Essay Samples and Ideas Repository

Some of the essay prompts that colleges give for admissions purposes are amazingly fun.

Imagine that you have the opportunity to travel back through time. At what point in history would you list to stop and why? (Swarthmore)
What in the best advice you ever received? Why? And did you follow it? (University of Pennsylvania)
What do you think has been the most important social or political movement of the twentieth century? Do you share a personal identification with this cause? (Trinity College, CT)
It has been said [Andy Warhol] that “in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” Describe your fifteen minutes. (New York University)
Describe an intellectual experience of the past two years that has given you great satisfaction. (Amherst)
You’ve just written a 300-page autobiography. Send us page 217. (University of Pennsylvania)
Sartre said “Hell is other people,” while Streisand sang, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” With whom do you agree? (Amherst)
If you could go back and change one day in your life, what would you change and why? (Santa Clara University)
Explain how your experiences as a teenager significantly differ from those of your friends. Include comparisons. (University of Puget Sound)
Compose an essay about a memorable meal you have eaten. We are especially interested in the details: the occasion, your company at this meal, its physical setting, the kinds of foods you ate, or their preparation. (University of Chicago)
Using a Piece of wire, a car window sticker, an egg carton, and any inexpensive hardware store item, create something that would solve a problem Tell us about your creation, but don’t worry: we won’t require proof that it works. (Johns Hopkins)
Elvis is alive! Okay, maybe not, but we have been persuaded that recent Elvis sightings in highway rest areas, grocery stores and laundramats are part of a wider conspiracy involving five of the following: the metric system, the Mall of America, the crash of the Hindenberg, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, lint, J.D. Salinger, and wax fruit. Construct your own theory of how and why five of these items are related. (University of Chicago)

There are many more to be found, I’m sure, by searching for college admissions topics.