Essays That Worked: 50 Essays from Successful Applications to the Nation's Top Colleges

This terrific collection of college-application essays would be enough to scare anyone off. But it is just as likely to inspire greatness. These are essays that admissions officers of top schools read and loved. Forget your lofty plans to abolish world hunger or your deep and meaningful tour of Europe. These successful college applicants wrote about thumb sucking, inchworms, a recipe for cranberry bread, and arguing with Dad about what to write. "Some of the best essays are about seemingly trivial things," say the editors of Essays That Worked. "By finding the profound in the mundane, a writer can tell the admissions officer more about his personality than all the teacher references ever could." This book urges you to write something that couldn't possibly have been written by anyone else--something that will cause an admissions officer to say, as one does about a piece included here, "This essay blew me away, and it still does." And finally, don't fret about how fine these essays are. "We chose fifty essays from over one hundred thousand applications." say the editors. "You've got a much better chance of getting into Harvard than getting your essay into this book." --Jane Steinberg