Student Application Essays

At the end, you'll have a unique essay that you'll proudly submit to your top choice colleges. Find out more about Prep Scholar Admissions now: Some colleges publish a selection of their favorite accepted college essays that worked, and I've put together a selection of over 100 of these (plus some essay excerpts! Please note that some of these college essay examples may be responding to prompts that are no longer in use. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it.

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One way to understand what colleges are looking for when they ask you to write an essay is to check out the essays of students who already got in—college essays that actually After all, they must be among the most successful of this weird literary genre.

In this article, I'll go through general guidelines for what makes great college essays great.

My upbringing has numbed me to unpredictability and chaos.

With a family of seven, my home was loud, messy, and spottily supervised.

With links to 120 full essays and essay excerpts, this article will be a great resource for learning how to craft your own personal college admissions essay!

Even though in many ways these sample college essays are very different from one other, they share some traits you should try to emulate as you write your own essay. You'll see a similar structure in many of the essays.

Here are six of these short essays answering the 2014 prompt: "Tell us about the best gift you've ever given or received." I've picked two essays from the examples collected above to examine in more depth so that you can see exactly what makes a successful college essay work.

Full credit for these essays goes to the original authors and the schools that published them. We were in Laredo, having just finished our first day at a Habitat for Humanity work site.

The Hotchkiss volunteers had already left, off to enjoy some Texas BBQ, leaving me behind with the college kids to clean up.

Not until we were stranded did we realize we were locked out of the van.