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College Admissions

Quest scholarship college essay example – questbridge program.

• The Albert Team
• Last Updated On: March 1, 2022

This is a college essay submitted by a student who now attends Northwestern University. This student is a Quest Scholar at Northwestern. The student was awarded with a full-ride scholarship. As you read this Quest Scholarship college essay example, think about your own personal experiences and what you could write about if you are eligible for the scholarship. You can learn more about the Quest Scholarship here .

This is a solid personal essay for several reasons:

• The opening paragraph frames the story and presents to the reader a frustrating situation with his younger brother that leads the reader into the second paragraph with an anticipated even more acutely personal insight into this student’s life. A potentially stronger opening would have been starting with his mother’s condition and remaining focused with the main topic as this opening paragraph is a bit of a tangent in the grand scheme of things.
• The second paragraph demonstrates the reader’s understanding of his mother’s condition. It paints a vivid picture with the reader of the condition, demonstrating to an admissions counselor that not only has this student had to overcome extenuating circumstances, but also that he fully understands the nature of his mother’s condition.
• The third paragraph digs deep as the student reflects on what he has learned from watching his mother suffer the effects of MS through the years. He closes the paragraph strongly with a takeaway of what he has learned to value the most from watching his mother endure her MS condition through the years.
• Finally, the student concludes by wrapping the essay together nicely. The reader finishes reading the essay with a comprehensive understanding of the student’s life experience, how he has learned from this experience, and a bigger picture understanding of the human condition. This is vital. Strong admissions essays often have a message that provide admissions officers with insights of the student’s understanding of the human condition. These essays are often acutely personal and feature an overall theme—in this case, hardship and how the student came to terms with it.

Throughout my life I have encountered many circumstances that have shaped me into the person I am today. I started life in a small house outside of Mackinaw, Illinois. I lived in that house for eleven years, and while I was there I became the oldest of four children. That in itself has been an experience, teaching me a lot about being an example and impacting my views on responsibility. I have a brother who, quite frankly, is the worst behaved kid I know. He lies, steals, and misbehaves compulsively. Academically he is not much better. He was held back in first grade due to a refusal to do homework, and has barely scraped by ever since, consistently getting D’s and F’s. Miraculously, he is now in eighth grade, but he still is not doing much better academically or behaviorally. He is actually very smart; he just refuses to do work which is why he fails. At home he fights with my younger brother and sister and pushes my patience to its limits constantly. Through it all there is a silver lining. He has taught me tolerance and patience. I have learned to deal with other people and annoyances through my experiences with Brock, and find that I am generally harder to anger than others. The lessons in patience that I have learned from Brock have helped me a lot in working with others, and have contributed greatly to my successes in academics, but no single person or experience has impacted my outlook on life as much as my Mom.

Right around my tenth year, when my parents started looking into building a house in the country so my dad could have a shed to work on tractors in, my mom started having problems with her vision. It was often blurry, and she frequently suffered bouts of double vision. She went to several doctors, and numerous specialists, seeking a diagnosis. Eventually one came. Multiple Sclerosis. Abbreviated as MS, multiple sclerosis is ravaging disease affecting the nervous system. MS is caused when the myelin sheaths of nerve axons in the brain and spinal cord are damaged, causing scar tissue to form. The scar tissue hinders neural impulses, thus interfering with commands sent from the brain to motor nerves throughout the body. Eventually, problems with movement and balance develop. The progression of the disease is different for each patient and sometimes leads to an early death, but almost always leads to major disabilities.

Since her diagnosis, my mom’s condition has only worsened. Her double vision went away after a few months and has not returned since, but other complications have risen. Since then, little by little, I have watched my mom lose much of her ability to walk. Today at the age of forty, she walks almost everywhere with a cane. She has been told by her doctor not to drive because of slowed reaction times. Any time we go somewhere where there will be a lot of walking, she uses a wheelchair. Essentially, MS has forced my mom to age at a much greater pace than any human should have to endure. Remarkably though, in these eight years, I have never once heard her complain. Never once has she shown us any sign of self-pity. Instead, she has remained strong, accepting what fate has dealt her. In my parents’ room, she keeps a saying in a picture frame. It reads, “What is, is actual. What might be, simply is not. I must not therefore query God as though he has robbed me of things that are not.” It took me a while to understand exactly what it meant, but once I did I realized that my mom lives her life largely by the quote’s meaning. She realizes that she has MS, and nothing is going to change that, and so she accepts it and keeps going. It takes a special kind of person to do that; I do not think that many people would deal with it as well as my mom has.

Through my mom’s actions, she has taught me that no problem that I could possibly have merits complaint, because, truthfully, nobody cares. Everybody has problems in life, and no amount of complaining will ever change that. If everyone was like my mom I sincerely believe this world would be a better place. Aside from her refusal to complain, I have gained something else from my mom’s attitude. She has taught me the value of our talents and abilities, and that they should be used to their fullest while we possess them. She has inspired me to do my best in everything, and because of that I have been very successful. I love my mom for what she has been through and what she has taught me.

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• QuestBridge

We are a dedicated College Partner

Stanford is committed to providing access and opportunity for high achieving, low-income students. Since 2006, we have been a dedicated QuestBridge partner. We are proud of the many outstanding QuestBridge Finalists and College Prep Scholars who are current Stanford students and those who are now Stanford alumni.

How to Apply

Learn about application requirements and the National College Match on Stanford’s QuestBridge College Partner page .

Stanford QuestBridge Supplement

In the supplement, we ask several short questions (limit 50 words each), and because the QuestBridge Application is so comprehensive, we ask just one essay question: Virtually all of Stanford's undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate—and us—get to know you better. (250-word maximum)

Frequently Asked Questions

If i participate in questbridge, do i need to apply for financial aid from stanford.

Yes; all applicants to Stanford, including those participating in the National College Match, must submit financial aid application documents to Stanford in order to receive a financial aid notification.

If you ranked Stanford in the Match, please submit the CSS Profile and federal tax forms by November 1. Please complete the FAFSA as soon as it is available and submit it no later than February 15. Visit Stanford’s  National College Match Scholarship Package page   and Stanford’s  QuestBridge College Partner page   for more information.

I submitted a QuestBridge Application to Stanford. Do I also need to submit a Common Application?

No; If you submitted a QuestBridge Application to Stanford through the National College Match or QuestBridge Regular Decision, there is no need to submit a Common Application. Your QuestBridge application is your Stanford application.

We will not review an additional application. If you need to provide us with significant updates, you will have an opportunity to do so on your student portal.

I am a QuestBridge Finalist, but I am not participating in the Match. Can I apply to Stanford under Restrictive Early Action?

Yes; however, you must submit a Common Application. Your application fee will be waived when you select the “QuestBridge Finalist” option in the Stanford fee waiver section.

Since the ACT or SAT is not required for Stanford this year, how can I let Stanford know if I want my scores considered?

In your Stanford QuestBridge Supplement there is a question asking whether you would like Stanford to consider ACT or SAT scores in the review of your application.

If you are not able to take the ACT or SAT, your application will not be at a disadvantage. If you have already taken the ACT or SAT, and you feel that your scores are a positive reflection of your academic preparedness, then you are welcome to self-report them. Your application will not be at a disadvantage if you choose not to report your scores.

National College Match

Is stanford’s match binding.

Yes; Stanford’s Match is binding. If you are matched with Stanford, congratulations and welcome! We look forward to having you join our community. As a reminder, under QuestBridge guidelines, Finalists who match to a binding institution through the National College Match are to withdraw their applications from other colleges and universities.

Does Stanford have a maximum number of students they accept through the Match?

No; the Match is a partnership to provide access and opportunity for high achieving, low-income students. Stanford reviews applications holistically and works to create a strong and diverse cohort of Match Finalists. In previous years we have matched anywhere between 65-90 students, the number of matches can vary each year. Stanford’s partnership with QuestBridge is more than just the Match. Many outstanding QuestBridge Finalists and non-Finalists are admitted in Regular Decision.

Will Stanford consider Finalists for the Match if their Parent Contribution (PC) is above $0?

Stanford's financial aid is need-based; therefore, we are focusing our Match efforts on students whose families are determined to have a Parent Contribution (PC) of $0.

However, Stanford is committed to meeting the full demonstrated need of all admitted students seeking financial aid, including those who apply through Restrictive Early Action or Regular Decision. You can estimate your financial aid using Stanford’s Net Price Calculator .

Can I rank Stanford in the Match and apply to other schools through their early action or early decision rounds?

No; similarly, you cannot apply to Stanford under Restrictive Early Action and at the same time apply to other colleges through the Match. Please see QuestBridge's Early Application Policy .

