hamilton college essay prompts

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How to Write the Hamilton College Essay 2016-2017

“Know thyself.” This phrase, coined by Alexander Hamilton, is one of the primary guiding philosophies at Hamilton College, and defines the student experience of self-discovery. Hamilton follows a set of educational goals and purposes closely, and they look for these qualities in the students it accepts.

Hamilton College is private liberal arts school located in Clinton, NY, with a small enrollment of 2,000 undergraduates and an equally minute acceptance rate of 25%. The school emphasizes an education in writing and thinking critically, so that students become contributing citizens of the world.

With excellent facilities and dedicated faculty and resources, students are able to receive a personalized approach and work closely alongside their professors. Despite lingering complaints about the heavy workload and heavier snowfall, students are genuinely very happy with life at Hamilton. There are a plethora of summer research and internship opportunities, and over 42 majors to choose from across 51 areas of study.

If you believe Hamilton is the place for you, be sure you understand the following guidelines as you tackle their sole supplementary prompt.

Hamilton College Application Essay Prompt

While the primary criteria for admission are academic achievement, intellectual promise, and community engagement, Hamilton also seeks to admit candidates who are a good fit with the programs and experiences offered by the College. Please take this opportunity (in 100-250 words) to tell us about your interest in Hamilton and, in particular, why you believe it is a place where you can thrive. Be open. Be honest. Be brief.

As the prompt itself says, the college already takes into account your academics and ability to engage with the community that have been communicated elsewhere in your application. Therefore, you should use this essay to discuss more in depth how you fit into the Hamilton community.

Note that they are looking for candidates that are a good fit with the programs and experiences offered ­– they want you to be specific, and recognize that this is a true “Why this school?” essay. Chances are they will notice you are being generic if you say something along the lines of “this place has great academics and a beautiful campus,” so be specific, do your research, and give candid reasons as to why you are a strong fit for Hamilton.

Hamilton is a selective liberal arts school, which, among other defining characteristics, is extremely small and very cold throughout the year. This environment might not be for everyone, so recognize the unique environment Hamilton provides and convey how you see yourself fitting in.

Although you don’t have too much space to elaborate, and they do specifically request a brief essay, be sure to mention specific programs and classes at Hamilton you would take a part in to show that you have invested time in learning about the school. In addition, address how the campus and area will enrich your student experience, how you might take advantage of the Nesbitt-Johnston Writing Center, how you might join an Off-Campus Study, etc.

Finally, address how you will thrive at Hamilton, given the resources you will have at your disposal and the kind of mission the college follows. Like the prompt says, be open and honest, but also be concise, specific, and know why you would like to attend Hamilton College specifically, not why you want to go to a liberal arts school in general.

Want help with your college essays to improve your admissions chances? Sign up for your free CollegeVine account and get access to our essay guides and courses. You can also get your essay peer-reviewed and improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

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Admitted Essay for Hamilton College: Essay Review

With Only So Many Words To Express Themselves, Students Often Find College Essays Difficult To Write…

This is especially true when students are asked one of the most common college essay prompts: why this college? In this article, we’ll analyze a personal statement that helped a student get admitted to Hamilton College. We’ll give you the expert breakdown of what makes this essay work, where it could shine even more, and how you can apply this advice to your own essay.

An Admitted Essay For Hamilton College

Why do you want to attend Hamilton College?

“Hamilton College is a liberal arts college set apart from its peers. The interactions that I have had with Hamilton faculty and alumni have shown me that Hamilton is a place where I will be challenged intellectually to explore ideas more deeply and share those ideas with greater sophistication than I ever have. Hamilton’s open curriculum and commitment to exquisite writing would provide me with the opportunity to try many different disciplines while developing the ability to communicate with others well. This experience would make me a more effective intellectual because I will have gained a broad base of skills that are transferable to any endeavor. In my conversations with Ms. Phyllis Breland she has shown me that Hamilton is a place where I will be supported by a network of people who all wish to see me reach my greatest potential. Hamilton has the resources necessary to support a student in any endeavor as long as he or she is willing to work hard. The immersive study abroad program in France that Hamilton supports has a reputation for being one of the best in the world as well as one of the oldest. Because of Hamilton’s requirement for students to take classes taught in French I would develop a deep mastery of the language that would not occur otherwise. This is a unique opportunity that few other colleges could offer. My experiences at Hamilton have proven to me that it is a place where I can thrive.”

