Accepted! 50 successful college admission essays - Gen Tanabe, Tanabe Kelly 2008
Essays about music
57 successful admission essays
Gregory James Yee
Cerritos, California
Gregory’s music career began after his parents realized that without having taken a single music lesson, he could hum The Star-Spangled Banner in perfect pitch and rhythm—at age 2. Fifteen years later, the piano lessons he started while still a toddler paid off. The Whitney High School graduate has won numerous piano awards including the Raissa Tselentis Award given to one student nationwide for outstanding performance in the Advanced Bach category in the National Guild Audition. In addition to music, Gregory was a National Merit Commended Scholar, played on his school’s varsity baseball team and is an avid sports fan, having collected the autographs of over 400 collegiate and professional athletes. While he wrote this essay for USC, he was also accepted to Stanford University.
How Rocky Changed My Life
University of Southern California
In fi fth grade, my teacher asked the class to list our heroes. My friends repeated familiar names like Michael Jordan, Tom Cruise and Michael Jackson. My answer? Bill Conti. Who? You may not know his name, but you’ve certainly heard his work: the theme song to the movie “Rocky.” Bill Conti is a musician, composer and, to me, hero.
I fi rst saw him at a concert when I was 9 that featured several of his original compositions. The most stirring and inspiring that night was the “Rocky” theme. As the trumpet fanfare began the audience instantly recognized the music and erupted. For an unassuming man, he commanded the audience’s undivided attention throughout the performance. That night I decided to become a composer.
When the orchestra performed the “Rocky” theme with Mr. Conti at the helm, it was the fi rst time I had ever seen a man lead 80 other people performing a composition of his very own. He was like a painter who had an image in his mind and was conducting his understudies to create a majestic portrait before our very eyes. Unlike at any concert I had been to before, I wasn’t listening to the notes written by someone centuries ago. From his own imagination, Mr. Conti created every note his orchestra played. Just as every ear-pleasing chord and fl owing melody created a powerful image of Rocky preparing for a big fi ght, my music, like Mr. Conti’s, expresses images and feelings in my mind.
Since that concert, I have written several award-winning compositions that I have performed on numerous occasions, including my sister’s wedding and at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. Last year I was honored by my high school band when they played one of my compositions. The concert by Mr. Conti inspired me to convey my feelings and emotions in the form of musical composition. My dream is to be an artist, writing music for the world to hear and conveying my thoughts through music.
There’s something inspiring about witnessing a person’s realization that they have discovered what they would like to do for the rest of their life. That’s exactly what Gregory allows the admission offi cers to be a part of in his essay. In describing Bill Conti’s concert, he shares what he heard and how he became inspired. Even someone who is not a music afi cionado can relate to Gregory. In his story, it is not the subject that stands out so much as the verbs and adjectives.
Many people embrace music, perhaps you among them. Like Gregory did, make your story unique by making it intensely your own, and you will have written a winning essay. While Gregory could have focused on his own original compositions or performances, he chooses to emphasize something that is totally his own—how he fell in love with music.
This is a unique topic that will not be shared with another applicant.
Andrew Koehler
Oreland, Pennsylvania
Andrew’s love of music began at the age of 5 when he started playing the violin. While a student at Upper Dublin Public High School, he began playing in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, eventually becoming that orchestra’s concertmaster. In this essay Andrew describes the orchestral Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s opera “Tristan and Isolde.” The essay’s sentence structure and lack of paragraphs are intentional efforts to more closely mirror the music described. In addition to his contributions in music, Andrew founded the German Club at his school and speaks both German and Ukrainian. He plans to pursue a career in conducting.
Prelude and Liebestod
Yale University
The thin white baton is suspended for only a moment above the conductor’s head. As it falls silently to its original chest-height position, the low strings begin their fi rst hushed sounds. This is anguished music, full of tension. Again and again the same unsettling sonority appears, each time in desperate need of a resolution that is consistently and tortuously evaded. The music’s protagonist is fatally injured; his pain becomes ever more acute, and the imminence of his death is unquestionable. He nevertheless fi ghts to stay alive—not for himself, but for his one true love. Thick, dense chromatic scales in the upper strings, which repeat in succession, build to a moment of frantic intensity as the hero desperately tries to tear off his bandages so that his true love might never know the extent of his fatal injuries. This passionate gesture only worsens his condition, and two low notes in the double basses, played with great weight, signal the hero’s inevitable death. With a haunting melody beginning in the woodwinds, the heroine approaches her lover. Realizing that he is dead, she begins to sing of her grief. Her song, passed delicately among the instruments of the orchestra, begins as a whisper. As the grief grows, so too does the tension in the musical texture, with each section of the orchestra eventually joining the collective in the singing of this song of tragedy. The music grows louder and louder still, and the passion refl ected in the remembrance of this love becomes almost unbearable, until a point of saturation where it seems no longer possible to continue with such heart-wrenching pain, and it is at this point that the entire work’s tremendous climax occurs, when all members of the orchestra play with full force and unspeakable intensity, an
intensity which describes the death of the heroine, for she, too, has died, from the insurmountable grief caused by her lover’s passing. Death hangs heavily in the air and the weary arpeggios in the strings begin to calm the music’s atmosphere. With the fi nality of the last chord, the cloud of tension which had so long held throughout the work fi nally resolves. There can be no more grief, and the tragedy of two deaths lies cradled in the complete tranquility for which the music had fought so long to reach. Slowly, ever so carefully, the various players of the orchestra begin to sit back in their respective seats and put their instruments down, exhausted by the sublime power of music.