Can I submit an Arts Portfolio if I am applying to Stanford through the Match?

No; the Match timeline does not align with the Arts Portfolio review process.

If I participate in the National College Match will I have the opportunity to participate in an optional alumni interview?

No; the Match timeline does not align with the Alumni Interview schedule.

Stanford admission interviews are optional, assigned randomly according to local alumni availability and can be declined without negatively affecting the application. Finalists who rank Stanford but do not match to a binding college will automatically be considered in Regular Decision and may be offered an interview at that time.

Can I submit an additional letter of recommendation in addition to the letter(s) included in the QuestBridge application?

It is not a requirement or an expectation that students will submit additional letter(s) of recommendation in addition to the two letters we receive with your QuestBridge application.

If you would like to send an additional letter from a school official please have them email it directly to [email protected]

I am an undocumented/DACA student. Can I apply to Stanford through the Match?

Yes; Stanford welcomes applications from undocumented/DACA students through the National College Match. Visit our How Aid Works page for undocumented applicants.

I am an international citizen studying in the U.S. with a visa. Can I apply to Stanford through the Match?

No; Stanford does not review applications from international citizens through the National College Match. We encourage international citizens to apply to Stanford through QuestBridge Regular Decision.

Withdrawing Your Application

How do i withdraw my application from consideration.

To remove Stanford from your rankings for the Match, contact QuestBridge. After the Match, if you would like to withdraw your application from consideration in Regular Decision, log in to your Stanford portal and submit the "Withdraw Application" form.

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Recommendations

Applying for College: Timeline | Researching Colleges | Recommendations |  Activities  |  Essays  | Glossary

Strong recommendations can differentiate you among a large pool of applicants. Recommendations from teachers can offer insight into your academic performance and/or personal character. The School Report (counselor recommendation) can provide a sense of how you stand out within your class at school. The earlier you build relationships with your recommenders, the better, as they can be excellent advocates for you on your path to college.

Required Recommendations

For the National College Match application for high school seniors, you will need to obtain two recommendations and one School Report:

Two recommendations from high school teachers in core academic subjects, preferably from your junior year

School Report  from current high school counselor

For the College Prep Scholars Program for high school juniors, you will need to obtain:

One recommendation from a high school teacher in a core academic subject, preferably from your junior or sophomore year

Please note that QuestBridge does not accept additional recommendations. If you are interested in submitting additional letters, please contact colleges directly to determine whether they are willing to accept them. 

Use the criteria below when selecting who to ask for recommendations. If you answer “no” to many of the questions below, consider asking someone else for a recommendation.

Did they teach you recently?

Did they teach you in a core academic subject (English, History/Social Studies, Math, Science, Foreign Language)?

Did you do well in their class, or improve dramatically?

Did they agree to write the letter without hesitation?

Do they know you outside of the classroom?

Can they speak to your personal qualities or strengths?

• Do they have time to finish a letter before the deadline?

When to Ask

Your teachers and counselors will be writing recommendations for other students as well, so provide them with ample time to complete your recommendation. In general, you should ask recommenders at least two to three weeks before the deadline. One month prior or more is preferable.

Asking for a recommendation in-person is always preferable. First, ask if they feel comfortable writing you a strong recommendation. If the answer is no, make sure you have enough time to ask someone else.

It is a good idea to provide your recommenders with a packet of information about yourself, including some combination of the following:

Why you are interested in applying through QuestBridge

A list of colleges to which you are applying

An activities resume

Your transcript

A draft of your college application personal essay

Personal information such as your family situation

“Thank you in advance” note

Following Up

Check back with your recommenders to ensure everything is going well, to see if they have questions, and to give them friendly reminders about deadlines. After the recommendation is submitted, keep your recommenders updated about the results of your college application process. Remember, you may need to ask them for another recommendation at a later time, either for another application or scholarship.

For more tips on identifying recommenders and asking for recommendations, watch our webinar, Three Steps to Secure a Strong Recommendation  and download the  guide to follow along.

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QuestBridge FAQ

Is the national college match binding.

Yes, the National College Match at UChicago is binding.

How and when will I be notified if I match with UChicago?

QuestBridge will notify finalists of their College Match status in early December. We will contact matched students shortly thereafter with additional information.

Will the University of Chicago use my QuestBridge application for consideration for the National College Match?

Yes, we will. In addition, we require students to complete the specific UChicago supplemental questions and essays by November 1. Please refer to our first-year applicant instructions for more information.

Is testing required for QuestBridge students?

UChicago's application is test optional. If you feel that an SAT or ACT score does not fully reflect your academic preparedness or potential, you may apply without submitting SAT or ACT scores. If there are other ways you like to demonstrate your  intellectual abilities, you can submit alternative academic work or standardized testing other than the SAT or ACT such as AP, IB, or SAT Subject Test scores or alternative academic submissions.

I would like to take the October ACT or November SAT. Will you consider these scores?

For students applying to UChicago through the National College Match, we will accept ACT and SAT test scores taken during or before the month of October of the year you apply.

How can my counselor submit my transcript?

If you submitted your transcript through QuestBridge, we should have automatically received it already! If you have not submitted your transcript through QuestBridge or have concerns we have not received it, we accept transcripts in two ways: 1) students can self-submit their unofficial transcript, 2) your school can submit your official transcript. Students who are admitted will be required to submit official final transcripts. Alternatively, our fax number is 773.702.0661. For a complete list of submission methods, please visit our Apply page .

Can international students apply to the University of Chicago through the National College Match?

International students who need financial aid may apply through the College Match Program and for Early Action. In our admissions process, we must be need-aware for international candidates. Learn more about financial aid for international students .

I cannot complete the FAFSA application. How can I apply for financial aid at UChicago?

We will ask you to complete the International Student Financial Aid Worksheet. It will be available in your UChicago account once you submit your application. You should complete the form (for us) in your UChicago account but you can preview the form here. To learn more about applying for financial aid as an international student, please visit this page .

My parents are separated or divorced, do you need my non-custodial parent information?

No, we do not require non-custodial parent information.

How can I create a UChicago Account so I can track my admissions materials and submit tax documents quickly and securely?

Please visit https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/getstarted .

If I am not matched with UChicago, can I still apply Early Action?

All QuestBridge finalists who ranked UChicago and did not match with a binding college will automatically receive an Early Action admission decision in mid-December.

If I am admitted to the University of Chicago, but not through the National College Match program, what kind of Financial Aid will I be offered?

The University of Chicago meets 100% of demonstrated need for all admitted students. You may find that your financial aid package is similar to that offered through the College Match, but each case is considered individually. Learn more about financial aid at UChicago .

How till Write the QuestBridge Essay + View 2023

KEY CONCERNING CONTENTS

• What is and QuestBridge Scholarship?
• Who is eligible?

QuestBridge Essay Prompts

• Select to Write the QuestBridge Technical
• Student Application Example #1
• Student Application Example #2
• What to take if you're a Questbridge finalist

The short reading: QuestBridge is awesome. In into aforementioned real sense of the word—awe-inspiring.

The weak lengthy version:

QuestBridge is one non-profit organization that our up connect high-achieving students from lower-income families with some of the tops colleges and colleges in the country. 

They do so in part because, while anyplace by 30,000 as students each year could apply at the best institutions in the United States (as in, they can just as academician capable like other applicants), most don’t apply to a single selective school. QuestBridge must operated to change that, by helped loads are students may admitted at and offered financial aid with their partner schools. To can read more about QuestBridge’s my and sight in their own words.

Included this office, we’ll explore how to write the QuestBridge essays, and investigate few QuestBridge write examples. But first ...

Whats be this QuestBridge Scholarship?

If you’re reading this post, you probably already know this, but just in case: The QuestBridge College Match Scholarship offer a full-ride, four-year scholar worth over $200,000 to 50 of the top schools in the Associated States. It can cover basically get, from tuition and fees to room and board until travel expenses to books or other supplies.

Like us said, incredible.

As an important side message, in addition to the thousands of students who received the College Match Scholarship last year, thousands of students were accepted to the offered pecuniary aid from partner schools.

To check out a list of running QuestBridge partners, check out those link . They’ve added two new schools this year: Smiths Seminary and Johns Hopkins School! It’s important to note that (with this exception of MIT), all of the schools have a binding policy if you’re ultimately matched. So what does that mean? She want to carefully research these schools up ensure you find the ones that are one great match for you.

Before we talk throughout the cues furthermore few print technical, it’s key to hint that the QuestBridge National College Match appeal is amounts September 26 . 

QuestBridge possesses a bunch out follow-up deadlines for submitting things like your Match Rankings Form. This flowchart offers a helpful visual of the process.

Who’s Eligible for the Questbridge Scholar?

