Kenyon College Undergraduate College Application Essays

By now, color and form are two essential ways I express myself. In my art I often draw myself as a stick figure with a shock of bright red hair. My family, friends, and even strangers have always commented on the thousands of freckles that pepper...

When my dad first began working in Mexico, I nonchalantly changed my schedule to include seventh grade “Intro to Spanish.” Naturally, I didn’t think twice about what would later prove a crucial decision—few seventh graders realize how such simple...

Fingers at the ready. Arms at the ready. Feet at the ready. Stomach at the ready. Eyes at the ready. Keys, bow, steps, song, speech – all at the ready to create another person, another emotion, another world. This genesis, this nebula that hatches...

When I turned sixteen, my grandparents took me out to the lavish Sixteen restaurant in Chicago. “Sixteen for sixteen,” they said. Over microscopic spoonfuls of diced cucumbers, which the restaurant dubbed "a salad," my Grandma handed me a velvety...

Most people are surprised to hear that I head from the suburbs to the city to ride a horse.. Just off a busy city avenue in Buffalo, tucked among white stucco apartment buildings sits The Buffalo Equestrian Center, a turn of the century polo arena...

This is how my nightmare begins.

I’m standing in the heart of a pristine university campus, surrounded by hundreds of teenage girls fidgeting with their luggage. Damp hair sticks to the backs of our necks; we can taste the heat and the salt and...

Sweat dripped from my brow as I carefully set my roll of tape onto the granite kitchen counter in front of me. My masterpiece was finally complete. As I slid down from my stool, I was careful to not let my knobby ten-year-old knees topple into the...

Why aren’t there campaigns for male plus sized models? I had no one to tell me I’m beautiful when I weighed 185 pounds in eleventh grade; all I got were offensive slurs and derogatory nicknames. I had shielded out the remarks, without retorting,...

The painting is enormous. Its carved golden frame hangs squarely in the center of a muted red wall in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I lean in and read the information plaque to the right: Breaking Home Ties by Thomas Hovenden. Stepping back, I...

At the tender age of nine, both my hands clutching the glass of water I’d carefully poured, I made my way over to the table where my grandmother, or Halmoni as we say in Korean, sat before a war zone of cards strewn across the table. I was not...