Our Expert Review

Immediately, the student begins to answer the question posed by the prompt in-depth and with personal detail. In general, answering the prompt as soon as possible results in the best essay. Here, the student goes to great lengths to emphasize why they’re excited to potentially attend Hamilton College and why the education they would receive can’t be found anywhere else. The personal statement is brief due to the word count requirement, but the student spends the time to make sure their knowledge of Hamilton and the type of education offered there goes beyond the surface points one would find on their website. They also connect these offerings back to their own passions and interests.

Throughout the essay, the student also references their past experiences with Hamilton College and its alumni. Not only do they use these experiences to connect to their own passions and dreams, but they also help the student more fully answer the question posed by the prompt: why Hamilton College?

Yet even in this excellent essay, there is room for the student to better present themselves.

While the language, style, and structure of the essay do work, further revision could help it read with more clarity and emotional strength. Better word choice and work toward developing a smoother reading flow would help this student better showcase why they are drawn to Hamilton College. Overall, while this essay is excellent, it could have benefited from one more draft before being sent out.

How To Apply This Advice To Your Own College Essays

Go into detail.

With so much information available on the web, students have the opportunity to get into detail about what draws them to a school beyond just the culture and program offerings. Your essay should go beyond surface details too - perhaps you’re drawn to the ideas of a particular professor rather than just their major, or you want to participate in the college’s historic debate team due to your own fierce love of debate. When you get into detail about what the school has to offer that would help you nurture your passions and hone your talents, you show the ability to put your education to good use.

• Name one specific feature that draws you to this college. How can you relate this back to your own passions, talents, interests, or goals?
• Could your essay apply to any number of schools in the area? How can you make your essay more specific?

FOCUS ON FLOW

One way to make your personal statement stand out is to focus on the flow and structure of the essay. A great way to do this is to read your essay out loud during the revision process. This helps you catch words, phrases, and sometimes even entire sentences that feel out of place or too wordy.

In addition, your essay should flow in a logical order as well. In this essay, the student starts off strong and builds on their ideas, yet begins to flip back and forth between their past experiences and their potential future at Hamilton at dizzying speed. A further revision would help this student rearrange a few sentences in a more logical order, combining to have a huge effect on the way the essay reads.

• How does your essay sound when read out loud?
• Do your sentences flow together logically? Do you build on each idea in order, or do you jump around making several points at once?
• Are you making use of words with strong emotional connotations to help bridge ideas together?

REVISE YOUR ESSAY

This student’s essay, while it answers the prompt, could benefit from further revision. Many students believe they don’t have to edit their essays at all; or if they do, they only go over it once to proofread. The best college applications have been read through and revised several times, often with the help of trusted outsiders who can go over the essay with a fresh set of eyes. Therefore, make it point to revise each of your essays at least once, if not several times. When you believe you’re satisfied with what you have, ask your college counselor to look over it. Often, they’ll help you improve in ways you may have never thought of!

If you struggle with the revision phase, printing out your essay can be a game-changer. Not only will you have room to make colorful notes, the change from screen to paper can help take your brain off autopilot, helping you catch mistakes and flex your creativity.

• Who can you reach out to in order to take your essay to the next level?
• Can you expand upon any ideas to showcase my talents, abilities, or accomplishments?
• Are you fully answering the prompt, or do you need to be more direct?

Refining Your Personal Statement Is Worth It

Taking the time to carefully structure your essay and revise it several times can pay off with admission into your dream school. After all, it’s extremely rare for the first draft of anything to be the best draft.

However, it’s important to remember: It’s hard to get a fresh perspective on something you never walk away from.

After you write your essay and between each round of revisions, let yourself focus on other things for at least a few hours, preferably a few days. While you hang out with friends or focus on other parts of your applications, the gears in the back of your head will be turning over the ideas you wrote in your essay. When you return to revise again, you’ll often find yourself with more ideas than you did during the first draft!

