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Essays About Cats: Top 5 Examples Plus Prompts

Cats are some of the most beloved animals to humankind; this article contains writing prompts and essay examples to help you write essays about cats. 

When you think of animals, two things come to mind: cats and dogs. Cats are some of the most popular pets, as they are, for the most part, relatively independent, low-maintenance, and easy to care for. The word “cat” most often describes domesticated house cats but also refers to some of the most vicious predators on the planet, such as lions, cheetahs, and leopards. Nevertheless, they make great companions for people who enjoy staying home and spending time sitting down and petting them, which reduces stress and anxiety. 

If you want to start writing essays about cats, start by reading some essay examples.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers

1. Short Essay on “Cat” by Kirti Daga

2. life of stray cats by nathaniel bridges, 3. do cats understand mirrors by christine o’brien, 4.  why cats are bad pets by shannon cain.

  • 5. ​​Why Are Cats So Incredibly Rude? by Julie Davidson

5 Writing Prompts For Essays About Cats

1. should you own a cat, 2. why are cats so loved, 3. my experience with cats, 4. cats vs. dogs, 5. my favorite breed of cat.

“If your cat has given birth to kittens, make sure that your house is quiet because a lot of noise and activity can scare a small kitten and a cat lover would never wish to scare a kitten for sure. Cats can be shy in nature and can even take time while adjusting with the environment. One needs to be patient and deal with the animal with a lot of love and care.”

Daga gives a basic description of cats’ physical features, personalities, and misconceptions about them. They are gentle and playful yet, to an extent, selfish. Many believe that cats are related to black magic and bad luck; however, this is entirely false. Daga ends the essay by briefly discussing how to tame a cat and care for one that has given birth to kittens.

“Although it’s impossible for us to adopt every stray cat on the street, but imagine if every family manage to keep a pet cat in their home. That can actually save a lot of their lives. Some might have allergies towards animals but you can still help by providing clean water and some food outside of your house for the cats. This can avoid them from eating poisonous or unhygienic foods and also let them have a healthier life.”

In his essay, Bridges implores readers to be more sympathetic to the plight of stray cats. They have difficulty finding food and are involved in many accidents, particularly with cars. Bridges suggest leaving out food and water for stray cats, so they eat healthier food than whatever they scavenge for. In addition, he encourages people to adopt stray cats, although this is not for everyone, as some may have allergic reactions. 

Looking for more? Check out these essays about dogs .

“the extent of cat self-awareness is still a mystery. Despite all of the wisdom contained in her all-knowing eyes, when your cat’s pacing back and forth in front of mirror, she’s probably not admiring the sleekness of her coat or the smoothness of her freshly-trimmed nails.

More than likely, she’s investigating the stranger that is too close for comfort.”

O’Brien writes about the phenomenon in which cats look at themselves intently in the mirror. Based on research, cats do not recognize themselves and continue to look into the mirror to assess possible threats. As animal brains are less developed, they do not understand that they see themselves and instead see their reflections as other animals. They are not looking at themselves as people claim but trying to perceive the presence of another cat. 

“How many people do you see taking their cat with them on car rides? Or having a nice walk in the park? Absolutely no one. If you’ve ever brought your cat in the car, you know how loud, annoying and horrible it is, not only for them but you as well. The whole time, all you hear is their pitiful meow from the carrier, which is in the very back, covered in blankets to drown out the ear-splitting screeches.”

Cain’s essay explores the more negative aspects of cats, particularly compared to owning a dog. She starts by recalling ancient Egyptian traditions by which cats were associated with divinity and protectors from evil spirits, demons, and hell. She also discusses several bad qualities of cats; they are “a bit messy,” “filthy,” “annoying,” and “horrible.” While Cain does not hate cats, she believes dogs are preferable. 

5. ​​ Why Are Cats So Incredibly Rude? by Julie Davidson

“Cats hold a grudge. When a cat is mad, she wants you to acknowledge it. Some will act out doing such things as clearing the books off the coffee table, sumo wrestling a feline roommate, or emptying her water dish out onto the floor—all to get your attention. But, just when she has pushed us to our absolute limit, a cat flashes those big kitten eyes (picture Puss in Boots from Shrek), and we melt like a snowman in the Sahara.”

Davidson writes about some of the cats’ bad habits, particularly their “rudeness.” They demand attention, put up a bad attitude when it is not given, and do things considered “adorable” to win back the favor of their owners. Cats are lovable yet manipulative; however, this is part of their nature, and cat owners must deal with it. For more, you can also see these articles about cats .

Essays About Cats: Should you own a cat

In this essay, research and list the advantages and disadvantages of owning a cat- what positive and negative traits do they have? Then, conclude whether you would recommend getting a cat as a pet to others. Of course, this would be easier if you own or have a cat, but ample research will suffice. This is an excellent topic for an argumentative essay, as you can find many arguments for and against owning a cat online. 

It is a fact that cats are loved by many. What makes cats so lovable? In your essay, look into some qualities of cats that make them so beloved and ideal as pets. If you do not have a cat,  you can base your essay on interviews with cat owners or information from the internet. 

Think of a memorable occasion when you interacted with a cat, whether with your pet, a family member or friend’s cat, or even a stray cat outside. How did it make you feel- were you stressed, relaxed, or disgusted? Your essay should be a retelling of a personal story; do not include others’ opinions or ideas from online sources. 

For an engaging argumentative essay, decide which animal you prefer: cats or dogs. Research and write about the advantages and disadvantages of having either of them as a pet, then decide which one you would prefer. Be sure to justify your choice; you can use some of the essay examples above as evidence, 

Do you have a favorite breed of cat? How about the species of cat overall? For your essay, write about your favorite type of cat, whether a lion, tiger, or adorable Persian cat. Explain why it is your favorite and, if applicable, any other special meaning the cat has to you. 

If you’d like to learn more, check out our guide on how to write an argumentative essay .

For more help, check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

college essay on cats

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Essay on Cat: Samples for Students in 100, 200, and 300 Words

college essay on cats

  • Updated on  
  • Jan 29, 2024

Essay On Cat

Cats are adorable pets. They are furry, cute and cuddly and are loved by most people. Their silly acts make them a favourite among people. Cats have been around for thousands of years now it is now sometimes unclear if we have domesticated them or if is it the opposite that is true. There are so many aspects to cats. We have included several things related to cats in the samples of our essay on Cat. let’s have a look at the same!

Table of Contents

  • 1 Essay on Cat in 100 words
  • 2 Essay on Cat in 200 words
  • 3 Essay on Cat in 300 words

Also Read:- Essay on Waste Management

Essay on Cat in 100 words

I have a pet cat and her name is Hermoine. She is white in color. We brought her home when she was only 8 weeks old kitten. Now, she is 1 year old. I love to play with her. We have a ball for her that she likes to chase around the house. Most of the time she is playing, she likes to eat and sleep otherwise. When I wake up in the morning, I look for Hermoine. And every night before going to bed, I pet her. I love my cat and now, she an important part of our lives. 

Also Read:- Essay on My Hobby

Essay on Cat in 200 words

I have a pet cat. His name is Snowbell and he is white in colour. We brought Snowbell home when he was around 8 weeks old and now, he is 1.5 years old. Most of the time he stays inside the house being lazy and sleeping. But he is also very energetic. He likes to chase a ball around the house that we brought for him. 

Pets are very lovable but having them brings a lot of responsibilities. We take very good care of Snowbell and feed him twice a day. We make sure that he gets enough nutrients in his meals. My sister bathes him twice a week. And then we brush his white fur. Cats also need a good bed to sleep in so, we brought a bed specifically for him. It’s so soft and he loves sleeping in it. Also, we made sure that he got all his vaccinations done on time. 

By nature, cats like to eat fish and other meats. And so, our Snowbell also loves fish and chicken. Whenever I am studying, Snowbell comes near me, curls up around my feet and lays there. Our whole family loves Snowbell, especially my mother. Snowbell is an important part of our family.

Also Read:- Essay on Athletics in 100, 200, 300 Words for Students

Essay on Cat in 300 words

My cat’s name is Stuart. He is a Maine Coon cat that is famous for its furry looks. Stuart is very dear to me. His walk is majestic, and he loves to hop around the house while carrying all his grace in his golden fur. Although very majestic, when he sleeps, his postures are funny to look at. 

Most of the time he stays at home playing with the ball we got him. But at times he also goes in the backyard for a stroll. He loves watching the birds from the window in my room. I have always wanted a pet cat and when my dad brought home Stuart, I was the happiest. He came home curdled like a white snowball. The cats of his breed live in cold climates, hence we have to ensure that our house is airconditioned properly, especially at night. Now, because they are habitual to such cold climates, the fur of Stuart is amazingly fluffy. We also have to take extra precautions so that Stuart doesn’t feel too much heat. 

Cats require a lot of attention and care. We take care of Stuart’s meals like we would of a baby. We feed him twice a day and make sure that he gets all the necessary nutrients through his meals. We also bathe him twice a week. Another important thing that we made sure of is that he got all his vaccinations done on time. And periodically we visit the vet to make sure that he is healthy. Although domesticated, he still likes to chase around birds. When some pigeons sit on the window, he chases them away. 

Everyone in our family love loves Stuart. We all take care of him and love him with all our hearts. He is an important member of our family.

Ans: I have a pet cat and her name is Hermoine. She is white in colour. We brought her home when she was only 8 weeks old kitten. Now, she is 1 year old. I love to play with her. We have a ball for her that she likes to chase around the house. Most of the time she is playing, other times she likes to eat and sleep. When I wake up in the morning, I look for Hermoine. And every night before going to bed, I pet her. I love my cat and now, she an important part of our lives. 

Ans: I have a pet cat. His name is Snowbell and he is white in colour. We brought Snowbell home when he was around 8 weeks old and now, he is 1.5 years old. Most of the time he stays inside the house being lazy and sleeping. But he is also very energetic. He likes to chase a ball around the house that we brought for him.  Pets are very lovable but having them brings a lot of responsibilities. We take very good care of Snowbell and feed him twice a day. We make sure that he gets enough nutrients in his meals. My sister bathes him twice a week. And then we brush his white fur. Cats also need a good bed to sleep in so, we brought a bed specifically for him. It’s so soft and he loves sleeping in it. Also, we made sure that he got all his vaccinations done on time.  By nature, cats like to eat fish and other meats. And so, our Snowbell also loves fish and chicken. Whenever I am studying, Snowbell comes near me, curls up around my feet and lays there. Our whole family loves Snowbell, especially my mother. Snowbell is an important part of our family.

Ans: A pet is an animal that is brought home and is taken care of as one of the family members.

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Cat College Essays Samples For Students

144 samples of this type

Regardless of how high you rate your writing skills, it's always a worthy idea to check out an expertly written College Essay example, especially when you're handling a sophisticated Cat topic. This is exactly the case when WowEssays.com directory of sample College Essays on Cat will come in handy. Whether you need to brainstorm an original and meaningful Cat College Essay topic or inspect the paper's structure or formatting peculiarities, our samples will provide you with the necessary material.

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A Cat in The Rain Essay

Free the black cat essay sample.

The narrator of the story, The Black Cat is an insane man. There is a horde of evidence throughout the story to prove this assertion. The actions, the hallucinations and the uncontrollable fits of rage all prove that the narrator is insane.

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Dogs and cats share extraordinary relationships with humans and are two of the most popular choice for pets. They both offer unconditional love, comfort and friendship and become an important part of our lives in many ways. While some people prefer the company of dogs, others are considered cat lovers. Both cats and dogs are different in their behavior and have their own personalities as pets. The essay examines the nature of cats and dogs and illustrates the similarities and differences in their behavior and how they percept certain situations.

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Dogs and cats are the most common pets kept by man. They can be said to be man’s closest friends in relation to the animals. This implies that the two share quite a lot. This essay is dedicated to bringing out the similarities and differences between dogs and cats. The essay will first highlight the similarities and then look at the differences.

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When one thinks of pets, one primarily thinks of getting a cat or a dog. These are the two most popular kinds of pets out there, but how can one decide on which one to get? Thankfully, there are a few key differences that can be considered that will help on a quest to get a new pet. In this essay, we will examine the main differences that exist between cats and dogs.

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The Black Cat is the story of a married man who has a love for animals that grows as he himself grows older. This man ends up getting pets of all kinds and developing relationships with them but his closest relationship is with a totally black cat by the name of Pluto. Pluto and he are inseparable in the beginning. Pluto follows him mostly everywhere he goes and their bond becomes tighter than ever.

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Thesis: Communication accommodation theory (CAT), speech codes theory and Peplau’s interpersonal theory provide three distinct means by which greater communication can be accomplished within health care contexts. I. COMMUNICATION ACCOMMODATION THEORY (CAT)

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<Student’s name> <Professor’s name>

Introduction As it known, the recent issue of cruelty to animals is particularly acute. Many countries have adopted laws to protect animals; animal cruelty is a criminal offense. Thus, according to the social opinion, a person must not only prevent animal abuse, but also take care of them. But is it not dangerous – to concern excessively for animals? On the one hand, animal abuse is an act of cruelty which must be punished, but on the other hand, the excessive treatment sometimes can harm animals even not lesser than abuse.

In this report, the problem of animal abuse and excessive concern about them will be discussed.

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Essay on Cat

The cat is a domestic animal. Its scientific name is Felis catus. It is a small animal that belongs to the “Felidae” family. The cat is the only domesticated species of the family. Other members include tigers, panthers, etc. Cats are adorable animals and are petted by lots of people in the world. They are playful and spending time with them reduces stress and anxiety. In this essay about cats in English , their nature, behaviour and diet have been discussed.

Cat Paragraph in English

Cats are of three types- house cats, farm cats and feral cats. House cats are the cats we pet in our houses. Cats become good friends of humans. Unlike dogs, cats are not very active around their owners. However, they are good emotional companions to their owners. An essay on cats must emphasize the fact that cat-sitting has been proven to be therapeutic by many researchers. 

Any ‘my pet cat essay for Class 6’ must include a few details about the appearance of cats. Cats have very sweet features. It has two beautiful eyes, adorably tiny paws, sharp claws, and two perky ears which are very sensitive to sounds. It has a tiny body covered with smooth fur and it has a furry tail as well. Cats have an adorable face with a tiny nose, a big mouth and a few whiskers under its nose. Cats are generally white in colour but can also be brown, black, grey, cream or buff. 

Cats are omnivores. They eat vegetative items such as rice, milk, pulses, etc. as well as fish, meat, birds, mice, etc. Therefore, cats can feed on both types of food.

It is worth mentioning in this my pet cat essay for Class 6 that cats are considered sacred in several cultures such as the Japanese culture. Cats are often depicted as symbols of wit and honour. Several folklores include stories about the intelligence of cats. 

Apart from being clever and sweet, cats are also skilful hunters. They use their sharp, pointed nails and canines (teeth) to kill animals like snakes, mice and also small birds. Cats are also helpful to their owners as they protect the household from rats. Thus, from this cat essay, it can be said that cats are helpful pets as well.

However, any essay on cats would be incomplete without writing about their babies. A cat offspring is called a “kitten”. Cats are very protective and caring towards their kittens. They feed the kittens and raise them. Kittens are extremely tiny and adorable as well. Their eyes open sometime after they are born. Kittens are very energetic and they spend their time playing with each other and loving their parents. 

Now this cat essay will discuss the nature of cats. Cats are very lazy creatures. They usually spend their time napping and sleeping in warm places. Cats have a slow approach to their lives. They are not very energetic animals and they yawn very adorably whenever they are tired. Cats are very good friends to humans if they trust them. Cats like to sleep close to humans for their body warmth.

A Short My Pet Cat Essay for Class 6

In the following, my favourite pet cat essay, the cat’s behaviour, diet and appearance are discussed. Cat is a domestic animal. Cats are very beautiful and friendly animals. They are very good at hunting rats and snakes.

Cats have two eyes, a tiny nose, two perky ears, four legs and a tail. Their bodies are covered with smooth fur. They have whiskers under their nose. They have sharp claws and tiny paws. Cats are very lazy animals. They sleep a lot during the day. Cats are very good friends to humans. Cats eat both animals and vegetables. 

With that, this cat essay in English comes to its conclusion. This cat essay includes various information about cats in short. In a nutshell, this cat essay for kids discusses why cats are loved by many people.

My Pet Cat Essay for Class 1

Cats are domestic animals. They are small in size. Their bodies are covered with smooth fur. They have two mesmerizing eyes, two highly sensitive ears, four legs, whiskers under their nose and a long tail.