Andrew does not write about himself directly in his essay, but the admission offi cers still learn a lot about who he is. It’s apparent that he is avid about music and has a level of understanding that few of us will ever possess. The way Andrew describes the music and his choice of words reveals his ability to hear and interpret music in a way that only a true musician can. Even if you have never heard this piece you can still imagine what it sounds like just by reading the descriptions Andrew provides. In an indirect yet unmistakable way, he shares a side of him that’s real music to the admission offi cers’ ears.
Sarah Medrek
Hammondsport, New York
Sarah has such close ties to music that she can almost hear her piano and trombone beckoning. In her essay, she describes her relationship with Wurly, the name that she has given to her piano. A graduate of Hammondsport Central School, she was the fi rst chair trombone in the New York All State Symphonic Band, received a fi rst place award in
Fletcher’s Piano Competition and attended the New York State Summer School of the Arts School of Orchestral Studies. She was also a National Merit Scholar and recipient of the Bausch and Lomb Science Award. She plans to work in engineering.
Wurly
Princeton University
Although it is 11:18 at night, I hear my piano, affectionately known as Wurly, calling me. From across the room he entices me with his white and black 88-toothed smile. He murmurs that my sheets of ragtime music and my collection of rock ’n’ roll songs long to be read but instead lie dormant in his bench, soundlessly accumulating dust. I try to explain, “Wurly, it’s 11:18 at night, and you can’t wake up my parents. Tomorrow brings new opportunities.” Like any recalcitrant child, he does not understand. He sul-lenly closes his lid to rest for the night.
No matter how often I tickle his smooth and polished keys, it is not enough. Neither my daily morning renditions of “Twist and Shout” nor my hour sessions in the afternoon with Bach, Chopin and Schumann suffi ce.
I do not like to mention it, but Wurly is downright jealous of my liaisons with the piano at school, where I accompany the junior high chorus. I wish I could be mad with him and reprimand him for his insolence, but I cannot.
I know he is right. He hates wrong notes: I play too many for his tastes.
Wurly only wants the best and gets very jealous when I tell him of the fl aw-less performance of Mozart’s Sonata in G Major I heard while at orchestra rehearsal. I neglect to tell him that a 13-year-old kid played this, but somehow he knows and shames me into another few minutes plunking out the rhythm to Gershwin’s Prelude #3.
If only I had unlimited time to play piano, I think wishfully. Not only would I satisfy the insatiable needs of Wurly the drill sergeant, I would bring myself contentment. Number Three on my list of lifetime goals is to become a virtuoso on the piano, able to play any piece of music thrown my way as if it were a one-fi nger version of Mary Had a Little Lamb. Although I come a sixteenth note closer to this goal every day, it is a slow process. It would take unlimited time and resources for me to be as good as I want to be.
The other items on my lifetime list of goals are more attainable. Someday, I will run a marathon; I just need to keep on jogging fi ve times a week.
Someday, I will speak Spanish fl uently, as long as I continue to study Spanish and learn new words. Someday, I will be an unbelievably good trombonist; all I need to do is practice every day. These goals are a cinch compared to becoming a virtuoso piano player. They only require vigilant attention; perfect piano playing requires unthinkable amounts of time and an unfathomable amount of skill.
Sarah employs a creative approach by animating her piano and revealing her feelings about music and practice through her interaction with it. She also subtly weaves in her other life goals. After reading her essay, the admission offi cers understand how she feels about playing musical instruments, the importance they play in her life and how she motivates herself to achieve personal goals.
We all have idiosyncrasies that make us who we are. In this case Sarah has named and speaks to her piano. Some might call that crazy but to an admission offi cer it’s a sign of honesty. After all, it is these quirks that make each of us unique. You should not be afraid to share yours in your essay.