Scholarship Essays for College Admissions

I’ve often been told that I’m an idealist - that I believe too much in the good of mankind and that my ambitions for changing the world are too lofty. I’ve often been told that I’m too passionate and that I invest myself too deeply in the things I do and in the people I care about. I’ve often been told that I’m too . well, that I’m just too much of everything. And, to each person who has told me this, I’ve always responded with just one thing: if I were any different, any less believing, passionate, investing, if I were anything less, then I just wouldn’t be me.

Maybe I am a little bit ambitious in my desires: my life’s goal is to change the world, and I won’t settle for less. There are just so many things I want to accomplish in my life: I want to be a lawyer because I want to defend the rights of the American people; I want to be a journalist because I want to give people the truth; I want to a novelist because I want to give people the inspiration and life lessons that I’ve learned through reading; and, last, I want to be a mother because I want to raise children whose bright smiles lighten the hearts of the people around them. In addition, I want to open an orphanage for underprivileged kids from around the world - a house, where children who did nothing wrong get a chance to rectify the mistakes of chance: they receive the opportunity for love and education. Even though these dreams are what others deem as “idealistic” and maybe a tad unrealistic, I don’t really care because I’ve never been one to settle for less than the best; after all, if I aim for the low, I’ll inevitable only reach the low, and I prefer not to doom myself to such a pitiful fate.However, even more than my dreams, my passions consume me: they drive me to continue through the haze of my pain and the impossibility of my task with whole-hearted abandon. In the past, this has translated to a single-minded determination to forge ahead. It translates to me staying from seven in the morning until nine at night to finish the newspaper with the aid of only a few other staff members and my advisor.

It translates to me pushing through exhaustion and hunger to compete in a finals round at a speech and debate tournament, without collapsing until after the round is finished. It translates to me staying up until ungodly hours in the morning to help a friend with whatever he or she may need. Yet, above all else — above the passion for writing, speaking, learning, above the passion for being an orator, a debater, a journalist — I have a passion for people.

I seek not only to help people, but also to understand them. I hope, one day, after I discover the half-buried secrets of the human subconscious by constantly analyzing their actions and motives, to be able to understand exactly where they’re coming from and where they’re going. And perhaps, once I understand that, I’ll have reached the end of the journey of self discovery that I’ve embarked on. Ultimately, I am a person of intensity. I am willing to do anything (at least, anything within the bounds of the law) to achieve whatever it is that I’ve set out to do, or to help those around me.

I am a person who wants to feel life - to feel the pain and the joy, to feel the entire spectrum of human emotion. Many people live life with blind contentment, but I don’t want to be one of those people. I don’t want to live my life in a glass box, seeing people and experiences — the very world — go by without ever touching them with my heart. In all honesty, it’s probably cleaner in here, in this glass box. It’s sterilized. Outside, you just get ripped apart: blood spreads from the shattered fragments of your heart and stains you, embedding itself into your very soul, and the scars that result never fade. But I can’t help it - I’m drawn outside of this box by curiosity, by fascination, by my need to experience life in all of its trebled intensity. Perhaps I am “too” idealistic, too believing, too ambitious, too passionate. Maybe I’m just too me. Yet, somehow, I’m always compelled to be just a little bit more.