Cats are of three kinds, namely- farm cats, house cats and feral cats. House cats are petted by many people all across the globe. Cats are considered sacred in some traditions and cultures like the Japanese culture. Cats are very witty animals. They are very skilful hunters of rats, snakes, etc. Cats are very lazy pets, they sleep for long hours in a day and they are friendly to people they trust. Cats are not very social animals. Its offspring is called a “kitten”. Cats belong to the same family of tigers and panthers. Cats feed on both vegetables and animals and are, therefore, omnivores. Cats are very beautiful animals and they’re a favourite of many people.

With that, my pet animal cat essay comes to an end. In this essay on cats for class 1, their types, appearance, behaviour, diet and nature are discussed. These are some reasons why cats are adored by many.

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FAQs on Cat Essay

1. What is a Cat’s Average Lifespan?

A cat’s average lifespan ranges from two to sixteen years. This is usually in the case of indoor cats as compared to street cats whose lifespan extends only up to 5 years.  The lifespan of a cat depends on the lifestyle they adapt to as well as the environmental hazards they are protected from. A person must contact a veterinarian and use the tips given to ensure that the cat is able to survive longer and lead a healthier lifestyle.

2. How Many Breeds of Cats are There on the Planet?

There are sixty recognized cat breeds in the world at present. Some of them are- Persian cats, Birman, Siberian cats, Siamese cats, British Shorthair, American Shorthair, etc. Some of the most common cat breeds known are Domestic shorthair, American shorthair, Domestic Longhair, Russian Blue, Bengal, Scottish Fold, etc. Different breeds have different characteristics in terms of their behaviour, personalities and needs. Some of them are reserved and short-tempered while some are extremely affectionate and loving. There are some breeds that are extremely independent while others are devoted to their owners.

3. How do Cats Clean Themselves?

The tongues of cats are scaly and they are excellent for cleaning the fur of cats. Cats keep their fur clean by licking their bodies. They are epitomes of cleanliness in terms of hygiene and hence use their tongue, paws and teeth to clean themselves clean. They use their rough/barbed tongues to lick, the paws for absorbing moisture and using it to clean off the dirt as well as their teeth to pick out the stubborn specks from their body.

4. How do we know that a cat is suffering from a health issue?

Cat owners must be very vigilant about the health of their cats by observing changes in their movements time and again. Once a cat reaches a certain age, it is obvious that their diet routine and their behaviour. For those cats suffering from major infections or diseases, regular checkups at the vet are mandatory. Once every two months is the recommended period of time to get a cat checked for health issues. Some symptoms like hiding, aggression towards people, loss of interest towards surroundings, neglect to groom or unusual vocalisation should be monitored.

5. What should domestic cats eat?

There is a difference in the diets of domesticated cats and street cats. Most of the time street cats are found to dig through garbage for leftover food for survival or catch smaller live animals as a part of their hunting tactics. In the case of domesticated cats, veterinarians usually suggest a compact diet that is healthy and to the liking of the cats. Regulating the food every day can prevent the cats from being either malnourished or overweight. Cats mostly prefer meat so boiled or cooked fish, chicken or red meat can be included plus cat food containing the same can also help in building their immune system and protect their heart, eyes and bowel movements. Raw meat and dairy products like cheese should be avoided as they are very harmful.

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If you have ever owned a pet, then, you can attest to the fact that owning a pet is indeed a fantastic experience that everyone should have at least once in a lifetime. Pets are obviously animals. However, to a pet owner, a pet [...]

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college essay on cats

Tips for Compare and Contrast Dog and Cat Essay

college essay on cats

Introduction

When tasked with writing a compare and contrast essay on dogs and cats, it is essential to delve into the uniqueness and intricacies of these two popular pets. In this article, we will provide you with valuable tips and insights to help you craft an impressive essay that effectively highlights the similarities and differences between dogs and cats.

Understanding the Differences

Before you begin writing your essay, it's crucial to understand the fundamental differences between dogs and cats. Dogs are known for their loyal and social nature, often seeking companionship and interaction with their owners. On the other hand, cats are known for their independent and self-sufficient behavior, displaying a more reserved and solitary demeanor.

Physical Characteristics

When comparing dogs and cats, it is important to consider their physical traits. Dogs are generally larger in size, possessing a wide variety of breeds with distinctive features such as fur length, color, and body structure. Cats, on the other hand, tend to be smaller in size with slender bodies, and their fur can vary greatly in texture and coloration.

Behavioral Traits

Another crucial aspect to explore in your essay is the behavioral differences between dogs and cats. Dogs are often seen as highly trainable and adaptable, with an innate ability to form strong bonds with their owners. Cats, on the other hand, display a more independent nature, often preferring to explore their surroundings at their own leisure and pace.

Identifying the Similarities

While dogs and cats have their unique traits, there are also several similarities that can be explored in your essay.

Companionship and Emotional Bond

Both dogs and cats have the ability to form emotional bonds with their owners. They provide companionship, love, and affection, making them popular choices for households seeking a furry friend.

Need for Care and Attention

Regardless of the differences in their behavior, both dogs and cats require proper care and attention. They need to be fed, groomed, and provided with a safe and comfortable living environment.

Health and Well-being

Ensuring their pets' health and well-being is a shared responsibility for both dog and cat owners. Regular visits to the veterinarian, vaccinations, and appropriate exercise are essential for maintaining their overall health.

Tips for Writing an Impressive Essay

1. research thoroughly.

Before you begin writing, conduct in-depth research on both dogs and cats. Understanding their history, characteristics, and unique qualities will help you provide accurate and detailed information in your essay.

2. Create an Outline

Outline the structure of your essay to ensure a coherent and logical flow of ideas. Organize your thoughts and arguments, making it easier for readers to follow your analysis and comparisons.

3. Include Specific Examples

Support your statements with precise examples to provide a comprehensive view of the topic. Whether it's highlighting a specific breed's behavior or identifying common health issues in both dogs and cats, specific examples add credibility to your essay.

4. Use Clear and Concise Language

Avoid using overly complex language or jargon that may confuse your readers. Focus on conveying your ideas clearly and concisely, ensuring your audience can easily understand your points.

5. Consider Both Sides

While comparing and contrasting, it's important to consider both the similarities and differences. Provide a balanced perspective on the topic, acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of both dogs and cats.

6. Edit and Revise

After completing your essay, take the time to edit and revise. Ensure proper grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Eliminate any typos or errors that may distract the reader and hinder the overall quality of your essay.

By utilizing the tips and insights provided in this article, you are well-equipped to craft an exceptional compare and contrast essay on dogs and cats. Remember to focus on the unique characteristics, both similarities, and differences, while providing comprehensive and detailed analysis. Happy writing!

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Essay on Cats Vs Dogs

Students are often asked to write an essay on Cats Vs Dogs in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Cats Vs Dogs

Introduction to cats and dogs.

Cats and dogs are two of the most loved pets around the world. They are very different in many ways. People often choose one or the other based on their personalities and lifestyles.

Personality Traits

Cats are known for being independent and calm. They usually take care of themselves. Dogs are more social and often need more attention and time from their owners.

Care and Needs

Dogs need daily walks and playtime, which makes them great for active people. Cats are more relaxed and can be happy living indoors, making them good for quieter homes.

Training and Intelligence

Dogs can be trained to do many tasks and tricks. Cats can also be trained but they tend to do things their own way.

Both cats and dogs can be loving companions. The choice between them depends on what kind of pet fits better with your life.

250 Words Essay on Cats Vs Dogs

Pets like cats and dogs are loved by many people. They can be great friends and bring joy to families. Cats and dogs are different in many ways, from how they act to what they need from their owners.

Caring for Cats

Cats are known for being independent. They can often take care of themselves and don’t always need people around. Cats clean themselves, don’t need to go outside to use the bathroom, and are usually quiet. They are good for people who work a lot or have a small living space.

Caring for Dogs

Dogs are more like loyal friends who need attention and love. They need to go on walks and play outside. This means they are great for active people. Dogs also need to be trained so they know how to behave well.

Playing with Pets

Cats love to play with small toys or chase a light from a laser pointer. They can play alone or with their owners. Dogs often want to play games like fetch or tug-of-war with their owners. They usually need more time and space to play than cats.

The Bond with Humans

Cats can be loving, but they might not always show it. They may sit on your lap when they want to be close. Dogs often show love by wagging their tails, licking, and staying close to their owners.

In the end, whether a cat or a dog is better depends on what a person likes and how much time they can spend with their pet. Both can be great friends and bring happiness to their owners.

500 Words Essay on Cats Vs Dogs

When it comes to choosing a pet, cats and dogs are the most popular options. Some people prefer cats, while others are true dog lovers. Both animals make great companions but in different ways. This essay will compare cats and dogs, looking at their behavior, care needs, and how they interact with people.

Personality Differences

Cats are often seen as independent and mysterious. They usually do their own thing and might not always want attention. Cats can be playful, but they also enjoy their alone time. On the other hand, dogs are known for being friendly and loyal. They love to be around people and often want to play or go for walks. Dogs are also known to protect their homes and families.

Caring for Cats and Dogs

Taking care of a cat or dog requires time, money, and love. Cats are generally easier to care for because they use a litter box inside the house. They also groom themselves, so they don’t need baths as often as dogs. Cats need to be fed, have their litter box cleaned, and get regular check-ups at the vet.

Dogs need more attention compared to cats. They have to be taken outside several times a day to use the bathroom and get exercise. Dogs also need to be trained so they know how to behave, and they should be bathed regularly. Like cats, dogs need to be fed and taken to the vet for check-ups and shots.

Space Needs

Cats don’t need a lot of space. They are happy living in small apartments as long as they have windows to look out of and toys to play with. Dogs, especially big ones, need more room to move around. They do best in homes with a yard or near a park where they can run and play.

Bonding with People

Cats can form strong bonds with their owners, but they often show their love in quiet ways, like sitting on your lap or sleeping near you. Dogs show their love more openly by licking, wagging their tails, and following their owners around. Both cats and dogs can sense how their owners feel and will try to comfort them when they are sad or sick.

Cats can be trained to do simple things like use a scratching post or come when called, but they are not as interested in learning tricks as dogs. Dogs can be trained to do many things, from basic commands like sit and stay to more complex tasks like guiding the blind. Both animals are smart in their own ways, but dogs are usually more eager to please their owners.

In the end, whether a cat or a dog is the better pet depends on the person’s lifestyle and what they want in a companion. Cats are great for people who want a more low-maintenance pet that is independent. Dogs are good for those who want an active friend and have the time to train and care for them. Both cats and dogs can bring a lot of joy and love into a home. It’s important to think about what pet fits best with your life before making the choice.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

  • Essay on Cats As Pets
  • Essay on Cats And Dogs
  • Essay on Caterpillar

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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college essay on cats

Essay about a pet??

<p>Okay, so my cat has really inspired me to do some great things for the environment. Not simply for my cat, but for what I believe is all of “innocence,” or the inhuman world. I feel I can write about this rather passionately, because I have done quite a few major things to improve my community for the better in terms of the environment, and I’d like to portray my driving forces behind it, as well as my drive for most things. My only worry is it’ll seem cheesy or feel kind of strange to admissions officers. What do you think?</p>

<p>A second thing, if you don’t think I should write the one about my pet: I want to write an essay about a fashion show I planned, but my recommendation writer may touch on it, and it’ll be listed as an extracurricular activity in my common app. Thus, it may feel repetitive, and I hear all the time from admissions officers that they want to hear something they don’t know about me.</p>

<p>So, thoughts?</p>

<p>well…</p>

<p>I don’t think mentioning your cat is a bad idea. It all depends on HOW you show it, how you write it.</p>

<p>Alot of people elaborate on their ECs for their essay, thats prolly what i’m doing.</p>

<p>How would be a bad way to write about my cat?</p>

<p>“My cat is my role model” depending on the reader, itll come off as blatantly stupid, or hilarious XD</p>

<p>haha yeah, okay.</p>

<p>i LOVE it! i think it really stands out- which is a good thing! it’s unique. And if well written (and i mean WELL written), and in a not-too-cheesy, but rather down-to-earth-honest style… then it could be really, very good. so yes. i think you should go for it. but also, i guess it depends on what you wanna major in/ college you wanna go to. i don’t know if this actually makes a difference, but you should consider it none the less.</p>

<p>Yeah, good advice, thanks! I’m not sure yet actually haha</p>

<p>My cat is my inspiration? You can’t pick some notable figure in the world or in your personal life? Your cat would, IMO, need to be some sort of high achiever- eg, 80 hours of cuddly love at a nursing home and how, without that, you wouldn’t have realized… Or, profoundly disabled and the caring for it taught you something. Etc. Not cheesy, jusy waaay too innocent an idea. You need a teacher or advisor to help sort this through. Sorry.</p>

<p>It’s not the cuddling. I know how to not make it innocent. Thanks :]</p>

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27 Outstanding College Essay Examples From Top Universities 2024

Learn how to write any college essay with these amazing examples of college essays that worked in 2019.  How was your college application journey? Let us know over at collegeessayguy.com

One of the best ways to write a successful college essay for your college application is by learning from real college essay examples that worked . I've compiled a few of my favorite essay examples here that cover a variety of college essay topics.

Need help writing your college essay? Click here for my ultimate guide .

Or, check out my complete guide for answering the most popular college essay prompts on the Common App.

Some essay samples below are by students who chose to write about a challenge, while other examples may be helpful if you’re looking to write about yourself more generally. And yes, a few of these essays did help these students get accepted into the Ivy League, (I’m not telling you which!) though these are all great essays regardless of where (or if) students were admitted to their top choice school.

Looking for more college admissions essay examples about yourself? Check out more personal statements here .

Behold, some of the best college essays of 2024 (in my humble opinion).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Personal Statement Examples         Burying Grandma         Laptop Stickers         Punk Rock Philosopher         Grandma's Kimchi         Travel and Language         Dead Bird         I Shot My Brother         Porcelain God

UC Essay Examples

  • Supplemental Essay Examples         UChicago Supplemental Essay Examples         Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road         Rock, Paper, Scissors         U of Michigan Supplemental Essay Example         East Meets West

Common App Essay Prompts

According to the 2024/2025 Common Application , the common app essays topics are as follows:

Background Essay: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Challenge Essay: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Belief Essay: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

Gratitude Essay: Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Accomplishment Essay: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Topic Essay: Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

Create-Your-Own Essay: Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

What Makes a Great College Essay?

These application essays show many sides of a person.

The key to many of these essays is that they describe a story or an aspect of the student’s life in a way that is dynamic: It reflects many of their values, strengths, interests, volunteer work, and life experiences. 

Many of these essays also demonstrate vulnerability. College admissions officers reading your college application will want to know how your values, qualities, and skills will flourish in college— and how good your writing skills are . 

Whether it’s a supplemental essay , personal statement , Common App essay , or diversity essay , the essays below can help you better understand what can result from following a college essay format or applying tips for how to write a college essay to help you get into your dream school. 

College Essay Tips

We asked dozens of experts on essay writing and test scores for their take on what makes a great college essay. Check out five of our favorite college essay tips below. 

1. Imagine how the person reading your essay will feel.

No one's idea of a good time is writing a college essay, I know. But if sitting down to write your essay feels like a chore, and you're bored by what you're saying, you can imagine how the person reading your essay will feel. On the other hand, if you're writing about something you love, something that excites you, something that you've thought deeply about, chances are I'm going to set down your application feeling excited, too—and feeling like I've gotten to know you.

This college essay tip is by Abigail McFee, Admissions Counselor for Tufts University and Tufts ‘17 graduate.

2. Write like a journalist.

"Don't bury the lede!" The first few sentences must capture the reader's attention, provide a gist of the story, and give a sense of where the essay is heading. Think about any article you've read—how do you decide to read it? You read the first few sentences and then decide. The same goes for college essays. A strong lede (journalist parlance for "lead") will place your reader in the "accept" mindset from the beginning of the essay. A weak lede will have your reader thinking "reject"—a mindset from which it's nearly impossible to recover.

This college essay tip is by Brad Schiller, MIT graduate and CEO of Prompt, which provides individualized feedback on thousands of students’ essays each year.

3. Don't read the Common Application prompts.

If you already have, erase them from memory and write the story you want colleges to hear. The truth is, admission reviewers rarely know—or care—which prompt you are responding to. They are curious to discover what you choose to show them about who you are, what you value , and why. Even the most fluid writers are often stifled by fitting their narrative neatly into a category and the essay quickly loses authentic voice. Write freely and choose a prompt later. Spoiler alert...one prompt is "Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design. " So have at it.

This college essay tip is by Brennan Barnard, director of college counseling at the Derryfield School in Manchester, N.H. and contributor to the NYT, HuffPost, and Forbes on intentionally approaching college admissions.

