ESSAYS THAT WORK!

SHERIDAN FRANCIS HONORE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE FELLOW

ESSAY PROMPTS• Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity

that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

• Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?

• Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?

• Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?

• Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, which marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

SAMPLE ESSAY No. 1

I definitely didn’t become an adult when I was five. But it’s important I talk about a certain day when I was five in order to make sense of the day I did. Recently, a freshman at my high school was sitting at my lunch table and started talking about 9/11. By the way he was talking, that infamous day was ancient history to him – something he read about in a textbook, something he expected no one at the table to remember personally.I closed my eyes. I was downtown that day:It is my third day of Kindergarten at P.S. 89 and the principal has called a sudden assembly. My class lazily files into the auditorium. The principal tells us something bad has happened a few blocks away at the World Trade Center and before I can process this, my dad races into the building, completely disheveled. He grabs my older brother David and me and together we speed out of the school and now I’m scared.

SAMPLE ESSAY No. 2

The memory of my first McDonald’s hamburger is still fresh in my mind. I can easily recall the way that the acidic pickles overpowered my senses, how their pungent fragrance wafted through my car and invaded my clothes. I can feel the soggy buns disintegrating atop my tongue, so unlike any other bread I have ever had, and the meager patty crumbling between my teeth. These flavors and textures are memorable because they were novel, because I was not raised on such hamburgers but tried one for the first time during a recent family car ride home from Canada. My parents were puzzled by my desire to consume a food that they had always regarded as taboo. My rationale was this: I do not eat the hamburger because it might be delicious or good for me. I eat it to learn about the world.

SAMPLE ESSAY No. 3

"Si no quieres estudiar entonces te vas a tener que poner a trabajar!" "If you don't want to go to school, then I don't have a choice but to take you out and you'll have to work!" This is what my dad told me when I was an eighth grader. The words cut deep and hit me where they hurt. Why was he telling me this? Because I deserved every bit of it. I was at a point in my life when I was very immature. I was a bad apple, a wannabe thug, and a class clown. I have never been a small kid. I was used to being the biggest kid in my class. This followed me all through middle school. When I was an eighth grader, I took advantage of this and used the size of my body to inflict fear in other students. I was a bully. My school had a zero tolerance policy for bullying, so every time I got in trouble, I would automatically receive a day of suspension. By the middle of the school year, it seemed like I was spending more time out of school than I was in. The school district was ready to expel me.

SAMPLE ESSAY No. 4

I was born with a hammer in my ear. It enables me to hear the 6,000 human languages. One strikes me most: English. I speak it as my fifth. Read it as my second. Write it as my first. Although I speak four languages (excluding English), I am unfortunately and almost painfully a trite occurrence in my family. I come from the village of Tordher, Pakistan, a place where if you are born monolingual you will be regarded as an anomaly. My family’s first language is Pashto. My mother’s second language is Hindko. My father’s second languages are Urdu and Hindi. This almost evokes a redefinition of the word infant (in fans, Latin for born without speech). At 10 months of age, a baby’s babbling resembles the household language. At 12 months, the baby can decipher sounds that carry a meaning (such as ma-ma). This is called the one-word stage, during which babies can become deaf to other languages in order to hone in on their native tongue. Big problem. It is hard to discriminate languages when they are spoken equally in a household.