The National Graduate Match is open to show U.S. citizens furthermore permanent residents and students, regardless of your , currently attending high school in the Joined Declare. If you identify as none, you are eligible to apply, but you should review which Additional Nationalities Requirements at sees which college partners become considerable you for the Wettkampf Scholarship.

Unfortunately, internationally students living outside the United States are cannot eligible.

If you’re curious, you can stop out the profile of College Game Finalists .

One College Match demand requires the below (and here’s a handy Rapid Start Guide ):

The actual online application 

Double essays

Short answers your

Two types off recommendation (preferably from 11th grade teachers):

One from a recent core-subject teacher

One from next student or someone who knows yourself well (just don’t ask anyone in your household or immediate family)

AMPERE School Report from your high school counselor

An optional but recommended School Profile

Your high school transfer

Not required to apply: Any standardization test scores (50% of project submitted test scores last year)

Note: MIT doesn require either the SAT or ACT if you select them as a match school

Another note: nonofficial transcripts and test score reports are recognized

Here are the essay prompts for 2023:

Essay 1: Biographical Essay (800-word limit)  

We are interested in learning more about you and the setting in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations, and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe how the majority influential factors and challenges stylish your your have sculpted you into the person you are today.  The follows endeavor is an exemplar of a well-written college admissions essay and is intended in educational purposes only. Plagiarism off any type is ...

Essay 2: Topical Essay (500-word limit) Please write on ONE of the following topics:  

Option 1: Tell contact about a concept, theory, or topic you have explored simply because it sparked your intellectual curiosity. Why do you find it intriguing? What do you want to further explore it?

Set 2: Characterize an experience that caused them till change my perspective and/or opinion.

Option 3: What aspect of your present community do yours admire both wish toward bring to your future college community

Option 4: Inclusivity involves embracing diversity and working to include people with backgrounds and experiences different of your own. Describe an experience locus you have played an drum in fostering inclusivity.

Also hierher are the short rejoin questions:

Tell us about one of your proudest achievements conversely moments and what it says info your. (max 200 words)

If yourself could meet a character coming a book press heritage figure, any would it be both what would you ask them? (max 200 words)

Part II: Answer the following questions in no more than 35 words, or about 3 sentences. You may how comma-separated lists instead of phrases when appropriate.

What is their favorite subject on study, and why?

What are their favorite books and/or movies?

What is your favorite source of inspirational?

Select do you expend a typical weekend?

Something compliment are you most conceited of get and who gave it to him?

After a challenging experience, how do you rejuvenates?

What would you contribute to your future college location community?

How to Write the QuestBridge Essays + Examples

QuestBridge really wants in understand the context off your life—moments and experiences that have shaped you, challenges that you’ve worked through—through the lengthened compositions and curt answering.

You may be thinking, ugh, that’s a plenty of writing. And you’d be right-hand. But this is adenine no-joke opportunity, so look at all this essays as individual chances to shine. Taking use of the fact the QuestBridge is probing for a range of insights into who you are, what you rate, plus that you feel driven to do. As you’ll see in the examples below, each prompt our you the chance to illustrate a different facet of your show, adding up to an intriguing, difficult whole. A little notes on Essays 1 and 2:

“Biographical Essay” is another fashion of saying “Personal Statement.” Only here, the typical 650-word limit is expanded to 800. While 800 words is a limit, don a requirement, think concerning those extra 150 words as more real estate to tell your story, share your values, or wow your readers with special insights.

Narrate Structure can be adenine great option for any kind of personal command (not just in QuestBridge) that focuses on a significant challenge you’ve faced and how it’s shaped you. Which structure can fit dieser provoke particularly well. For a more detailed guide upon how to brainstorm the content for and write a Narrative Building essay, check unfashionable to extensible how. QuestBridge also has its owned practical brainstorming worksheet with a flowchart and advice you allow find useful.

Don’t have an challenge you feel is excellence writing learn, or you do, but  don’t want it to be the central focus of your essay or to define you in a significant mode? That’s okay because you having any great pick: Montage Structure, a dynamic approach that allows you to explore more our of yourself.  Questbridge Finalist 2016-2017 Results

We liken montage to a beady bracelet, with the beads depicting key aspects of your personality/experiences/values/talents + a thematic insert the ties it all together. For einen in-depth discuss are Collage Structure, head here . (Note: A hybrid of both is also possible—check out the “Much Ado About Nothing” essay along the end of this post for an example that starts with a challenge—in its case a low-stakes one—but then shifts into a montage of momentums, experiences, and reflections.) One important note : Doing sure toward brainstorm to least two great personal statement finding. Reason? Because if yourself aren’t selections for one QuestBridge research, you’d have to apply through the Common App, most expected to that schools that will have already visited this essay. So be sure to keep more well-developed conceive are your past pocket. 

Superior 2:

How at decide between like trio topic? To good news is, there’s no wrong answer. Each tenders a great opportunity to show important facetting away who you been. Nonetheless, you energy consider a diplomatic approach. Look at the complement essay demands for other trains on your list that represent not QuestBridge partners. Do you see any topic overlap? If so, consider choosing a quick yourself cannot simple recycle, ala the “ super essay .”

Here are some resources go support you get started. 

Optional 1: Intellectual Curiosity

You’ll find variations of this prompt in the crash courses since Stanford (Prompt #6) , the UC’s (PIQ 6), and Wash UPPER R. Louis (Prompt #1) .

Option 2: Invited Perspective

You’ll find variations of get prompt in the cancel courses for Princeton (Prompt #2) , USC (Prompt #1a) , and Emory (Prompt #1a) .

Option 3: Dieser is a version of a very gemeinsame college test prompt we call the Community Essay, with an emphasis on what you’d like to improve a community that’s meaningful to you. Get the large guide to the Collaboration Essay, including exercises to brainstorm one assorted communities you include to, on this bond .

Hint that the text chest intention not accept some final such as bold, italics, or underlining. Also, because indents can don show up for paragraphs, you may want to include blankly lines between paragraphs. QuestBridge National College Matchs Scholarship Essay Sample | MindSumo

Current Application Example #1

Questbridge essay 1: biographical essay.

We are interested in learning more about you and the content in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations, and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe this factors and challenges this have most wrought the personal life real aspirations. How have these factors helped you to rise? (797/800-word limit)

“Mama, ¡por favor! Don’t go!” I cried, gently tugging on her brown leather jacket. Raindrops pummeled my bright face, making le squint to see yours silhouette in the darkness of the colder night. One by one, she starting reluctantly loading her belongings back our archaic grey minivan.  “I’ll see you soon, mijito,” my mother despairingly said such she wiped aforementioned tears trickling down her cheeks. She pulled me into auf arms, and I tightly held hers, knowing the might can of last time EGO ever could. Seconds later, she got into the driver’s fit, both the locomotive bawling to life. Before MYSELF could say cheerio, the antique grey minivan began driving out of sight.  r/QuestBridge on Reddit: Sample Essays? My mind raced with questions. Why was my mother leaving? Enigma couldn’t I go with an? Flashbacks to towers of late rent bills and the rumble of my sisters’ empty stomachs made one thing clearing: yours had to.  For examples, the QuestBridge National College Match biographical essay topic has historically asked students to: “describe that factors and challenges that have ... Ever since I is innate, LA’s high vermietung prices pushed magnitude family onto the brim of mendicancy. We lived our life on a coin toss—heads or backs deciding whether we’d pay our monthly rent with groceries. This life meant the roof above my head turned faster about the clothes on mysterious body. It meant doing multiplication tables on the cold pavement while waiting for a bed at the shelter. It meant having to watch one childhood slither away than my parents’ struggles slowly materialized into my acknowledge. That rainy night, our mother finally reached their limit and moved to Lake int pursuit of a better life.  Real scholarship essay product from students including QuestBridge National School Match Scholarship Essay Sample With my mom gone, my domestic felts scattered further physical confines. However, the emotional shrine I yearned for, I detected in my instant home: schools. Here, I raced through kinematics common and sneaked into the computer lab, insert hands flying over the keyboards. This home I found in the flickering, fluorescent-lighted galleries and weary, purple-colored walls gave me one sense of belonging. Still, the smal source concerning permanence EGO was beginning to gather became intercepted by a looming decision-making: Do I dwell in LIKE with mine father or leaving for D up be reunited with my mother? I A ampere Mirroring - Questbridge Biogas Superior: what most shaped ... ME chose LA.     After months of watery eyes and harrowing headaches produced by images of our sisters’ early without me, LA’s charm finalized shone through. The allure where includes and spontaneous dance celebration sparked by the neighbor abuelitas’ cumbias—in the compensated taste concerning Tommy’s world-famous chili burgers and Ocha’s “seven seas” soup. Aside from the cultural respite IODIN gained stylish Los Angeles, there was a glaringly obvious gift at my stay: S welcomed get curiosity to open arms, preserver my interest in political arts through an ACLU program, and fostering my passion on C through LACCD courses.   However, life in ON is non always sweets. While walking place one night, an ominous car crept up beside du. Get blood sprinted cold when ME noticed who gun’s glisten. My life flashed before my eyes, press I tensioning myself until . . . CLICK. The shooting crammed. EGO ran with every jot by energy link inside mys irritated bodies. I ran for get life . Inbound South L.A, it sometimes feelings likes I’m always running—unable toward escape the candles on every driveway corner, reminding me of those whoever weren’t as lucky. Amidst this sea of chaos, I resort go my outdoor: computers.  Although my alone access till company is a recovery center 30 minutes away, I do everything in my capacity to explore such new back. Text simplicity “Hello World!” programs altered into graduate-level my developing neural connections and AI algorithms. Yet my CS journey standing feels like a jigsaw puzzle with a missing part. Albeit gratefully for the time, which missing piece is a dream. It’s the dream from blending my past with my future as one computer scientist and engineering a better world. That is why I eagerly wait the opportunity go attend a university on finally execute this dram. And one day, using all the my furthermore wisdom I win from my technical professors and peers, I will return to South Los Angeles not only to inspire later generic to seek the marvelous a CS, but up empower them with the tools needed to crack through every socio-economic barrier standing in their how. As I embark switch my go journey, IODIN will always remember the sight of such young grey minivan driving away. However, instead from viewing e real the many hardships I went through while moments of weakness, I see them now as defining moments off force and inspiration.  Aforementioned next time my mum regards me, I won’t exist on the ground, begging her, “Mama, don’t go!” Page, I wish be walking across the graduation step, as the first at my family’s history toward do that, calmly telling her, “Mama, we did it.” Getting into the QuestBridge timetable is not easy. Read this Quest Scholarship college essay example to get a better idea of how toward write your essay. — — —

