College essays that made a difference - Princeton Review 2010
Joseph I. Malchow
The applicants
Joseph started a small company that produced software and was featured in The New York Times. He also did voiceovers for television and radio, establishing what he describes as “a relatively well-respected brand name in the audio production field.” At his high school, he managed Stage Crew for two years.
Stats
SAT: 1520 (790 Critical Reading, 730 Math)
High School GPA: 4.50 weighted
High School: Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School, Scotch Plains, NJ
Hometown: Scotch Plains, NJ
Gender: Male
Race: Caucasian
Applied To
Boston College
Carnegie Mellon University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
New York University
Tufts University
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University
Essay
Joseph used the following essay in each of his applications.
For most schools, he used the Common Application prompt: Select a creative work—a novel, a film, a musical piece, a painting, or other work of art—that has influenced the way you view the world and the way you view yourself. Discuss the impact the work has had on you.
For his application to Cornell and a few other schools, the prompt was open-ended so he suggested the above question.
On Penn’s application, the prompt was: First experiences can be defining. Cite a first experience that you have had and explain its impact on you.
Ah, Figaro! I am fortunate to at last have an opportunity to pour the gallons of zest inspired by that name into words that, hereto, have gone unexpressed. Perhaps, when complete, this essay will further serve to retort my parents’ incredulous stares when “La Vendetta!” blares resolutely, in all its Mozartian glory, from those faithful woofers atop my dresser.
Mozart and Da Ponte’s Le Nozze Di Figaro, The Marriage of Figaro, has done much for me It has ushered my musical palette forth with breathtaking speed. But within this single work there also exists a bevy of culture that touches all aspects of human interest! Where else but in the audience of an opera can one be diverted, learn music, language, and history all simultaneously? Can anything else residing on three modest compact discs take a person as many months to digest and fully enjoy? In my eighteen years I’ve experienced nothing like the thrill of the opera. The profits I have reaped from my experience with Figaro have been invaluable. For all of the listening, viewing, and reading that I have done- for all of those hours happily occupied- I am beginning to absorb the Italian language, socioeconomic class-relations of 18th century Europe, and Spanish dress and architecture. In this way, opera, and more specifically Figaro-my first- has spilt light upon previously shadowed intellectual interests.
Though I revere Figaro’s superlative educational utility, the piece synapses with me on a personal level as well. In its essence, opera seeks to communicate. In Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, Antonio Salieri, describing the raw emotive puissance of Mozart’s work, says, “I heard the music of true forgiveness filling the theatre, conferring on all who sat there a perfect absolution.” Opera demands the synergy of all of mankind’s methods of communication- song, acting, dance, oratory, and music. I was first introduced- truly introduced- to Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. I invited my closest friends there for my eighteenth birthday. I had already read much of the libretto and heard Sir Georg Solti’s Figaro on compact disc. But as I sat in the audience- subtitles steadily glowing from the LCD screen before me- I saw the majesty of opera blossom in real time. I saw comedy, tragedy, and villainy at once; invoking so many tools- so perfectly- to deliver the milieu of each and every scene. I had always held myself to be a person of communication; English and Literature had always been my favorite class. But I sat there, viewing the work of this man, who I’d always heard limned as ’great’, in absolute control of his audience. And I whispered to myself- I recall this vividly-, “I get it.” I understood why his bust was placed below the headline “The Great Composers” on that poster in 3rd grade music class. As I viewed John Relyea’s Figaro bouncing to the pulse of Non Piu Andrai under James Levine’s stewardship, I knew that this was an art form I could appreciate.
See this page to find out where this student got in.