Elon University Undergraduate College Application Essays

Instead of racing off to Florida's ever popular and over-crowded beaches, I spent my junior year's spring break sleeping in a room without air conditioning, cold showers, cleaning up trash, picking weeds, and wiping little kids' runny noses....

ELLICOTT CITY, MD--- It is 12 AM and parents everywhere believe their teenagers are snug in bed. However, instead of sleeping, their kids are wide awake, studying every ounce of information they could be tested on in a matter of hours. Believing...

I had no idea my boyfriend and I had broken up until my friends started texting me asking why. Confused, I logged onto my Facebook account. I had a notification saying that my now ex-boyfriend had cancelled the relationship. I also had an inbox...

“That song is so overdone.”

“She is so fierce.”

“I totally booked that audition.”

Thespians have earned a reputation for being catty. Sure, we all strut like divas and belt the “Wicked” soundtrack, although privately wishing we could sing five notes...

"Acting is a spiritual quest to touch human beings" Larry Moss

Actors hold a tremendous amount of power over their audience; with this power comes a responsibility. Too often, the spoken word is abused and taken for granted. Phrases are strung...

Both heels of my four-year-old, worn out, hand-me-down tennis shoes were propped up on the tree branch in front of me. In my lap, I held the seventh book in the Series of Unfortunate Events, and a half-empty bottle of water was buried in the...

The grass brushed against my ankles and my backpack bounced with each step as I walked through the field. Through my sunglasses, I looked towards kids playing what I knew was soccer. With my school, I had traveled to Haiti over Christmas break....

One hundred and forty-eight years ago, in the midst of exile on the island of Guernsey, Victor Hugo narrated these words – “Whatever the goal may be, in earth or in heaven, the whole secret lies in proceeding to that goal” – in his novel The...

“Food is the way to a man's heart.” This surprisingly sexist saying has always been a coveted motto among the women in my large Latino family. The number of times my abuela disclosed what she believed to be the secret to love to me is...

I stared down at my bowl of coarse, mushy oatmeal as everyone surrounding me at the table began to devour their overflowing plates of eggs, bacon, and French toast.

This is going to be a long ten days, I thought.

The summer between my junior and...

"One dollar." I smiled with satisfaction as I handed my friend a can of soda and hid the money he gave me in my shoe. It was at summer camp, when I was thirteen years old, that I discovered the "Law of Supply and Demand" and created a system that...

I dreamt of the crowd in the darkness, a single spotlight shining down on me as I graced the stage with my movement, a sparkling array of costumes, and the feeling of soothing, crisp air. From the moment I stepped into my first dance class, I knew...

Every time I strap on a guitar, a joyous juxtaposition of feeling washes over me. Sweet harmony glides on a smooth, still surface of my mind, while nervous anticipation rumbles underneath in a tumultuous undercurrent. Behind the neck of this...

“Test does not exist! We only think she exists!”

The pale pink room was filled with too-bright morning light. High up on the Himalayan mountainside, the monastery had a sweeping view of the fog-covered village below.

The portly monk continued, in...

Of all markings that can grace the human body -- above moles, freckles, or even tattoos -- scars hold the most meaningful anecdotes. They display proudly won battles and mistakes on the individual who bears them. I have a few scars myself, the...

We left for Illinois with pitch black darkness to guide the way, caravaning in spacious minivans. The next few hours, a blur of sleeping, truck drivers responding to the “Jesus loves truckers” painted on the van, and bonding games, passed fairly...

In Mark Haddon’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime”, an autistic boy named Christopher flees to London to live with his mother after discovering that his father has murdered a dog. Christopher, who has never travelled before, is...

The plane slowly descended from the clouds. In my hand was a letter entitled, “Open on the Plane over to Germany.” It was from my sister, the first of a series of ten letters that I was to open throughout the next eleven months. I slowly opened...

Despite what he meant to me, I won’t tell you his name; that privilege was signed away as part of camp counselor protocol.

I moved myself under the rock wall. The dense heat rising from the tire pieces covering the floor paired with the green...

With all the commotion I heard, I thought someone had set a batch of chocolate chip cookies on fire again. But the world of a high school dorm is seldom that predictable. No, nothing was burning. The sophomore girls running into my room sweated...

I slowed my car outside of the soup kitchen and looked at the parking lot. There was one space left, and the only way I could park was to back up into it, which I was terrible at. My heart dropped into my stomach.

Nervously, I put my car in...

Monday: “We men are just better than the women.”

And in that moment I zoned back in. Although I later learned that his, the driving instructor's, comment was related to how a male’s body chemistry gives him a better alcohol tolerance, his words...

“E is for EMILY!”

To most, this statement is obvious. But to a two-year-old learning her letters using colorful wooden blocks lined up in a shoebox, the realization that her first name starts with a specific vowel is extraordinary.

Several studies...

“Let’s get out of here, just you and me.”

This is what Molly, my friend, whispered to me one afternoon as she awoke from an “in-and-out” nap, as she likes to call it. Molly is a 90-something year old hospice patient who is wrapped in dementia and...