Of course, sometimes it can be difficult to find the right idea to answer a prompt even during the first draft. No matter what phase of the college essay writing process you’re in, our WeAdmit counselors have been in your shoes before and would love to offer a helping hand. We’ll work with you to not only refine your personal statements, but through any other part of the college process that you find yourself having trouble with!

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, hamilton college essay tips.

I'm applying to Hamilton College (not to be confused with the musical) and I'm working on my essay. Could anyone who's been through the process share some tips or examples of Hamilton essays that worked? Any guidance would be much appreciated!

It's good that you're trying to gather some insight into Hamilton College's essay expectations. Hamilton provides some examples of real, successful essays students submitted to them: https://www.hamilton.edu/admission/apply/college-essays-that-worked

Also check out this CollegeVine guide to writing the Hamilton essays: https://blog.collegevine.com/how-to-write-the-hamilton-college-essays

Remember that a great college essay showcases your unique voice, tells a compelling story, and keeps the reader engaged. Good luck, and I hope these tips help you craft an essay that stands out and gives the admissions committee a better understanding of who you are!

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

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Hamilton College Admissions Essay Examples

Year after year we are inundated with the same question: can we see some college essay examples? Although we do not share our clients’ work in order protect their privacy, we are happy to share some of the successful college essay examples provided by admissions committees across the country. So, without further ado, please find four successful personal statements submitted to Hamilton College below:

Aubrey Wallen ’26,

Lakeland, tenn.  .

75,000 flipped pages. 11,520 packed boxes. 6 school maps. 

I began measuring my life in flipped pages, packed boxes, and school maps when I was 6. As my family and I flitted between states and coasts for my father’s job over the last decade, I shielded myself with fantasy novels. With my head propped on the baseboard near my nightlight and a book held up in front of me by aching arms, I would dance in whimsical forests, fight daring battles, and rule dangerous courts long after dark. In my fantastic universe, I could take turns being the queen, the knight, the hero, and even the villain. These books helped me express the happiness, anger, sadness, and queerness I could not have even begun to imagine alone.

The characters I discovered in novels as I toured libraries and Barnes & Noble stores in strip malls around the country taught me resilience and empowered me to nourish my strengths. Mare Barrow showed me the power of determined women, and I unapologetically strove for academic excellence and obtained a GPA of 4.4. Tane, from The Priory of the Orange Tree, inspired me to push the limits of my own body, so I’ve traversed approximately 1,544 miles in cross-country races and practices. Evelyn Hugo’s unapologetic character compelled me to want to embrace and feel free with my queerness rather than shelter it away in a shameful corner. Even further, this year I am adding a third dimension to my love of fantasy by interpreting Mrs. White in my school’s production of Shuddersome and The Monkey’s Paw with assistance from Anne of Green Gables, my first fictional idol, who massively influenced my personality and tendency for dramatics. But above all, Leigh Bardugu, my favorite author, gave me permission to even dare to write and to dream that I can. 

What began as a safety net in my adolescence has grown to something more, a true passion for English and all that it can express. Language is power and I wish to wield it like a mighty sword. I want to be the puppetmaster, the speaker, and the leader in a world that is crafted in ink. I want to be a New York Timesbestseller and to know that whatever I do is impactful and that it creates a difference, no matter how small. I want to walk down a crowded street and see “my book” spread open in a passing person’s hands, as they refuse to put it down, just like I did so many times in the hallways of my middle school. A writer, a college professor, a publishing lawyer: I want it all, the riots of failure, and the pride of success. 

Without the assistance of literature, I wouldn’t be who I am today. If I hadn’t grown up fueled on library hauls I wouldn’t have discovered that I love English. I wouldn’t get shivers when I fret for a favorite character or celebrate their triumphs, be as ready to face obstacles, or be as adventurous as I am. Without the moves around the country and back, I wouldn’t have become so resilient and open to change, so adaptable to life, but most importantly I wouldn’t have become so in love with language. With every move I burrowed in books, and with every book I became me. Literature has made me in every way, and the only way I can repay it is to become the penman. 

Nicholas “Cole” Wassiliew ’26,

Bethesda, md..

