For My Mother: College Admission Essay Sample

Tell us about the world you came from and how this world shaped your dreams and aspirations.

I believe in the woman who was both my mother and my father throughout my life. My father was an alcoholic, violent man with no job, goals, ethics, or sense of being, and contributed nothing to our family but terrorization. He continued to live in our house and my mother could not escape him. She worked as a waitress and used her small earnings to support herself, my brother, and me, and my father made her life even harder. He came home drunk with threats and cuss words until finally my mother decided once and for all to leave this man.

Despite our lack of money, my mother found a way to move out of the house we had lived in for over eleven years, find an apartment, and pay all the moving expenses. I thought I had stayed strong throughout the years of living with my father, but my mother’s intuition (her most notable “superpower”) got the best of me. She knew I could no longer bear life with my father and she made everything easier for me, despite the difficulties of doing so. My mother and I moved into our new apartment in the beginning of my senior year (my brother was already in college and living in an apartment). It was strange at first, almost like being in a hotel. However, I was able to finally breathe. My mother and I were significantly less stressed and a lot happier.

Most of my friends are well off financially, but because of my mother I am able to see that I am luckier than they are. I was able to see the struggle of my mother and the hurt she experienced as she could not allow us to have any luxurious items. Through this I gained a greater appreciation for all the things I did have. A lot of my friends take what they have for granted. However, I am proud to say that I hold much more value in sweat and labor than in Chanel and Prada.

This experience has motivated me to work hard in school. I don’t want my choices to be as constrained as my mother`s, and I also want to make my mother feel proud of herself for raising a successful daughter – I want to be her proof that she did something right in her life. Her tenacity and courage have given me ambition to excel academically and professionally, as well as the humility to appreciate all that I have achieved.