Accepted! 50 successful college admission essays - Gen Tanabe, Tanabe Kelly 2008
Influential people
57 successful admission essays
Jacqueline Ou
Lexington, Massachusetts
Jacqueline is thankful for her junior high math tutor. Mr. Chase helped her build the foundation for impressive achievements. In addition to the math honors she describes in her essay, she was a member of the USA Today All-USA Academic First Team, a Siemens Advanced Placement Scholar for being the highest scoring female junior in New England on the math and science AP exams and a semifi nalist in the Intel Science Talent Search. At Lexington High School, Jacqueline led a student-directed a cappella group and a traditional Chinese dance troupe, edited for the newspaper and won fi rst place in the state for her National History Day paper.
Polyhedra
Duke University
In the back of my dresser sits a set of old, beaten-up plastic polyhedra lying dusty and unused. I haven’t touched them for years, since the time in sixth grade when I fi lled the pyramid, sphere and cone with dyed water to compare their volumes and spilled water all over the kitchen chairs. I spent forever cleaning the stains out of those white chairs! I had to stick my polyhedra into storage after that, because Mom banned me from ever mixing polyhedra, food dye and kitchen chairs again in my entire life, or at least while I was still living under her roof.
One afternoon a few weeks ago, soon after learning about the death of my friend and math tutor, Mr. Chase, I suddenly get an impulse to dig the polyhedra out of their hiding spot. I fi nger the cracked plastic container and lift the hexagonal prism, once my favorite polyhedron, out of the box.
Holding the chipped prism in my hands, in a moment’s time I am taken back to bits and pieces of the afternoons when Mr. Chase and I explored polyhedra together. The fl ashbacks of all the time I spent with Mr. Chase, memories that I have long since neglected and almost forgotten, fl ood my mind. Within each passing frame, I feel, see, hear the images fall bluntly.
It is a fall afternoon after school, and I’m lying stomach-down, legs dangling in the air and chin propped up by my hands, on the front entrance bench of Clarke Middle School. I am absorbed in my sixth-grade factoring homework while waiting for Mr. Chase to come. I have never met him, and truthfully, I’m a little dubious of this random man volunteering to teach me math on his own time. But when he comes in carrying his work briefcase and greets me with a serious, quiet expression, I feel a little more comfortable. We end up sitting in a small teacher’s room talking about what I like and what he likes about math for the rest of the afternoon. Going home, I decide that maybe this won’t be another restless math class fi lled with boring plug-and-chug problems. I like Mr. Chase, and I like talking about math with him.
Now Mr. Chase and I are in the same cramped teacher’s room at the middle school on a dismal, rainy January afternoon. I’m at that little chalk-board (I wonder if it’s still there?), scrawling numbers all over the place and he’s sitting in a plastic chair too small for him. Only an eighth grader and just learning the complexities of math problem solving, I can’t see the pattern in the numbers he’s reading to me from a number theory book lying in his lap. He’s smiling ever so slightly while watching me become frustrated.
It takes us more than 30 minutes, but we reason the answer out together, slowly. By the time we fi nish, I’m excited, he’s excited and we are ponder-ing possible extensions of the pattern. I understand the whole proof!
I’m in high school now, freshman year. I’ve just blown into the room, a little late, and I plop into a seat front row center. Mr. Chase, at the whiteboard, is already explaining the math club’s activity for the afternoon. Five minutes later, everyone else is busy puttering around with the materials, but Mr. Chase sits down with me and guides me through the exploration activity. I cut out the brightly colored tetrahedrons, octahedrons and dodecahedrons he has prepared ahead of time, and he directs me with questions about the number of edges, vertices and faces of each polyhedron. He leads me to conjecture a relationship between these three polyhedral characteristics, also known in texts as Euler’s Theorem. When I look up momentarily, I see his smile—the special one I rarely glimpse—because he knows that I’m on the verge of making my conjecture.
A few months later, I’m at home, sitting on my bed, calling Mr. Chase.
“Hello? Is Mr. Chase there?” A pause. “Hello?” His soft-spoken, scratchy, familiar voice comes on the line. I think I’m squealing by this point. “Guess what! I made the AIME!!” All our afternoons of hard work designing the best scoring strategies and exploring math problems has paid off, as I have qualifi ed for the second level national math exam, the AIME. Chatting with him on the phone, I am excited to share the good news because we have reached our goal together.
