Part of Me is In West Philly: College Admission Essay Sample

A few times a week, I make the hour-long trek from my home in the suburbs to my fencing school in West Philadelphia. As I drive to practice, suburban towns slowly fade into red and brown brick row homes, until all around me are boarded up windows, barred doors, and cars that have been in one too many accidents. Dilapidated homes with trash strewn across their sidewalks sit across from schools, churches, and businesses that all seem to fade together into blocks of continuous buildings.

In my town, only 0.6 percent of children live below the poverty line, but in some parts of West Philadelphia the number is over 40 percent. Many of these children receive inadequate educations and struggle to read at grade level. As someone who has always loved reading, I decided to use my Eagle Scout project to help these students improve their reading skills. Working with an organization called West Philadelphia Alliance for Children (WePAC), I built four wooden bookshelves and organized book drives at local libraries to collect over five hundred leveled readers for four public elementary schools in West Philadelphia.

My project challenged me like nothing I had ever attempted. I had already served in multiple leadership positions within my scout troop - from Senior Patrol Leader to crew leader on a sailing adventure around the Bahamas - but I soon realized how much planning was required for such a large project involving so many volunteers. I had to meet with community leaders to develop my proposal and organize the book drive, and then I had to plan the actual execution of my project. With the help of my grandfather, a more experienced woodworker, I designed bookshelves to meet WePAC’s specifications. Then, I reached out to troop members, friends, and family, who generously donated their time to help build and paint them.

Beyond challenging my skills, however, my project made me reflect on my own upbringing and how fortunate I have been throughout my life. As I sorted through the stacks of more than five hundred leveled readers that I collected during the book drive, I became nostalgic. I knew these books; they were my childhood. At the same time, I thought about why I had collected them, and how so many kids never even get a chance to read books like these. I have always loved reading, and a strong foundation in reading is fundamental to a good education, so the idea that some kids might never get the chance to find their own love of reading and build this foundation really resonated with me as a significant problem. I knew my project would not fix the problem. Four bookshelves full of books are not enough to improve the literacy of all underprivileged children in West Philadelphia, but I also knew that I needed to help in any way I could, even if my impact was only minor. Yet it was an impact premised on the generosity, at times, of complete strangers. From a man at the lumberyard who cut pieces of wood for free to the people who donated books to my collection bins at their local libraries, their kindness opened my eyes in a new way to the value of community.

What my project showed me most of all, though, is my place in the greater community. Despite coming from a suburban town with different socioeconomic demographics, I feel a personal connection to West Philadelphia. My project is a part of me, the physical manifestation of the hard work and dedication it took to complete, and that part of me will forever reside in those four schools in West Philadelphia. When I drive to practice, I am no longer forging through a foreign landscape. Behind the barred elementary school windows, the books I collected sit in the bookshelves I built, awaiting the small hands of a young reader.