I dreaded their arrival. The tyrannical cicadas swarmed DC and neighboring areas in 1987, 2004, and again in 2021. I was freaking about Brood X, the worst of them all. Brood X is a cluster of cicadas that descend on Washington, D.C., every 17 years. I live in the epicenter of their swarm. Cicadas battled with mosquitoes for first place in the top tier of the human annoyance pyramid. I hate these off-brand cockroaches.

For 17 years, cicadas live underground feasting off of sap, running free of danger. Then, they emerge and face the real world. That sounds familiar. I have lived in the same house, in the same town, for 17 years, with my parents feeding me pasta and keeping me safe.

Is it conceivable that I have more in common with cicadas than I previously thought? Cicadas have beady, red eyes. After a year of enduring Zoom classes, attending tele-health appointments, and spending too much time on social media and video games, I too feel a little blurry-eyed and disoriented. But what about their incessant hum and perpetual noise? That is not me. OK, maybe I do make protein shakes with a noisy blender at all hours of the day. Maybe I do FaceTime vehemently with friends, blare music while I shower, and constantly kick a ball around both inside the house and out.

At least I do not leave damaged wings, shedded skin, or rotting carcasses everywhere. Smelly soccer socks on the clean carpet after a long practice? Check. Pools of turf in the mudroom after sliding all over the field? You got it. Dirty dishes and trail mix stains after accidentally sitting on a mislaid M&M are hardly as abhorrent as cicada remains, right?

The more I reflected, the more I realized these bugs and I are more alike than different. After 17 years of being cooped up, we are both antsy to face new experiences. Of course, cicadas want to broaden their wings, fly, and explore the world, even if it means clumsily colliding into people’s faces, telephone poles, and parked cars. Just like I want to shed my skin and escape to college, even if it means getting lost on campus or ruining a whole load of laundry. Despite all my newbie attributes, I am proceeding to the next phase of my life whether I am ready or not.

Only the hardiest of cicadas survive their emergence and make it to trees to mate, lay eggs, and ensure the existence of their species. I want to be a tenacious Brood X cicada. I will know what it means to travel into the wrong classroom before getting laughed at, bump into an upperclassman before dropping textbooks everywhere, fail an exam after thinking I aced it. I may even become the cicada of the lecture hall by asking a professor for permission to go to the bathroom. Like cicadas, I will need time to learn how to learn.

No matter what challenge I undergo that exposes and channels my inner-cicada, novice thought process, I will regroup and continue to soar toward the ultimate goal of thriving in college.

When I look beyond our beady red eyes, round-the-clock botherment, and messy trails, I now understand there is room for all creatures to grow, both cicadas and humans. Cicadas certainly are on to something … Seventeen years is the perfect amount of time to emerge and get ready to fly.

Catherine “Cate” van den Beemt ’26,

Freeland, md..

I was born to two moms. One, my biological mom, Meredith. One, my mom who adopted me, Mary. Because they were a same-sex couple, the law required that Mary adopt me in order to be my parent. They used Sperm Donor 3311. All I know about my “father” is that he didn’t have a familial history of cancer, he has a twin brother who is 6’4″, and he studied math in school. This is all background information; I don’t even know his name. He doesn’t know mine, nor does he know that I even exist. People often ask “What does your father do for a living?” and I’m forced to respond “I actually have two moms,” triggering reactions like that of my driving instructor, “Oh, well that must be different.” I’m 17-years-old and still don’t know how to respond to these comments. 

When I was 5, Mary, who had been sick for a long time with leukemia, passed away, and my life was turned upside down. I was old enough to understand grief, and yet I still question why it happened. It was terrifying seeing my mom break down while saying, “Mom died last night.” I wonder what I missed out on and carry guilt that I don’t remember much about Mary, because we just didn’t have enough time together. Many say grief gets easier with time, however, I think the way you grieve just changes over time. 

The world kept spinning and, in 2011, my biological mom met another woman, who soon became my stepmom. However, to me, Kerry is also my mom. No longer do I reveal the fact that I have two moms; now I get reactions to the fact that I have three. 

