Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Melodies steep in the air around me, drawing my soul to their sound like salt to the sea. The familiar rush of speedwriting emboldens me as I evade cliches and raze hesitation. In these moments I am t

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Why Yale

Bookworms attract each other like unedited papers attract comma splices, with fervor (that was a pun). We uplift each other, manifesting fulfilling futures: interests harnessed for change, kaleidoscop

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Essays

I love playing literary Devil’s advocate, meshing unorthodox concepts with manicism parallel to Victor Frankenstein’s. I hum with intellectual creativity, stretching my imagination through comparative

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Chosen essay

There's a secret haven at the top of the stairs at East End Temple's religious school. It squats in stairway B, looking onto the tar-soaked rooftop with spiderwebbed windows. The space itself is disgu

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Music means so many things to so many people. It can bring us joy, inspire us, validate us or heal us. Please tell us about a song or piece of music that is particularly meaningful to you and why. Please include the name of the song/piece and the artist.

Growing up, I was an admiring shadow of my musician father. He could play anything from Kiss to jewish festival tunes to musical soundtracks. Most impressive, however, was his ability to coax language

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Why are you applying to Vassar? (Limit 300 words)

The first thing I saw at Vassar College were Camp Rock decorations written in chalk on the blackboards in Sanders Auditorium. I was exhausted and undershowered; a veteran from months of unsuccessful c

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Why Bard?

Bard College is a magical place where scholarship enmeshes with creativity and artwork. There is no limit to what I could learn and achieve at Bard, especially through the enthralling Written Arts pro

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Optional Essay Question

My girlfriend Sofia and I have a baseline of understanding that we call the ‘wavelength’. It empathizes with mood swings, resents beauty standards, and dreads walking alone at night; hallmarks of a di

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Why The New School

There are no guarantees for my blossoming future. Most likely, I’ll be bankrupted by student debt and overpriced organic cat food by the time I’m thirty. I doubt I’ll ever stop liking female and nonbi

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EC Essay

There's a secret haven at the top of the stairs at East End Temple's religious school. The space itself is disgusting: yellow stains seep through peeling “white” paint and rust blankets the railings.

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Extracurricular Activity and Work Experience Briefly elaborate on an activity, organization, work experience, or hobby that has been particularly meaningful to you. (Please respond in about 150 words)

There's a secret haven at the top of the stairs at East End Temple's religious school. The space itself is disgusting: yellow stains seep through peeling “white” paint and rust blankets the railings.

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Your Voice Please respond to each question in an essay of about 250 words. At Princeton, we value diverse perspectives and the ability to have respectful dialogue about difficult issues. Share a time when you had a conversation with a person or a group of people about a difficult topic. What insight did you gain, and how would you incorporate that knowledge into your thinking in the future?

My girlfriend Sofia and I have a baseline of understanding that we call the ‘wavelength’. It empathizes with mood swings, resents beauty standards, and dreads walking alone at night: hallmarks of a di

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Princeton has a longstanding commitment to service and civic engagement. Tell us how your story intersects (or will intersect) with these ideals.

My favorite coat is spoiled with love. The thin blue denim is pockmarked with holes; the sleeve, gummy with exposed stuffing, tears gorily from the breast, and wind screams through the stitches like a

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What brings you joy?

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What song represents the soundtrack of your life at this moment?

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As a research institution that also prides itself on its liberal arts curriculum, Princeton allows students to explore areas across the humanities and the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. What academic areas most pique your curiosity, and how do the programs offered at Princeton suit your particular interests? (Please respond in about 250 words)

Poems and prose expose the bones of humanity, revealing the sentimental truths of our universe. Songwriting harnesses those truths, championing them to inspire change. While wielding these arts is imp

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List the titles of the required readings from academic courses that you enjoyed most during secondary/high school.

The Bluest Eye, We The Animals, The Kite Runner, Their Eyes were Watching God, Yiddish: a Biography of a Langauge, Queer Yiddishkeit, My Beloved World, Born a Crime, Ragged Dick, The Boy who Harnessed

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List the titles of the books, essays, poetry, short stories or plays you read outside of academic courses that you enjoyed most during secondary/high school.

Little Women, The Signature of all Things, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, The Vanishing Half, Song of Achilles, Call me by Your Name, Revolutionar

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We’re interested in learning about some of the ways that you explore your interests. List some resources and outlets that you enjoy, including but not limited to websites, publications,  journals, podcasts, social media accounts, lectures, museums, movies, music, or other content with which you regularly engage.

Epoch (school literary magazine) The Owl (student-run magazine that I write for) Live Poets Society of NJ (publishes high school anthologies) Archiveofourown (fanfiction website) The MET Gal

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A hallmark of the Columbia experience is being able to learn and live in a community with a wide range of perspectives. How do you or would you learn from and contribute to diverse, collaborative communities?

My partner Sofia and I have a baseline of understanding called ‘the wavelength.’ It empathizes with mood swings, resents beauty standards, and dreads nighttime walks: hallmarks of distinctly feminine

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Why are you interested in attending Columbia University? We encourage you to consider the aspect(s) that you find unique and compelling about Columbia.

Most of my friends are devoted astrophysicists, completely engrossed in their closed-off world of vortexes and quantum gravity. I’m daunted by their studies, farther out of reach than the planets my g

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For applicants to Columbia College, please tell us what from your current and past experiences (either academic or personal) attracts you specifically to the areas of study that you previously noted in the application.

My great-grandparents left their language in the smoldering rot of Auschwitz, smothering my family's Polish Jewry to worship Americanization across the Atlantic. Eighty years later, I chase our histor

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Arts and Sciences Response

Cornell is a school that was founded on the principles of creative, involved interdisciplinarity. Polar subjects waltz together through the Olin library and Arboretum, their unholy union sparking insp

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Brown’s Open Curriculum allows students to explore broadly while also diving deeply into their academic pursuits. Tell us about any academic interests that excite you, and how you might use the Open Curriculum to pursue them while also embracing topics with which you are unfamiliar. (200-250 words)

I relish my passions' kaleidoscopic intersections. Brown's cornucopian curriculum enables my jigsawed educational aspirations. I'll delve into Jewish philosophy, chasing my ancestral psyche through

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Brown’s culture fosters a community in which students challenge the ideas of others and have their ideas challenged in return, promoting a deeper and clearer understanding of the complex issues confronting society. This active engagement in dialogue is as present outside the classroom as it is in academic spaces. Tell us about a time you were challenged by a perspective that differed from your own. How did you respond? (200-250 words)

*Sofia—she/they My partner Sofia and I have a baseline of understanding called ‘the wavelength.’ It empathizes with mood swings, resents beauty standards, and dreads nighttime walks; hallmarks of di

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Brown students care deeply about their work and the world around them. Students find contentment, satisfaction, and meaning in daily interactions and major discoveries. Whether big or small, mundane or spectacular, tell us about something that brings you joy. (200-250 words)

There's a secret haven at the top of the stairs at East End Temple's religious school. It squats in stairway B, looking onto the tar-soaked rooftop with spiderwebbed windows. The space itself is disgu

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Why Tufts?

On a quasi-deserted M22 bus racing through 2008-era Chinatown, my family played a familiar game. We called it Tufts vs McGill: the ultimate smackdown between my parents’ alma matters. My brother and I

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It’s cool to love learning. What excites your intellectual curiosity?

I love playing literary Devil’s advocate, meshing unorthodox concepts with a manicism parallel to Victor Frankenstein’s. I hum with intellectual creativity, stretching my imagination through comparati

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