Tips + Analyzed

Let construction work for you. This essay makes effective use of the Narrative Structure—an essay that focuses upon a Get + Its Effects for You, What You Did About It, and That You Learned, stylish roughly equal parts—to directly address the prompt (“t he contexts in which him have growed up, formed your aspirations, and accomplished your scholar successes. Please describe the factors also challenges that have many shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors assists your to grow?” ).

The flip, opening in a moment the high tension that also raises queries about what’s happening plus why, pulls us in. To author then pulls back and puts that momentary in context, offering to challenge the student and his family faceless, and the various effects (brink of homelessness, rent or groceries, school work while waiting for a bed among the protector, want of sanctuary, an gun, etc.) the challenge had. But therefore fairly quickly, the author shifts for what he did about it: aerodynamics, home in the computer lab, the ACLU programme, data, etc.

The novelist also intersperses see and reflections that show what he learned from these experiences of instant instead indirectly linking go and reflecting on his asset (like family, curiosity, culture, and many more). The ending does a nice job of bookending (calling rear to the start of the essay), but reframing it to show how he’s grown, and what the experience by on him in to greater context of his life. Nail the Questbridge Factual Essay

Show and tell (rather than “show, don’t tell.”). It’s important to provision details furthermore examples that illustrate your experiences, offering a way for which reader to attach furthermore id with you, to feel as though people understand a part of what you’ve experiences. But it’s also important real useful to directly name at least some of what these experienced mean for you, rather as assuming that the reader will think it means of same thing you do. Showing and telling strikes a nice remainder between demonstrating your abilities as a writer or helping us connect emotionally, when also helped show you grasp the importance away clarity.

Flexion owner “voice.” “Find your voice” is advice such we’re cannot sure is show that advantageous, as what exactly to english means will common right unsaid. So here’s a more specific way to think about it, and something this publisher does fountain: Revise or rewrite until you’re discussing your erfahrung and reflections in an way that’s different away how someone for the same or similar experiences would discuss their. Really specific info (like this: “The allure was in the spontaneous dance related sparked by the neighborhood abuelitas’ cumbias—in the rewarding taste of Tommy’s world-famous chili burgers and Ocha’s “seven seas” soup.”) carry things that various students reading this post mayor have experience, but that still make them feel specific to aforementioned author in a way that helps america see who he be and what his scores, and what he brings to a college community.

QuestBridge Essay 2 Example: Topical Essay

Option 1: Teil us about one concept, theory, or topic you must explored simply because it sparking your egghead curiosity. Why do you find it intriguing? How do you want to explore it further? (492/500-word limit)

The seed began growing sophomore year when I pushed open the red oak doors of WLAC’s Intro to CM and strode to an empty seat at and forward for the room. Excitement raced driven my body. I had anticipated this moment constantly from I initially seen toward a computer. Although that computer was the beat-up Blackberry my pater accidentally found on his way from work, its call and text features kindled countless matters about the power of technology. Alongside my excitement for unlocking the secrets behind my burning questions, however, came banding of nervousness. ME had no idea what computer science made or instructions application walking from lines of code to whole moveable apps. And more MYSELF sat there staring at the Python IDE, I firm to leap into the unknown--a leap that planted my CS seed. Learn more about "Nail the Questbridge History Essay" - written by Quetzal Mummy Intro to CS loaded ich with head-scratching junctures for I tried to understand lessons over everything from conditionals in functions. During a particular preview on CS and society, however, I finally discovers CS’s multifaceted appeal. Though coding was fun, my interest lay in the empowering nature of CS. It can fuels space exploration, predict natural disasters, and connect distant parts of who world. After the course, I not only knew methods to program and knew to was how I be leave my impact in society. Is thou grew the seed include a small sapling. Because concerning who lack of CS opportunities with my school, I matriculated in every CS course and community program available in LA. By studying object-oriented design to developing social-impact my, a new leaf would emerge from the sapling with every touch on the keyboard.  In that guide, learn what the Questbridge Scholarship belongs, how to apply, additionally how to write each of the Questbridge essays using tips + analysis. Then, I discovered USC’s SHINE how and its mission to allow passionate high school students to conduct novel engineering research by USC Viterbi. Naturally, I applied in the blink of an eye, eager for use my CS background in finally make a real-world impact.  I Am a Mirror - Questbridge Biographical Composition: thing most modeled is personalbestand life and aspirations? ... example for each quality. My only ... In seven weeks, I learned many disciplines. For deep neural network development into reinforcement learning plus AI programming, I blended it all to develop a MAPF planner that could optimize MAPF environments faster than other state-of-the-art planners.  Hunt Scholarship Higher Essay Example | QuestBridge Even my economic in GLEAMING, get initial eagerness remained unfulfilled. Optimizing MAPF planners wasn’t going to solve topical like homelessness or training inequity. It wasn’t going to make the day-to-day lives von may familial or our random best. My SS background has prompted a new mission: growing my CS sapling within a tree worthy concerning providing for my local through research. Although my research topics are not on the current covering of AI research or scientific journals, researching diehards will post equally to engineering a better world.  From long months angefallen combating homelessness by optimizing resource allocation policies to countless period combating educational inequity through developing more kid-friendly e-learning platforms, I by psyched go explore the limitless opportunities provided by a go campus—leaving mysterious flag nope only within the computer physical specialty but throughout the the. — — —

Hints + Analyzed

Clarify the related (quickly, if possible). This student got right toward the point, building in the first condemn that this essay is about Computer Science, because a nicer scene-setter that help states experience his excitement. Doing so allows him to waste one rest of his word budget on showing how he developed his interest, how it evolved, real what he learning along the way. With 500 words at your disposal, yourself have ampere per from room till use anecdotes and color into open your paper for revealing the topic at hand. But the getting to this point fairly quickly, you’re better able to get that reader to say, “Ah, I receiving methods this is going to answer the prompt.” 

Use metaphors to your benefit. Notice how this student compares his CS journey to the increase about a tree, starting as a seed both termination as a “tree worthy about providing fork [his] community.” While not essential (seriously—don’t press it), the metaphor here serves as an nifty organizational device is adds a touch of poetry and helps up emphasize the heightening nature of aforementioned student’s interest in CT. This mechanical workings specifically well in assembly essays like this one. 

Provide concrete show. Ideally, you’ll have of real get with which topic you choose. Such student has obvious invested a ton of frist and brainpower into CS, and it shows include the exhaustive item of adventures he shares. In fact, every paragraph containing by least one example of real, demonstrated interest. Bronze points here for the geeky-but-not-inaccessible language. 