4. Show your emotions.

Adding feelings to your essays can be much more powerful than just listing your achievements. It allows reviewers to connect with you and understand your personality and what drives you. In particular, be open to showing vulnerability. Nobody expects you to be perfect and acknowledging times in which you have felt nervous or scared shows maturity and self-awareness.

This college essay tip is by Charles Maynard, Oxford and Stanford University Graduate and founder of Going Merry, which is a one-stop shop for applying to college scholarships

5. Revise often and early. 

Your admissions essay should go through several stages of revision . And by revisions, we don’t mean quick proofreads. Ask your parents, teachers, high school counselors or friends for their eyes and edits. It should be people who know you best and want you to succeed. Take their constructive criticism in the spirit for which they intend—your benefit.

This college essay tip is by Dhivya Arumugham, Kaplan Test Prep's director of SAT and ACT programs.

Personal Statement Examples

The "burying grandma" example college essay.

Written for the Common App college application essays "Tell us your story" prompt. This essay could work for prompts 1 and 7 for the Common App.

They covered the precious mahogany coffin with a brown amalgam of rocks, decomposed organisms, and weeds. It was my turn to take the shovel, but I felt too ashamed to dutifully send her off when I had not properly said goodbye. I refused to throw dirt on her. I refused to let go of my grandmother, to accept a death I had not seen coming, to believe that an illness could not only interrupt, but steal a beloved life.

When my parents finally revealed to me that my grandmother had been battling liver cancer, I was twelve and I was angry--mostly with myself. They had wanted to protect me--only six years old at the time--from the complex and morose concept of death. However, when the end inevitably arrived, I wasn’t trying to comprehend what dying was; I was trying to understand how I had been able to abandon my sick grandmother in favor of playing with friends and watching TV. Hurt that my parents had deceived me and resentful of my own oblivion, I committed myself to preventing such blindness from resurfacing.

I became desperately devoted to my education because I saw knowledge as the key to freeing myself from the chains of ignorance. While learning about cancer in school I promised myself that I would memorize every fact and absorb every detail in textbooks and online medical journals. And as I began to consider my future, I realized that what I learned in school would allow me to silence that which had silenced my grandmother. However, I was focused not with learning itself, but with good grades and high test scores. I started to believe that academic perfection would be the only way to redeem myself in her eyes--to make up for what I had not done as a granddaughter.  

However, a simple walk on a hiking trail behind my house made me open my own eyes to the truth. Over the years, everything--even honoring my grandmother--had become second to school and grades. As my shoes humbly tapped against the Earth, the towering trees blackened by the forest fire a few years ago, the faintly colorful pebbles embedded in the sidewalk, and the wispy white clouds hanging in the sky reminded me of my small though nonetheless significant part in a larger whole that is humankind and this Earth. Before I could resolve my guilt, I had to broaden my perspective of the world as well as my responsibilities to my fellow humans.   

Volunteering at a cancer treatment center has helped me discover my path. When I see patients trapped in not only the hospital but also a moment in time by their diseases, I talk to them. For six hours a day, three times a week, Ivana is surrounded by IV stands, empty walls, and busy nurses that quietly yet constantly remind her of her breast cancer. Her face is pale and tired, yet kind--not unlike my grandmother’s. I need only to smile and say hello to see her brighten up as life returns to her face. Upon our first meeting, she opened up about her two sons, her hometown, and her knitting group--no mention of her disease. Without even standing up, the three of us—Ivana, me, and my grandmother--had taken a walk together.

Cancer, as powerful and invincible as it may seem, is a mere fraction of a person’s life. It’s easy to forget when one’s mind and body are so weak and vulnerable. I want to be there as an oncologist to remind them to take a walk once in a while, to remember that there’s so much more to life than a disease. While I physically treat their cancer, I want to lend patients emotional support and mental strength to escape the interruption and continue living. Through my work, I can accept the shovel without burying my grandmother’s memory.

Tips + Analysis:

Make (Narrative) structure work for you. This essay uses what we call Narrative Structure, which focuses (in roughly equal word count) on a challenge + effects you’ve faced, what you did about it, and what you learned. Quick tip: one common and easy mistake is to spend most of the essay focused on the challenges + effects, but try to keep that to about a third—what your reader is generally more interested in is what you did about that challenge and what you learned/how you’ve grown. For a more complete guide to using Narrative Structure to shape your personal statement, check out that link.

Show insight and growth. This essay does so in a few different ways. One is by recognizing that they were wrong about something / had “done it wrong” (e.g. ...understand how I had been able to abandon my sick grandmother in favor of playing with friends and watching TV or However, I was focused not with learning itself, but with good grades and high test scores. ). We’re pointing this out because, fairly frequently, students are worried that acknowledging they were wrong in some way will be looked down upon by readers. Put those worries to rest—showing that you’re capable of reflecting, acknowledging your failings or where you were wrong, and growing through your new understanding is a sign of maturity that colleges value. (For more on insight/reflection , check out that link, which is focused on the UC PIQs but its content also applies to personal statements.)

Bring us into your world. You can do so through things like imagery (e.g., the towering trees blackened by the forest fire a few years ago, the faintly colorful pebbles embedded in the sidewalk, and the wispy white clouds hanging in the sky ) and through illustrating (or sometimes directly naming) your values and how your experiences have shaped them (e.g., I had to broaden my perspective of the world as well as my responsibilities to my fellow humans ). A personal statement isn’t simply a list of accomplishments (let your Activities List and Additional Info section do that lifting for you). Instead, it’s about helping a college understand who you are through the values, interests, insights, skills, and qualities you bring to their campus and community.

THE "Laptop Stickers" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

My laptop is like a passport. It is plastered with stickers all over the outside, inside, and bottom. Each sticker is a stamp, representing a place I've been, a passion I've pursued, or community I've belonged to. These stickers make for an untraditional first impression at a meeting or presentation, but it's one I'm proud of. Let me take you on a quick tour:

" We < 3 Design ," bottom left corner. Art has been a constant for me for as long as I can remember. Today my primary engagement with art is through design. I've spent entire weekends designing websites and social media graphics for my companies. Design means more to me than just branding and marketing; it gives me the opportunity to experiment with texture, perspective, and contrast, helping me refine my professional style.

" Common Threads ," bottom right corner. A rectangular black and red sticker displaying the theme of the 2017 TEDxYouth@Austin event. For years I've been interested in the street artists and musicians in downtown Austin who are so unapologetically themselves. As a result, I've become more open-minded and appreciative of unconventional lifestyles. TED gives me the opportunity to help other youth understand new perspectives, by exposing them to the diversity of Austin where culture is created, not just consumed.

Poop emoji , middle right. My 13-year-old brother often sends his messages with the poop emoji 'echo effect,' so whenever I open a new message from him, hundreds of poops elegantly cascade across my screen. He brings out my goofy side, but also helps me think rationally when I am overwhelmed. We don't have the typical "I hate you, don't talk to me" siblinghood (although occasionally it would be nice to get away from him); we're each other's best friends. Or at least he's mine.

" Lol ur not Harry Styles ," upper left corner. Bought in seventh grade and transferred from my old laptop, this sticker is torn but persevering with layers of tape. Despite conveying my fangirl-y infatuation with Harry Styles' boyband, One Direction, for me Styles embodies an artist-activist who uses his privilege for the betterment of society. As a $42K donor to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund, a hair donor to the Little Princess Trust, and promoter of LGBTQ+ equality, he has motivated me to be a more public activist instead of internalizing my beliefs.

" Catapult ," middle right. This is the logo of a startup incubator where I launched my first company, Threading Twine. I learned that business can provide others access to fundamental human needs, such as economic empowerment of minorities and education. In my career, I hope to be a corporate advocate for the empowerment of women, creating large-scale impact and deconstructing institutional boundaries that obstruct women from working in high-level positions. Working as a women's rights activist will allow me to engage in creating lasting movements for equality, rather than contributing to a cycle that elevates the stances of wealthy individuals.

" Thank God it's Monday ," sneakily nestled in the upper right corner. Although I attempt to love all my stickers equally (haha), this is one of my favorites. I always want my association with work to be positive.

And there are many others, including the horizontal, yellow stripes of the  Human Rights Campaign ; " The Team ," a sticker from the Model G20 Economics Summit where I collaborated with youth from around the globe; and stickers from " Kode with Klossy ," a community of girls working to promote women's involvement in underrepresented fields.

When my computer dies (hopefully not for another few years), it will be like my passport expiring. It'll be difficult leaving these moments and memories behind, but I probably won't want these stickers in my 20s anyways (except Harry Styles, that's never leaving). My next set of stickers will reveal my next set of aspirations. They hold the key to future paths I will navigate, knowledge I will gain, and connections I will make.

Make (Montage) structure work for you. This essay uses what we call Montage Structure, which uses a “thematic thread” (in this case, laptop stickers ) to connect different, perhaps otherwise seemingly disconnected sides of who a student is. One strength (among many) of this structural approach is that it can allow a student to demonstrate a broad range of values and experiences that have shaped them, which in turn helps a college understand who you are through the values, interests, insights, skills, and qualities you bring to their campus and community. For a more complete guide to using Montage Structure to shape your personal statement, check out that link.

Show (and probably also tell a little). “Show don’t tell” is generally solid writing advice, but for college essays, we’d recommend leaning a bit more toward the “Mostly show but than maybe also tell a little, just to be sure your reader gets it” approach (Though that’s clearly not as catchy a phrase).  So show us your experiences and values through specific moments and details, but also include some language that more directly states those values and what they mean to you, like Working as a women's rights activist will allow me to engage in creating lasting movements for equality, rather than contributing to a cycle that elevates the stances of wealthy individuals .

Get a little vulnerable. Being vulnerable in writing is a great way to help a reader feel closer to you. And it’s useful to keep in mind that there’s actually a pretty great variety of ways to be vulnerable. One nice moment of vulnerability in this essay comes with …in we're each other's best friends. Or at least he's mine —it’s a nice, soft moment in which the author offers up something that could feel a little tender, or maybe scary to share (because hey, acknowledging that you might care about someone more than they care about you can feel that way). 

Learn how to write your college essay

The "punk rock philosopher" college essay example.

This was written for the Common App college application essays, and works for prompts 1 and 7 (or none of them, because the author is that cool):

I am on Oxford Academy’s Speech and Debate Team, in both the Parliamentary Debate division and the Lincoln-Douglass debate division. I write screenplays, short stories, and opinionated blogs and am a regular contributor to my school literary magazine, The Gluestick. I have accumulated over 300 community service hours that includes work at homeless shelters, libraries, and special education youth camps. I have been evaluated by the College Board and have placed within the top percentile.

But I am not any of these things. I am not a test score, nor a debater, nor a writer. I am an anti-nihilist punk rockphilosopher. And I became so when I realized three things:

1) That the world is ruled by underwear. There is a variety of underwear for a variety of people. You have your ironed briefs for your businessmen, your soft cottons for the average, and hemp-based underwear for your environmental romantics. But underwear do not only tell us about who we are, they also influence our daily interactions in ways most of us don't even understand. For example, I have a specific pair of underwear that is holey, worn out but surprisingly comfortable. And despite how trivial underwear might be, when I am wearing my favorite pair, I feel as if I am on top of the world. In any case, these articles of clothing affect our being and are the unsung heroes of comfort.

2) When I realized I cannot understand the world. I recently debated at the Orange County Speech League Tournament, within the Parliamentary Division. This specific branch of debate is an hour long, and consists of two parties debating either side of a current political issue. In one particular debate, I was assigned the topic: “Should Nation States eliminate nuclear arms?” It so happened that I was on the negative side and it was my job to convince the judges that countries should continue manufacturing nuclear weapons. During the debate, something strange happened: I realized that we are a special breed of species, that so much effort and resources are invested to ensure mutual destruction. And I felt that this debate in a small college classroom had elucidated something much more profound about the scale of human existence. In any case, I won 1st place at the tournament, but as the crowd cheered when my name was called to stand before an audience of hundreds of other debaters, and I flashed a victorious smile at the cameras, I couldn’t help but imagine that somewhere at that moment a nuclear bomb was being manufactured, adding to an ever-growing stockpile of doom. And that's when I realized that the world was something I will never understand.

3) When I realized I was a punk rocker philosopher. One summer night, my friend took me to an underground hardcore punk rock show. It was inside a small abandoned church. After the show, I met and became a part of this small community. Many were lost and on a constant soul-search, and to my surprise, many, like myself, did not have a blue Mohawk or a nose piercing. Many were just ordinary people discussing Nietzsche, string theory, and governmental ideologies. Many were also artists creating promotional posters and inventive slogans for stickers. They were all people my age who could not afford to be part of a record label and did something extraordinary by playing in these abandoned churches, making their own CDs and making thousands of promotional buttons by hand. I realized then that punk rock is not about music nor is it a guy with a blue Mohawk screaming protests. Punk rock is an attitude, a mindset, and very much a culture. It is an antagonist to the conventional. It means making the best with what you have to contribute to a community. This was when I realized that I was a punk rock philosopher.

The world I come from consists of underwear, nuclear bombs, and punk rockers. And I love this world. My world is inherently complex, mysterious, and anti-nihilist. I am David Phan, somebody who spends his weekends debating in a three piece suit, other days immersed within the punk rock culture, and some days writing opinionated blogs about underwear.

But why college? I want a higher education. I want more than just the textbook fed classrooms in high school. A community which prizes revolutionary ideals, a sharing of multi-dynamical perspectives, an environment that ultimately acts as a medium for movement, similar to the punk rock community. I do not see college as a mere stepping stone for a stable career or a prosperous life, but as a supplement for knowledge and self-empowerment; it is a social engine that will jettison us to our next paradigm shift.

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The "Grandma's Kimchi" College Essay Example

This essay could work for prompts 1 and 7 for the Common App.

Every Saturday morning, I’d awaken to the smell of crushed garlic and piquant pepper. I would stumble into the kitchen to find my grandma squatting over a large silver bowl, mixing fat lips of fresh cabbages with garlic, salt, and red pepper. That was how the delectable Korean dish, kimchi, was born every weekend at my home.

My grandma’s specialty always dominated the dinner table as kimchi filled every plate. And like my grandma who had always been living with us, it seemed as though the luscious smell of garlic would never leave our home. But even the prided recipe was defenseless against the ravages of Alzheimer’s that inflicted my grandma’s mind.

Dementia slowly fed on her memories until she became as blank as a brand-new notebook. The ritualistic rigor of Saturday mornings came to a pause, and during dinner, the artificial taste of vacuum-packaged factory kimchi only emphasized the absence of the family tradition. I would look at her and ask, “Grandma, what’s my name?” But she would stare back at me with a clueless expression. Within a year of diagnosis, she lived with us like a total stranger.

One day, my mom brought home fresh cabbages and red pepper sauce. She brought out the old silver bowl and poured out the cabbages, smothering them with garlic and salt and pepper. The familiar tangy smell tingled my nose. Gingerly, my grandma stood up from the couch in the living room, and as if lured by the smell, sat by the silver bowl and dug her hands into the spiced cabbages. As her bony hands shredded the green lips, a look of determination grew on her face. Though her withered hands no longer displayed the swiftness and precision they once did, her face showed the aged rigor of a professional. For the first time in years, the smell of garlic filled the air and the rattling of the silver bowl resonated throughout the house.

That night, we ate kimchi. It wasn’t perfect; the cabbages were clumsily cut and the garlic was a little too strong. But kimchi had never tasted better. I still remember my grandma putting a piece in my mouth and saying, “Here, Dong Jin. Try it, my boy.”

Seeing grandma again this summer, that moment of clarity seemed ephemeral. Her disheveled hair and expressionless face told of the aggressive development of her illness.

But holding her hands, looking into her eyes, I could still smell that garlic. The moments of Saturday mornings remain ingrained in my mind. Grandma was an artist who painted the cabbages with strokes of red pepper. Like the sweet taste of kimchi, I hope to capture those memories in my keystrokes as I type away these words.

A piece of writing is more than just a piece of writing. It evokes. It inspires. It captures what time takes away.

My grandma used to say: “Tigers leave furs when they die, humans leave their names.” Her legacy was the smell of garlic that lingered around my house. Mine will be these words.

The "Travel and Language" College Essay Example

When I was very little, I caught the travel bug. It started after my grandparents first brought me to their home in France and I have now been to twenty-nine different countries. Each has given me a unique learning experience.

At five, I marveled at the Eiffel Tower in the City of Lights. When I was eight, I stood in the heart of Piazza San Marco feeding hordes of pigeons, then glided down Venetian waterways on sleek gondolas. At thirteen, I saw the ancient, megalithic structure of Stonehenge and walked along the Great Wall of China, amazed that the thousand-year-old stones were still in place.

