Sample of College Application Essay
I've spent the past few weeks trying to think how to write the
perfect essay for you, an essay that will explain to you who I am
and why accepting me will make your lives so much better. While I
didn't want to over-stress the second point -- I believe you allow
for some pompous attitudes in your accepted students, after all, we
are teenagers and therefore immortal and perfect in everything we
say and do, but I was scared you would think me too conceited for
even your accepted standards -- it was very important to me that you
know why accepting me will enlighten you so.
Because when you ask me to describe my ideal roommate, you are
really asking something else entirely. You are asking about me as a
person. You are asking how I see other people, how I value and judge
them. You are asking which qualities and temperaments are suited to
my own. You are asking what I consider worthwhile in other people,
and, through them, myself.
All I can write in good conscience is: How can you ask that of us
and expect us to squeeze it all into just two pages, double-spaced?
It would be cruel of us to write more, for you must read hundreds of
these same essays. Yet it is inhuman for us to write less. People
are so much more complex than one admissions essay. We have, of
course, interests and dislikes, habits and fetishes, wants and
concerns, et cetera. But we are so much more than those. Our
interests, our passions, our pursuits -- they are not their own;
they are not individual pieces of our true, but lower, selves. They
are the manifestations of our souls. How can I, with brevity, answer
a question that asks me to define my soul much less someone else's?
I won't. But perhaps it is all for the better; you have learned far
more about me through this than you would have if I had simply
answered the question.
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