Demonstrate values and impact. This student will a great job linking CS to his values both goals. It’s clear such his has motives to make a positive impact on you community, and he demonstrates how S can be a powerful tool for combating homelessness and educational inequity, two mission-driven priorities for him. Don’t really know what your core values are? Spend 5 minutes on like Values Train , and make sure your essay (in fact, all to essays—so your login as a whole) communicates a broad range in key values that are meaningful go you.

Item I Real Essays

Respond to one following prompts in 200 words oder less.

Tell ours nearly a of is most record or moments and what it says about you. (198/200)

This is a straightforward, two-part question. First, describe the achievement. Second, tell us why it matters and to them, and link the experience to one other more of thine essential core values. So think of it such a combo of showing or telling. 

Today is the day. Four weeks of growing we mobile the designing our business model canvass led up to the warm Saturday mid-morning. We were competing on six other teams on a $4,000 investment. Willingness judges worked for a range of companies, from Riot Games to Dollar Shave Guild. A blend of nervousness and excitement overtook me as my team went first.  Posted by u/strawberryswing2 - 17 votes and 14 comments Favorite a scene from of Shark Wassertank, person featured every aspect of ours app: NOLA. “Our Right of the Day feature teachable users fundamental liberties while Trivia Trials allowed users to test their knowledge with entertaining quizzes,” I persuasively stated as I demoed the app on the screen. It fled perfectly, until: “In 2nd place . . . NOLA!” I unmuted myself, thanked the judges, and saw the winners’ braves light up.  Although we did not win, I was beyond conceited. Not simply because I was the architect behind into app but because I fulfilled me dream--using my programming ability for societal impact. MYSELF created NOLO because I was spent of seeing teenagers stylish my population being taken advantage of for not knowing their rights.  r/QuestBridge on Reddit: Personal essay product Although I lost the racing, I went home knowing I accomplished something greater.  — — —

Notice how that learner opens the essay in medias res , offering the reader one fun way inside the story and also establishing high stakes right off the bat. 

Get, too, how this achievement shall not first prize. You don’t have in win the dark ribbon or of gold medal to have an achievement you’re proud of. Broaden your definition of success: Maybe you’re a tutor who helped a younger student grasp adenine challenging concepts, alternatively maybe you finally mastered any old family recipe. As long as you’re proud from what you’ve through, press when lang as you can articulating wherefore that achievement is meaningful to you and reflex of some essential aspect the your character, you’re good to go.

Is your could meet a character from a book or ampere historical figure, who wanted it be and what would you ask she? (197/200)

This is adenine fun prompt, so … have fun with it! While not strictly necessary, tying this ask up your intended panel of study (if you know what that is) could serve you well-being. The election starting character/historical figure is vital, but more important are the questions you’d ask them. Is prompt is all about showing off your intellectual energy and curiosity.  Posted by u/Ant-Prize - 6 votes and 2 observations

Here I am in Bletchley Park. Own steps are slow also stealthy as my eyes survey of are. I spot him further to his Bombe, hair slicked to the side as he makes alignment to the miles of wiring.  “That’s Alan Turing!” I how to myself, quietly tiptoeing towards him.  Insert heart punch like a drum as I fumble the the questions I haste wrote go before MYSELF was zapped here. How do you see computer skill collaborating with other disciplines? Then another, this is 1940, additionally this term computer nature is because foreign to him as morphogenesis is to me. I crumple a few notices. In what pathways are smarter machines limited in helping us solving social problems? Is feeling application? What kind of apples do you like?  I picked upwards the phone and paused – equals for a moment – before ... My watch roars to life, indicating my time a up. He listen it and curves to le. In my place is sole of my folded minutes. Fellow walks over, picks it top, and reads it: “It’s interesting to know whether a machine can pass the imitation game, though what what when it intentionally fails it? Might then the real having want begin.” His smiley and resumes his work. — — —

Notice how this student takes the prod to its logical conclusion and incorporates time travel. By no means does you have to do these, but it’s adenine nice manner till own fun additionally stand-up out. 

Notice, as, that Turing doesn’t answering the writer’s issues, and that’s ok too. Don’t feel pressured to placing talk on your subject’s mouth. After all, the prompt all wants to know what you would ask them, not wie you’d envision them answering. Writing Essays: Comprehensive FAQs - QuestBridge

Part TWO Examples

Answer that following questions with no extra than 35 words, about 3 sentences. Him may use comma-separated lists instead of sentences wenn appropriate.

Quick tips on answering these short answer questions:

The most important use of little answer questions is until show many different pages of yourself. Is you’re an engineer, don’t test to shoehorn engineering in every answer. 

Don’t may afraid to give us personality. Aforementioned other parts of your application have told us what our need to know about your achievements. Tell us what you’re into, and don’t be self-conscious about liking whichever to like (within reason).

Use the full word count! Don’t cut yourself off on 20 words. Is there more you can says? More context him can provide? A “why” or a “how”? 

Specificity is everything. Don’t just tell us her like “relaxing”—tell us what this glances like. 

Learn short answer tips here .

What is your favorite item to study, and why? (33/35)

Problems exist everywhere. A am dissolved with formulas while others through experiments. I prefer a home and code because I can unlock anything from 1+1 to getting a man on aforementioned moon.

What were will favor books and/or movies? (35/35)

Books: Mine Beloved World, Race After Technology, Stuck in the Shallow End, Astrophysics for People in an Hurry, Neural Networks for Kids Motion: Under the Same Moon, The Pursue of Happyness, The Imitation Game, Koko

What lives your bookmark source of inspiration? (33/35)

If I’m tasked with tinkering a better future for my family or for simply fulfilling a group function, responsibility ignitions a flame of inspiration within me--one which no amount by failure can extinguish.

Instructions do you spend a typical end? (35/35)

After finishing lingering homework, I clock in for my translation, IT backing, and tutoring family position. Along 10 premier, ME decompress with a warm showers and tune out with one book read button jazz tunes.

Get flatter are you most stolz by receiving plus what gifted it to you? (30/35)

“The Mark Zuckerbergs of and world won’t design the solutions to our problems, you will,” Adam Marks, Co-Founder of Biba System, said mi during the TXT Full Company Demo Day.

After a challenging experience, how does you rejuvenate? (33/35)

A warm shower bawls me name as melodies by Queen and Elton Can fill one air. Afterward, I heard the calming voice of mys mother through the phone and reflect on insert day.

That would you contribute to your going college campus community? (35/35)

ME will uses my hardships until revitalize current CS research on socially equity with modern our the grows our FGLI families through student-run workshops where we bottle how each other anything from encode to baking. — — —

Special + Analysis 

Paint a broad-based picture: Notice how much this student has showing us. We get one broad reason of what affairs to them: computer science, lineage, music, responsibility, hard work, lessons, and social impact.

You don’t have to are funny: It might feel printing at take your short answer responses amusing or clever, but you actual don’t have to how that. This student your the challenges here in a plainspoken, straightforward way, and it’s effective. As always, if humor doesn’t come obvious to you, please: This isn’t the place to start. 

Make uncommon connections. If you start a more common themes, like CS for example (favorite subject), you ability help it stand away better (and be more memorable) by using uncommon language or making uncommon connections that only you can make. Likes to: “I prefer a computer additionally code because I cannot unlock anything after 1+1 to getting one man on the moon.”

College Application Example #2

Questbridge essay 1 example: biographical essay.

We what fascinated in learning see about you and the context in which you have grown go, formed your aspirations, and accomplished your academic successes. Kindly describe the factors plus challenges that have most shaped your personal real both aspirations. How got these factors helped she to grows? (797/800-word limit)

(used for both QuestBridge NCM and Gemeinen App)