It was through exploring cultures around the world that I first became interested in language.

It began with French, which taught me the importance of pronunciation. I remember once asking a store owner in Paris where Rue des Pyramides was. But when I pronounced it PYR–a–mides instead of pyr–A–mides, with more accent on the A, she looked at me bewildered.

In the eighth grade, I became fascinated with Spanish and aware of its similarities with English through cognates. Baseball in Spanish, for example, is béisbol, which looks different but sounds nearly the same. This was incredible to me as it made speech and comprehension more fluid, and even today I find that cognates come to the rescue when I forget how to say something in Spanish.

Then, in high school, I developed an enthusiasm for Chinese. As I studied Chinese at my school, I marveled how if just one stroke was missing from a character, the meaning is lost. I loved how long words were formed by combining simpler characters, so Huǒ (火) meaning fire and Shān (山) meaning mountain can be joined to create Huǒshān (火山), which means volcano. I love spending hours at a time practicing the characters and I can feel the beauty and rhythm as I form them.

Interestingly, after studying foreign languages, I was further intrigued by my native tongue. Through my love of books and fascination with developing a sesquipedalian lexicon (learning big words), I began to expand my English vocabulary. Studying the definitions prompted me to inquire about their origins, and suddenly I wanted to know all about etymology, the history of words. My freshman year I took a world history class and my love for history grew exponentially. To me, history is like a great novel, and it is especially fascinating because it took place in my own world.

But the best dimension that language brought to my life is interpersonal connection. When I speak with people in their native language, I find I can connect with them on a more intimate level. I’ve connected with people in the most unlikely places, finding a Bulgarian painter to use my few Bulgarian words with in the streets of Paris, striking up a conversation in Spanish with an Indian woman who used to work at the Argentinian embassy in Mumbai, and surprising a library worker by asking her a question in her native Mandarin.

I want to study foreign language and linguistics in college because, in short, it is something that I know I will use and develop for the rest of my life. I will never stop traveling, so attaining fluency in foreign languages will only benefit me. In the future, I hope to use these skills as the foundation of my work, whether it is in international business, foreign diplomacy, or translation.

I think of my journey as best expressed through a Chinese proverb that my teacher taught me, “I am like a chicken eating at a mountain of rice.” Each grain is another word for me to learn as I strive to satisfy my unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

Today, I still  have the travel bug, and now, it seems, I am addicted to language too.

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The "Dead Bird" Example College Essay Example

This was written for a Common App college application essay prompt that no longer exists, which read: Evaluate a significant experience, risk, achievement, ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

 Smeared blood, shredded feathers. Clearly, the bird was dead. But wait, the slight fluctuation of its chest, the slow blinking of its shiny black eyes. No, it was alive.

I had been typing an English essay when I heard my cat's loud meows and the flutter of wings. I had turned slightly at the noise and had found the barely breathing bird in front of me.

The shock came first. Mind racing, heart beating faster, blood draining from my face. I instinctively reached out my hand to hold it, like a long-lost keepsake from my youth. But then I remembered that birds had life, flesh, blood.

Death. Dare I say it out loud? Here, in my own home?

Within seconds, my reflexes kicked in. Get over the shock. Gloves, napkins, towels. Band-aid? How does one heal a bird? I rummaged through the house, keeping a wary eye on my cat. Donning yellow rubber gloves, I tentatively picked up the bird. Never mind the cat's hissing and protesting scratches, you need to save the bird. You need to ease its pain.

But my mind was blank. I stroked the bird with a paper towel to clear away the blood, see the wound. The wings were crumpled, the feet mangled. A large gash extended close to its jugular rendering its breathing shallow, unsteady. The rising and falling of its small breast slowed. Was the bird dying? No, please, not yet. 

Why was this feeling so familiar, so tangible?

Oh. Yes. The long drive, the green hills, the white church, the funeral. The Chinese mass, the resounding amens, the flower arrangements. Me, crying silently, huddled in the corner. The Hsieh family huddled around the casket. Apologies. So many apologies. Finally, the body  lowered to rest. The body. Kari Hsieh. Still familiar, still tangible.

Hugging Mrs. Hsieh, I was a ghost, a statue. My brain and my body competed. Emotion wrestled with fact. Kari Hsieh, aged 17, my friend of four years, had died in the Chatsworth Metrolink Crash on Sep. 12, 2008. Kari was dead, I thought. Dead.

But I could still save the bird.

My frantic actions heightened my senses, mobilized my spirit. Cupping the bird, I ran outside, hoping the cool air outdoors would suture every wound, cause the bird to miraculously fly away. Yet there lay the bird in my hands, still gasping, still dying. Bird, human, human, bird. What was the difference? Both were the same. Mortal.

But couldn't I do something? Hold the bird longer, de-claw the cat? I wanted to go to my bedroom, confine myself to tears, replay my memories, never come out. 

The bird's warmth faded away. Its heartbeat slowed along with its breath. For a long time, I stared thoughtlessly at it, so still in my hands.

Slowly, I dug a small hole in the black earth. As it disappeared under handfuls of dirt, my own heart grew stronger, my own breath more steady.

The wind, the sky, the dampness of the soil on my hands whispered to me, “The bird is dead. Kari has passed. But you are alive.” My breath, my heartbeat, my sweat sighed back, “I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.”

The "I Shot My Brother" College Essay Example

This essay could work for prompts 1, 2 and 7 for the Common App.

From page 54 of the maroon notebook sitting on my mahogany desk:

“Then Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me.” - Genesis 4:13

Here is a secret that no one in my family knows: I shot my brother when I was six. Luckily, it was a BB gun. But to this day, my older brother Jonathan does not know who shot him. And I have finally promised myself to confess this eleven year old secret to him after I write this essay.

The truth is, I was always jealous of my brother. Our grandparents, with whom we lived as children in Daegu, a rural city in South Korea, showered my brother with endless accolades: he was bright, athletic, and charismatic.

“Why can’t you be more like Jon?” my grandmother used to nag, pointing at me with a carrot stick. To me, Jon was just cocky. He would scoff at me when he would beat me in basketball, and when he brought home his painting of Bambi with the teacher’s sticker “Awesome!” on top, he would make several copies of it and showcase them on the refrigerator door. But I retreated to my desk where a pile of “Please draw this again and bring it to me tomorrow” papers lay, desperate for immediate treatment. Later, I even refused to attend the same elementary school and wouldn’t even eat meals with him.

Deep down I knew I had to get the chip off my shoulder. But I didn’t know how.

That is, until March 11th, 2001.

That day around six o’clock, juvenile combatants appeared in Kyung Mountain for their weekly battle, with cheeks smeared in mud and empty BB guns in their hands. The Korean War game was simple: to kill your opponent you had to shout “pow!” before he did. Once we situated ourselves, our captain blew the pinkie whistle and the war began. My friend Min-young and I hid behind a willow tree, eagerly awaiting our orders.

Beside us, our comrades were dying, each falling to the ground crying in “agony,” their hands clasping their “wounds.” Suddenly a wish for heroism surged within me: I grabbed Min-young’s arms and rushed towards the enemies’ headquarters, disobeying our orders to remain sentry duty. To tip the tide of the war, I had to kill their captain. We infiltrated the enemy lines, narrowly dodging each attack. We then cleared the pillars of asparagus ferns until the Captain’s lair came into view. I quickly pulled my clueless friend back into the bush.

Hearing us, the alarmed captain turned around: It was my brother.

He saw Min-young’s right arm sticking out from the bush and hurled a “grenade,” (a rock), bruising his arm.

“That’s not fair!” I roared in the loudest and most unrecognizable voice I could manage.

Startled, the Captain and his generals abandoned their post. Vengeance replaced my wish for heroism and I took off after the fleeing perpetrator. Streams of sweat ran down my face and I pursued him for several minutes until suddenly I was arrested by a small, yellow sign that read in Korean: DO NOT TRESPASS: Boar Traps Ahead. (Two summers ago, my five year old cousin, who insisted on joining the ranks, had wandered off-course during the battle; we found him at the bottom of a 20 ft deep pit with a deep gash in his forehead and shirt soaked in blood) “Hey, stop!” I shouted, heart pounding. “STOP!” My mind froze. My eyes just gazed at the fleeing object; what should I do?

I looked on as my shivering hand reached for the canister of BBs. The next second, I heard two shots followed by a cry. I opened my eyes just enough to see two village men carrying my brother away from the warning sign. I turned around, hurled my BB gun into the nearby Kyung Creek and ran home as fast as I could.

Days passed. My brother and I did not talk about the incident.

‘Maybe he knew it was me,’ I thought in fear as I tried to eavesdrop on his conversation with grandpa one day. When the door suddenly opened, I blurted, “Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said pushing past me, “Just a rough sleep.”

But in the next few weeks, something was happening inside me.

All the jealousy and anger I’d once felt had been replaced by a new feeling: guilt.

That night when my brother was gone I went to a local store and bought a piece of chocolate taffy, his favorite. I returned home and placed it on my brother’s bed with a note attached: “Love, Grandma.”

Several days later, I secretly went into his room and folded his unkempt pajamas.

Then, other things began to change. We began sharing clothes (something we had never done), started watching Pokémon episodes together, and then, on his ninth birthday, I did something with Jon that I hadn’t done in six years: I ate dinner with him. I even ate fishcakes, which he loved but I hated. And I didn’t complain.

Today, my brother is one of my closest friends. Every week I accompany him to Carlson Hospital where he receives treatment for his obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia. While in the waiting room, we play a noisy game of Zenga, comment on the Lakers’ performance or listen to the radio on the registrar’s desk.

Then, the door to the doctor’s office opens.

“Jonathan Lee, please come in.”

I tap his shoulder and whisper, “Rock it, bro.”

After he leaves, I take out my notebook and begin writing where I left off.

Beside me, the receptionist’s fingers hover over the radio in search of a new station, eventually settling on one. I hear LeAnn Rimes singing “Amazing Grace.” Her voice slowly rises over the noise of the bustling room.

“’Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear. And Grace, my fears relieved...”

Smiling, I open Jon’s Jansport backpack and neatly place this essay inside and a chocolate taffy with a note attached.

Twenty minutes have passed when the door abruptly opens.

“Guess what the doctor just said?” my brother cries, unable to hide his exhilaration.

I look up and I smile too.

For analysis of what makes this essay amazing , go here.

The "Porcelain God" College Essay Example

Essay written for the "topic of your choice" prompt for the 2012 Common Application college application essays.

Bowing down to the porcelain god, I emptied the contents of my stomach. Foaming at the mouth, I was ready to pass out. My body couldn’t stop shaking as I gasped for air, and the room started spinning.

Ten minutes prior, I had been eating dinner with my family at a Chinese restaurant, drinking chicken-feet soup. My mom had specifically asked the waitress if there were peanuts in it, because when I was two we found out that I am deathly allergic to them. When the waitress replied no, I went for it. Suddenly I started scratching my neck, feeling the hives that had started to form. I rushed to the restroom to throw up because my throat was itchy and I felt a weight on my chest. I was experiencing anaphylactic shock, which prevented me from taking anything but shallow breaths. I was fighting the one thing that is meant to protect me and keep me alive – my own body.

At five years old, I couldn’t comprehend what had happened. All I knew was that I felt sick, and I was waiting for my mom to give me something to make it better. I thought my parents were superheroes; surely they would be able to make well again. But I became scared when I heard the fear in their voices as they rushed me to the ER.

After that incident, I began to fear. I became scared of death, eating, and even my own body. As I grew older, I became paranoid about checking food labels and I avoided eating if I didn’t know what was in the food. I knew what could happen if I ate one wrong thing, and I wasn’t willing to risk it for a snack. Ultimately, that fear turned into resentment; I resented my body for making me an outsider.

In the years that followed, this experience and my regular visits to my allergy specialist inspired me to become an allergy specialist. Even though I was probably only ten at the time, I wanted to find a way to help kids like me. I wanted to find a solution so that nobody would have to feel the way I did; nobody deserved to feel that pain, fear, and resentment. As I learned more about the medical world, I became more fascinated with the body’s immune responses, specifically, how a body reacts to allergens. This past summer, I took a month-long course on human immunology at Stanford University. I learned about the different mechanisms and cells that our bodies use in order to fight off pathogens. My desire to major in biology in college has been stimulated by my fascination with the human body, its processes, and the desire to find a way to help people with allergies. I hope that one day I can find a way to stop allergic reactions or at least lessen the symptoms, so that children and adults don’t have to feel the same fear and bitterness that I felt.

To find out if your essay passes the Great College Essay Test like this one did, go here .

The "Five Families" College Essay Example

This essay could work for prompts 1, 2, 5 and 7 for the Common App.

When I was 16, I lived with the Watkins family in Wichita, Kansas. Mrs. Watkins was the coordinator of the foreign exchange student program I was enrolled in. She had a nine year old son named Cody. I would babysit Cody every day after school for at least two to three hours. We would play Scrabble or he would read to me from Charlotte’s Web or The Ugly Duckling. He would talk a lot about his friends and school life, and I would listen to him and ask him the meanings of certain words. He was my first friend in the New World.

My second family was the Martinez family, who were friends of the Watkins’s. The host dad Michael was a high school English teacher and the host mom Jennifer (who had me call her “Jen”) taught elementary school. She had recently delivered a baby, so she was still in the hospital when I moved into their house. The Martinez family did almost everything together. We made pizza together, watched Shrek on their cozy couch together, and went fishing on Sunday together. On rainy days, Michael, Jen and I would sit on the porch and listen to the rain, talking about our dreams and thoughts. Within two months I was calling them mom and dad.

After I finished the exchange student program, I had the option of returning to Korea but I decided to stay in America. I wanted to see new places and meet different people. Since I wasn’t an exchange student anymore, I had the freedom--and burden--of finding a new school and host family on my own. After a few days of thorough investigation, I found the Struiksma family in California. They were a unique group.

The host mom Shellie was a single mom who had two of her own sons and two Russian daughters that she had adopted. The kids always had something warm to eat, and were always on their best behavior at home and in school. It would be fair to say that this was all due to Shellie’s upbringing. My room was on the first floor, right in front of Shellie’s hair salon, a small business that she ran out of her home. In the living room were six or seven huge amplifiers and a gigantic chandelier hung from the high ceiling. The kitchen had a bar. At first, the non-stop visits from strangers made me nervous, but soon I got used to them. I remember one night, a couple barged into my room while I was sleeping. It was awkward.

After a few months I realized we weren’t the best fit. In the nicest way possible, I told them I had to leave. They understood.

The Ortiz family was my fourth family. Kimberly, the host mom, treated me the same way she treated her own son. She made me do chores: I fixed dinner, fed their two dogs Sassy and Lady, and once a week I cleaned the bathroom. I also had to follow some rules: No food in my room, no using the family computer, no lights on after midnight, and no ride unless it was an emergency. The first couple of months were really hard to get used to, but eventually I adjusted.

I lived with the Ortiz family for seven months like a monk in the deep forest. However, the host dad Greg’s asthma got worse after winter, so he wanted to move to the countryside. It was unexpected and I only had a week to find a new host family. I asked my friend Danielle if I could live with her until I found a new home. That’s how I met the Dirksen family, my fifth family.

The Dirksen family had three kids. They were all different. Danielle liked bitter black coffee, Christian liked energy drinks, and Becca liked sweet lemon tea. Dawn, the host mom didn’t like winter, and Mark, the host dad, didn’t like summer. After dinner, we would all play Wii Sports together. I was the king of bowling, and Dawn was the queen of tennis. I don’t remember a single time that they argued about the games. Afterward, we would gather in the living room and Danielle would play the piano while the rest of us sang hymns.

Of course, those 28 months were too short to fully understand all five families, but I learned from and was shaped by each of them. By teaching me English, nine year-old Cody taught me the importance of being able to learn from anyone; the Martinez family showed me the value of spending time together as a family; the Struiksma family taught me to reserve judgment about divorced women and adopted children; Mrs. Ortiz taught me the value of discipline and the Dirksen family taught me the importance of appreciating one another’s different qualities.

Getting along with other people is necessary for anyone and living with five families has made me more sensitive to others’ needs: I have learned how to recognize when someone needs to talk, when I should give advice and when to simply listen, and when someone needs to be left alone; in the process, I have become much more adaptable. I’m ready to change, learn, and be shaped by my future families.

ANALYSIS OF THE "FIVE FAMILIES" ESSAY

Remember that movie “The Sixth Sense”?

