Following Her Footsteps: College Admission Essay Sample

As I walk into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, I can hear the television anchor announcing the latest news. I suddenly perk up upon hearing Maria Bartiromo's rapid reports on the latest stock market ups and downs, and I listen attentively as she questions the guest of the day. I blindly stuff eggs into my mouth as my eyes follow the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

Finally, I reluctantly pull away from the screen upon hearing my mom’s call of “we have to go now!”

For as long as I can remember, I have been immersed in the business world. My mother is a Certified Financial Planner, but every weekday morning, I wake up to her trading. While I lacked genuine knowledge of business for much of my early childhood, I wanted to cultivate my background into an experience.

I tagged along with my mother to attend the Money Show in San Francisco on a crisp August morning before my senior year began. This wasn’t my first time going there, but it was the first time I understood the panel speaker’s lecture. Two months before, I had signed up to take Financial Accounting 1A upon my mom’s encouragement. This class, in the course of teaching me how to create income statements and reports, taught me key terms that were vital to the stock market. I was excited to fully understand what “bonds” were and which stocks were good to buy during that season.

Taking Economics at school was the first time that I fully developed my passion for business. Before, I had lacked interest in accounting’s meticulousness because, even though I knew that accounting was the basis of business, the repetitiveness alienated me. As I sat down for class one day, my Economics teacher pulled up a 60 Minutes video. In it, former Chairman of the Fed Ben Bernanke described how the U.S. economy worked and how he stimulating the economy after the 2008 crash. Listening to him describe such nuances made me realize that it was the practicality, the real-life experience, of business that excited me. I was hypnotized watching the volatility of the stock market, mesmerized seeing money flow in and out of sector upon sector.

Today, my dream is to become a businesswoman with a strong background in all aspects of business, to be not only fascinated by that flow of dollars and influence, but aware of its smallest workings. I thirst for knowledge, and I do not want to be limited to one angle of business. I want to know it all.