College essays that made a difference - Princeton Review 2010

Tracy Serge
The applicants

Tracy directed and performed in several plays in high school. Her other activities concerned original oratory, sales, and forensics.

Stats

SAT: 1480 (780 Critical Reading, 700 Math)

SAT Subject Test(s): 800 Literature, 690 Math Level 1

ACT: 35

High School GPA: 4.00

High School: Fairmont Senior High School, Fairmont, WV

Hometown: Fairmont, WV

Gender: Female

Race: Caucasian

Applied To

Yale University (early decision)

Essay

Tell us something about yourself that we couldn’t learn from the rest of your application.

Waltzing Over the Border With a Paintbrush in My Hand

One of my favorite books is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The narrator of the novel states that adults never ask the important questions about a person, such as “What does his voice sound like?” or “What games does he like best?” Often, in applying for scholarships and, now, for college, I have felt that perhaps no one was asking the “important questions.” I believe I have been shaped more by those profound experiences which have become my anecdotes, than I am of my grades and ACT scores, which reveal only one aspect of my life that is important to me. So, when asked to state something about myself that the admissions committee would not be able to gather from my application, I found I was unable to limit myself to just one interest or story. After all, twenty-four straight hours on a bus with twenty-one classmates has influenced my life far more than even a perfect score on the SATs ever could.

To elaborate on the above, my eighth grade class had only twenty-one students. We all knew each other as no one else could (eight hours a day, five days a week, for nine years, will do that) and decided to celebrate (or mourn) the impending graduation from our close-knit, sheltered group to the larger world of high school with a bus trip to Canada. As it happened, the bus broke down about twenty-five feet from the Canadian border. This was the greatest exercise in patience I have ever had to endure. It took four hours for our driver to realize the problem and inform us that we had run out of gas. I love absurdity … and truckstops.

The patience I learned in this situation has served me well in another area of my life: ballroom dancing. In the seventh grade, I decided that I preferred the beauty and grace of the stylized ballroom dances to the repetitive back-and-forth sway of the usual teen moves. My partner was a fellow student, and we weren’t sure it was going to work out when we arrived at the first class and discovered that we were the only couple there not contributing to our retirement plans. However, the problem was soon solved when preference grew into passion. I have now been a avid ballroom dancer for nearly six years and have learned much more than just the proper sequence of steps in a samba. Aside from the obvious self-discipline of many hours a week spent in training, learning dance requires patience. Everyone learns at a different speed and in different ways. A dancer must understand that while she has trouble with the waltz, her partner may be equally perplexed by the fox-trot. The two must then cooperate to become comfortable and confident. From dancing, I have learned the incomparable value of teamwork. After all, it does take two to tango.

Another experience that has had a lasting impact on my view of myself has been painting murals. From the time I was three and couldn’t color inside the lines, through the many days in geometry I spent trying to draw at least a respectable imitation of a circle, I was certain I had no artistic talent. It’s amazing how an overabundance of white walls will bring out the artist in anyone. I don’t know exactly what made me decide to paint the girl’s dressing room in our theater department, but my friend and I decided that it had to be done, and we were the ones to do it.

We started the day after the idea occurred to us, deciding that a sunset over mountains must be respectably simple. It wasn’t. Within the first ten minutes, we realized we were in way over our heads. We did manage to make the sun somewhat circular, but could not get it any color resembling nature’s pale yellow. Of course, we’d started and we knew we couldn’t stop—not until walls, floor, and ceiling were completely transformed. In my head, I often likened the painting of a mural to the stages of grief: denial (This certainly wasn’t my idea!); anger/rage (Why did you pick mauve? Any fool knows the sky is never mauve!); envy (Why can’t I be as talented as Michelangelo?); resentment (You started this because you knew it would make me look bad!); bargaining (If I mow your lawn, will you finish my mural?); depression (What’s the use? It’s never going to look good.); and acceptance (Wait a minute … this actually does looks good!).

We struggled for weeks, teaching ourselves art basics such as shading, blending, and highlighting. We began to absorb ourselves into the painting. The excited chatter of the first days died down, replaced by the soothing sound of brush strokes from the hands of two teenaged girls in meditative concentration. Slowly, the mural began to take form and our confidence began to grow. The room brightened, and the harsh fluorescent lighting seemed to fade into the background behind our luminous sun. The last part, the ceiling, was perhaps the most difficult. We spent hours a day, heads at 90-degree angles to our necks, trying not to be so presumptuous as to compare ourselves to Michelangelo.

Finally, it was complete: sun, valley, mountains, and the sprawling colors of the sunset. As the first freshman walked into the room this year and said, “Oooh … that’s really good. Who painted it?” I realized that there is an additional stage beyond acceptance: wisdom. The painter is rewarded not only with pride, but with a sense of the power of passion and perseverance.

These activities and events have contributed substantially to the person that I am. With every decision I make, every responsibility I am given, and every strange circumstance in which I find myself, I gain a little more wisdom. Academic learning is central in my life, but it is only one aspect of the person I am. I haven’t told you what games I like best, and you may still not know what my voice sounds like, but I think I have begun to, at least partially, answer the important questions.

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