I won't ruin it for you, but I will tell you that there’s a moment toward the end when a crucial piece of information is revealed that triggers in the mind of the audience a series of realizations that have been leading up to this Big Revelation.

That’s kind of what this writer does: he buries a series of hints (one in each paragraph) that he “explodes” in the final paragraph. In short:

He buries a series of essence images in his first paragraphs (one per family).

He doesn’t tell us what they mean until the end of the essay, when he writes “I learned and was shaped by each of them.” Note that each essence image is actually a lesson--something he learned from each family.

When he reveals each lesson at the end, one after the other, we sense how all these seemingly random events are connected. We realize this writer has been carefully constructing this piece all along; we see the underlying structure. And it’s a pretty neat one.

Each of the first five paragraphs works to SHOW . (He waits to TELL us what they mean ‘til that second to last paragraph.)

See how distinct each family is? He does this through specific images and objects.

The second to last paragraph answers the “So what?” question. (Q: Why did he just show us all these details? A: To demonstrate what each family has taught him.)

He also goes one step further. He answers the “So what?” question once more in the final paragraph. (Q: So what am I going to do with all these lessons? A: I’m going to use them to adapt to my next family--in college.)

The beauty of this is that he’s demonstrating (showing not telling) that he has an extremely valuable quality that will be useful for doing well at any college: adaptability.

TIP: And that’s one more way to write your essay . Identify your single greatest strength (in this case, it was his ability to adapt to whatever life gave him). Ask: how did I learn this? How can I SHOW that I’m good at this?

Here are all the “Show” and “Tell” moments clearly marked:

When I was 16, I lived with the Watkins family in Wichita, Kansas. Mrs. Watkins was the coordinator of the foreign exchange student program I was enrolled in. She had a nine year old son named Cody. I would babysit Cody every day after school for at least two to three hours. We would play Scrabble or he would read to me from Charlotte’s Web or The Ugly Duckling. He would talk a lot about his friends and school life, and I would listen to him and ask him the meanings of certain words.  He was my first friend in the New World.

Show 1: "By teaching me English, nine year-old Cody taught me the importance of being able to learn from anyone."

My second family was the Martinez family, who were friends of the Watkins’s. The host dad Michael was a high school English teacher and the host mom Jennifer (who had me call her “Jen”) taught elementary school. She had recently delivered a baby, so she was still in the hospital when I moved into their house. The Martinez family did almost everything together. We made pizza together, watched Shrek on their cozy couch together, and went fishing on Sunday together.  On rainy days, Michael, Jen and I would sit on the porch and listen to the rain, talking about our dreams and thoughts. Within two months I was calling them mom and dad.

Show 2: "the Martinez family showed me the value of spending time together as a family" (implication: he doesn't have this with his own family)

The host mom Shellie was a single mom who had two of her own sons and two Russian daughters that she had adopted.  The kids always had something warm to eat, and were always on their best behavior at home and in school. It would be fair to say that this was all due to Shellie’s upbringing. My room was on the first floor,  right in front of Shellie’s hair salon, a small business that she ran out of her home. In the living room were six or seven huge amplifiers and a gigantic chandelier hung from the high ceiling. The kitchen had a bar. At first, the non-stop visits from strangers made me nervous, but soon I got used to them. I remember one night, a couple barged into my room while I was sleeping. It was awkward.

Show 3: "the Struiksma family taught me to reserve judgment about divorced women and adopted children."

The Ortiz family was my fourth family. Kimberly, the host mom, treated me the same way she treated her own son.  She made me do chores: I fixed dinner, fed their two dogs Sassy and Lady, and once a week I cleaned the bathroom. I also had to follow some rules: No food in my room, no using the family computer, no lights on after midnight, and no ride unless it was an emergency.  The first couple of months were really hard to get used to, but eventually I adjusted.

I lived with the Ortiz family for seven months like a monk in the deep forest.  However, the host dad Greg’s asthma got worse after winter, so he wanted to move to the countryside. It was unexpected and I only had a week to find a new host family. I asked my friend Danielle if I could live with her until I found a new home. That’s how I met the Dirksen family, my fifth family.

Show 4: "Mrs. Ortiz taught me the value of discipline."

The Dirksen family had three kids.  They were all different. Danielle liked bitter black coffee, Christian liked energy drinks, and Becca liked sweet lemon tea. Dawn, the host mom didn’t like winter, and Mark, the host dad, didn’t like summer. After dinner, we would all play Wii Sports together. I was the king of bowling, and Dawn was the queen of tennis. I don’t remember a single time that they argued about the games.  Afterward, we would gather in the living room and Danielle would play the piano while the rest of us sang hymns.

Show 5: "and the Dirksen family taught me the importance of appreciating one another’s different qualities."

Of course, those 28 months were too short to fully understand all five families, but I learned from and was shaped by each of them.  By teaching me English, nine year-old Cody taught me the importance of being able to learn from anyone; the Martinez family showed me the value of spending time together as a family; the Struiksma family taught me to reserve judgment about divorced women and adopted children; Mrs. Ortiz taught me the value of discipline and the Dirksen family taught me the importance of appreciating one another’s different qualities.

The "Tell" / "So What":

THE "FOOD" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “I Love/I Know” Type

I’ve spent most of my life as an anti-vegetable carboholic.  For years, processed snack foods ruled the kitchen kingdom of my household and animal products outnumbered plant-based offerings. 

My transformation began with my mom’s cancer diagnosis. My mom went on a 100% whole food plant-based diet. I fully embraced this new eating philosophy to show my support. Eager to figure out the whole “vegan” thing, the two of us started binge-watching health documentaries such as “What the Health” and “Forks Over Knives”. We read all the books by the featured doctors like “The China Study” and “How Not To Die”. I became entranced by the world of nutritional science and how certain foods could help prevent cancer or boost metabolism. 

Each new food I discovered gave me an education on the role diet plays on health. I learned that, by eating sweet potatoes and brown rice, you could cure acne and heart disease. I discovered eating leafy greens with citrus fruits could boost iron absorption rates. I loved pairing my foods to create the perfect macronutrient balance. Did you know beans and rice make a complete protein? 

Food has also turned me into a sustainability nut. Living plant-based also saves the planet from the impact of animal agriculture. For the same amount of land space, a farmer can produce 200 kilograms of soybeans versus 16 kilograms of beef. I do my part to have as small of an ecological footprint as I can. I stopped using plastic snack bags and instead turned to reusable beeswax wraps. My favorite reusable appliance is my foldable straw. If I am going to nourish my body, shouldn’t I also want to nourish the earth? 

My journey toward healthy living led me to becoming co-leader of the Northern Nevada PlantPure Pod, “Biggest Little Plant Pod”, a group dedicated to spreading the message about the whole food plant-based lifestyle. We are currently working on a restaurant campaign to encourage local eateries to create a plant-based, oil-free menu option and become PlantPure certified. After discovering how many restaurants use oil in their cooking, I decided I needed to open a plant-based oil free cafe to make up for this gap. My dream is to open up my very own affordable oatmeal cafe based on my Instagram page, morning_mOATivations. And I know that oatmeal isn’t the sexiest superfood out there, so here’s my sales pitch: I’m going to make oatmeal the Beyonce of the breakfast world- sweet, sassy, and power packed. This allows me to educate people about nutritional science through the stomach. 

Finally, I am a strong proponent of hands-on experience for learning what good food looks and tastes like, so cooking is one of my favorite ways to teach the benefits of a plant-based lifestyle. Using my taste buds as my textbook to learn which flavors work together and which ones don’t helps me educate, as I’ve found that information tends to stick in a person’s mind once they’ve experienced healthy, delicious foods with their own senses. Our society has taught us that delicious food has to make us feel guilty, when that is simply not the case. The best feeling in the world is falling in love with a dish and then learning all the health benefits that it provides the body.

While my classmates complain about being tired, I have more energy because my body is finally getting the right macros, vitamins, and minerals it needs. This has allowed me to push myself harder physically, excelling in running and earning my high school Cross Country team’s Most Improved award. I’m still a picky eater. But the foods I am particular about have changed. Rather than a carboholic, I choose to call myself a vegeholic.

THE "HAPPINESS SPREADSHEET" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Essence Object” Type

Meditation over a flaxen sunset with a friend and parmesan-topped spaghetti for dinner — “14.” Assignments piling up on my desk as a high fever keeps me sick at home — “3.” Taking a photo excursion through downtown Seattle for a Spanish project — “15.” For the past 700 days and counting, the Happiness Spreadsheet has been my digital collection for documenting numerical, descriptive, and graphical representations of my happiness. Its instructions are simple: Open the Google Sheet, enter a number between 1 and 20 that best represents my level of happiness, and write a short comment describing the day. But the practical aspect of the spreadsheet is only a piece of what it has represented in my life.

A “14” etched on November 15, 2018, marked the first Lakeside Cooking on the Stove Club meeting. What had started as a farcical proposition of mine transformed into a playground where high school classmates and I convene every two weeks to prepare a savory afternoon snack for ourselves. A few months later, a “16” scribbled on February 27, 2019, marked the completion of a fence my Spanish class and I constructed for the dusty soccer field at a small Colombian village. Hard-fought days of mixing cement and transporting supplies had paid off for the affectionate community we had immediately come to love. The Happiness Spreadsheet doesn’t only reflect my own thoughts and emotions; it is an illustration of the fulfillment I get from gifting happiness to others.

If happiness paves the roads of my life, my family is the city intertwined by those roads — each member a distinct neighborhood, a distinct story. In times of stress, whether it be studying for an upcoming derivatives test or presenting my research at an international conference, I dash to my father for help. Coming from the dusty, people-packed backstreets of Thiruvananthapuram, India, he guides me in looking past the chaos and noticing the hidden accomplishments that lie in the corners. When in need of confidence, I find my mother, who taps her experiences living in her tranquil and sturdy tatami-covered home in Hiroshima, Japan, helping me prepare for my first high school dance or my final match in a tennis tournament. Whenever my Happiness Spreadsheet numbers touch lows, my family is always there to level me out to “10.”

The Happiness Spreadsheet is also a battery monitor for enthusiasm. On occasion, it is on full charge, like when I touched the last chord on the piano for my composition's winner recital or when, one frosty Friday morning, I convinced a teacher to play over the school speakers a holiday medley I’d recorded with a friend. Other times, the battery is depleted, and I am frustrated by writer's block, when not a single melody, chord, or musical construct crosses my mind. The Happiness Spreadsheet can be a hall of fame, but it can likewise be a catalog of mistakes, burdens, and grueling challenges.

The spreadsheet began on a typical school day when I left my physics class following the most confusing test I’d taken. The idea was born spontaneously at lunch, and I asked two of my friends if they were interested in pursuing this exercise with me. We thought the practice would last only a couple of weeks or months at most, but after reaching 700 days, we now wonder if we’ll ever stop. To this day, I ponder its full importance in my life. With every new number I enter, I recognize that each entry is not what defines me; rather, it is the ever-growing line connecting all the data points that reflects who I am today. With every valley, I force myself onward and with every mountain's peak, I recognize the valleys I’ve crossed to reach the summit. Where will the Happiness Spreadsheet take me next?

THE "TRANSLATING" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Skill/Superpower” Type

".miK ijniM" This is how I wrote my name until I was seven . I was a left-handed kid who wrote from right to left, which made my writing comprehensible only to myself. Only after years of practice did I become an ambidextrous writer who could translate my incomprehensible writing. As I look back on my life, I realized that this was my first act of translation. 

Translation means reinterpreting my Calculus teacher’s description of L’hospital’s rule into a useful tool for solving the limits . As I deciphered complex codes into comprehensible languages like rate of change and speed of an object, I gained the ability to solve even more complicated and fascinating problems. My Calculus teacher often told me, “It’s not until you can teach math concepts to somebody that you understand them completely.” Before I discovered the joy of teaching, I often explained difficult math concepts to my friends as a tool for reviewing what I’d learned. Now, I volunteer to tutor others: as a Korean tutor for friends who love Korean culture and a golf tutor for new team members. Tutoring is how I integrate and strengthen new concepts for myself.  

My talent for translating also applies to my role as a “therapist” for my family and friends . I’m able to identify their real feelings beneath superficial words by translating hand-gestures, facial expressions, and tones. I often put myself into their situation and ask, "What emotional support would I want or need if I was in this situation?" Through these acts of translation, I’ve grown into a more reliable and perceptive friend, daughter, and sister. 

However, my translation can't accurately account for the experiences I have yet to go through . After realizing the limitations of my experience, I created a bucket list full of activities out of my comfort zone, which includes traveling abroad by myself, publishing my own book, and giving a lecture in front of a crowd. Although it is a mere list written on the front page of my diary, I found myself vividly planning and picturing myself accomplishing those moments. By widening my experiences, I’ll be a therapist who can empathize fully and give meaningful advice based on rich experiences.

My knack for translating has led me to become a real-life Korean language translator . As an English to Korean letter translator in a non-profit organization, Compassion , I serve as a communication bridge between benefactors and children in developing countries, who communicate through monthly letters. I’ve translated hundreds of letters by researching each country to provide context that considers both cultural aspects and nuances of the language. This experience has motivated me to learn languages like Spanish and Mandarin. I’ve realized that learning various languages has been a journey of self-discovery: the way I talk and interact with people changed depending on the language I used. As I get to know more about myself through different languages, I grew more confident to meet new people and build new friendships.

While translating has been a huge part of my life, a professional translator is not my dream job . I want to be an ambulatory care clinical pharmacist who manages the medication of patients with chronic diseases. In fact, translating is a huge part of the job of a clinical pharmacist. I should substitute myself into patients’ situations to respond to their needs effectively, which requires my translating skill as a “therapist.” Moreover, as a clinical pharmacist, I’ll be the patients’ private tutor who not only guides them through the right use of medication but also gives them emotional support. As my qualities as a “therapist” and a “tutor” shaped me into a great translator, I will continue to develop my future as a clinical pharmacist by enhancing and discovering my qualities. In one form or another, I've always been and will be a translator.

THE "WHY BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Career” Type

I sit, cradled by the two largest branches of the Newton Pippin Tree, watching the ether. The Green Mountains of Vermont stretch out indefinitely, and from my elevated vantage point, I feel as though we are peers, motionless in solidarity. I’ve lost my corporeal form and instead, while watching invisible currents drive white leviathans across the sky, have drifted up into the epistemological stream; completely alone with my questions, diving for answers. But a few months ago, I would have considered this an utter waste of time. 

Prior to attending Mountain School, my paradigm was substantially limited; opinions, prejudices, and ideas shaped by the testosterone-rich environment of Landon School. I was herded by result-oriented, fast-paced, technologically-reliant parameters towards psychology and neuroscience (the NIH, a mere 2.11 mile run from my school, is like a beacon on a hill). I was taught that one’s paramount accomplishment should be specialization. 

Subconsciously I knew this was not who I wanted to be and seized the chance to apply to the Mountain School. Upon my arrival, though, I immediately felt I did not belong. I found the general atmosphere of hunky-dory acceptance foreign and incredibly unnerving. 

So, rather than engage, I retreated to what was most comfortable: sports and work. In the second week, the perfect aggregate of the two, a Broomball tournament, was set to occur. Though I had never played before, I had a distinct vision for it, so decided to organize it.

That night, the glow-in-the-dark ball skittered across the ice. My opponent and I, brooms in hand, charged forward. We collided and I banana-peeled, my head taking the brunt of the impact. Stubborn as I was, even with a concussion, I wanted to remain in class and do everything my peers did, but my healing brain protested. My teachers didn’t quite know what to do with me, so, no longer confined to a classroom if I didn’t want to be, I was in limbo. I began wandering around campus with no company except my thoughts. Occasionally, Zora, my English teacher’s dog, would tag along and we’d walk for miles in each other's silent company. Other times, I found myself pruning the orchard, feeding the school’s wood furnaces, or my new favorite activity, splitting wood. Throughout those days, I created a new-found sense of home in my head.

However, thinking on my own wasn’t enough; I needed more perspectives. I organized raucous late-night discussions about everything from medieval war machines to political theory and  randomly challenged my friends to “say something outrageous and defend it.” And whether we achieve profundity or not, I find myself enjoying the act of discourse itself. As Thoreau writes, “Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves, the waves may cast up pearls.” I have always loved ideas, but now understand what it means to ride their waves, to let them breathe and become something other than just answers to immediate problems. 

I am most enamored by ideas that cultivate ingenious and practical enrichments for humanity. I enjoy picking some conundrum, large or small, and puzzling out a solution. Returning from a cross country meet recently, my friend and I, serendipitously, designed a socially responsible disposable water bottle completely on accident. Now we hope to create it.

