Wellesley College

Why Wellesley? What attracts you about Wellesley? Our Socratic reading group is the ultimate unconventional cult, nine curious high schoolers and a college professor gathering every weekend to discuss the practicality of anarchy, the life of the mind, and the cosmological divine. Here, I learned things my school curriculum couldn’t teach me: how to break … Read more Why Wellesley?

Common Application essay on diversity “Dinner is ready!” Every Sunday a member of our family takes a turn choosing what we’re having for dinner, and today was my turn. My mother had prepared all of my favorite food, from foie gras to sea urchin sushi to satay. As we began eating, my mother asked me … Read more Diverse Identity

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. One hundred sixty-two days ago I was counting the days I had left to live. “Impression: Large right ovarian mass with cystic appearance periphery and solid tumor in the center…” I trembled as I heard … Read more Joy

Personal statement for the common application. A year and a day’s journey lay ahead of every fabled knight in search of the ever elusive Holy Grail, and if said knight was deemed worthy to find it, exhaustion would cause him to sleep at the feet of the Grail without ever truly seeing it. And while … Read more Finding My Faith

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. I could not understand. There was no sign of trash on the streets. There was no trace of graffiti on the benches or walls. Everything was impeccably clean and simple in the middle of Stockholm, … Read more Modesty. Simplicity. Practicality.

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. In June of 1982, with the harsh sun beating down on their small, rural city, my mother’s community danced throughout the streets in … Read more Inside My Mother’s Garden

Common App (Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?) The soft reminder of warm light, the neat rows of novels and biographies and volumes of poetry against mahogany shelves back to back in a literary continuum… I walk … Read more A Meaningful Place

Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. I cannon-balled into reading in first grade and have not emerged to catch my breath yet. Reading is the medium through … Read more The Power of Reading

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. The sunlight collapses lazily against the windows of our tall, stately house today, yet the gracefully arching pathways and crisp white paint job … Read more Window Panes and Scattered Nails

Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you? This is the balcony that extends into infinite dimensions. Inside: paintings and the smell of dusk. Lined against the tiled walls are canvases both void and filled. A soft light overhead. … Read more The Balcony