Princeton University Admission Essays

“If you only learn one thing all year, I hope it isn’t which side won the Civil War, or how Kennedy and Krushchev saved the world,” a middle-aged man with peppered hair and round glasses candidly stated from the front of the room, “but that…

The clock strikes, marking the passing of another hour. He speaks to me, a soul emerging from a simple shell, a shell of intricately carved, French wood. Kai finally comes alive with the downward glide of my arm. He cries in anguish, sings in pure…

While learning a new language is extremely difficult, its benefits outweigh the numerous hours that must be devoted to it. Throughout my high school career, a decent ability to converse in -broken- Spanish has been vital to my volunteerism. Many of the patients that come…

When my family decided to move to the United States I was ten years old and thought little more of it other than to regret that I’d be leaving a city that I loved, a school I enjoyed attending, and the friends I’d acquired over…

To be given a year to spend as one chooses is clearly an unreasonable expectation, but for the sake of hypothetical situations I would say that I would spend that time around Russia’s monasteries, helping rebuild those that a rise in awareness is reconstructing from…

As someone who has always had a love for learning about other cultures, studying foreign languages has been a natural passion for me. I grew up in a bilingual household, which gave me an early appreciation for the nuances of language and how it shapes…

A girl drops in her seventh Alka-Seltzer tablet, still perplexed that her cough medicine can transform her mundane plastic bottle into a colorful lava lamp. “Again!” Five boys laugh as their Coca-Cola rockets spiral through the air. The 300 kids squeal at the sight of…

I graduated in 2000 from Rockway Middle School, at the time a “C+” crowded public school struggling to improve its programs; to the surprise of some, I did so having had the honor of being taught by several excellent teachers. They may not have been…

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” (Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau) I have always heard that it is best to be…

In this life, there are two types of questions: ordinary questions, of mathematics, logistics, and time; and questions of love, questions of faith, questions of life, whose truth is found not in answers, but rather in the journey to find them. Too many people do…