I watched TV with her, baked cookies for her, and observed her persistence as she regained strength and achieved remission. We beat biology, time, and death, all at the same time, with cookies, TV, and friendship. Yet I was so concerned with helping Kiersten that I had not realized how she helped me during her battle with cancer.
I had been so used to solving my problems intellectually that when it came time to emotionally support someone, I was afraid. I could define cancer, but what do I say to someone with it? There were days where I did not think I could be optimistic in the face of such adversity. But the beauty that resulted from sympathizing as opposed to analyzing and putting aside my own worries and troubles for someone else was an enormous epiphany for me.
My problems dissipated into thin air the moment I came home and dropped my books and bags to talk with Kiersten.
The more I talked, laughed, smiled, and shared memories with her, the more I began to realize all that she taught me. She influenced me in the fact that she demonstrated the power of loyalty, companionship, and optimism in the face of desperate, life-threatening situations.
She showed me the importance of loving to live and living to love. Most of all, she gave me the insight necessary to fully help others not just with intellect and preparation, but with solidarity and compassion. In this way, I became able to help myself and others with not only my brain, but with my heart.
Ultimately, he finds his way and gains a deeper perspective on life, and thus shares a story of overcoming and of complex intellectual and emotional growth. We first see it in the essay when he describes one of his first impressions of Kiersten, with her blonde hair flowing in the wind by the Jersey Shore and how that contrasted with the dark hair of his family.
That description then flows as we read the next paragraph, where he talks about the impact of her cancer. Maybe a quick explanation would have helped the reader make sense of her location, and create an even stronger linkage with Nikolas and his family. Additionally, Nikolas might have taken one more step toward the end of the essay to connect this newfound emotion to other parts of his life. HS2 Academy is a premier college counseling company that has helped thousands of students gain admission into Ivy League-level universities across the world.
With a counseling team of passionate educators with over years of combined experience, we pride ourselves in helping high schoolers achieve their college dreams. Since results matter most, entrust your future to the leader in college admissions with a consistent track record of success. Abigail gained national attention after reading her application essay on TikTok earlier this year, with over Her essay helped her to recieve a rare likely letter in the most competitive Harvard application cycle in history with a less than 4 percent acceptance rate, and now she uses her platform to help other college hopefuls navigate the application process.
Watch her read the beginning of her essay here and check out her other writing tips on her TikTok. To condemn an entire letter because of its use 0. Any spare time that I had, I filled. Though my specific schedule has changed over time, the busyness has not.
I never succumbed to the stress of potentially over-committing. I thrived. So, I added another ball, and another, and another. I began to want to come into contact with these more and more, so I further narrowed the scope of my color wheel and increased the shades of my primary colors.
I found my rhythm, and I embraced it. Passion has given me purpose. I wish I could end here, triumphant and basking in my new inspiration, but life is more convoluted. Motivation is a double edged sword; it keeps me facing forward, but it also keeps me from having to look back. I am not perfectly healed, but I am perfect at navigating the best way to heal me. Rather than focus purely on the loss of one of her parents to cancer, Abigail reflects on her life and the adjustments she has had to make.
It is particularly poignant how she expresses the sense that her life with only one remaining parent seems somehow anomalous, that the constant reminders of the completeness in the familial structures of others haunts her. What also makes this essay all the more intriguing is how we get a glimpse into her internal life as she learns to cope with the loss.
Lastly, we see a sense of realism and maturity in Abigail's closing reflection. Elite Educational Institute has been helping students reach their academic goals through test preparation, tutoring, and college consulting services since Learn more at www. Other kids had Nintendos and would spend their free time with Mario and Luigi. While they pummeled their video game controllers furiously, the pads of their thumbs dancing across their joysticks, I would type out labels on my industrial-standard P-Touch with just as much zeal.
I labeled everything imaginable, dividing hundreds of pens into Ziploc bags by color, then rubber-banding them by point size. The finishing touch, of course, was always a glossy, three-eighths-inch-wide tag, freshly churned out from my handheld labeler and decisively pasted upon the numerous plastic bags I had successfully compiled. Labeling became therapeutic for me; organizing my surroundings into specific groups to be labeled provides me with a sense of stability.
Each book is either filtered into that category or placed definitively into another one. Yet, such consistency only exists in these inanimate objects. Thus, the break in my role as a labeler comes when I interact with people.
Their lives are too complicated, their personalities too intricate for me to resolutely summarize in a few words or even with the I have learned that a thin line exists between labeling and just being judgmental when evaluating individuals. I can hardly superficially characterize others as simply as I do my material possessions because people refuse to be so cleanly separated and compartmentalized.
My mother is sometimes my biggest supporter, spouting words of encouragement and, at other instances, my most unrelenting critic. The overlap becomes too indistinct, the contradictions too apparent, even as I attempt to classify those people in the world whom I know best. Neither would I want others to be predictable enough for me to label. The real joy in human interaction lies in the excitement of the unknown. Overturning expectations can be necessary to preserving the vitality of relationships.