A jolt. The moment has passed. Back in real time, I am stunned by the news of Mr. Chase’s death. I am 17 years old, but this is the fi rst time a person whom I knew well has passed away. Only thinking back now do I stop and fully appreciate the impact he made on my life. Only after he is gone do I realize that I, as well as so many other young mathematicians, have lost a great source of inspiration. I regret all those times in the past years that I thought of calling him to tell him about my latest mathematical endeavor but never quite got around to it. I wish I had called Mr. Chase to tell him about qualifying for the USAMO my junior year, the most prestigious national math exam, or making the elite 15-member state ARML team that took second place nationally. I want to thank him now for taking the time out of his busy work schedule to tutor me one-on-one in middle school and tell him that he was the person who fi rst sparked my love for mathematics. In some way, though, I hope he knew how much he touched my life.
While I set the plastic polyhedra back into their dusty spot behind the dresser, I do not leave the memory of Mr. Chase hidden there with them as I once did a few years ago. Although I go on with my life, Mr. Chase is there. I refl ect on Mr. Chase’s generosity, gentleness, passion for math. I talk to my dad, math team coach and his other tutees about all the good conversations we had with him, joking around and thinking about math. I may have lost contact with Mr. Chase over the years, but playing with my old polyhedra set again freshly etched our relationship back into my mind, and his passing away has altered my formerly untouched perspective on life and death. As so aptly put to me by a friend during a recent conversation, “Welcome to life, Jackie.”
This essay does several things right. First, Jackie introduces us to a person who was not only infl uential in her life but also the source of her greatest strength and academic passion. Second, while Jackie’s subject is Mr. Chase, we actually learn more about her. It’s her reactions to his lessons that are the heart of the essay and make it powerful.
She even works in her own accomplishments in mathematics. Finally, Jackie shows us her ability to analyze her relationship with Mr. Chase throughout the years. She provides details when necessary but is also not afraid to time shift and take us from her past to the present in the span of a few sentences.
When writing an essay about an infl uential person—especially someone who is close to you—it is very easy to focus on the individual to extol all of his or her virtues. But you need to remember that the infl uential person is not applying to college—you are. This means the admission offi cers need to learn about you even if it is through your portrayal of another person.
Usbaldo Fraire, Jr.
San Antonio, Texas
Growing up in a single-parent family, Usbaldo describes his upbringing as one of poverty. But these challenges only motivated him to do more. While a student at Robert E. Lee High School, he mentored youth with similar backgrounds, encouraging them to resist joining gangs and to appreciate the value of education. He is the fi rst in his family to attend college, and on top of that, he is helping to fi nance his own education as a national winner of the Hispanic Heritage Youth Award for Leadership.
Inspiration to Learn
University of Texas at Austin
In my family’s past, no one has ever met the challenge of mathematics.
In fact no one in my family has ever challenged anything because of their lack of education. My grandmother was illiterate when it came to complex math. Oppression limited her education to the third grade and simple addition and subtraction. My mother, aunts, uncles, along with my father never graduated or dared to attempt an algebra problem in school. The threat of x and y were too complex and overwhelming.
Over the years, I made up my mind to tackle mathematics. With some motivated teachers, I began to develop a keen interest in the subject. As a child I was always told that math was power, and power was what I wanted. So I took the challenge every year and thought of it as a game of “cracking the code,” but I still had doubts about my abilities. I believed my understanding would end when I reached Algebra I, if I ever made it that far.
One day when I began to act up with other classmates, my social studies teacher Mr. Salinas pulled me out of class as he usually did and inevitably delivered a scolding. This time though I questioned his authority and asked why he never punished my friends, for they were guilty of the same non-sense. My train of thought completely changed when he said, “because I care about you.” He began to explain that he had taught for 30 years at Gus Garcia Middle School and always looked for those students who had the potential to break our community’s chain of failure. One day these students would come back to the barrio and prove that it was possible to become anything they wanted if they put the time and effort into their futures. He told me as though he strongly believed that I would be one of the students to accomplish this feat. He compared my math scores and overall grades to other students to show me that I was one of the top students of the school. Mr. Salinas made me believe until this day that I could break the chain of failure. His visions and expectations of me impacted the rest of my life; for the fi rst time I had someone who believed in me passionately.
He would bet his life on me, just as my mother would. His visions of me pointed my life in a positive direction.
Along with the support of my mother and grandmother, I was determined to make something of myself with mathematics. Mr. Salinas and my family made me set goals to challenge myself to the maximum and thus be able later to use my math skills for a successful job. During my senior year, I realized I wanted to expand my skills and learn more in order to study engineering. The rigorous courses of the University of Texas College of Engineering can help me accomplish my goals and in return I want to contribute to my society, building public schools, museums and libraries.
