College essays that made a difference - Princeton Review 2010

Daniel Mela
The applicants

Daniel was valedictorian of his high school and president of its largest club, Operation Smile. While managing more than 150 students in Operation Smile, he helped raise more than $20,000 to provide free reconstructive surgery for children and young adults. A Boy Scout for six years, Daniel won his rotary club’s Service-Above-Self Award for service to the community. He played varsity tennis and winter track, as well as soccer on the freshman team. He was also a paperboy for five years. A scholar in the National Hispanic Recognition Program, Daniel was selected for the New Jersey Governor’s School of International Studies. He was in the National Honor Society and the Spanish Honor Society.

Stats

SAT: 1390 (680 Critical Reading, 710 Math)

High School GPA: 4.51 weighted

High School: Lawrence High School, Lawrenceville, NJ

Hometown: Lawrenceville, NJ

Gender: Male

Race: Latino

Applied To

Amherst College

Georgetown University

Harvard College

Princeton University

Rutgers University—New Brunswick

Tufts University

Essay

Daniel submitted the following essay to Amherst, Georgetown, Harvard, and Tufts.

Beep, beep, beep. My alarm goes off at 5:30 AM. I dart outside in my oversized t-shirt and pajama pants to bring in the newspapers as the rain pours out of the sky onto the freshly printed papers. The daily morning pressure has begun — I must deliver the papers by 6:30! Why did it have to rain today? I get onto my bicycle and prepare to enter the dark, misty, morning … Whoa, I almost rammed into a stray trashcan in the road. I swerve to the left to avoid a giant puddle. Okay, my first house is a porch customer. I get off my bike and run through the grass up to my customer’s porch twenty feet away, but on the way I step in dog poop. I’m just going to have to move on — a paper boy’s got to do what a paper boy’s got to do! I begin to shiver with mud on my clothes and water leaking into my old sneakers. There are only five papers left. After another grueling ten minutes I’m finally done! I begin to walk inside the house to dry off, and of course it stops raining at that moment.

Why do I keep this job, a job that requires getting up in the wee hours of the morning to deliver newspapers to demanding and unsympathetic customers? There are the obvious reasons, such as for making money, gaining responsibility, learning how to run a business, and meeting many new people. But, well, there’s another reason that I don’t like to admit to the “guys;” I also do it for a girl. Not just any girl, but rather a girl whose very presence has changed my outlook on the world and allowed me to escape the typical high school goal of popularity.

Fast forward six months, and I have finally saved up enough money to buy a used 1996 Nissan Maxima and to take this girl, Megan, to New York City’s Tavern on the Green, the restaurant of her dreams. (Trust me, it’s a restaurant that has very “undreamy” prices.) Megan is bursting with excitement as we walk through Central Park to get to Tavern. It’s her sweet sixteen birthday. I put my arm around her and point out the “bright stars in the sky”; she giggles, but gives me those sarcastic eyes. She knows I’m overdoing it. Finally we go in and have a great time despite my reminder that she does not need to order the most expensive entrée. The night is followed by my surprising her with ice-skating under the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. Personally I do not get too many thrills from the night’s activities. Nonetheless, her ecstatic smiling eyes at the end of the night prove that at least this morning’s paper delivery was worth it. I secretly get my own joy driving us off in my new used Maxima.

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