If I were never surprised by the behaviors of those around me, my biggest source of entertainment would vanish. I meticulously follow directions to the millimeter in the chemistry lab but measure ingredients by pinches and dashes in the comfort of my kitchen. I even call myself a labeler, but not when it comes to people.
I therefore refrain from the temptation to label—despite it being an act that makes me feel so fulfilled when applied to physical objects—when real people are the subjects. The consequences of premature labeling are too great, the risk of inaccuracy too high because, most of the time, not even the hundreds of alphanumeric digits and symbols available for entry on my P-Touch can effectively describe who an individual really is.
By integrating occasional humour and witty commentary into an otherwise lyrical and earnest self-reflection, Justine masterfully conveys an unfettered, sincere wisdom and maturity coveted by prestigious universities. Justine breaks the ice by recalling a moment in her childhood that captures her fervent passion for labelling. When applying to selective academic institutions, idiosyncrasies and peculiar personal habits, however trivial, are always appreciated as indicators of individuality.
She also writes from a place of raw honesty and emotion by offering the rationale behind her bizarre passion. She recognizes, however, it would be imprudent to navigate all facets of life with an unfaltering drive to compartmentalize everything and everyone she encounters. In doing so, Justine seamlessly transitions to the latter, more pensive half of her personal statement.
She extracts several insights by analyzing how, in staunch contrast with her neatly-organized pencil cases, the world is confusing, and rife with contradictions.
In concluding, Justine returns back to the premise that started it all, reminding the reader of her take on why compartmentalizing the world would be an ultimately unproductive effort. It reads easily, flows with imagery, and employs a simple concept—her labelling practices—to introduce a larger, thoughtful conversation. I thought about every one of my atoms, wondering where they had been and what miracles they had witnessed.
My physical body is a string of atoms, but what of my inner self, my soul, my essence? Every one of us is made of star stuff, forged through fires, and emerging as nicked as the surface of the moon.
I was duly impressed with Quidditch and the Invisibility Cloak, of course, but I was absolutely spellbound by how much I could learn about Harry.
The kippers he had for breakfast, the supplies he bought for Potions—the details everyone skimmed over were remarkable to me. Fiction was a revelation. I considered the usual suspects—invisibility, superhuman strength, flying—but threw them out immediately. My superhero alter ego would be Story Girl. Here was my imaginary superpower, embodied in real life! I had been struggling with AP Biology, seeing it as a class full of complicated processes and alien vocabulary.
That changed radically when I listened, enthralled, as Radiolab traced the effects of dopamine on love and gambling. It contained conflict and emotion and a narrative; it made me anxious to learn more. The layperson often writes off concepts—entropy, the Maginot Line, anapestic meter—as too foreign to comprehend. But with the right framing, the world suddenly becomes an open book, enticing and ripe for exploration. I want to become a writer to find those stories, much like Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich from Radiolab, making intimidating subjects become familiar and inviting for everyone.
I want to become Story Girl. Carrie begins her essay with a fondly-remembered compliment from her brother, introducing her most passionate endeavor: storytelling. By recalling anecdotes related to her love of stories, she establishes herself as a deeply inquisitive and creative person; someone whose greatest virtue is their unfettered thirst for knowledge.
Going on to explore the intersections between stories and science, Carrie reveals her past difficulties with AP biology; that is, until she learnt about the amazing stories hidden within the subject. By combining her previous interest with her newfound love for biology, Carrie is able to highlight how her past experiences have assisted her in overcoming novel challenges.
This portrays her as a resilient and resourceful problem-solver: traits that colleges value heavily in their students. Carrie ends her essay with her belief that through stories, everything is possible. She expounds on her future ambitions in regards to storytelling, as well as her desire to make learning both fun and accessible to everyone via the power of stories. By comparing her goals to that of a superhero, Carrie is able to emphasise her enthusiasm for contributing to social change.
As an admission essay specialist , Dan Lichterman has been empowering students to find their voice since He helps students stand out on paper, eliminating the unnecessary so the necessary may speak. Drawing upon his storytelling background, Dan guides applicants to craft authentic essays that leap off the page.
He is available for online writing support within the US and internationally. To learn more and schedule a brief complimentary consultation visit danlichterman. But simply constructing letters and characters from strokes of ink gives me immense satisfaction. I often find myself crafting characters in the margins of notebooks with a fifty-cent pencil, or tracing letters out of thin air with anything from chopsticks to fingertips.
The art of handwriting is a relic in the information era. Why write when one can type? Perhaps the Chinese had an answer before the advent of keyboards. Moreover, perhaps this strange passion in polishing every single character of a word delineates my dedication to learning, testifies my zeal for my conviction, and sketches a crucial stroke of my character. My pen firmly nods in agreement with Hilbert, while my mind again fumbles for the path to knowledge.
The versatility of handwriting enthralls me. Fittingly, each hand seems to parallel one of my many academic interests. Characters of the Regular Hand kai shu , a legible script, serve me well during many long hours when I scratch my head and try to prove a mathematical statement rigorously, as the legibility illuminates my logic on paper. Words of the Running Hand xing shu , a semi-cursive script, are like the passionate words that I speak before a committee of Model United Nations delegates, propounding a decisive course of action: the words, both spoken and written, are swift and coherent but resolute and emphatic.
