Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Application Essays

During the art camp’s Bead and Wire Sculpting class, a fish-shaped frame with wires running across it caught my eye. “Carly, what’s this?” “An earring holder,” the freckled girl announced. “But I want it to stand up.” We built a half-dozen wire bases, experimenting with…

It was broken. Teams were gathering in the gym for the regional Science Olympiad competition and my electric vehicle sat useless on the cafeteria table. The motor simply would not spin, even though the lights said the circuit was on. The competition was 12 minutes…

Six or seven years ago my family purchased, for pennies on the dollar, a couple of foreclosed-upon rental properties in Silver City, a rough but budding Old Milwaukee neighborhood. When we first walked through the behemoth relics of the 1920s, we stepped over missing floorboards,…

I thought I had it all figured out when I began high school. My future, I was convinced, was in psychology—a field that has always fascinated me and seemed to be a promising career choice. Before specializing in psychology in college, I planned to focus…

John F. Kennedy stated in his 1961 Inaugural Address, “Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths…” People in the different fields of science…

My father is a mechanic. Therefore I am, by proxy, an unaccredited mechanic, specializing in relatives’ cars, vintage Vespa scooters, and my friends’ bicycles. I’ve loved our dirty garage from a young age — the sting of growing callouses and the aroma of motor oil…

My mother often reminded me that nothing good would ever come from playing video games. As a young child, I dismissed her words as baseless propaganda to coerce me into doing more chores. After all, I was having plenty of fun catching Pokemon on my…

At my home, it sometimes feels like “angle of refraction”, “thin films”, and “escape velocity” are as common as “hello”, “thank you”, and “go to sleep”. That’s what you get when your parents are both professors in engineering. When I ask a single question about…

When life throws me a curve, I try to find an equation for the best-fit line. Actually, life never really throws me a perfect curve, only a series of data that resembles one. Most people are content by connecting these random dots, forming a rudimentary…