerson College is a form of storytelling. If you were to write the story of your life until now, what would you title it? Why? (I totally interpreted that as “Film” and not “Story”, but obviously they didn’t mind!) </p>

<ol>
<li>Please tell us what influenced you to select your first choice major </li>
</ol>

<p>C) 1. It’s the big number of a small theatre, lit by the bright Broadway lights beside it: A Deeper Shade of Purple. An odd, non-sequitur sort of name, but what else would you expect from a film about me? After all, I have a tendency towards blind faith, answered prayers and dream-come-trues – and purple is the colour of spirituality. But no wishy-washy lavenders, mind you. All my life I have been a combination of vivid blues and stronger reds. Purple may be confused for serene blue, but fiery, passionate red is needed to create it. I am a purple that gets deeper and deeper the more I mature – not the slow gradation of sunrise but a madcap virtuoso flinging great gobs of paint at his canvas. For I have always grown in awkward spurts, each time growing more intense, more my own person. And then there is the fact that I have always been an artist. Purple for creativity, purple because my pen bleeds lilac, purple because it would make for beautiful colour imagery. I see beauty everywhere, and a film with that title could work in some wonderful visual elements. </p>

<p>Emerson’s colours are purple and gold. Coincidence? I think not. </p>

<ol>
<li>Ever since I was in grade six, I have nursed dreams of publishing. As I wrote more and more prolifically, I realized that perhaps those dreams were closer than I thought. I simply needed a mentor, someone other than high school teachers who rarely required creative projects and even more rarely critiqued those projects. After CTY courses, I realized just how much a teacher can help and confirmed what I’d considered since elementary school – that I would be an English major so I could continue improving. </li>
</ol>

<p>I want to be a writer; it is simple as that. I know it will be difficult, but I also know that I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life. Writing has always been something I did naturally, like flexing a muscle or breathing. I cannot explain it, but I am driven by that inexplicable voice at 5am that urges you to keep writing, only a couple more pages until you’ve got it. I have thousands of pages worth of scrawl on paper and napkin and coffee filter. I hope a university education will teach me how to organize those bundles into something publishable.</p>

<p>I wrote a really long essay (ahem 2000 ahem hmm words) but it got me into brown, dartmouth, middlebury, colby, macalester and now swarthmore (I was waitlisted)</p>

<p>I basically talked about how entering the field of working with dogs affected me and my life: struggles I've been to, lessons i've learned and so on. can send it to anyone who wants it.</p>

<p>Hey, good luck with your applications!</p>

<p>a. Accepted: UPenn (attending), Northwestern, UChicago, NYU, BU, and GW.
Waitlisted: Columbia and Georgetown.
Rejected: Yale and Harvard.</p>

<p>I think my essays helped :)</p>

<p>b.
1. Common App Personal Statement
2. What do you like to do for fun? (UPenn prompt)</p>

<p>c.</p>

<ol>
<li></li>
</ol>

<p>Dahlia Gibson (title)</p>

<p>The first time I saw her was in New York. It was a blustery, January afternoon and the balmy, tropical sun of Costa Rica was just a distant memory, blown away by Manhattan’s bone chilling wind. Desperate for a reprieve from the piercing cold, I ducked into the first shop I saw. I wandered aimlessly about, shivering, not sure for what I was searching. Making my way through the crowded aisles, I paused to peruse the classic rock section. Pushing Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” back into its slot, I noticed something in the back of the store. I turned my head and there she was. Her rich, ebony color radiant against the icy whiteness of the winter snow. She was simply breathtaking. “Andr</p>

<p>sapofrio, you made my mouth water with ur 2nd essay :D
XD</p>

<p>hahaha thanks (i guess)!! :)</p>

<p>My essay got me in to CMU (attending), UChicago, and a few others.</p>

<p>I thought the essay made a big difference for me. PM me if you want it.</p>

<h2>Actually, you know what, I'll post it. Because I like it that much.</h2>

<p>The light casts an eerie, pale-blue glow on my face as I stare wide- and glassy-eyed at the screen. The room is silent apart from the loud click-clacking of keyboard keys. I unravel the difficult algorithms and untangle the graceful threads; the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Compile... run... success. There is nothing quite like seeing something that you made, especially something as intricate as a computer program, finally work. I love distilling complex puzzles down to simple, elegant solutions.</p>

<p>Elegance is a difficult concept to define. The idea was probably best described by Antoine de Saint-Exup</p>

<p>stormgren, I really liked your essay :)</p>

<p>This</a> is my common-app essay from 2007. It was probably the weakest point of my application, but it did get me into Caltech (the only place I applied).</p>

<p>eh why not. when i was slogging through applications, i wanted to read some more winning essays to see whether i was going in the right direction with my essay or not.</p>

<p>applied to: university of maryland-college park (safety), nyu (match), boston university (match), jhu, washu in st. louis, mit, upenn, columbia (ed), brown
rejected from: mit, upenn, columbia (deferred, then rejected)
waitlisted at: washu
got into: umcp (full ride), nyu, boston u, jhu, brown (where i'm going!)</p>

<p>for columbia and umcp: write an essay which conveys to the reader a sense of who you are.
for the rest: i used mit's prompt-"describe the world you come from and how it has shaped your plans for the future or something."</p>

<p>for the first one, i wrote about my fight with procrastination. it did not shed a very flattering light on me...</p>

<p>for the second one, i wrote about my parents and how they've influenced me.</p>

<p>pm me and i'll show you the second essay.</p>