Submitted Essays for Prestigious Schools by Former Clients

Example 1:  Emory University Additional Essay

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     In the words of Ebby LaLoosh in Bull Durham, “You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball.” The game of baseball has always been a simple game to me ever since I first picked up a bat at four-years-old. Instead of throwing things at my younger brother and hitting him, my parents would yell at me, “Go take your frustrations out on something else!” Since baseball involves both throwing and hitting, it seemed a natural choice. The simplicity I loved: the playing field includes four bases in a diamond shaped circuit, and whichever team has more players cross home plate throughout the game wins.

     After each season, I moved up to the next league for my age group- Bronco, Pony, and Colt. During this pre-high school era, too many coaches solely cared about winning: “You’re doing it wrong!” they screamed instead of saying, “Maybe try this way because….” They let me know that I had to discover other ways to improve, which meant studying the physics of my swing.  

     One of the common cues coaches always told players was “Swing with a downward angle on the ball.” I quickly saw inconsistent results from swinging down to the baseball; whether I hit the ball hard or not, my swing felt unnatural, and I was not seeing the results I wanted.

     As I progressed in school, classes increased in real-world application. Times tables were replaced with Periodic Tables which were replaced with derivative and integral tables. As my knowledge grew, so did my curiosity. I began to ask myself, Why? And going beyond the teacher’s way.

Each Tuesday and Thursday, my high school offers something called Academic Opportunity (AO). Students use this time as a study hall, but all teachers are available to answer questions and help. During this time, I went into classes such as Calculus because they interested me. I knew there were students who needed the teachers help more than I, so I listened to their questions. Often, I knew the answer, so I picked up a marker and began explaining as clearly as I knew how. Over time, I figured out this was fun for me.

     As my curiosity grew in the classroom, so did my curiosity on the field. The physics of how a round bat could square up a round baseball fascinated me. The more I researched, the more I realized that what I was fundamentally taught was wrong.

     Physics taught me that the amount of work exerted on an object, such as a bat hitting a baseball, equals the product of the force and distance exerted on that object. As I understood this, along with the fact that a pitching mound towers ten feet above the rest of the field and causes the average pitch to come in at an angle of negative 7 degrees, the notion of swinging down at the ball made no sense. What coaches told me for years contradicted a basic physics formula. According to the formula, I calculated that increasing the distance of force will increase the energy imposed on the baseball. Since the ball comes in at a negative angle, swinging at a negative angle decreases the distance of force on the ball, as there is only one point where my bat can positively make impact with the baseball. In fact, swinging with a positive angle, upward, on the baseball increases the work done on the ball because my bat can positively meet the baseball in many spots as it matches the plane of the ball. This means baseballs are hit harder and farther.

     Because of my physics class, I learned that by hitting a baseball in this way, I became a better player for it, and that knowledge in the classroom can apply to the sport I loved in a way I never imagined.

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Example 2: Johns Hopkins University Supplemental Essay

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     On a gloomy and cloudy Friday in September 2017, I found myself running to my computer screen after school and repeatedly hitting the refresh button on my inbox. I was expecting an email back from Dr. Bergman, a well-known independent pediatrician. I knew that receiving an internship at his office would be slight, for he had not accepted high school interns in the past couple of years because he works with the Emory University internship program. Before applying, I learned that his Emory interns have given his office the highest possible rating; and best of all, as a graduate of Johns Hopkins, Dr. Bergman is known for taking extra initiative to train his interns to succeed in college and in the workplace. Even though I was aware of the big risk involved in applying there, I knew that if he accepted me, I would learn and experience more than I could ever imagine. A sigh of relief came over me as I saw the email subject line: “See you Monday afternoon!” 

