Name ________________________ Date _________ Hour_____
Sample College Application Essay # 4
Vocabulary Preview
ungainly (adj.) – awkward, clumsy, gawky
epiphany (n.) - a moment of realization
nuance (n.) - a subtle difference or distinction in expression,meaning, response
omniscience (n.) – the state of being all knowing
omniscient (adj.)
quintessence (n.) - the most pure and perfect embodiment of something
Write a sentence using one or more of the words above correctly in context.
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DIRECTIONS: Read the following sample college application essay. As you read, ask questions, note confusions,
and summarize key points in your own words.
PROMPT: 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 Pub
by Anisa Jones
I never knew I’d find a second home. I guess it waltzed itself into my life the
moment I timidly walked into the advanced journalism “pub,” sitting down next to
the only other freshmen who had been accepted onto staff that year, a tall,
ungainly-looking boy with a brilliant grin and a girl who looked almost as
innocent as I.
There are many such moments in life, those singular epiphanies that force one’s
acknowledgment that something is at play of a far greater magnitude than what
can be distinguished at first glance. But as climactic as it may seem now, there
really was no defining moment when each new wave of Falconer staffers
became a part of my family. Maybe it was the thrill of a 2:30 a.m. layout night, or
perhaps it was the staffwide panic-induced bonding at the beginning of each
month when we frantically solicit business advertising to support our newspaper,
but somewhere and somehow, the three rooms of the Torrey Pines journalism
staff— the computer lab, the classroom, and most of all the publications lounge,
fondly dubbed the “pub”—morphed into a home away from home for me.
Falconerds love to joke that our pub is a magic portal. Usually it leads to the
fantasy world of Narnia—or whatever my mind happens to dwell on when
questioned by inquisitive outsiders. Yet as I’ve ventured deeper into its depths for
the past three years, I have begun to realize that indeed our pub is a portal, and
on the other side lies not a figment of C.S. Lewis’s imagination but an infinite
dimension of the printed word, one that is as inspiring and as passionate and as
real as the human experience—and the wondrous nuances of staff life that I
have come to cherish.
It is to the pub that an embodiment of all the athletes, the thespians, the nerds,
and the rebels is somehow attracted, like butterflies to a field of wildflowers,
united by our mutual passion for writing, our eye for design, and most of all, our
devotion to our monthly publication.
With its one wall of reflecting windows facing the exterior, the pub is a nearperfect mirror on the outside world. Sitting within this curtain of invisibility, I can
see the figures of other students and teachers gliding across the silver screen as
though in a silent film sequence. A girl stops, glances at her reflection in the
mirror, and checks her hair and makeup; her eyes look straight into mine, yet she
cannot see me. It was this mesmerizing sense of omniscience that first seized
my fantasies—the moments in so many others’ lives which I can witness as a
journalist, whether spoken and written in words or captured and expressed
through images.
It is in this familiar yet enchanted place that I have conducted many of my most
enlightening interviews over the years. True, there is glamour in the notion that
journalists serve as the “gatekeepers to the news,” and the opportunities I have
been endowed with on a daily basis, from phone conversations with officials in
the governor’s office to conferences with teen movie stars, are tantalizingly unlike
any of the experiences offered to the typical high school student. Whether it is
with a hot air ballooning agency struggling with increasingly strict restrictions
each year or a homeless man searching for a purpose in life, interviews have led
me to witness firsthand the beauty and pain of each individual’s story. It is
incredibly humbling, and incredibly ironic that the resounding majority of the
people I have spoken with I will never meet again, yet even as a stranger I was
given the chance time and time again to share in their lives, to believe, to
empathize. At first, I drank in this newfound perception and sought to shine the
spotlight on the individual through my writing, struggling to freeze these
transcendental moments I witnessed into the monochromatic ink of newsprint.
But it was not until, in the comfort of the pub’s couches before a quaint tea-table
and accompanied by a seemingly undepletable jar of Twizzler licorice candies, I
was swept from the once pain-free bubble in which I dwelled into a whirlpool of
emotions, that I began to realize that the quintessence of the human existence
could never be captured in mere syllables. Reaching out to the parents of a
student who was killed by a tragic prescription drug overdose, it was in the pub
that I first learned to be sincere, to trust, to live, as the old couple’s optimism
shamed the petty squabbles that had governed so much of my life until then,
optimism that, though marred by regret, anger, and despair, effulged an
irrepressible hope. Until that moment, I had naively believed my existence, and
the existence of those immediately around me, to be that of an ethereal bliss.
Never before having personally experienced sorrow so close to home, I was
struck deeply by the family’s story—not only by their son’s passing, but even
more by the unselfish willingness of his parents to share with me their most
profound pain and most insightful reflections. Now I reach out to every soul in the
sky, cry until my tears can fill an ocean, laugh until I doubt I’ll ever breathe again.
Even when I walk out the mirrored doors of the pub for the last time next year in
June, I know I will look back upon the portal, and, if it is 2:30 a.m. on a starlit
Wednesday morning, the green glow of the LED sign at the door will blink fondly
once more in the distance: PUB OPEN.
It will always be open.
5 Margin notes are
detailed and
insightful.
4 Margin notes
effectively
demonstrate the
student’s thinking.
3 Margin notes are
adequate, but do not
demonstrate deep
thinking.
2 Margin notes are
short and
demonstrate a weak
effort.
0 – 1 Incomplete.
1. How does Jones use imagery and detail to serve her purpose? Fill out the chart below to help you
organize your thoughts. Use the verbs on page 30 in your three-ring binders to help spur your
thinking.
In her personal essay, Jones makes use of imagery and detail in order to __________________
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Example # 1:
Example # 2:
Example # 3:
Example # 4:
How does this example add to
Jones’s message or tone?
How does this example add to
Jones’s message or tone?
How does this example add to
Jones’s message or tone?
How does this example add to
Jones’s message or tone?
Why include this example?
What impact does it have on
the audience?
Why include this example?
What impact does it have on
the audience?
Why include this example?
What impact does it have on
the audience?
Why include this example?
What impact does it have on
the audience?