College essays that made a difference - Princeton Review 2010

Philip James Madelen Rucker
The applicants

Between the ages of 10 and 16, Philip lived away from home in Lake Arrowhead, California, for competitive figure skating training. Following his sophomore year of high school, he moved home to Savannah, Georgia, to be with his family. In school, Philip was actively involved in the production of his class yearbook, National Honor Society, Rotary Interact Club, and many other organizations. In the Savannah community, he was a Junior Block Captain with his local neighborhood association and a staff writer for his local newspaper. He also held a part-time job as a legal assistant at a small law firm.

Stats

SAT: Philip did not include his score in any of his applications

SAT Subject Test(s): 650 U.S. History, 740 Math Level 1

ACT: 30

High School GPA: 94.0 (out of 100)

High School: St. Andrew’s School, Savannah, GA

Hometown: Savannah, GA

Gender: Male

Race: African American/Caucasian

Applied To

Boston College

Brown University

Emory University

Georgetown (early action)

Harvard College (early action)

Tufts University

Tulane University

University of Chicago (early action)

University of Rochester

Yale University

Essay

Philip used the following essay in his applications to BC, Brown, Chicago, Georgetown, Harvard, Rochester, and Yale. The essay prompt was different for each, but the prompts from his three top-choice schools are below.

Harvard College: Supplemental essay on a topic of your choice.

University of Chicago: In a pivotal scene of a recent American film, a videographer—a dark and mysterious teen-aged character—records a plastic bag blowing in the wind. He ruminates on the elusive nature of truth and beauty, and suggests that beauty is everywhere—often in the most unlikely places and in the quirky details of things. What is something that you love because it reflects a kind of idiosyncratic beauty—the uneven features of a mutt you adopted at the pound, a drinking glass with an interesting flaw, the feather boa you found in the Wal-Mart parking lot? These things can reveal (or conceal) our identity; so describe something that tells us who you are (or aren’t).

Yale: There are limitations to what grades, scores, and recommendations can tell us about any applicant. We ask you to write a personal essay that will help us to know you better. In the past, candidates have written about their families, intellectual and extracurricular interests, ethnicity or culture, school and community events to which they have had strong reactions, people who have influenced them, significant experiences, personal aspirations, or topics that spring entirely from their imaginations. There is no “correct” response. Write about what matters to you, and you are bound to convey a strong sense of who you are. (As with the first essay, observe the 500-word limit.)

My Moment of Reckoning

The blistering sun shines through the tall fir trees onto a mound of frosty snow that sparkles like diamonds. As the heat of the summer day melts the snow, the snow forms a stream that curls down the hillside onto the quiet road below. I walk up the hillside with my skates over my shoulder, the sun shining on my black pants. It is hot. I enter the rink to the familiar sounds of sharp blades etching the ice to the beat of Beethoven. Indoors, the air is chilly; the ice is glistening; the heat from outside meets the icy coolness of the rink at the tall, wide windows.

Hour after hour, day after day, the same Zamboni brings white snow from inside the rink to the outside, dumping it into the same spot, creating the same flowing stream down the hillside. Seen from outdoors, the mound of snow is an aberration in the summer heat, but seen through the windows from indoors the same snow, framed by the trees, suggests a crisp, sunny, winter day. Even though the snow has been there every morning since I started coming to this rink, it struck me on this particular morning both how lovely and how strange it appeared.

The snow is clean and fresh, the residue of the early morning practice of young, promising, and often famous, figure skaters. Not yet sullied like most snow by the time that it is taken away, it is still pristine. It clings to its frostiness in the hot sunshine — a futile effort. This snow has lived a short life. It began as the smooth, shimmering ice that first catches one’s eye and then catches the edges of the skaters’ blades. As the skaters worked harder, the ice became snow, and within an hour or two of its beginnings it was removed. The snow rests now in this mound like millions of tiny diamonds, vulnerable to the rays of the sun and awaiting its fate.

As I stop to notice the incongruous beauty of the snow, the evergreens, and the glaring summer sun, I reflect on an affinity that I feel towards this snow. I, like the snow, am a bit misplaced. It has been wonderful to be a part of the life at this beautiful rink, this elite training center that grooms champions, but it is not really my element. I long to be with my family and have a more “real” life, not the sheltered, specialized one that this rink offers, where one’s purpose is so limited. I stare at the snow for a moment and consider that soon it will melt into water and flow down the hillside to regions uncertain. Yet, perhaps, it will land where water and snow naturally belong and where the season of its life fits the season of its setting. As I watch, I realize that, perhaps, it is time for me also to leave, to leave this rink and this rarefied life of competitive skating, to go down the hillside and return to my roots.

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