     My internship experience in his office exceeded all expectations. Dr. Bergman believes in collaborative learning, a technique in which he explains his daily tasks and engages in meaningful conversations with the interns, and one which I experienced throughout the shadowing process of my internship. Through collaborative learning, I was able to talk to Dr. Bergman about all sorts of topics, such as advice for my future in medicine, his experience at Johns Hopkins, his current everyday tasks, and even about the craziest cases at his office, which includes a gentleman who was skittish over his “obsessive addiction to water.” In addition to collaborating with Dr. Bergman, I had amazing opportunities to talk to the rest of his staff, as well as the patients he had when I shadowed checkups.

     Being able to directly collaborate with my mentor, the friendly staff, and all sorts of patients taught me about the power of communication and visual experience. Being able to directly talk and interact with the doctor and patients not only made learning there fun, but also easier to remember; and by the end of the internship, as I was able to assess many patient conditions in a heartbeat.

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Example 3:  Harvard University Optional Essay

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SETTING

It is move in day at Harvard University for the class of 2022. The sky is clear, parents are all

saying goodbye, and the new students are everywhere. We are in Canaday Hall, one of Harvard’s

freshman dorms.

[Future College Roommate walks into his new dorm, where Jacob sits on his newly made bed.

He quickly stands up as Future College Roommate walks in and goes over to greet him.]

 

JACOB: [Fumbling to shake Future College Roommate’s hand] Hey, my name’s Jacob. Nice to

meet you. Can’t believe I’m actually here at Harvard.

 

FUTURE COLLEGE ROOMMATE: [Holding a laugh to himself] Nice to meet you. Honestly, I

can’t believe that I’m here either. Call me Ben by the way.

 

JACOB: Ok. Ben. I can remember that. By the way, what are you majoring in? I’m going to be majoring in Computer Science and hopefully doing Pre-Med alongside it. Yeah, it’s weird right. I just think that it’s a combination that could help me in the future, and I both enjoy Computer Science and want to become a surgeon.

 

BEN: [Jumping onto his bed] That’s actually pretty cool, but I heard that those majors

mean that you will be taking some pretty tough classes. I’m also doing Pre-Med, but I have a

Biology major alongside it. What about sports, you watch any?

 

JACOB: [Walks over to his bed and falls onto it] I don’t watch that many sports on TV, but

when I do watch, it’s usually soccer because my family is from Colombia, and that’s all they

watch in the house. Other than that, I usually watch Netflix instead of sports.

 

BEN: Makes sense, I’m guessing with your height you play basketball right?

 

JACOB: [Making a running motion] Nope, I get that all the time though. I run cross country and

track and field.

 

BEN: Really?

 

JACOB: Yeah, I actually started off with soccer then went into travel baseball. I played baseball

for many years up until the 8th grade where the team held a 5k as a fundraiser for a trip to

Cooperstown, New York. I was usually the slowest sprinter on the baseball team with these long

legs of mine, so I didn’t really expect to do that well at the race, but I ended up finishing top ten

overall. Everyone was surprised - along with myself.

 

BEN: [Pointing at his watch] What was your time in that race?

 

JACOB: [Holding his hands to his head trying to remember] I don’t really remember, but I think

it was around twenty-four minutes. Not that fast for actual runners but it sure felt fast to me at the

time. Anyway, a friend who was on the high school cross country team asked me to come to the

summer training and maybe consider joining the team when my freshman year started. I did

pretty well over the summer and really enjoyed my time spent running. The school year came up

pretty quick and I had to decide between baseball and cross country.

 

BEN: Could you have done both? I thought they were different seasons.

 

JACOB: I technically could have, but if I did cross country I would not have any time to practice

baseball, so I could only pick one or the other. Honestly the decision was not hard to make, I had

enjoyed my time spent running much more than my time spent playing baseball so I joined the

team and have been running ever since. I did extremely well and have done both cross country

and distance track since freshman year and my junior and senior years I was one of the top

runners in the state with my time being 16:10 for the 5k.

 

BEN: [Eyes open wide] Man, that’s fast. I actually play tennis though, been playing it all my life.

