Stanford University Application Essays

As we all piled onto the aging tweed sofa, my dad struggled to get the fancy new VCR to work while my mom, my brother Jacob, and I continued to stare vacantly at the blank screen. It was Christmas Eve, 2001, and we were settling…

Among the candid celebrity shots and photogenic pets, one aspect of Instagram has always intrigued me: the Popular page—a continuously changing mosaic of current top posts. After checking the page, I often wondered what made those photos so special that they were shown on all…

If I were to follow Henry David Thoreau’s advice to simplify my life and eliminate any unnecessary possessions, I would find myself with perhaps half a dozen of the most important left. It is said that one can tell a lot about a person by…

Sitting in a dingy, cramped restaurant waiting for the carts of brunch dishes to pass by, I look like your average American teen – Calvin Klein t-shirt, khakis, a look of disgruntlement and impatience on my face. I should be making up this week’s sleep…

What is the world without music? Is it silent? Is it still? It is empty. As a child, I desired to have a musical outlet but struggled in finding an instrument that suited me. Throughout my four years of piano lessons, I enjoyed the playing,…

In the first grade, I told my classmates that one of my favorite foods was rice. One of my friends asked me why, and I responded, “Why not? Doesn’t everyone eat rice daily?” It took me a while to realize that not everyone has Vietnamese…

“Don’t be such a wimp, just jump!” I glanced up to see the smirking face of a blonde riding the chairlift above me. For the past five minutes, I had sat perched atop a fifteen-foot boulder directly under Snake Creek chairlift, snowboard strapped to my…

“Hey! Change your away message. It’s so OLD!” The chat window pops up onto the screen of my computer. Cool. One of my friends just messaged me. Wait. What is wrong with my away message? Its font and color are conspicuous enough to alert others…

I lean my head against the cold glass window and watch the world fly by at 70 mph, as the soothing tones of stringed instruments and a dancing guitar line melt into Emm Gryner’s voice singing “Stereochrome.” I was 6 years old, riding in the…

The December breeze seeps through the cracked-open door, but I only feel my heart, throbbing in eerie unison with the clock behind me. At a heartbeat a second, my heart will beat ten thousand eight hundred times before editing of The Oracle finishes for the…