I am still interested in psychology and neuroscience, but also desire to incorporate contemplative thought into this work, analyzing enigmas from many different perspectives. My internships at the NIH and the National Hospital for Neuroscience and Neurosurgery in London have offered me valuable exposure to research and medicine. But I have come to realize that neither of my previous intended professions allow me to expand consciousness in the way I would prefer. 

After much soul-searching, I have landed on behavioral economics as the perfect synergy of the fields I love. All it took was a knock on the head.

THE "5 FAMILY IDENTITIES" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage, “Identity” Type

“Chris, what would you like to have for Christmas Dinner? ”

Suddenly, a miniature gathering of the European Commission glares straight at me. I feel the pressure of picking one option over the other.

 What do I choose? The Roast Duck of Denmark, the Five Fish of Italy, the Turkey of Great Britain, or the Ham of the U.S.? Like the various nations of the European Union, the individual proponents of these culinary varieties are lobbying their interests to me, a miniature Jean-Claude Junker.

Now, you may be asking yourselves: why would I be so pensive over a meal choice?

See, I have been blessed to be a part of what my mother calls the “melting pot of Europe.”  While I was born in England, my brothers were born in Denmark and New York. I have a Swedish sister-in-law, Italian Aunts, an English Uncle, Romanian cousins and an Italo-Danish immigrant father. Every year, that same family gathers together in New York City to celebrate Christmas. While this wonderful kaleidoscope of cultures has caused me to be the ‘peacekeeper’ during meal arbitrations, it has fundamentally impacted my life.  

Our family’s ethnic diversity has meant that virtually each person adheres to a different position on the political spectrum. This has naturally triggered many discussions, ranging from the merits of European single-payer healthcare to those of America’s gun laws, that have often animated our meals. These exact conversations drove me to learn more about what my parents, grandparents, and other relatives were debating with a polite and considerate passion. This ongoing discourse on current events not only initiated my interests in politics and history, but also prepared me greatly for my time as a state-champion debater for Regis’s Public Forum team. In turn, participating in debate has expanded my knowledge regarding matters ranging from civil rights reparations to American redeployment in Iraq, while enriching my capacities to thoughtfully express my views on those and other issues, both during P.F. rounds and at the dinner table.

Just as I’ve learned to understand and bridge the divides between a rich tapestry of cultures in order to develop my familial relations, society’s leadership must also do the same on a grander scale. This awareness incited a passion for statecraft within me – the very art of balancing different perspectives - and therefore a desire to actively engage in government. With my experiences in mind, I felt there was no better place to start than my own neighborhood of Bay Ridge. Young hipsters, a high concentration of seniors, Italian & Irish middle class families, and a growing population of Middle-Eastern Americans help to comprise a district that I have begun serving as the first teenaged member of my local Community Board.  Within my public service capacity, I am committed to making policy judgments (for example, regarding hookah bars, zoning regulations, and park renovation expenses) that are both wise and respectful of my community’s diversity. 

Most importantly, my family has taught me an integral life lesson. As our Christmas Dinner squabbles suggest, seemingly insurmountable impasses can be resolved through respect and dialogue, even producing delicious results! On a grander scale, it has elucidated that truly inclusive discourse and toleration of diverse perspectives render tribalism, sectarianism, and the  divisive aspects of identity politics powerless over our cohesion. I fundamentally value cultural, political, and theological variety; my own microcosm reflecting our global society at large has inspired me to strive to solve the many conflicts of bitterness and sectionalism in our world today. This vocation may come in the form of political leadership that truly respects all perspectives and philosophies, or perhaps as diplomacy facilitating unity between the various nations of the world. The problems I would need to help remedy are numerous and daunting, but our annual Christmas feasts will forever remind me that they can be overcome, and that humanity’s diversity is not a weakness, but a definitive strength.

THE "Coffeeshops + Coffee" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Home” Type

Before I came to America, I drank Puer Tea with my father every morning in my bedroom, sitting cross-legged on Suzhou-silk mats beside a view of the Lakeside reservoir. Beside a dark end table, we picked up teacups as the mild aroma greeted our noses. As we faced the French window, my father would share the news he read in China Daily : the Syrian civil war, climate change, and gender equality in Hollywood. Most of the time, I only listened. With each piece of news, my curiosity piqued. Secretly, I made a decision that I wanted to be the one to discuss the news with him from my perspective. So, I decided to study in America to learn more about the world.   

After one year’s extensive research and hours of interviews, I came to America for 9th grade and moved in with a host family. But, my new room lacked stories and cups of tea. Fortunately, I found Blue House Cafe on my walk home from church, and started studying there. With white walls, comfortable sofas, and high stools, Blue House is spacious and bright. Hearing people’s stories and looking at their warm smiles when they taste various pastries as I sat by the window, I watched as a production designer scouted locations for his film, or a painter took notes while brainstorming for his freehand brushwork of Blue House. With a cup of coffee, I dig into differential and parametric equations for my upcoming AP Calculus test, learn the nuances of public speaking by watching Michael Sandel’s Justice lectures on my laptop, and plan fundraising events for my non-profit. 

I’ve also learned by watching leaders host meetings at the rectangle conference table at the back of the cafe and I learn from the leaders of meetings, watching as they hold the edge of the table and express their ideas. Similarly, as president of the International Students Club, I invited my teammates to have meetings with me at the cafe. Coordinating the schedule with other members in Blue House has become a frequent event. Consuming several cups of coffee, my team and I have planned Lunar New Year events, field trip to the Golden Gate Bridge, and Chinese lunch in school to help international students feel more at home. Straightening my back and bracing my shoulders, I stood up behind the conference table and expressed my creative ideas passionately. After each meeting, we shared buttermilk coffee-cake.

In my spot next to the window, I also witnessed different kinds of people. I viewed visitors dragging their luggage, women carrying shopping bags, and people wandering in tattered clothes --the diversity of San Francisco. Two years ago I saw volunteers wearing City Impact shirts offering sandwiches and hot chocolate to homeless people outside of the cafe. I investigated more about City Impact and eventually signed up to volunteer. No longer was I a bystander. At holiday outreach events, I prepared and delivered food to homeless people. While sharing my coffee, I listened to a story from an older Chinese man who told me, in Mandarin, how he had been abandoned by his children and felt lonely.

Last summer, I returned to Xiamen, China, and taught my father how to drink coffee. Now, a Chemex and teapot are both on the end table. Instead of simply listening, I shared my experiences as a club president, a community leader, and a volunteer. I showed him my business plan and prototypes. My father raised his cup of coffee and made a toast to me, “Good girl! I am so proud of you.” Then, he patted my head as before. Together, we emptied our cups while the smell of coffee lingered.

THE "KOMBUCHA CLUB" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Uncommon Extracurricular Activity” Type

I add the critically measured sugary tea mixture to the gallon jar containing the slimy, white, disc-shaped layers of the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.

Now to wait.  

After exactly seven days, I pour the liquid into a fermentation-grade glass bottle with a ratio of 20% pomegranate juice and 80% fermented tea. I place it on my kitchen counter, periodically checking it to relieve the built-up CO2.

Finally, after an additional seventy-two hours, the time comes to try it. I crack the seal on the bottle, leaning over to smell what I assume will be a tangy, fruity, delicious pomegranate solution. and it smells like rotten eggs. The insufferable stench fills my nostrils and crushes my confidence. I'm momentarily taken aback, unable to understand how I went wrong when I followed the recipe perfectly. 

My issue wasn't misreading the recipe or failing to follow a rule, it was bypassing my creative instincts and forgetting the unpredictable nature of fermentation. I needed to trust the creative side of kombucha— the side that takes people's perfectionist energy and explodes it into a puddle of rotten egg smelling 'booch (my preferred name for the drink- not "fermented, effervescent liquid from a symbiotic culture of acetic acid bacteria and yeast"). I was too caught up in the side that requires extreme preciseness to notice when the balance between perfectionism and imperfectionism was being thrown off. The key, I have learned, is knowing when to prioritize following the recipe and when to let myself be creative. Sure, there are scientific variables such as proximity to heat sources and how many grams of sugar to add. But, there's also person-dependent variables like how long I decide to ferment it, what fruits I decide will be a fun combination, and which friend I got my first SCOBY from (taking "symbiotic" to a new level).

I often find myself feeling pressured to choose one side or the other, one extreme over the alternative. I've been told that I can either be a meticulous scientist or a messy artist, but to be both is an unacceptable contradiction. However, I choose a grey area; a place where I can channel my creativity into the sciences, as well as channel my precision into my photography.

I still have the first photo I ever took on the first camera I ever had. Or rather, the first camera I ever made. Making that pinhole camera was truly a painstaking process: take a cardboard box, tap it shut, and poke a hole in it. Okay, maybe it wasn't that hard. But learning the exact process of taking and developing a photo in its simplest form, the science of it, is what drove me to pursue photography. I remember being so unhappy with the photo I took; it was faded, underexposed, and imperfect. For years, I felt incredibly pressured to try and perfect my photography. It wasn't until I was defeated, staring at a puddle of kombucha, that I realized that there doesn't always have to be a standard of perfection in my art, and that excited me. 

So, am I a perfectionist? Or do I crave pure spontaneity and creativity? Can I be both?

Perfectionism leaves little to be missed. With a keen eye, I can quickly identify my mistakes and transform them into something with purpose and definitude. On the other hand, imperfection is the basis for change and for growth. My resistance against perfectionism is what has allowed me to learn to move forward by seeing the big picture; it has opened me to new experiences, like bacteria cross-culturing to create something new, something different, something better. I am not afraid of change or adversity, though perhaps I am afraid of conformity. To fit the mold of perfection would compromise my creativity, and I am not willing to make that sacrifice.

THE "MOMENTS WHERE THE SECONDS STAND STILL" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Montage Essay, “Other/Advanced” type

I hold onto my time as dearly as my Scottish granny holds onto her money. I’m careful about how I spend it and fearful of wasting it. Precious minutes can show someone I care and can mean the difference between accomplishing a goal or being too late to even start and my life depends on carefully budgeting my time for studying, practicing with my show choir, and hanging out with my friends. However, there are moments where the seconds stand still.

It is already dark when I park in my driveway after a long day at school and rehearsals. I can’t help but smile when I see my dog Kona bounce with excitement, then slide across the tile floor to welcome me as I open the door. I run with him into my parent’s bedroom, where my mom, dad, and sister are waiting for me. We pile onto my parents’ bed to talk about what’s going on in our lives, plan our next trip to the beach, tell jokes, and “spill tea.” They help me see challenges with a realistic perspective, grounding me in what matters. Not paying attention to the clock, I allow myself to relax for a brief moment in my busy life.

Laughter fills the show choir room as my teammates and I pass the time by telling bad jokes and breaking out in random bursts of movement. Overtired, we don’t even realize we’re entering the fourth hour of rehearsal. This same sense of camaraderie follows us onstage, where we become so invested in the story we are portraying we lose track of time. My show choir is my second family. I realize I choreograph not for recognition, but to help sixty of my best friends find their footing. At the same time, they help me find my voice.

The heavy scuba gear jerks me under the icy water, and exhilaration washes over me. Lost in the meditative rolling effect of the tide and the hum of the vast ocean, I feel present. I dive deeper to inspect a vibrant community of creatures, and we float together, carefree and synchronized. My fascination with marine life led me to volunteer as an exhibit interpreter for the Aquarium of the Pacific, where I share my love for the ocean. Most of my time is spent rescuing animals from small children and, in turn, keeping small children from drowning in the tanks. I’ll never forget the time when a visiting family and I were so involved in discussing ocean conservation that, before I knew it, an hour had passed. Finding this mutual connection over the love of marine life and the desire to conserve the ocean environment keeps me returning each summer. 

“Why don’t we have any medical supplies?” The thought screams through my mind as I carry a sobbing girl on my back across campus in search of an ice pack and ankle wrap. She had just fallen while performing, and I could relate to the pain and fear in her eyes. The chaos of the show becomes distant, and I devote my time to bringing her relief, no matter how long it may take. I find what I need to treat her injury in the sports medicine training room. I didn’t realize she would be the first of many patients I would tend to in this training room. Since then, I’ve launched a sports medicine program to provide care to the 500-person choir program.  

Saturday morning bagels with my family. Singing backup for Barry Manilow with my choir. Swimming with sea turtles in the Pacific. Making my teammate smile even though he’s in pain. These are the moments I hold onto, the ones that define who I am, and who I want to be. For me, time isn’t just seconds ticking by on a clock, it’s how I measure what matters.

THE "IDENTIFYING AS TRANS" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Narrative Essay, “Challenges” Type

“Mommy I can’t see myself.”  

I was six when I first refused/rejected girl’s clothing, eight when I only wore boy’s clothing, and fifteen when I realized why. When gifted dresses I was told to “smile and say thank you” while Spiderman shirts took no prompting from me, I’d throw my arms around the giver and thank them. My whole life has been others invading my gender with their questions, tears signed by my body, and a war against my closet. Fifteen years and I finally realized why, this was a girl’s body, and I am a boy. 

Soon after this, I came out to my mom. I explained how lost I felt, how confused I was, how “I think I’m Transgender.” It was like all those years of being out of place had led to that moment, my truth, the realization of who I was. My mom cried and said she loved me. 

The most important factor in my transition was my mom’s support. She scheduled me an appointment with a gender therapist, let me donate my female clothes, and helped build a masculine wardrobe. With her help, I went on hormones five months after coming out and got surgery a year later. I finally found myself, and my mom fought for me, her love was endless. Even though I had friends, writing, and therapy, my strongest support was my mother.

On August 30th, 2018 my mom passed away unexpectedly. My favorite person, the one who helped me become the man I am today, ripped away from me, leaving a giant hole in my heart and in my life.

Life got dull. Learning how to wake up without my mom every morning became routine. Nothing felt right, a constant numbness to everything, and fog brain was my kryptonite. I paid attention in class, I did the work, but nothing stuck. I felt so stupid, I knew I was capable, I could solve a Rubik’s cube in 25 seconds and write poetry, but I felt broken. I was lost, I couldn’t see myself, so stuck on my mother that I fell into an ‘It will never get better’ mindset.

It took over a year to get out of my slump. 25 therapy sessions, over 40 poems, not a single one didn’t mention my mom. I shared my writing at open mics, with friends, and I cried every time. I embraced the pain, the hurt, and eventually, it became the norm. I grew used to not having my mom around.

My mom always wanted to change the world, to fix the broken parts of society. She didn’t get to. Now that I’m in a good place, mentally and physically, I’m going to make that impact. Not just for her, but for me, and all the people who need a support branch as strong as the one my mom gave me.

I’m starting with whats impacted me most of my life, what’s still in front of me, being Transgender in the school system. For my senior project, I am using my story and experience as a young Transgender man to inform local schools, specifically the staff, about the do’s and dont’s of dealing with a Transgender student. I am determined to make sure no one feels as alone as I did. I want to be able to reach people, and use motivational speaking as the platform. 

After experiencing many twists and turns in my life, I’m finally at a good spot. I know what I want to do with my life, and I know how I’m going to get there. 

Mom, I can see myself now. Thank you.

If you’d like to see more sample essays + a guide to “ Should I come out in my personal statement (and if so, how?) ” please check out that link.

THE "iTaylor" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Narrative Essay, Undefined Type

Are you tired of seeing an iPhone everywhere? Samsung glitchy? It’s time for a change. I present to you, the iTaylor. I am the iTaylor. On the outside, I look like any smart phone, but when you open my settings and explore my abilities, you will find I have many unique features.

The iTaylor’s best feature is its built-in optimism. Thanks to my positivity, I was chosen to give the morning announcements freshman year. Now, I am the alarm clock for the 1,428 students of Fox Lane High School. For the past three years, I have been starting everyone’s morning with a bubbly, “Good morning, foxes!” and ending with “Have a marvelous Monday,” “Terrific Tuesday” or “Phenomenal Friday!”  My adjective-a-day keeps people listening, gives me conversation starters with faculty, and solicits fun suggestions from my friends.

Next up, language settings. I’ve worked hard to be bilingual so the iTaylor can be set to either English or Spanish. Fun fact: In middle school, I set my phone to Spanish so that messages like “ Alexis te envió un mensaje en Instagram ,” would increase my fluency. I learned nuances of the language by watching Spanish sitcoms like Siete Vidas and Spanish movies like Como Agua Para Chocolate . I appreciate the emphasis Spanish culture places on relationships, the way siblings take care of each other, and how grandparents’ wisdom is valued. Inspired, I began creating family events and even making efforts to grow closer to my second cousins.

