College essays that made a difference - Princeton Review 2010
Melissa Henlea
The applicants
Melissa was on the varsity tennis team and was a member of the National Honor Society for two years. She worked a part-time job (about twenty to twenty-five hours a week) her junior and senior years and took part in a local tennis academy her senior year.
Stats
SAT: 1400 (690 Critical Reading, 710 Math)
SAT Subject Test(s): 640 U.S. History, 740 Math Level 1, 690 Math Level 2, 650 Chemistry
High School GPA: 4.00
High School: McMinnville High School, McMinnville, OR
Hometown: McMinnville, OR
Gender: Female
Race: Caucasian
Applied To
Dartmouth College
Lewis and Clark College
Linfield College
Stanford University
Essay
Melissa used the following essay in her applications to Dartmouth, Linfield, and Stanford. The essay prompt was approximately:
Use this space to tell us anything else about you that you feel we should know.
Although it may be difficult to tell, I hate talking about myself. I feel arrogant and self-centered and boastful when I go on and on about what I’ve done and what I want to do. And since I’ve had to answer the question “Tell us about yourself” on every other application, whether it’s for a college or a scholarship, I’ve decided not to tell you about myself, but to tell you about my apple tree.
I grew up in the country, in a neighborhood where there were only three girls my age, but about ten boys two or more years older than I, one of whom was my obnoxious older brother. With this excess of torture, torment, and testosterone, I was often forced to find places where I could escape the plague of cootie-infested boys. Unfortunately, being both younger and a “girl”, I could find no place the boys couldn’t go. And so my mother, being the wonderful and patient woman she was, granted me sole access to our apple tree.
Before I continue, I feel I should describe my apple tree to provide you with a mental image as you read on. It’s a young tree, no older than I am and so it’s rather small, just a bit shorter than our old one-story house. It looks it’s best in the summer, as most trees do, when it’s laden with the greenest and sourest apples imaginable and it’s covered with little white blossoms. With all the apples weighing them down, its branches would scratch the ground and form a curtain between the outside world and itself.
My apple tree first gave me respite from the harassment even before I was big enough to actually climb it. I spent days sitting at the base of the tree, writing the oh-so-juicy diary entries of a 7-year old and reading my Serendipity books, separated from the world by a few inches of shrubbery.
After I grew a bit and was able to climb the tree, I spent even more time in it, adding gymnastics and acrobatics (you gain a very unique perspective of the world when you hang by your knees in a tree) to the more peaceful activities of writing and reading. During the school year, when the weather was warm, I would do my homework sitting in my tree and enjoying a snack.
Once I reached middle school, I spent almost as much time in my tree as I did in my bedroom. My writing now included short stories and haikus, usually about nature and animals, and my reading had grown to books with several chapters and little or no pictures (a sacrifice I was forced to make in the effort to find more challenging books). Homework was done at the base of the tree since it was a bit difficult to drag the textbooks up into the branches.
Now, however, at the end of my high school career, I am no longer able to enjoy the comfort and serenity of my apple tree — unless, of course, I want to be prosecuted for trespassing. When my family and I moved from our home in the country, we left behind many things pertinent to the first thirteen years of my life, but my apple tree is what I miss the most.
My apple tree was more than just a refuge from the unbearable boys of the neighborhood. For years, it was my best friend. It was the best listener, with its trunk leaning companionably against my back and its branches hanging above, and it would never reveal any of my feelings or secrets. It was always there for me, strong and dependable, soothing and peaceful.
See this page to find out where this student got in.