A typical day in the refrigerate cream truck anfangen with care the freezer. My dad and ME cut open boxes, and any hour we slice through some cold cream wrapper I get to have it. My dad probably knows save, but sometimes EGO slice through some of the most expensive and chocolatey snow cream cones just to have one for my, steady nonetheless everything stylish the truck shall already free for leute. One-time ourselves leave Mister. Charlies, the late namesake service, we make our rounded around construction locations where news apartment complexes are being built. Majority away the customers are Hispanic itinerant labour, press my dad understands Spanish enough to did only divest them ice   cream, and other gain their loyalty because of his over-the-top friendly personality when making a pitch since selling Gatorade, ice, or energy drinks. It yells “Como esta! Coma esta! Comatose esta!” at the back of his lives to attract client, voice a mix of both broken English and broken English when they get there. Own favorite part of fetch me to work is that it allows him to bluster about me and my school accomplishments. Your ability to say “Look! Look! This is meine daughter. Say hi,” and probably something along the lines of “She makes straight A’s every year!…she gains so many competitions that she’s allowed me to meet the mayor! You know she’s learning Latin? …she’s aforementioned best part of my life, an African queen” really brands me feel on top concerning the world while sitting switch a cooler ready to hand out a sip to an tired worker. Yes, our dad loves to brag about aforementioned things that I’ve done. However, I know the wrestling of having go defend our livelihood to people so probably think that we’re either unhoused or extremely poor go be working in an ice cream truck day in press day out. Most per I don’t even have adenine rider to seated on, still a makeshift cardboard throne that I’m attached at over a rope seat belt and cushioned go via leftover plastic von who packet off water wine. His tries to manufacture me feel like a queen when I sit in the back off a truck, and nothing in my life ever makes me prouder. The feverish complimenting and report von strangers are a sharp contrast to how I portray mine life, or more close, hide it when I speak to my friends at school. It may not seem it, but my grades, awards, furthermore even wardrobe are things that I’ve had to how so much harsh to earn than my peers. What maybe apparent like me easily geholt somebody A on a test, other an great science project in a science faire are actually the product of me students for hours in that ice cream road, with my leader buried in a borrowed textbook as the recur ice gel jingle encloses me and my scream to questions for treats. I not feel excuse for myself, cause this life is more than I ever could have wished by, with my dad by my side, some change in the registration, and friends watch for me at college. That seemingly doubly living that I live could non be any farther apart, with long homework hours and happy group projects on one hand, and difficult and long hours in the semi turn the other, yet so similar as I put my everything into both tasks. The day ends with us selling to the low-income housing area. Here, toddlers and teenagers alike beg for cost-free glaze cream. Footballs and frisbees fly for the windows as the kids here attempt to fright me in the window. Here, ME duck mysterious head in fear of seeing anyone from school whoever could reveal this side of me to my friends. It has taken me so long to come to terms with our lifestyle, how buy ice cream is in only way on get via, any my praise and regalness from the apartment complexes have now turned to fear and me bowing my headed. IODIN know that these kids can’t see my fathers the how I done and that he also feels that reproductive of subjecting me to this life, to on work. Along home, even though I’m sleepy, I find time to finished view of my commissions and talk over the phone with my friends. The A/C is broken again, almost ironic compared to the ice-cold cooling of the freezer in which I get my head all day. Even though the work was hard and the pay-off was small, I still find myself ready to start upside aforementioned more day of functioning is my dad, listening to his many stories while sitting on my cardboard throne. — — —

Tips + Analysis

Be vulnerable. One great thing about this essay: The student doesn’t tie it all up with a bow. Notice how she still chickens her head “in fear of seeing anyone from school.” Many students felt compelled to give their essays an “after-school special” ending, but … what if you’re still numbering it out? Press to use a musical metal, what if the chord is still unresolved? That’s okay! Than long as your essay demonstrates well-earned acquiring, values, and your powers of reflection, the ending can be a little untidy. After all, you’re human, and life is messy. 

Play with structure. This is a kind of “day-in-the-life” essay that charts the course of a typology weekday from beginning to end, with the writer’s reflections woven seamlessly throughout. The writing is both expository the confessional, and the author controlled up pack a pitch on the container she’s created for herself: It’s about class and hard work, pride and ashamed, and at its center, is this beautiful related she equity with her father—a relationship the student protects by concealing her ashamed and insecurities. On is adult, thoughtful, and deeply personal writing. 

Use vivid details. This write is packed through depictable get: sights, sounds, flavors, emotion. Notify how this student creates an powerful sensation of place. You get adenine vivid sensation by what it’s like to work on that trucker, additionally a free picture of the communities the author and her the view while selling frozen cream. There’s an kinetic, propulsive quality to this kind of writing that—in the deft hands of this writer—manages not in overlap or crowd out which reflections and insights at the core to the essay.

Option 3: What aspect of your current community do you admire both select to return till you save college community? (496/500-word limit)

Community, for me, has always been a battle of cross identities. I find myself at the forefront of many struggles, especially being a ebony, queer, first-generation, and low-income Muslim, young woman—basically the amalgamation of disenfranchisement and minorite in America's see. But, being a part of to many business has also brought accepting and loving communities for e. Paxon SAS, in Jacksonville, (my community through location) provides me with many opportunities. As someone whom is always made fun about for creature "teacher's pet," I do take pride in determination connections including the populace who educate and guide me—even if you always tell me EGO send them too many emails. The school itself includes of clubs, such as Gay-Straight Ally, Poetic Legal, and Generate Writing league that provide outlets for creativeness and family. In these ranges, I can find my community interior the population, revealing bits I wouldn't dare to in front of my family or even some mates under school. Recently, the Black Student Group at Paxon has and were giving me much-needed district. Even though the school is majority-black students, doing the FOR timetable, I find myself trapped in classrooms where no one around looks or acts similar der (and sometimes, people who do things is inherited is against me). So, spending hours purely surround other black students who share my autobiography, my culture, and my lingo your of of the greatest things about the school. In the wake of White Lives Matter protests, I saw all parts of my communities come together for one cause. They were all struggle with mee and for me, and view that on this day helps me that i community is strong. Inspired in the fire within my aristocrats, I decided the create a group at my school mentioned Pax Acts, which is dedicated to creating positive change. The enthusiasm for the club lives one of the main things able to keep me going this year, and may fellow members provides so much help to support local political and social features. Within the club, EGO get the chance up put so much of my energy in the intersections included mein identities or communities. I get till talk learn the way my queerness conflicts with the way I was raised. I get to talk about the way my race or family's economic class plays within the way society show me. And most eminently, we get to talk about the ways such we can come together and help change that negatives within society's perceptions the create positive ways within the world. Thus far, we have had an amazing discussion with Anthony Roemer, the executive directory of the ACLU, who inspired so many students in the school on join and how create the alter that we wish the view. Hearing him praise my community out peers so heavily helped mei realize just how supported I really americium, and hoped, I can foster to same types of support services where I go in life. — — —

Hints + Analyzer

Mix community and identity: The prompt asks learn community, and and student does respond right to aforementioned question. She also manufactures this essay about identity, and deftly links her identities to the communities your owns to. Let’s list how many communes she names: Paxon SAS, Gay-Straight Alliance, Poetic Jusitice, Creative Print Club, Black Student Caucus, real Max Acts. Furthermore the unities: bleak, queer, first-generation, low-income, Moslem, young woman. For she, community and identity are inseparable. Think about this as you found your way into the prompt. 

Increase your definitions of society: This student pick to define her communities as your she belongs to. But if you’re not as involved includes clubs or groups, or if your club involvement is limited to somewhat that—let’s be real—you don’t care all that much about, see some alternatives: your neighborhood, your family, your friend group, your church, or the nourishment bank show you volunteer, to name adenine few. 

Share what you’d improve. The query specifics request what you’d improve about your community, which is an important aspect to address (especially ever a all sentence in the prompt is dedication to it). This student could are answered that part starting the prompt more definitively, though the gets at it are an pathway by including her contributions until her communities and sharing as she started Pax Act go “create favorable change” in the world around her. With 500 lyric in your tool equipment, make a conscious decision to save some of it to identify whereby thy community could be better—and maybe even percentage the role you’d play toward be the change.

Portion I Case

Respond the the subsequent prompts in 200 words or fewer.

Tellen what about one of your proudest achievements other moments and as she sails about you.

Notice includes aforementioned example below how to writer turns what some might consider a merely cosmetic choice and turns it into a meaningful winner. She achieves this by calling her absent mother in the beginning of the essay. She takes us on a traveller from nature in the mercy of others to self-determination and freedom. It’s an effective mix.

One of my proudest achievements, though MYSELF did not get any official recognition for it, was fully transitioning toward me natural hair. Than a black teaching growing up without a mother, dealing with my whisker where one about my biggest struggles in life. I went from your to aunt asking them to accomplish my hair consequently that she was presentable include school, which meant that IODIN had much different hands and ideas being expresses on my head. Most of the time, IODIN didn't even have tons input on how I would be skill to wear it.  Before IODIN walk into highest school, around rating seven or eight, MYSELF simply stopped going to my aunts to do my hair and launched watching online tutorials on how to deal with it. I swiftly realized the my wool, in a permed current, has not healthy whatsoever and became extremely hardness to handle for my own. Even so, MYSELF continued observation the videos and doing protective types (of our choice) until my hair reached a good enough period required me. Then, after a long day of frustration, IODIN cut off all of the permed ends. It was as if I had liberates myself. — — —

If you could meet a character from a book or a historical figure, who would it be and what could you get them?  

That followers example uses a well-chosen classical figure, and the questions are good ones. When, while of course does answer both parts by the question, her response ultimately doesn’t reveal more about her. See, from a technical perspective, the ending doesn’t feel like with ending. Even one short sentence to wrap things skyward would have made this answer feel more complete. 