At eight years old, I was diagnosed with what some might call a glitch: epilepsy. Fortunately, a new IOS software update cured my condition by the age of 15, but through epilepsy, I gained a love of exploration. Whereas at 10, I couldn’t bathe without supervision, I now enjoy snorkeling in unknown waters. While at 11, I couldn’t be left alone with my friends, I now explore the subways, crowded streets, and Broadway shows of New York City. Overcoming epilepsy taught me to take risks and explore new places.

This brings us to the iTaylor location settings. Two summers ago, I travelled to Ecuador to live with a friend’s family and teach Spanish theater to third graders. The experience implanted a “cookie” in me, filling me with a desire to learn about different cultures. I brought this desire home to a volunteer position at a local program for immigrant children. I helped the kids make presentations about their places of origin, including Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. Also, as resident tour guide and ambassador for exchange students at my school, I’ve discovered North African fusion music from Selima, learned German slang from Henrike, and helped Saidimar prepare his Mr.Sulu campaign, a regional pageant in the Philippines. It became clear that the English language, one I took for granted, is the central feature that brings groups together.

This past summer, I brought my talents to Scotland, playing the dual role of  Artistic Director and leading character for Geek the Musical . I worked to promote the show in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival against 53,232 shows, reinventing ways to motivate the cast and connect with strangers from all over the world. We learned the more we connected, the more our audience grew. I applied these skills to my leadership positions at home, including my High School Theater Group, Players. I’m now better at creating a marketing strategy that includes door-to-door sales, print advertising, and identifying broader target audiences to fill seats.

The rollout plan for the iTaylor is to introduce it to the theater market. My goal is to use performance and storytelling to expose audiences to different cultures, religions, and points of view. Perhaps if we all learned more about each other's lifestyles, the world would be more empathetic and integrated. 

So what do you think? Would you like an iTaylor of your own? The iTaylor College Edition is now available for pre-order. It delivers next fall.

THE "FIGURING OUT WHAT REALLY MATTERED CHALLENGE" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Narrative Essay

"Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air." --Ivan Pavlov 

Upon graduation, I will be able to analyze medieval Spanish poems using literary terms and cultural context, describe the electronegativity trends on the periodic table, and identify when to use logarithmic differentiation to simplify a derivative problem. Despite knowing how to execute these very particular tasks, I currently fail to understand how to change a tire, how to do my taxes efficiently, or how to obtain a good insurance policy. A factory-model school system that has been left essentially unchanged for nearly a century has been the driving force in my educational development.

I have been conditioned to complete tasks quickly, efficiently, and with an advanced understanding. I measured my self-worth as my ability to outdo my peers academically, thinking my scores were the only aspect that defined me; and they were. I was getting everything right. Then, I ran for Student Government and failed. Rejection. I didn’t even make it past the first round of cuts. How could that be? I was statistically a smart kid with a good head on my shoulders, right? Surely someone had to have made a mistake. Little did I know, this was my first exposure to meaning beyond numbers.

As I was rejected from StuGo for the second year in a row, I discovered I had been wrongfully measuring my life through numbers--my football statistics, my test scores, my age, my height (I’m short). I had the epiphany that oh wait, maybe it was my fault that I had never prioritized communication skills, or open-mindedness (qualities my fellow candidates possessed). Maybe it was me. That must be why I always had to be the one to approach people during my volunteer hours at the public library to offer help--no one ever asked me for it. I resolved to alter my mindset, taking a new approach to the way I lived. From now on I would emphasize qualitative experiences over quantitative skills. 

I had never been more uncomfortable. I forced myself to learn to be vulnerable by asking questions even if I was terrified of being wrong. My proficiency in using data evidence could not teach me how to communicate with young children at church, nor could my test scores show me how to be more open to criticism. The key to all of these skills, I was to discover, happened to be learning from those around me. Turns out, I couldn’t do everything by myself.

The process of achieving this new mindset came through the cultivation of relationships. I became fascinated by the new perspectives each person in my life could offer if I really took the time to connect. Not only did I improve my listening skills, but I began to consider the big-picture consequences my engagements could have. People interpret situations differently due to their own cultural contexts, so I had to learn to pay more attention to detail to understand every point of view. I took on the state of what I like to call collaborative independence, and to my delight, I was elected to StuGo after my third year of trying.

Not long ago, I would have fallen apart at the presence of any uncertainty. As I further accept and advance new life skills, the more I realize how much remains uncertain in the world. After all, it is quite possible my future job doesn’t exist yet, and that’s okay. I can’t conceivably plan out my entire life at the age of 17, but what I can do is prepare myself to take on the unknown, doing my best to accompany others. Hopefully, my wings continue enabling me to fly, but it is going to take more than just me and my wings; I have to continue putting my faith in the air around me.

THE "PARENTS' RELATIONSHIP" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

Narrative Essay, “Challenge” Type

My mom opened Kanishka’s Gastropub in 2013. I was ecstatic. We would become the first Mother-Son Indian duo on Food Network peeling potatoes, skinning chicken, and grinding spices, sharing our Bengali recipes with the world. 

However, the restaurant tore apart my parent’s relationship. Two years after opening, my dad started coming home late most nights, plastered from “happy hour with work colleagues.” My mom, trying to balance her day job at Kaiser and owning a restaurant, poured her stress on me,“What the hell is wrong with you! Always watching YouTube and never talking!” 

The worst time came when my parents tried to fix their relationship. Repeated date nights induced more arguments. Enduring the stress of her restaurant, my father, and her mistakes, my mom attempted to end her life. Fortunately, I found her just in time.  

Over the next two years, things were at times still hard, but gradually improved. My parents decided to start anew, took some time apart, then got back together. My mom started to pick me up from activities on time and my dad and I bonded more, watching Warriors and 49ers games. 

But at times I still had to emotionally support my mom to avoid sudden India trips, or put my siblings to bed if my parents weren’t home at night. Over time, I found it difficult being my family’s glue. I wanted back the family I had before the restaurant--the one that ate Luchi Mongsho together every Sunday night.

So I looked for comfort in creation. I began spending more time in our garage , carefully constructing planes from sheets of foam. I found purpose balancing the fuselage or leveling the ailerons to precisely 90 degrees. I loved cutting new parts and assembling them perfectly. Here , I could fix all the mistakes. 

In high school, I slowly began to forge a community of creators with my peers. Sophomore year, I started an engineering club and found that I had a talent for  managing people and encouraging them to create an idea even if it failed. I also learned how to take feedback and become more resilient. Here, I could nerd-out about warp drives and the possibility of anti-matter without being ignored. I would give a weekly report on new technology and we would have hour-long conversations about the various uses a blacker material could have. 

While building a community at school rebuilt my confidence, I still found I enjoyed being alone at times. While driving in my car, I’d let my mind wander to movies like Big Hero Six and contemplate if a zero-friction bike really was possible. I’d create ideas like an AI highway system that tells drivers exactly when to switch lanes based on timing and calculus to prevent braking from nearby cars. Or I’d blueprint a new classroom with interactive desks, allowing students to dive deep into historical events like a VR game. I found outlining complex ideas like these sometimes provide insights into something I’m researching or could one day materialize into future projects. 

Looking back (and perhaps inadvertently), the conflicts from the restaurant days have taught me valuable lessons. Helping my mom through her relationship taught me to watch out for those in emotional distress. Spending nights alone made me more independent--after all, it was then that I signed up for advanced math and programming courses and decided to apply for software internships. Most of all, seeing my mom start her restaurant from no food-industry experience inspired me to found two clubs and a Hydrogen Car Team. 

Even though we eat Luchi Monsho on a monthly basis now, I know my family will never be the way it was. My mom and I won’t become a Food Network mother-son duo. I can’t fix all the mistakes. But I can use them to improve the present.

THE "THREATENED BY ISIS" COLLEGE ESSAY EXAMPLE

In 8th grade while doing a school project I Googled my dad's name and it came up in US military documents posted on the Snowden/NSA documents on WikiLeaks. I stayed up all night reading through documents related to Army support contracts in Iraq and Kuwait in 2003. I asked my dad about it the next day and he said, "It was a mistake I made that has been resolved." Turns out it hadn't been.

Saudi Arabia in the 2000s wasn’t the most ideal place to grow up. I was always scared of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. My school was part of the US Consulate in Dhahran, and when I was in the 8th grade it was threatened by ISIS. Violence has always surrounded me and haunted me. 

After 14 years of living in a region destroyed by violence, I was sent away to boarding school in a region known for peace, Switzerland. That year my father was found guilty and imprisoned for the charges related to his Army support contract. I felt as if I was Edgar in Shakespeare’s King Lear and this could not get worse, but yet it did.

My parents got divorced and my childhood home was bulldozed to the ground by the Saudi government after my father was sent to prison. My mom had always been a hub of stability, but she was too overwhelmed to support me. I started eating to cope with my anxiety and gained 100 pounds in a year and a half. As I gained weight, my health started to deteriorate, and my grades started to drop. 

Things began to change at the beginning of my sophomore year, however, when I met my new roommate, Nico. He had grown up with someone whose father was also in prison, and was able to help me better understand the issues I was facing. Through my friendship with Nico, I learned how to open up and get support from my friends. 

I started to make new friends with more people at my school and was surprised to find out that 90% of their parents were divorced. Because we faced similar issues, we were able to support one and other, share tactics, and give advice. One of my friends, John, gave me advice on how to help my mother emotionally by showing her love, something I hadn’t been able to do before. My friends gave me a family and a home, when my own family was overwhelmed and my home was gone.

Slowly, I put my life back on track. I started playing basketball, began working on a CubeSAT, learned to program, changed my diet, and lost all the weight I had gained. 

 Now my friends in Switzerland come to me asking me for advice and help, and I feel as if I am a vital member of our community. My close friend Akshay recently started stressing about whether his parents were going to get divorced. With John’s advice, I started checking in on Akshay, spending more time with him, and coaching him before and after he talked to his parents. 

Leaving home in the beginning of my adolescence, I was sent out on a path of my own. While for some, high school is the best time of their lives, for me, high school has represented some of the best and, hopefully, worst times. Even with the struggles I’ve faced with my family, I am grateful for this path. It has brought me to a place that I only thought was fictional. In this new place I feel like a real person, with real emotions. This place is somewhere where I can express myself freely and be who I want to be. I am a much stronger, healthier, and more resilient person than I was two years ago. While it hasn’t been easy, I am glad to be where I am today.

For a ton of UC Essay Examples, head to my blog post here.

Supplemental essay examples, uchicago: the "why did the chicken cross the road" essay.

This essay was written for the U of Chicago "Create your own prompt" essay. The author included the following explanatory note:

I plan to double major in biochemistry and English and my main essay explains my passion for the former; here is a writing sample that illustrates my enthusiasm for the latter.

In my AP Literature class, my teacher posed a question to which students had to write a creative response. My response is framed around the ideas of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.”

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: A manicured green field of grass blades cut to perfectly matched lengths; a blue expanse ornamented with puffy cotton clouds; an immaculately painted red barn centered exactly at the top of a hill--the chicken gazes contentedly at his picturesque world. Within an area surrounded by a shiny silver fence, he looks around at his friends: roosters pecking at a feast of grains and hens lounging on luxurious cushions of hay. As the nice man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans collects the hens’ eggs, the chicken feels an overwhelming sense of indebtedness to him for providing this idyllic lifestyle.

On a day as pristine as all the others, the chicken is happily eating his lunchtime meal as the nice man carefully gathers the smooth white eggs when it notices that the man has left one behind. Strangely located at the empty end of the metal enclosure, highlighted by the bright yellow sun, the white egg appears to the chicken different from the rest. The chicken moves towards the light to tacitly inform the man of his mistake. But then the chicken notices a jagged gray line on the otherwise flawless egg. Hypnotized and appalled, the chicken watches as the line turns into a crack and a small beak attached to a fuzzy yellow head pokes out. Suddenly a shadow descends over the chicken and the nice man snatches the egg--the baby chick--and stomps off.

The chicken--confused, betrayed, disturbed--slowly lifts its eyes from the now empty ground. For the first time, it looks past the silver fence of the cage and notices an unkempt sweep of colossal brown and green grasses opposite its impeccably crafted surroundings. Cautiously, it inches closer to the barrier, farther from the unbelievable perfection of the farm, and discovers a wide sea of black gravel.  Stained with gray stones and marked with yellow lines, it separates the chicken from the opposite field.

The curious chicken quickly shuffles to Mother Hen, who has just settled on to her throne of hay and is closing her eyes. He is sure that the always composed and compassionate chicken will help him make sense of what he’s just seen.

“Mother Hen, Mother Hen! I-I just saw one of those eggs, cracking, and there was a small yellow bird inside. It was a baby. Are those eggs that the nice man takes away babies? And that black ground! What is it?” the chicken blurts out.

Her eyes flick open. “BOK BOK! Don’t you ever dare speak of what you have seen again,” Mother Hen snaps in a low and violent whisper, “or all of this will be taken away.” Closing her eyes again, she dismisses the chicken.

Frozen in disbelief, the chicken tries to make sense of her harsh words. It replays the incident in its head. “All the food, the nice soft hay, the flawless red barn--maybe all of this isn’t worth giving up. Maybe Mother Hen is right. She just wants to protect me from losing it all.” The chicken replays the incident again. “But it was a baby. What if it was hers? She still wouldn’t care. She’s being selfish; all she cares about is this perfect life.” A final replay, and the chicken realizes and accepts that Mother Hen knows, has known, that the man is doing something wrong; yet she has yielded to the cruelty for her own comfort. A fissure in the chicken’s unawareness, a plan begins to hatch. The chicken knows it must escape; it has to get to the other side.

“That man in the plaid shirt is stealing the eggs from their mothers again,” the chicken thinks the next day as he unlocks the cage. Then the man reaches into the wooden coop, his back to the entrance. “Now!” At its own cue, the chicken scurries towards the opening and exits unseen. With a backwards glance at his friends, the chicken feels a profound sadness and pity for their ignorance. It wants to urge them to open their eyes, to see what they are sacrificing for materialistic pleasures, but he knows they will not surrender the false reality. Alone, the chicken dashes away.

The chicken stands at the line between green grass and black gravel. As it prepares to take its first step into the unknown, a monstrous vehicle with 18 wheels made of metal whizzes by, leaving behind a trail of gray exhaust. Once it regains its breath, it moves a few inches onto the asphalt. Three more speeding trucks stop its chicken heart.

“I can’t do this,” it says to itself. “These monsters are a sign. They’re telling me to go back. Besides, a few lost chicks aren’t so bad. The man’s not that evil. He gives us food, and a home.”

But the chicken dismisses the cowardly voice in its head, reminding itself of the injustice back in the deceptively charming prison. Over the next several hours, it learns to strategically position itself so that it is in line with the empty space between the tires of passing trucks. It reaches the yellow dashes. A black blanket gradually pushes away the glowing sun and replaces it with diamond stars and a glowing crescent. It reaches the untouched field.

With a deep breath, the chicken steps into the swathe, a world of tall beige grass made brown by the darkness. Unsure of what it may discover, it determines to simply walk straight through the brush, out on to the other side. For what seems like forever, it continues forward, as the black sky turns to purple, then blue, then pink. Just as the chicken begins to regret its journey, the grass gives way to a vast landscape of trees, bushes, flowers--heterogeneous and variable, but nonetheless perfect. In a nearby tree, the chicken spots two adult birds tending to a nest of babies--a natural dynamic of individuals unaltered by corrupt influence.

And then it dawns on him. It has escaped from a contrived and perverted domain as well as its own unawareness; it has arrived in a place where the pure order of the world reigns.

“I know the truth now,” it thinks to himself as the sun rises. “But here, in Nature, it is of no use. Back home, I need to try to foster awareness among my friends, share this understanding with them. Otherwise, I am as cruel as the man in the plaid shirt, taking away the opportunity to overcome ignorance.”

“I must return now; I have to get to the other side.”

For more, here’s a guide to the U Chicago supplemental essays , and an in-depth guide to U Chicago’s extended essay .

We also analyze why we think this essay works in The Complete Guide , Session 6.

The "Rock, Paper, Scissors" UChicago Supplemental Essay Example

Essay written for the University of Chicago prompt, which gives you the option to create your own prompt..

Prompt: Dear Christian, the admissions staff at the University of Chicago would like to inform you that your application has been “put on the line.” We have one spot left and can’t decide if we should admit you or another equally qualified applicant. To resolve the matter, please choose one of the following:

Rock, paper, or scissors.

You will be notified of our decision shortly.

Rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock.  Wait... paper beats rock? Since when has a sheet of loose leaf paper ever defeated a solid block of granite? Do we assume that the paper wraps around the rock, smothering the rock into submission? When exposed to paper, is rock somehow immobilized, unable to fulfill its primary function of smashing scissors?  What constitutes defeat between two inanimate objects?

