Suggestions for Topics

College Essays
1

Can everyone please give me some advice on what I should try and write about or what to emphasize in my essays
I placed some hooks below.

  1. Probable College Major, Goal or statement.

Chemistry/ Biochemistry
Nutritional Science
Doctorate in Athletic Training

  1. My special strengths as an individual and as a prospective college student are: Self-Motivated, Discipline, Resilience, Kind

Eagle Scout
Founder of STEM Club
Chief Science Officer: As part of this, I organized Willow Wind’s first ever STEM fair to spread awareness about STEM to 180 students at Willow Wind School in town.
Competitive Swimming on a regional level (states)
Water polo Conference MVP
Red Cross Lifeguard YMCA
Food Bank and Ice Rink Volunteer

  1. What makes me different from other students, provide challenges that have been overcome.

My father died in 7th grade; I joined Boy Scouts to fill the male role in my life which saved my life.

I was 8 weeks premature, I went through a childhood of physical therapy, surgeries and doctor visits.

I enjoy swimming and dropping time, I didn’t start early in my life.

I enjoy mentoring kids and playing with them because I really enjoyed playing as a kid, this is a way for me to go back to a time that was memorable.

Enjoyed learning Latin and Greek stems in human anatomy, it provided a routine to my week, I would go in early and take the quiz and form a relationship with my teacher.

Didn’t read until 4th grade when I was diagnosed with my vision disability
Overcoming that I became a straight A student

First time I went on a Ferris wheel I dropped my hat and wondered why It fell so quickly,
I wondered why my stomach was queasy.

Experienced otoplasty twice because the surgeon on my ear surgery did not tie off the permanent stitches so they came through my skin.

I understand what grief is like, my dad died, the next year I lost all immediate relatives (2 grandparents and 2 uncles) who died within 6 months after my dad passed away, my water polo teammate Kevin Wallace overdosed on drugs and a scout in my boy scout troop, whom I had shared a tent with, stabbed his sister and killed his mother.

Vision/processing disability (Hyperotropia), my eyes are not aligned in the same visual plane. Without therapy and prisms, I see double vision.

Fluent in Spanish and French

Let me know if you have any questions.

2

Wow. You’ve been though a lot of stuff.

The challenge is to draw on all of that experience to paint a picture of who you are, without being too overt or falling into an overused pattern of “how I overcame adversity” and such-like. (Not to be dismissive, at all - clearly you have overcome adversity - the trick is to give your reader a glimpse of that, but in a way that puts it a little more on the periphery of the story so that it isn’t too heavy-handed, and it becomes part of a larger picture that also includes other subtleties about who you are.)

My question is, can you think of a specific vignette that captures multiple aspects of what you’ve described above? Like, for example, is there a kid that you have mentored, who brought out the joy that you feel in revisiting the positive parts of your youth, but also took you back to some of the struggles and losses? Can you think of a situation or a relationship to describe that would capture your multifaceted feelings about working with kids? Can you tell a story that is engaging in an ordinary, everyday way, on the surface, but that also brings out the deeper stuff along the way?

3

@aquapt I am thinking, possibly in boy scouts, I was the senior patrol leader, I will brainstorm. Thank you for sparking the ideas. I definitely think I can answer while tying in death and leadership