Duke University Admission Essays

Quiet as thieves, Diego and I slipped unnoticed from the boisterous dining room full of clinking glasses and roaring parents into the warm Guatemalan night. It was the middle of the dry season but the air was heavy with the smell of sulfur. Snippets of…

“Ma’am, I just don’t have the money.” I heard a click, and the phone went dead. In middle school, my parents began investing in rental properties, and over time, I became the manager, dealing with the rent, repairs, and complaints for six duplexes and two…

‘Andrea, from Norway. Pleased to meet you.’ ‘Hey. Elen from –’ I stopped short, unable to shake the hand of my to-be-roommate. First day at high school, and I was already struggling for words to explain my identity.Born in USA. Brought up in Bangladesh. Banglarican,…

“GIMME A PIGGYBACK RIDE! HORSEY!!!!” I scrambled to allow the giggling seven year old girl to climb onto my back. I was volunteering as a camp counselor at the Hand in Hand Chinese Cultural Summer Program, a program that introduces adopted Chinese children to Chinese…

A crowd of people forms at the entrance of the Eastside High School Gym. A five-foot-eleven, one-hundred-and-sixty-pound, curly-haired freshman shyly makes his way into the sea of faces. Today is tryouts for the Eastside basketball team. Eastside, my home for the next four years, lies…

As a child, I had always been fascinated with how things worked. From dismantling electronics to tinkering with toys, I was always eager to explore the mechanics behind objects. However, it wasn’t until I began taking science and math classes in high school that I…