In this essay Usbaldo shares just one facet of a person who made an impact in his life. While he certainly had many interactions with his social studies teacher, the one that made a lasting impression was when Mr. Salinas explained why he singled out Usbaldo for discipline.
The rest of the essay drives home the point that Usbaldo internalized from that single moment. Other students in this situation might have simply shrugged off their teacher’s comment and continued with their behavior, but Usblado clearly made a transformation and the rest of his essay helps to substantiate this change.
Usbaldo’s essay also does an excellent job of giving us an insight into his background. Showing us how little educational opportunities his family had and how troubled his community is helps us to put into context his achievements. This essay would be far less successful if Usbaldo came from a privileged family and attended an elite private
school. Whatever your background—whether underprivileged or not—it’s important to convey why your achievement is special. If you’ve overcome a challenge, say so.
Evelyn Thai
Van Nuys, California
Two things that are important to Evelyn are passion and honesty. As a student at Van Nuys High School, she participated in the things that satisfi ed those needs: political activism, community service and student government. As she was writing her admission essays, she adhered to her belief in the honest approach. She says, “I knew that as long as I was honest and was just being myself, I would get into the right school for me. And I was right. I love Princeton.” She hopes to work in international relations or neurology.
A Fall from Grace
Princeton University
I pledge allegiance to the fl ag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice all.
Even though we don’t even say it in school anymore, every morning I say this pledge to myself. Ever since I was little, I thought that the United States of America was the best place in the world—hey we had TWO Disneylands and don’t forget that it was an American that had invented the Happy Meal. As I turned the path from scratch-kneed toddler into know-it-all seventh grader, being an American took on more meaning. My parents were refugees during the Vietnam War and it had been America that had saved them. For me, America stood for life, liberty, freedom, equality—all those characteristics Rousseau had once imagined possible in a country, all those characteristics America proudly touted in every children’s history book.
When the US went to war against Iraq, I didn’t see it as an economically driven crusade, I thought that Saddam Hussein was really threatening my way of life and I hated him for being audacious enough to invade Kuwait.
My perspective of the world fell roughly into two categories, good countries who agreed with the US and bad countries who didn’t. The world worked like this and made sense because everything around me reinforced these ideas—from my elementary school teachers to our history books to everything on the nightly news.
Then I met Mister Pilloud. You have to spell it out, Mister Pilloud, because somehow Mister is more precise than Mr. If I close my eyes I can still remember every detail of Mister Pilloud’s face. He had wrinkles at the corners of his eyes—little creases that angled upward, not from old age but smiles.
What I remember most distinctly about the man is that he always smelled like day-old coffee. He had coffee every day—two, three, ten cups were never too many. This coffee addict wasn’t even really my teacher. A student teacher would teach us while he supervised.
Yet the best times were when the student teacher was absent. Mister Pilloud would begin by recounting to us what he called a horrible story. The horrible story would then turn out to be something in the news that was going on while we spoke. The classroom was never more alive, my peers never as thoughtful and as enraptured as in those 52 minutes when Mister Pilloud spoke. At fi rst, when he told me that our government was dumping millions of gallons of milk away so that the milk industry wouldn’t suffer losses, I didn’t believe him. I refused to believe that my country, such a great and caring country, could be so wasteful while there were all these people starving in countries around the world. So I looked it up and saw that he was not lying.
Thus it went for over a year, and when he was no longer my teacher, I would go talk to him at lunch. Hussein didn’t turn into an angel, but the United States of America began to fall from grace. My whole ideal system began to crumble and I learned that the world is not black and white. Mister Pilloud taught me that you can’t always believe what you read and that the truth is out there for me to discover. He made me realize that it was not our country that I love. I love everything that our country is supposed to stand for.
Evelyn’s essay illustrates her perceptiveness and thoughtfulness. Instead of simply describing Mister Pilloud, she shows us how she has changed from this experience. We learn how naive she was—which in itself is a very mature observation. Then we meet Mister Pilloud and we can actually see what he looks (and smells) like. All of this helps us to develop a mental image of this person.
While describing Mister Pilloud’s lessons of questioning the conventional wisdom, what really makes an impact is the end of the essay when we get to see an “after” view of Evelyn. No longer naive and unquestioning, she is now a sophisticated and critical thinker. By the end of the essay we have a much better idea of one aspect of Evelyn’s personality and we can see how she has become the person she is.