Maybe it’s all a metaphor for larger ideals. Perhaps paper is rooted in the symbolism of diplomacy while rock suggests coercion. But does compromise necessarily trump brute force? And where do scissors lie in this chain of symbolism?

I guess the reasoning behind this game has a lot to do with context. If we are to rationalize the logic behind this game, we have to assume some kind of narrative, an instance in which paper might beat rock. Unfortunately, I can’t argue for a convincing one.

As with rock-paper-scissors, we often cut our narratives short to make the games we play easier, ignoring the intricate assumptions that keep the game running smoothly. Like rock-paper-scissors, we tend to accept something not because it’s true, but because it’s the convenient route to getting things accomplished. We accept incomplete narratives when they serve us well, overlooking their logical gaps. Other times, we exaggerate even the smallest defects and uncertainties in narratives we don’t want to deal with. In a world where we know very little about the nature of “Truth,” it’s very easy—and tempting—to construct stories around truth claims that unfairly legitimize or delegitimize the games we play.

Or maybe I’m just making a big deal out of nothing...

Fine. I’ll stop with the semantics and play your game.

But who actually wants to play a game of rock-paper-scissors?  After all, isn’t it just a game of random luck, requiring zero skill and talent? That’s no way to admit someone!

Studies have shown that there are winning strategies to rock-paper-scissors by making critical assumptions about those we play against before the round has even started. Douglas Walker, host of the Rock-Paper-Scissors World Championships (didn’t know that existed either), conducted research indicating that males will use rock as their opening move 50% of the time, a gesture Walker believes is due to rock’s symbolic association with strength and force. In this sense, the seemingly innocuous game of rock-paper-scissors has revealed something quite discomforting about gender-related dispositions in our society. Why did so many males think that brute strength was the best option? If social standards have subliminally influenced the way males and females play rock-paper-scissors, than what is to prevent such biases from skewing more important decisions? Should your decision to go to war or to feed the hungry depend on your gender, race, creed, etc?

Perhaps the narratives I spoke of earlier, the stories I mistakenly labeled as “semantics,” carry real weight in our everyday decisions. In the case of Walker’s study, men unconsciously created an irrational narrative around an abstract rock. We all tell slightly different narratives when we independently consider notions ranging from rocks to war to existence. It is ultimately the unconscious gaps in these narratives that are responsible for many of the man-made problems this world faces. In order for the “life of the mind” to be a worthwhile endeavor, we must challenge the unconscious narratives we attach to the larger games we play—the truths we tell (or don’t tell), the lessons we learn (or haven’t really learned), the people we meet (or haven’t truly met).

But even after all of this, we still don’t completely understand the narrative behind rock-paper-scissors.  

I guess it all comes down to who actually made this silly game in the first place... I’d like to think it was some snotty 3rd grader, but then again, that’s just another incomplete narrative.

U of Michigan Supplemental Essay Example

The "east meets west" example essay.

This was written for the U. of Michigan supplemental "community" essay prompt, then adapted for a (no longer existent) essay for Brown. The Michigan prompt reads:

Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it.

Here's the essay:

I look around my room, dimly lit by an orange light. On a desk in the left corner, a framed picture of an Asian family is beaming their smiles, buried among US history textbooks and The Great Gatsby. A Korean ballad streams from a pair of tiny computer speakers. Pamphlets of American colleges are scattered about on the floor. A cold December wind wafts a strange infusion of ramen and leftover pizza. On the wall in the far back, a Korean flag hangs besides a Led Zeppelin poster.

Do I consider myself Korean or American?

A few years back, I would have replied: “Neither.” The frustrating moments of miscommunication, the stifling homesickness, and the impossible dilemma of deciding between the Korean or American table in the dining hall, all fueled my identity crisis.

Standing in the “Foreign Passports” section at JFK, I have always felt out of place. Sure, I held a Korean passport in my hands, and I loved kimchi and Yuna Kim and knew the Korean Anthem by heart. But I also loved macaroni and cheese and LeBron and knew all the Red Hot Chili Peppers songs by heart. Deep inside, I feared that I would simply be labeled as what I am categorized at airport customs: a foreigner in all places.

This ambiguity of existence, however, has granted me the opportunity to absorb the best of both worlds. Take a look at my dorm room. This mélange of cultures in my East-meets-West room embodies the diversity that characterizes my international student life.

I have learned to accept my “ambiguity” as “diversity,” as a third-culture student embracing both identities in this diverse community that I am blessed to be a part of.

Now, I can proudly answer: “Both.”

college essay on cats

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college essay on cats

college essay on cats

Campus cat colonies: How feral feline populations are managed at universities

<i>Ellen, a brown and white tabby cat, sits on the concrete pavement near Tolbert Hall at the University of Florida on April 29, 2024. (Kat Tran/WUFT News)</i>

UF is not the only university with a feral cat community. In fact, feral cats have stirred controversy in other countries as well, as a 2018 study by the University of New South Wales in Australia addressed its feline issues with a nine-year study that found TNR programs stabilize cat populations.

Most colleges and universities take pride in naming their sports teams after fearsome animals: Gators, Bulldogs and Tigers. But there is another critter that has marked its territory at many schools, including the University of Florida: Feral cats.

These unowned and roaming animals have found homes around dorms, classrooms and wooded areas where they can find food offered by compassionate students, faculty and administrators.

“They kind of have their own little group of caretakers, but UF policies toward feral cats is strange because you’re not supposed to feed them or interact with them,” said Emma Van Riper, 21, a UF political science senior, who learned about the campus cat community through Instagram and sometimes feeds cats living in the Tolbert Area.

The UF Environmental Health and Safety regulation maintains that feral cats cannot be fed due to public health concerns and will remove any animal food and containers left on campus grounds. “But we’re not going to leave them starving and alone because it’s not their fault they’re outside,” Riper said.

These elusive felines pose an obstacle for university administrations trying to protect the safety of humans and wildlife. But they also serve as a central part of the campus community and their caretakers. Trap-neuter-return programs, or TNR, have been used by community cat caretakers as a way to curb the overpopulation of cats and manage colonies.

UF is not the only university with a feral cat community. Schools in other states also have populations of feline citizens. In fact, feral cats have stirred controversy in other countries, as a 2018 study by the University of New South Wales in Australia addressed its feline issues with a nine-year study that found TNR programs stabilize cat populations.

Trapping cats involves the placement of food or bait at the very back of a trap to coax the cat inside and trigger the trip plate, according to Alley Cat Allies, a non-profit cat advocacy organization. The cats are then taken to a veterinarian or clinic to be neutered, vaccinated and have their ear clipped, a human way to identify cats that have been spayed and vaccinated, and then returned to their colony on campus.

The camaraderie of campus cats is reflected on social media platforms like Instagram, said Tina Tallon, a UF assistant professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts. She learned about UF’s campus cats and their management through a friend’s search for a missing cat.

She discovered the Instagram accounts: @campuskitties, run by Ines Aviles-Spadoni, a UF research program coordinator for the Transportation Institute, and @gatorcats, run by Devon Limcangco, 23, UF electrical engineering senior, both accounts regularly post about UF’s campus cats.

Soon after, Tallon volunteered to provide medical assistance to Willie, a black-and-white cat living near the mechanical and aerospace engineering building and eventually adopted him. “Not only does [social media] create community, but it also helps monitor the well-being of the cats, because that’s actually happened with Tenders,” Tallon said.

<i>Tenders, a local campus cat celebrity, sprawls on a power generation near the front desk office in Tolbert Hall at the University of Florida on April 29, 2024. (Kat Tran/WUFT News) </i>

Tenders is a local campus cat celebrity, who briefly disappeared from her usual home at UF Tolbert Area. Her disappearance sparked concern amongst community members about her whereabouts, including Tallon, who helped find and rescue the brown-and-white cat.

There are more formal, established campus clubs and programs that manage and advocate for the well-being of cats like the Cat Club , created in 2016, at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida and the Campus Cat Program , created in 2017, at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, Florida. Both colleges maintain a team of volunteers and club members, who use TNR methods to reduce the number of campus cats and feed the cats daily, with just enough food to comply with campus policies and discourage other wildlife like raccoons or squirrels.

On UWF’s 1600-acre campus, Nicole McDonald, the senior campus coordinator, worked with the university’s Department of Environmental Health Safety to address the health concerns and nuisances posed by 30 identified feral campus cats, as they were entering university buildings through automatic sliding doors.

“I caught up with another staff member who had been feeding them and we sat down to try to figure out a way to deal with them because we did not want to have them euthanized,” she said. After collecting donations to provide veterinary care, they started to perform TNR methods and trapped one or two cats every couple of weeks.

The university also has three or four foster families who care for potential cat candidates up for adoption. “We’ve been lucky, we have about 1,600 faculty and staff who have almost adopted them all because we have an amazing group that really love animals on campus,” McDonald said. Now, there are about four or five cats left on campus.

<i>A kitten with ringworm awaits care inside an animal cage at Operation Catnip, a Gainesville spay-neuter clinic, on April 27, 2024. (Kat Tran/WUFT News)</i>

Many cat caretakers seek additional support and assistance from animal shelters, independent cat management organizations and clinics that provide veterinary services. Operation Catnip, a free spay-neuter clinic and a teaching avenue for veterinary students was founded in 1998 by Dr. Julie Levy, a shelter medicine professor and program director at the University of Florida’s veterinary school.

Since its founding, the clinic has spayed and neutered more than 80,000 community cats, reducing the number of cats entering animal shelters or euthanized due to lack of shelter space, Levy said.

The awareness of effective and humane control of cat populations is widespread throughout the community, Levy said, pointing to how familiar people are with Operation Catnip through social media. Free-roaming cats on UF campus have been kept at a low number due to staff and volunteers who help neuter cats and remove some for adoption.

She also said TNR methods foster community involvement and engagement to volunteer and care for free-roaming cats. “That's different than programs where cats are removed for euthanasia, and it's very hard for supporters of that to find volunteers that will help do that,” Levy said.

When individuals continue to trap and maintain cats in their local areas, Levy said they are often adopted out, which also prevents the number of cats in the area from growing.

Other cat caretakers may assume a more involved role and set up a feeding schedule by themselves or with other residents. Adoption invariably accompanies the TNR process and causes an immediate reduction in cats in the area, preventing the population from growing. Solely performing spay-neuter methods takes longer because the cats are still thriving while they’re there, Levy said.

Another group of cat caretakers lies on the west coast at San Diego State University. Aztec Cats, founded in 2009 by John Denue, 57, a former San Diego State University Information Technology security professional, also seeks trapping, spaying and neutering services through clinics like the Feral Cat Coalition. Over time, he was able to spay and foster and relocate 23 cats and kittens after his first encounter with a mother cat leading her four kittens to dig around the trash near a food court on campus.

“I went out that night and went to the grocery store, and got some cat food and watched carefully to see where they lived and started feeding them,” Denue said. “Then I started noticing other cats on campus and the rest is history.”

He attributes the success of TNR methods to how self-contained the large campus is and the volunteer work by campus faculty, staff and students. The colony started with around a dozen cats, and Denue, now retired, continues to care for the two remaining cats on campus and manages the Facebook page.

“You don’t want the cats reproducing out of control on campus, because at that point, the administration would probably have to take some negative action against that,” Denue said.

As he started implementing feeding locations around campus, he collaborated with the university administration to change campus policies to allow feral cats on campus in compliance with environmental health and safety concerns.

Along the Ohio River in Evansville, Indiana, Sarah Stevens, 53, director of the honors program and living-learning communities at the University of Southern Indiana, assumed a role as a faculty point-person for the campus cats. One of her students, Peyton, worked with university administration to develop cat-friendly policies. The cats are managed by a leadership team of three to five members and 15 to 20 volunteers. In the last three years, they have been able to TNR 21 cats, and relocate and adopt four adult cats and 22 kittens.

<i>Three cats, Ellen, left, Frankie, middle, and Big Balls, right, sit on the concrete pavement near Tolbert Hall at the University of Florida on April 29, 2024. (Kat Tran/WUFT News) </i>

There are four feeding stations near wooded areas, behind apartments and around dumpsters, and like many other campuses, someone is always tasked to feed the cats daily.

Any concerns or updates about the cats are posted on the campus cat's Facebook group. “We have a shared Google Drive, so we have our vet receipts, budget, cat census, and feeding calendar,” Stevens said. They have also created winter shelters made from Rubbermaid containers, aluminum blankets and straw to protect the cats during colder months.

“When we have caught kittens, we usually try to find someone to foster them. We can’t always find somebody, so if we have one of our members foster, that’s great,” Stevens said. “But if we can’t find someone to foster, that’s when we partner with the humane society or Feline Fix [a local spay-neuter clinic] because they have a list of people who foster.”

Blackheart Trappers, in Miami-Dade County, is a nonprofit professional TNR organization founded in 2019 and run by Jonathan Colon Garcia, 36, and Sylvia Perea Cortez, 57. In the summer of 2020, their first big project was at the University of Miami, where they trapped nearly 300 community cats. “It took us about a year and a half to be able to do what we did there,” Garcia said.

Garcia and Cortez have adapted their TNR methods to the urban environment and the cats living in human-centric areas, where cats are seen as nuisances. “Which is very difficult because when you find and trap a cat next to a busy restaurant, it gets very stressful and frustrating when you’re trying to help one cat and you have a bunch of humans talking or not paying attention and letting us do our work,” he said.

When it comes to compassion fatigue, a form of emotional and physical distress due to repeated exposure to trauma that can affect caregivers as defined by Joyce University, and mental exhaustion, Garcia sets boundaries and knows when to say “No.”

TNR is about “preventing the needless deaths of countless litters,” Garcia said. However, Garcia notes that in certain cases, the best decision is to euthanize cats. “It hurts, because when you get to the point that you have the cat in your hands and all that you could tell them is, ‘I’m sorry we failed you,’ that’s when you need a break,” he said.

<i>A cat sits inside an animal trap at Operation Catnip, a Gainesville spay-neuter clinic, on April 27, 2024. (Kat Tran/WUFT News)</i>

Grant Sizemore, director of invasive species programs for the American Bird Conservancy, said TNR does not effectively reduce cat populations. The best way to control the overpopulation of cat colonies is by enclosing them in a confined space and keeping cats indoors, he said. This way, the cats can be consistently tracked, located, trapped and updated on their vaccinations.

Additionally, feral cat colonies are reservoirs for diseases that affect human and wildlife health including toxoplasmosis and feline leukemia virus, he said. Toxoplasmosis is transferred from the parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, and is found in infected cat feces, which can increase the health risks for pregnant women and those with compromised immune systems, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Sizemore notes the difference in perspectives and priorities of cat management programs between TNR advocates and conservation organizations. “For some, the priority is a live outcome for the cat regardless of what consequences that might have for naive wildlife or community health, and others, like conservation organizations, we prioritize not releasing a non-native invasive predator onto the landscape.”

The main problem with community cat management in Gainesville is the lack of cohesion between the Environmental Health and Safety unit tasked to control cats off campus and the students and staff who feed the cats, Levy said. She believes developing structured, policy-driven procedures and a volunteer task force would be the right way to decrease tension and manage campus cats.

There are different tools like discouraging people from feeding cats in certain areas, implementing TNR, relocating the feeding station or putting up cats for adoption, that can be used collaboratively to solve wildlife concerns, she said.

“If someone’s goal is to eradicate all free-roaming cats from the landscape, there isn’t any effective program to do that because it’s impossible,” Levy said.

“Whether it’s a routine cycle of killing cats to remove them or trap-neuter-return, it’s an ongoing process and there’s no final solution involved.” Alternatively, Levy said TNR programs should be approached the same way we look at harm mitigation methods, often used in public health programs to improve well-being. “We can take steps to reduce their harm and learn to live in harmony with that urban wildlife rather than think we can remove it all and go back to the way things are.”

The goal of colony management should be continual reduction and eventual elimination of the colony through attrition, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. On UF’s campus, Levy said the cat population has been neutralized due to TNR methods and the impact of work done by volunteers.

“I love having cats in the community. But at the same time, I know that having lots of stray cats isn’t good,” Limcangco said. “I’m hoping that we keep trapping them and giving them fixes. They’ll be like less community cats, but they’ll be more happy and safe.”

Copyright 2024 WUFT 89.1

Zeus looks out of the car window as his owner picks up pet food at a Miami-Dade County Animal Services Department Drive-Thru Pet Food Bank, Thursday, June 4, 2020, at Lake Stevens Park in Miami Gardens, Fla.

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