College essays that made a difference - Princeton Review 2010

Lindsay J. Cushing
The applicants

Lindsay interned for the Mayor’s Office in her hometown and the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office. She did community service with her high school’s Key Club, participated in Debate League, and was a member of the National Honor Society. She was active in the music programs at her school and church.

Stats

SAT: 1420 (720 Critical Reading, 700 Math)

High School GPA: 4.60 (out of 5.00)

High School: Westfield High School, Westfield, MA

Hometown: Westfield, MA

Gender: Female

Race: Caucasian

Applied To

Claremont McKenna College

Duke University Loyola

University of Chicago

Muhlenberg College

Pepperdine University

Pomona College

Skidmore College

Stanford University

University of San Diego

Wittenberg University

Essay

Lindsay submitted the following essay to every school she applied to that accepted the Common Application. She revised it to fit the remaining schools’ applications.

Common Application: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

The picture bobbing before me was of a seemingly happy 20-something year old man grinning for the camera, arm-in-arm with his buddies. But the numbers below told a different story: 1979-2000. As I walked through that balmy August night, I saw many of the same kinds of photographs on the shirt-backs of the people ahead of me. And the numbers below were in the same small increments; some as small as nine or ten years.

As a teenager, I had been exposed to the issue of suicide both in myself and in my friends, but felt powerless to stop this epidemic that was assaulting one million of my peers every year. That was until the day that I saw a television ad for a charitable walk called “Out of the Darkness.”

“Out of the Darkness,” a 26-mile walk through the night from Annandale, VA to Washington D.C., changed my perspective on suicide. Embarrassing as it was once to admit I, like most of my friends, had pondered how liberating it would be to stop having to deal with the stresses of teenage life. Even though I saw some of my friends suffering and glimpsed those same qualities in myself at times, I considered suicide to be a personal battle that only dwelt in reclusive misfits.

Those pictures changed my mind. If all of these beautiful, young, popular people could take their lives, then my stereotypes were completely wrong.

That was the purpose of “Out of the Darkness”. To change people’s attitudes about suicide. To make it a disease that people can talk about and seek help for without being ashamed. My money donors talked with me about suicide as if they’d never spoken the word before. They told me stories of personal suffering or the suffering of someone they loved without being ashamed that they were going to be judged.

A few days after the walk, making sure to tell my friends how much they mean to me, one of them asked, “Lindsay, why did you walk? What did you get out of it?” And I had to think. Did I want to educate people about suicide? Sure. Did I want to know I wasn’t abnormal? Yes. But what was my ultimate goal? More than anything, I knew, I wanted to change the world. I wanted to know that once I set my mind to something, I could do it. In my small way, I learned that I could change the world both for me and for thousands out there just like me. I, Lindsay Cushing, had the ability to make a difference.

And as I remembered the pictures bobbing on the shirt-backs in front of me, I gave my friend a hug and said, “I don’t want anyone to have to remember a loved one as a photograph.”

See this page to find out where this student got in.