 

JACOB: Oh, wait.You play tennis? I forgot to mention I play as well, though I have been so

focused on running that I rarely play anymore. I’ll still play with my dad from time to time. You

wanna hit sometime? [Makes swinging motion]

BEN: [Starting to walk out the door] Sure, just ask me when I don’t have class and we’ll set up

something. I have to go eat dinner with my family right now, See you later.

 

JACOB: [Waving] Alright Ben it was nice meeting you. I’ll see you later. [Lies down in bed]

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Example 4:  Medical School

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     As I tracked the baseball soaring towards me in the outfield, it was a cool, beautiful, clear fall day in Georgia. Just as I prepared to secure the ball into my glove, I found myself face down in the dirt with a throbbing pain in my forearm. My inattentive 9-year-old self had stepped into a ditch and slammed wrist first into the ground. One trip to the emergency department later, I was in awe of my X-rays being displayed. I clung to every word of the attending orthopedist as he explained the fracture in my radius and as he took the time to answer my onslaught of questions: “My body can heal that? There’s a growth plate where? You’re telling me those can cross over each other?” Every inquiry, no matter how trivial or complex, he answered and explained in a way I could grasp.  As I left the hospital that day, I was struck by just how impacted I was by one physician taking the time to connect with me as a patient, and I was left with a lingering curiosity to learn more.

     In the summer of 2018, my hunger to learn more led me to the bustling streets of Brooklyn. There on Avenue J, I was fortunate enough to observe the work of an ophthalmologist in her clinic. Her rapport with her patients was unlike anything I had experienced before, and I strove to replicate it during my three weeks there. As I tepidly mimicked the candor displayed before me, the patients responded in a way I could have never predicted. I had opened a window into patients'  lives so vastly different from my own. I especially remember one patient who was a taxi driver and he told me how without the treatment he received for his glaucoma, he’d lose his license. No matter their background, all of her patients shared one commonality. Their very livelihoods were better due to the treatment they received. The idea of a career where such practical action can improve so much for others had me hooked from then on. 

     While my experiences up to this point had instilled into me nothing short of unbridled optimism for the medical field, in February, I came face-to-face with some of its grimmer realities. I had just begun to catch up on some sleep in the front of my ambulance when a call from dispatch came through. The local hospital in the rural city of Elberton had a patient getting discharged who needed to be transported. We arrived on scene to find our 91-year-old patient alone and unwell, and to my dismay, he clung to his singular sheet on a bed without a gown or a blanket. I flagged down the only nurse in sight and quickly learned that he was the singular nurse for the entire floor, and the hospital was still waiting to receive more blankets and gowns so had none to spare. Frustrated, I draped our patient in one of our own blankets from the truck and was thankful when his cries of pain subsided and vigilantly kept him stable as we transported him to a nursing home some 20 minutes away. Surprisingly, we arrived at a similarly chaotic scene, as the few nurses scrambled to not only direct us, but also to balance their other duties. The hospice care providers that were supposed to be with our patient were still several hours away, and the hopelessness I felt when I realized his situation still clings to me. 

     Having been fortunate enough to grow up in the suburbs of a large city like Atlanta, such experiences were entirely foreign to me. Only as I have gained more experience beyond my own bubble have I grown to appreciate this. Currently, a regular patient of mine, “Bob,” relies on us for transport to his dialysis treatments from his farm on the Georgia/South Carolina border. The nearest facility to him has a reputation for poor care and is the same place where his father passed. Understandably, he elects to go to the next, closest treatment center, which is 40 miles away. Hearing all of this from Bob greatly resonated with me. Having to decide between an hour's journey and adequate care is a decision I have never been faced with. Of course, I had heard of the existence of health disparities in the classroom, but seeing its real-world effects elicited far more of a response in me. 

     The sum of my experiences has motivated me to dive deeper into the medical field. As a consequence of my time following health care providers and serving as one, I desire to be a physician who can provide and make positive impacts for those around me. I also thrive to give back and to do my part in addressing the health inequalities I have observed. And maybe one day, I’ll inspire another ungraceful, bright-eyed 9-year-old.