And strokes of the Cursive Hand cao shu resemble those sudden artistic sparks when I deliver a line on stage: free spontaneous, but emphatic syllables travel through the lights like rivers of ink flowing on the page. Yet the fact that the three distinctive hands cooperate so seamlessly, fusing together the glorious culture of writing, is perhaps a fable of learning, a testament that the many talents of the Renaissance Man could all be worthwhile for enriching human society.
Such is my methodology: just like I organize my different hands into a neat personal style with my fetish for writing, I can unify my broad interests with my passion for learning.
We -- will -- know! I must know: for knowing, like well-crafted letters, has an inherent beauty and an intrinsic value. I will know: for my versatile interests in academics will flow like my versatile styles of writing. We can visualize spontaneously crafted letters filling his notebooks. We see him trace Chinese characters into air by chopstick and fingertip.
We learn that he expresses his innermost self through an art that has become a relic within the information age.
Jiafeng goes on to reveal that his intellectual pursuit has been shaped by not one but three Chinese styles of handwriting, each reflecting a distinct element of his intellectual growth. He presents these polymath pursuits as united by writing, indicating to readers that his broad interests are all an expression of the same principle of discovery.
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Increasingly powerful palpitations throbbed in my heart as my eyes darted around the classroom — searching for a profound response to Dr. I took a deep breath while reaching the most genuine answer I could conjure. He arched his flummoxed brows as he began to open his mouth.
In class, I often separated the culture of Christianity from the religion. To tie these immensely disparate concepts as one and coin it as Christianity would present fallacies that contradict with the Christianity I knew. People were just using Christianity as an excuse to exalt themselves rather than the holy name of Jesus. My greatest realization came when Douglass declared Christian slave-holders as the worst slave-holders he ever met because of their deceptive feign of piety and use of Christianity to justify the oppression of their slaves.
To Douglass, Christianity was the opposite. People use this sacred religion to spread hatred, and to many, this is the only Christianity they know. Issues such as racism, white privilege, and gender disparity are highly salient topics of current political discussion.
As a Korean-American in the South, I am no stranger to intolerance. Because their words were less eloquent, people deemed their thoughts as less valuable as well. My protective nature drives my desire to connect with different people and build understanding. Excluded from the Manichaean narrative of this country, I observe the turmoil in our nation through a separate lens - a blessing and a curse.
Not only do I find myself awkwardly fixed in a black vs. In the end, I find myself stuck amongst the conventional labels and binaries that divide America. Franklin said after I shared these thoughts to the class. As an anomaly, accepting different truths is second nature. At a time in which the Black Lives Matters movement was sweeping America and racial tension was at a high, Ella was able to offer a powerful and brave perspective: how she feels to be neither Black nor White.
The true strength of this essay is its willingness to go where people rarely go in college essays: to race, to politics and to religion. It requires intellectual bravery to ask the hard questions of your own religion as opposed to succumbing to cognitive dissonance.
This is a trait that exists in a powerful independent thinker who could push all kinds of debates forwards - academic ones or otherwise. Her word choice continues to emphasize bravery and strength. Her humorous quirks show the insidious racism. She even needs to shield her family from the humble request for some more Ketchup at McDonalds! Imagine if one is nervous to ask for some more Ketchup and even such a mundane activity becomes difficult through the friction of racial tension and misunderstanding.
She demonstrates her intellectual prowess in her discussion of somewhat high-brow topics but also grounds herself in the descriptions of her daily acts of kindness. Creatively Ella weaves numerous literary devices in and out of her story without them being overbearing. These include alliteration and the juxtaposition of longer sentences with shorter ones to make a point.
Her final dialogue is subtle but booming. The reader is left genuinely sympathetic for her plight, challenges and bravery as she goes about her daily life. Ella is a bold independent thinker with a clear social conscience and an ability to wade in the ambiguity and challenge of an imperfect world.
College Confidential is your gateway to real, unfiltered guidance about applying to college and exploring majors and careers. CC is powered by our community of real students, parents, and admissions professionals. I looked at her blankly.
Where were the charts of colors and books of techniques? Why was her smile so decidedly encouraging? The sudden expectations made no sense. In a daze, I assembled my supplies the way the older students did. I was scared. I knew everything but nothing.
And even in those first blissful moments of experimentation, it hurt to realize that my painting was all wrong. The gleam of light. The distorted reflection. A thousand details taunted me with their refusal to melt into the glass. The vase was lifeless at best. As the draining hours of work wore on, I began wearing reckless holes in my mixing plate. It was my fourth hour here. Why had I not received even a single piece of guidance? At the peak of my frustration, she finally reentered the studio, yawning with excruciating casualness.
I felt myself snap. She looked at me with a shocked innocence that only heightened the feeling of abandonment. And then suddenly she broke into a pitch of urgent obviousness: "What are you doing! Don't you see those details??
There's orange from the wall and light brown from the floor. There's even dark green from that paint box over there. You have to look at the whole picture," she stole a glance at my face of bewilderment, and, sighing, grabbed my paint,stained hand. But over the years I did begin to see. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass.
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