North Carolina State University Undergraduate College Application Essays

As an individual fascinated with the universe and the potential questions it poses, I would quickly jump at the opportunity to spend a semester researching theoretical astrophysics. In this capacity, I have long considered academic study as...

Growing up a vegetarian with hippy parents, reading feminist and pacifist literature, and listening to Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles has shaped me into a very politically charged person. Thus, while I admit that the Great Pyramids are amazing and...

People love to complain about how “useless” mathematics is in everyday life:

•“How will cubic factoring help me get my dream job?”

•“How is the quadratic formula going to stop global warming?”

Typical.

If not mathematics, they often set their...

If you were asked to name five famous living female scientists or engineers off the top of your head, could you do it? The majority of people would probably not be able to name more than one, if that.

There are thirty-five members on my FIRST...

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. My first race was full of middle-aged men, and the decals on their cars weren’t all stickers like mine. They had been painted professionally. But paint jobs don’t impact speed and, to my advantage, I had the...

“So many emails say so little,” writes Norma Cone in her first letter to me. Her penmanship incorporates elaborate loops and smoothly conjoined letters from years of perfecting her cursive. In comparison, my script is poorly developed, a...

While rolling my clothes into the suitcase for the youth trip, I pondered new ways to persuade the school to accept my idea. I had used reasoning and humanitarian appeals, and nobody was signing on to my envisioned LGBTQ club. What more could I...

6,876 miles. This might be a hard distance to measure, so let me help you understand how far it is and just what it has entailed. It’s not only how far I’ve travelled almost every summer to see my family, but it’s how far I’ve travelled to become...

My junior year of high school, I took Honors Biology. Although I expected to do well, as I had always had a knack for science, I immediately fell flat on my face. At the midterm, I distinctly remember looking at my grades and seeing a 74. I had a...

“C810,” the judge announced. I check my code again — it’s mine. Rising from my seat, I step towards the front of the room. The other competitors clap, as is customary for speech events, breaking the sacred silence that previously occupied the...

In front of the board stood two kindergarteners, a classmate and I, ready to engage in fierce competition. The task? Simply solving a two-digit addition problem. I felt my heartbeat racing, my hands shaking while holding the marker. I had no...

Under the shadow of a magnificent mango tree at the heart of communist Cuba was the place where I learned to appreciate the beauty of the art of chess. When I was five years old, my father taught me the theory of chess, how the pieces moved and...

For me, the summer months used to possess a certain emptiness. The warm weather and freedom to explore personal projects were always welcome, but the absence of school’s daily scheduling and assignments sometimes left me feeling generally aimless...

I sat in the ornate home of my teammate’s mom, an established Palestinian surgeon, when she said, “I wish someone had killed them all.” I just finished asking this woman how the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict impacted her life, and was shocked at...

“It’s a sultry and sweltering day in Rajasthan, India.”

A young woman aged 19 years gives birth to an unimpeachable little girl that smiles her way into the world, suddenly a young man bombards into the room and pulls out a gun. The last thing the...

Standing knee-deep in clear water, I peer at the minnows swimming lazily around my toes.

“Help, Daddy, there’s a Mexican!” wails a curly-haired girl from the security of a bright pink inflatable ring. Her pointed finger indicates to all the target...

“Does Mr. Fishy go up, up, up or down, down, down?”

I ask my class as I lay a plastic toy fish on top of the water.

“Up, up, up!” a little boy named John exclaims.

“That’s right! Mr. Fishy goes up, up, up like we do!” I tell my class.

A plastic...

I’ve never been able to buy my Halloween costumes from a store. While my friends dressed up as ballerinas and princesses, I was Molly Pitcher and Clara Barton - not exactly costumes you can find at PartyCity. Instead, my mom made my costumes,...