Successful College Essay Examples From Top

Successful College Essay Examples From Top The most important aspect about the Summer Academy was finding my people, the ones who talked about Nietzsche and Plato at lunch and had long debates and poetry slams after Seminar. Making friends was never an easy feat for me, but at the Summer Academy, I found everyone I talked to felt like we had been friends for years. I made an even more intimate group of friends who I still keep in touch with because they are more than friends to me, they are family. I think that my sophomore to senior years of high school have been a great preparation for a school like St. John’s. Each year I had a two hour seminar course every day, in which half of the grade is based on discussion, and the other half is on papers. All the classes are taught seminar-style and the most any classroom has is 25 kids. I have truly thrived in this kind of mindful learning environment, and think it would be imprudent to pursue an education that may be heavy in testing and memorization. I am too used to sitting in crowded high school classes where more than half the class did not do the reading. Surprisingly enough I made friends within 20 minutes of being on campus. I was able to share my obsession with reading and the knowledge I gathered on any subject I put my mind to. After I came home, I knew I needed more information. I wanted to know more, I wanted to experience it myself. Reading is not checking off a box or attaining a grade, but something I have chosen many times and will continue to choose for the rest of my life. In my pursuit to find a catch, I could only find nothing. Unlike other colleges with special course requirements, unstable administration, and strange traditional customs such as Freshman not being able to say the word ‘duck’, I found complete and absolute nothing. I signed up for more information; they stayed true to the image and personality of the college. I visited the Santa Fe campus and experienced classes, the campus, and the people. When I think back, my favorite memories and my moments of greatest esteem are not those when I was victorious, but when I was thoughtful. I treasure the philosophical debates I’ve had with friends, the snow days spent reading in bed, the essays I labored over until they were a source of pride. Merriam-Webster defines satire as “trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly.” Catch-22 clearly fits within this definition. However, I find this definition lacking, good satire should hold up a fun-house mirror to society to accentuate its problems and perhaps offer hope for the future. I want a safe space for inquiry, not a safe space for ignorance. I know too many people who are content with limited knowledge and are discontent with limited possessions. I want to expose myself to as many ideas and viewpoints as possible, and I want to be more than a consumer. Maybe not, but I loved the rules, the structure, and the big questions that surrounded organizing a government. I thought about these things constantlyâ€"while brushing my teeth, doing chores, and driving to school. This has given me unique experience both in practice with writing analytical papers on a text, as well as practice with reading and discussing a text in a deeper way. This experience will not only be beneficial to me in discussion, but will hopefully raise the quality of a seminar for the class as a whole. The small enrollment size of as well as the overall approach to education makes St. John’s the ideal place for me to extend my positive experience of high school into the college setting. St John’s advertises itself as the school for readers and thinkers, people who want more than a degree. I know too many people whose only hope for college is to earn a diploma, and if they can do it without learning or growing, even better. I want to spend the rest of my life learning as much I can, because getting a diploma without expanding your mind is like saving a receipt for something you don’t own. I know too many people who want to silence their opponents instead of understanding them. Unable to take this beloved course a second time, I chose my senior classes with more than a touch of melancholy. I was skeptical that even the most appealing humanities class, AP Literature, would be anything but anticlimactic by comparison. I’d become so accustomed to reading the function-focused writings of Locke, Rousseau, Madison, Thoreau, that I found it difficult to see “literature” as anything more than mere stories. I wanted substance that I could actually do something with, and I didn’t expect to find it in AP Lit. The summer after my Junior year I signed up for a Summer Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. I immediately found my people and a continual comfort of my environment which automatically equated to the feeling of being home. Home is the feeling of being comfortable with the uncertainty and uncomfortable situations. The feeling of being involved, nervous and excited all at the same time. When I think about my principles, I think about how I aspire to the humility of Helen Burns and the resolution of Jane Eyre and the stoicism of St. John. But more than anything, I would like to live my life thoughtfully.