How Literature Saved my Life Perhaps the greatest blessing my parents have ever granted me was the move from our apartment in the Bronx to a two-family home in Queens, two blocks away from a public library. The library had all the boons my young heart could desire: bounties of books, air conditioning in the summer, and sweet solace from a dwelling teeming with the cries of an infant sister, a concept I couldn’t yet fathom. Books, then, were...

Toni Morrison, Cornell graduate of 1955, wrote in one of my favorite novels, Song of Solomon, "If you wanna fly, you got to give up the shit the weighs you down." Through her pithy, honest style of prose, Morrison reflects my goal to relinquish the things that hold me back so that I can pursue my passions - and fly. I believe Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences will provide all the resources and guidance necessary to help me on my...

Being biracial, my parents stem from two distinct cultures - neither to which I can completely relate. My mother's Guyanese family is vibrant and outlandish, whereas my father's Turkish family is conservative. Perhaps the only similarity between these two cultures is their inclination to distance themselves from a family member who has broken tradition by marrying outside his or her race, as they have done to my parents. For this reason, my siblings and I have not had many opportunities...

In my 10th grade health class, I learned about a psychological theory called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This theory depicts the five levels of human need in order of difficulty, ranging from the most basic ones such as food and water to ones that take more to fulfill, like love and self-esteem. The principle of this concept is that a human cannot reach the uppermost level, self-actualization, until all four lower levels have been satisfied. Only after the more basic...

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It's vital to consider the type of college setting you'd like as you decide which colleges to apply to. My college is set in a bucolic atmosphere, nestled in the Berkshire mountains. Thus, the most popular...

I would have not applied to so many schools, first and foremost. It spreads you too thin - there are so many supplemental essays, fees, and...