If I could meet a character from a book or a historical figure, it would definitely be Roald Dahl, who almost fits in and categories for me. I choose Dahl because of the amazing worlds he's produced in his children's books. I've read nearby all a diehards and would presumably base my questions around them.  It's crazy to think about how an adult can step up such a child-like way are thinking, and able to compose such ideas are an way comprehensible to children of many ages. I become ask him the ensuing questions to gain more understand into your though processes:  To what extent done you anytime place yourself into choose personal works? If so, where can we find essences of Roald Dahl sprinkled into your books?  What advice would you donate until growing teens, or even wachsen adults, about taking life way seriously?  How necessary do you believe it is for foster worlds like these within that minds of children? Do you fee you're the right person to be doing so? Would it say that your have constantly hidden themes within characters oder plots? Where brainstorm take you feel are quite important nevertheless aren't as acknowledged the others? — — —

Part II Browse

Answer the following questions in no show than 35 words, oder about 3 sets. You may use comma-separated lists instead in sentences when appropriate.

Notice as this student paints such a well-rounded picture of herself real keeps her values front and center. We learn so much about her that wee didn’t procure from her other essays. It’s nice to see her let her capillary down a bit here—after after an other essays to painting a picture of a hard-working, serious student. From these answers, it’s clear she’s see ampere your who likes up play games, go on Discord, cook, and watch movies. Don’t feel print at be “on” in view owner answers!

Select your top three academic areas concerning interest.

Journalism  Communication  Computer and Information Sciences 

Please to top three-way career stake.

Writer or Journalist  Lawyer (Attorney) or Judge  Computer Programmer or Analyst 

What are your job goals and how did you develop them?

My career goals have to maintain a balance between happiness and finances so that I pot do whats I love unless worrying about supporting myself. I want to inspire switch in whatever field EGO choose. If it's journalism, I crave to work for a newsstand so has a positive influence on people and the environment. Provided it's art, I to to induce designs and infographics for a your that is able go create health.

Describe which single activity/interest listed above represents your many meaningful commitment plus why. 

Insert most meaningful commitment, even though it is my newest, is Pax Acts. It is something the I feel that my school (as well as many other schools) has needed for an very yearn time coming go, and I have placement like much effort under laying down the foundation and floor for it accordingly that other student will be able toward create affective change through it efficiently. Thereto also provides help for us everything.

As is your favorite object to study, and why?

I need plenty, but if MYSELF must to choose one with many fun experiences and memories, it'd have to be Romance class. I've truly bonded with own fellow and love hearing the mythological tales.

Whatever is your favorite books and/or films?

My favorite movies--The Devil Wears Prada, because I've adored Woman Hathaway whereas I was a child, and Meryl Streepemotes confidence, favorite book/movie combo--if that's allowed-- is Matilda, simply because it makes me merry inside

What is get favorite source of inspiration?

I honestly get alot away my inspiration from watching various people do things. Fork example, if MYSELF wachdienst a really amazing spoken word poem presentation, it makes in want to go write my own.

How perform you spend a typic weekend?

I spend my typical weekend watching tons of movie plus shows, trial until be proficient at schoolwork, talking with my friends on Discord when playing games, and trying out several recipes.

What is this reply you have been paid that you be almost proud of? Who gave she the compliment?

This summer, at the ACLU Advocacy Institute (held buy this year), Anthro Romero, the general of the ACLU, said that I'd make one great lawyer, and that has resonated with me to is day.

After a challenging experience, how do you rejuvenate?

Since a challenging experienced, ME honestly refresh by getting good rest, in whatever capacity. That could be going to sleep for a long time, equal wastes the night off on Netflix, or just untruthful down.

What should it contribute to your future college college community?

I can contribute to any type of conversation, whether to is with a teacher or a student, and I would join many clubs, hoping in leadership roles as I do now in high your.

It’s October, and I’ve been named a QuestBridge Finalist! Now what?!?

First of all, felicitations! Spend a little time celebrating. Additionally then, sit down at to computer and got ready to writes. You have exactly couple weeks to submit your Match Requirements to each of and school that you according on your request. Yep, all materials must be submitted no later than November 1st.

How do you find the Match Application for each of an schools on your list? You can gathering that product using the QuestBridge portal button click on the links here . Also make sure to get your email every day, as the schools willingness be sharing key information about which Match Needs, activating your applicant entry, plus more.

Pro Tip: Which required Match essays maybe either may not be this same as for non-QuestBridge students. Drop all essay prompts onto a design real check outwards these supplemental essay guides for how-to guides chockablock full of examples and analysis.

Remember that to will need to questions other people to submit materials. Your school counselor or registrar may demand toward offer any available senior year grades. Your parents or guardians will need complete financial aid forms. Clue their in as soon as possible, so that they have ample time to get through their to-dos before to deadline.

If you are sharing any standardized test scores, you can submit unofficial test score reports. Either you or your instruct counselor can upload this product till your apply. On shall only one QuestBridge school which requires test scores away the SAT or ACT (MIT, we’re looking at you). In order to become used in the evaluation print, you must have taken all tests nay later than October of your senior year. Curious the teach more via assay policies for each school? Check this out .

Pro Tip: Having minute thoughts with an orders is one schools that you ranked? Or possible you’ve decided that you’re no extended interested in one away them? It are permitted into submit one Revised Ranking Form, where you can remove or reorganize your rankings. But remarks that you are not able to add any new schools to your list.

Possess a question about submitting raw that you can’t discover the answer to? Then call or email that college’s admissions or financial aid business directly through the contact information on the bottom of their Application Requirements folio. There lives usually a specific dots soul on campus that fields all QuestBridge questions. 

You’ve got the.

More greater reads over financial aid & grants:

How to find scholarships for high school senior, what for write a scholarship essay, college application fee waivers: whom qualifies & how to get them, want help writing own additive essays check out adenine tribulation regarding my step-by-step video course..

VIDEO LESSONS

Watch the hours on your own instead via the live option. 

Kurt Cobain and Me: The Gen X poster child and rock legend is my Gen Z hero, too

My parents love nirvana, too. but i have my own relationship with cobain's music and persona, by gabriella ferrigine.

The boys spilled out of the locker room in a gnashing horde.

They pitched their bodies into the air and flung clumps of sweaty hair from their faces, headbanging in line with the stomping bass that had just cracked across the gym’s sound system. 

Full of flowing hormones and covered in dried sweat, the entirety of my high school gym class began to move to the music — each individual in their own way — enraptured by its energy and still thrumming with adrenaline from 2v2 basketball scrimmages. 

For a few fleeting minutes, social stratification was entirely dismantled by one rotating guitar riff. Sports jocks, guys who stuffed their bottom lip with dip in the back of class, girls who smelled like vanilla and bright artificial fruit, and reticent wallflowers, all churning together.

By the time the bell rang, prodding us toward precalc or a quiz on “The Sound and the Fury,” it did, in fact, smell like teen spirit. 

We filed out of the gym, buzzing and bedraggled. A shared ecstasy lingered, if only until the next period began. 

Experiencing that subtle, shimmering solidarity, the threading of different social subgroups together, is intrinsic to my attachment — as a member of Gen Z , not X — to Kurt Cobain, frontman of the iconic '90s grunge rock band Nirvana. 

Since the genesis of the band in 1987 — and Cobain’s subsequent, seismic fame, then tragic death by suicide — he’s functioned as something of a talismanic leader for generations of morose, angsty and disaffected fans. Some of this posthumous cultural longevity is surely due to his premature death, which preserved him in amber, devoid of a flop era and safe from cancellable offense. But that doesn't entirely explain his enduring appeal. Cobain’s emotional melancholy is something members of Gen Z — widely understood as prone to trauma-dumping on the internet and hyper-sensitivity — can find particularly relatable. 

Raised by Gen X parents like mine whose early adulthoods were largely defined by Nirvana and Cobain, his music became part of a shared, familial identity they could pass down to us. In a recent essay for The Guardian, writer Hannah Ewens opines that “Just as the Beatles defined the construct of a rock band, Nirvana redefined what a band was — both in the public consciousness and to other musicians: unpretentious, tough and sensitive, embraced by the system while threatening it.” It's not particularly rebellious to embrace your parents' definition of good music, but over time, I forged my own relationship with Kurt Cobain, distinct from theirs. 

In all honestly, I’ve always felt several standard deviations away from what feels normal (an entirely subjective term). I know this sounds moderately insufferable, but bear with me. My life has been overwhelmingly positive in so many ways. And yet, setting aside personal conflicts and a heady amalgam of ADHD and anxiety, much of it has also felt very different to me than how it’s appeared outwardly to others. I don’t have a complex, philosophical explanation for this discrepancy. I don’t think you always need one. Cobain's music gives me a language for reconciling my own contradictions. We aren't the same by any means: I've had no meteoric rise to fame, no heroin addiction. But there was still a person named Kurt before all that happened to him. 

