Lauren Catharine Weller Moore - The applicants

College essays that made a difference - Princeton Review 2010

Lauren Catharine Weller Moore
The applicants

Lauren was on the varsity water polo and swim teams for three years and editor-in-chief of her high school’s literary magazine for one. She received several honors—AP Scholar with Distinction, National Merit Scholarship Program Commended Student, Honor Roll, and French Honor Society. She was a delegate to the Young Women’s Leadership Conference and a youth delegate to the Insights Conference with world political, business, and educational leaders. Her longest extracurricular commitment was with a local volunteer organization for six years.

Stats

SAT: 1540 (740 Critical Reading, 800 Math)

ACT: 31

High School GPA: 4.05 weighted

High School: The Bishop’s School, La Jolla, CA

Hometown: San Diego, CA

Gender: Female

Race: Caucasian

Applied To

Amherst College

Brown University

Duke University

Pomona College

Princeton University

Stanford University

Essay

Lauren is positive she used the following essay in her applications to Brown and Pomona. She is almost sure it also went to Amherst, Duke, and Stanford.

The prompt, from Brown’s application, was: We ask that you use this opportunity to tell us something more about yourself that would help us toward a sense of who you are, how you think, and what issues and ideas interest you most.

My make-up was done. My hair was set. My costume was perfect. All that was left to do was act … and act I did. In my eighth grade drama class, I took the title role in the play Annie. How did I land the vital part in the play? Simple: the role was perfect for me; Annie was a bouncy, cheerful, optimistic little girl with only good thoughts for the world.

That, and the fact that I had red hair and was one of a small handful who could actually sing.

My hair color and singing talents were hardly the reason that I could belt out “the sun’ll come out … tomorrow!” like no one else, however. (Besides, there were at least two other redheads in the class.) I was the leading role because when I sang, I meant it. I bet my bottom dollar that tomorrow, there would be sun. And gosh darn it, I meant it. The sun will come out tomorrow. Things generally do change for the better. I am an optimistic person.

Optimism is a gift that was given to me by my family. My parents both come from larger families, so much of my time away from school is spent with aunts, uncles, or grandparents. The environment is always a happy one, with people laughing about Uncle Albert accidentally spitting his dentures into his water glass (honest, it really did happen!), or five-year-old Ana telling me about her “childhood” as a preschooler. And no matter how horrible a situation someone may be in, such as losing a pet Labrador of ten years or needing financial support to get pulled out of a rut, we find a solution or we create a positive outlook in the end to help, even if it just means buying good old Uncle Albert some stronger Polident. My family instilled this optimistic outlook in me while I was young. Even at the young age of four, having read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, I had learned my lesson: Happiness is a habit—cultivate it.

Each human being is good in some way; it is my job to find this goodness and, I think, to experience it in whatever way possible. To find good in someone not only benefits me and the recipient, but it also positively influences the people around us. When people are around good people, good things tend to happen, as they do in my family.

I begin by trying to instill my optimism and love for life in other people. I really do point out beautiful skies after a thunderstorm, and I actually do stop to smell the rose bushes at school (much to my friends’ horror). I laugh at every chance that I get and relish the time that I spend with my friends. I do cartwheels on grassy lawns. I often get smiles out of people; this means that the people around me are happy. Laughing at me, maybe; but happy nonetheless.

Don’t get me wrong, though; I don’t just sit around compromising my morals merely to squeeze a smile out of someone. Sometimes a situation does not warrant an optimistic attitude. If my friend Sam does all in his power to avoid doing his French homework, I will not sacrifice my homework time or my integrity to let him copy my answers. I also won’t tell someone who has hurt herself by drinking too much at a party that everything will be okay; that is a sign of something worse that requires more than being cheerful. Larger, more global issues also resist a cheerful or optimistic approach. Do not think for a minute, for example, that I believe that issues such as genocide or the Holocaust happened for a positive reason.

Maybe I can’t transform every situation into a good one. I accept this, however, and realize that I can change things right around me. Because I was raised in a positive environment, I tend to flourish in a positive environment. I do well when the people surrounding me are doing well. This is why I encourage people to enjoy themselves and the world around them. I will go to great lengths to make a companion happy, even if it means driving halfway across town to get milk-free ice cream for my lactose intolerant friend at the health food store. It means the world to me when I see someone smile who has been moping for the past hour; that smile is my reward. The phrase “look on the bright side” was made for me. Without my optimism, I do not know for sure what type of person I would be. (I certainly would not have scored the leading role of Annie.) Yet what I do know is that I would never be able to enjoy the roses and the cartwheels that I enjoy doing now. And without these things, life just would not be so precious.

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