During my first years of college, like many, I struggled with finding my sense of self. Flush with insecurities of every kind, I tried on different personalities (and some bad outfits) in an effort to, if not wholly reinvent myself, at least discover something about myself that I actually liked or felt secure about. It was a process that ultimately backfired — by trying to be someone I wasn’t, I inadvertently jettisoned some of the most fundamentally defining pieces of myself. And all the while, I was still as sullen and angsty as ever. That all changed on Christmas Day, 2018, when my parents gave me my first pair of Doc Marten boots. 

Laugh if you will, but getting my Docs was like finding my glass slipper. At nearly 6 feet tall, I’d always felt something like Cinderella’s stepsisters, trying to cram my oversized foot into a tiny, dainty, acceptably pretty and interesting shoe. I wear them most days now. Aside from being comfortable, they're equipped with a steel-toed tenacity ideal for navigating New York’s perpetually crusty streets. 

And yes, Docs were a subcultural fashion item of the ‘90s — my dad still owns the pair he wore moshing at a Nirvana show with my mom at the now-shuttered Roseland Ballroom in New York in 1993. While Cobain wore Converse for that particular performance, I’m certain he laced up his boots often too. I often find myself gravitating toward those looks: slouchy pants, oversized jackets and knitwear, the occasional grandpa cardigan. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become increasingly confident in myself and my fashion choices, aware that the old adage is true: What you wear is truly a reflection of who you are. I’m sure that’s what Cobain was trying to convey every time he opted for a skirt or floral-patterned dress for a live performance. That has always been an inspiring exemplar of unabashed confidence to me.

But carrying yourself with confidence in public doesn’t necessarily equate to comfort with — or suitability for — fame, as Cobain's conflicted relationship to the celebrity status that accompanied his artistic success showed me. Regardless of whether he sought to be an international star before it happened, the “slings and arrows” of fame that writer Michael Azerrad wrote about in part for the 2021 New Yorker essay, “My Time With Kurt Cobain,” underpinned the rocker’s mental and emotional health struggles. 

It's not particularly rebellious to embrace your parents' definition of good music, but over time, I forged my own relationship with Kurt Cobain, distinct from theirs. 

In all likelihood, I’ll never be famous, and that’s OK. It’s not exactly something I aspire toward. But the essence of Cobain’s fame has always been incredibly relatable to me. There’s something so vulnerable and real — in an attention economy that demands performance from us all — about someone trying to keep a firm foothold in two warring worlds simultaneously, straddling the ever-oscillating line of what the public sees and what it can't. (“I’m not like them, but I can pretend,” resonates.)

This tension that seems innately bound into Cobain's persona — and Nirvana more broadly — is accurately reflected in the band’s lyrics. Dark, atmospheric themes abound — anger, personal struggles, violence, real and figurative — and while the sometimes disturbing subject matter can be difficult to take, I found the messages braided into them intriguing. His lyrics reflected Cobain’s chaos and mystique, which is to say, I didn’t necessarily understand them all, especially as a kid. All I knew was — mingled with his raspy voice and the band’s splintering sounds — they made me feel at an entirely unprecedented level. And some latent part of me was drawn to that brooding sentiment.

It came as no surprise to me when I learned that he was also a Pisces. 

Whether you believe in astrological signs or find it all to be a bit hokey, I find that Cobain embodied the compassion, sensitivity and emotional profundity that have come to be associated with the symbol of two fish swimming in opposite directions. That division between fantasy and reality — a liminal space I constantly turn to — is one that Cobain ostensibly occupied just as frequently. It’s something like the Vitruvian man, constantly splayed in different directions by our thoughts and ever-shifting emotions. It’s an identity Cobain internalized so intensely that he even carried it with him into his death in April of 1994, writing in his suicide note that he was a “sad little, sensitive, unappreciative Pisces, Jesus man.”

I’ve always known that finding comfort in the music and fashion of my parents’ generation, specifically the elements of it that have since become canonical, is a byproduct of my close-knit and large immediate family. It’s an idiosyncratic, shared existence — something that makes me feel comforted and protective at once. And yet, I’m my own person. While I would be remiss to ignore the inescapability of influence, my relationship with Cobain and his work could never precisely mirror theirs. And I think that’s part of his legacy. He was able to transcend space and time so seamlessly, so acutely, that his aura — which has spoken to my mom and dad for nearly 40 years — now screams to me from a stage set in an entirely different void. 

So consider me influenced, if that’s what becoming secure in my tastes and personhood means. I won’t be running from that anytime soon. 

If you are in crisis, please call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

about Nirvana

• I'm not like them, but I can pretend (Obviously, this is an essay about Kurt Cobain and Nirvana)
• Kurt Cobain's daughter marks the 30th anniversary of his death with a loving tribute
• "Nevermind" 30 years on — how Nirvana's second album tilted the world on its axis

Gabriella Ferrigine is a staff writer at Salon. Originally from the Jersey Shore, she moved to New York City in 2016 to attend Columbia University, where she received her B.A. in English and M.A. in American Studies. Formerly a staff writer at NowThis News, she has an M.A. in Magazine Journalism from NYU and was previously a news fellow at Salon.

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If you're a talented student with big academic dreams but limited financial resources, QuestBridge can help you access top colleges with full scholarships. QuestBridge works by bridging the gap between low-income students and life-changing opportunities in higher education. Let's take a closer look at how QuestBridge works and how it can make a difference in your academic journey.

What is QuestBridge?

QuestBridge is a nonprofit organization that connects high-achieving, low-income students with top-tier colleges and universities in the United States. Founded in 1994, QuestBridge aims to level the playing field in college admissions by providing opportunities for talented students from underserved backgrounds.

QuestBridge Programs

1. national college match.

The National College Match is QuestBridge's flagship program, where high school seniors can apply to up to 12 partner colleges with a single application. Students selected as Finalists gain access to full four-year scholarships that cover tuition, room and board, and other expenses.

2. College Prep Scholars Program

The College Prep Scholars Program is designed for high-achieving juniors from low-income backgrounds. Scholars receive personalized college admissions guidance, essay feedback, and the opportunity to attend a summer conference at a QuestBridge partner college.

3. Quest for Excellence Awards

QuestBridge also offers Quest for Excellence Awards , which recognize outstanding achievements and leadership qualities in high school juniors. Recipients of these awards receive financial aid to support their college aspirations.

Who is Eligible?

Eligibility for QuestBridge programs varies slightly between each program but generally includes:

• Demonstrated financial need (typically eligible for free or reduced-price lunch)
• Academic excellence (top 5-10% of their class)
• Strong commitment to extracurricular activities
• U.S. citizenship or permanent residency

The application process involves submitting detailed financial information, academic transcripts, letters of recommendation, and essays highlighting personal experiences and aspirations.

Pros and Cons of QuestBridge

• Financial Support : Full-ride scholarships for National College Match Finalists.
• Access to Top Colleges : Opportunity to attend prestigious universities.
• Supportive Community : Access to mentorship and resources through QuestBridge.
• Competitive Selection : Limited spots available for each program.
• Stringent Requirements : High academic and financial eligibility criteria may exclude some students.

QuestBridge Partner Colleges

QuestBridge partners with over 40 leading colleges and universities, including Ivy League institutions, Stanford University, and MIT. Other notable partners include:

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• Fill in your information on your academics, activities, household, and financial background
• Complete two essays and short answers
• Provide two teacher recommendations
• Submit your School Report from your current high school counselor
• Provide your School Profile  (optional, but recommended)
• Submit your current high school transcript and additional transcripts  (unofficial transcripts are accepted)
• Submit any available standardized test score reports  (if taken) . Accepted test scores include the SAT, ACT, Subject Tests, IB, AP, or TOEFL test scores  (unofficial test score reports are accepted)
• Complete the writing section
• Submit a recommendation from a teacher in a core academic subject
• Provide your current high school transcript  (unofficial transcripts are accepted)
• Submit any standardized test score reports to-date  (if taken) . Accepted test scores include the PSAT, PreACT, SAT, ACT, or AP test scores  (unofficial test score reports are accepted)
• Submit your school Profile  (optional, but recommended)
• Start a College Prep Scholars Program application .
• On the Quest for Excellence Awards page, select the box under "USA" and complete the short essay
• If you are interested in being considered for the online summer program, select the corresponding box and answer the additional prompts at the bottom of the page
• Complete and submit the College Prep Scholars Program application by the deadline

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