Not knowing my father doesn’t leave a void in my life. “Dad” didn’t sing “there was an old lady who swallowed a fly” and tickle me when the old lady swallowed the spider, my moms did. He didn’t take me to Gunpowder Friends Meeting where I shook hands and spent time with 80-year-old friends from the retirement home, my moms did. He didn’t console me when I began crying at the dry-erase board at school because it reminded me of white boards Mom wrote on when she was unable to talk. He didn’t teach me that love is love. He didn’t teach me who I was becoming, my moms did that. 

I’ve never known my father or that I was supposed to have one, so why would I think my life is any different from the so-called “norm?” If there’s one thing I have learned from my parents, it’s that I have developed a love for difference. I openly accept all those around me and excitedly anticipate the relationships that I will build in my future. There is no such thing as a normal family structure, and my upbringing has given me that greater world view. My moms have raised me to believe that I can accomplish anything. There are still limits, though. My family chooses not to travel to Jamaica because we aren’t accepted there. Before each family vacation, we must research to see if it is a gay-friendly place. I don’t know the answers to questions about my dad’s side of the family. But I don’t let those kinds of things get to me because instead I can talk about the people who raised me. The world is changing as we speak. “Normal” is fading, but it has already disappeared for me. I don’t want anything different than the family I have, and I own that every day.

Daniel “Deni” Galay ’26,

London, england.

“The difference between an anti-personnel and an anti-tank mine is not that complicated,” I am told casually, in halting Russian, by a boy even younger than I am during a walk through the Chechen mountains. I am freshly 14 and visiting my father’s homeland for the first time, unfamiliar with the harsh realities that kids half my age already know ironclad. My guide points out the areas where the grass is overgrown and the fruit trees abundant. People and animals alike know to avoid them; someone has learned of landmines the hard way. It shouldn’t surprise me — the scars of war on this rugged country are omnipresent — but it is so jarringly different from my life in London that it is nevertheless hard to digest.

It also differs from my father’s rosy stories about his childhood in Katyr-Yurt, stories that made me wish to swim carefree in icy rivers, devour handfuls of fresh sour cherries straight from the tree, and see nights dense with stars. I still experience these beauties of place, but my eyes are now open to the less romanticized parts, both enriching and complicating my connection to my family’s past. Suddenly, too, I am made uncomfortably aware of the conflicting layers of my familial identity. It is the Russian of my Muscovite, Jewish mother that I grew up speaking at home. Yet the Chechen children speak in broken Russian, and the grownups who are more fluent in it are not keen to communicate in the enemy’s language. Seeing the ugly scars of war, both physical and psychological, I cannot help but feel like an intruder, ashamed not only of my Russianness but also of my city-boy naivete. Despite this shame, I yearn to discover what it means to be Chechen, to see their home through their eyes, and through this desire, I begin to feel a deep connection all of my own to this beautiful, fraught land. 

In Moscow, my new awareness of conflicting identities only intensifies, but now on account of the maternal side of my heritage. Relatives there largely see Chechens as terrorists and raise an eyebrow when they hear where I have spent my summer. Babushka’s neighbour, a nurse who witnessed the carnage from the theatre siege in Moscow, turns away disgustedly when she overhears me relate the beauty of the mountains and the notable generosity of the people. Once again, I register the fear and distrust of “the other” that reigns in the more homogeneous cultures in Russia, making me appreciate the diversity of London all the more. 

When I return there, I cannot slip back into life as normal as I have done after past summers. I find myself pondering the question of identity and the way people interpret their own past, informed just as much by collective emotion and memory as by fact. The cosmopolitanism of London is just as I remembered it, but the things I loved about it I now see in a new light. I had always revelled in the fact that, despite our differences in heritage, my peers and I had seen each other as the same — bound together by being Londoners first and foremost. Now I am interested in conversations that I would never have considered previously, wanting not only to share my newfound experiences but also learn about the personal histories of my friends, many of whom, like me, are the children of immigrants to the UK. When did they come to explore and interrogate their own complicated identities? How did these discoveries make them feel? What does it mean to carry the stories, the poetry, and the pain of so many places within them? Questions like these, which were so important for me to answer about myself, also became a powerful place from which to understand more deeply the people around me and the complex world we share.

Zachary Yasinov ’26,

Syosset, n.y..

I know that I had prepared well for this moment. For two arduous months, I readied my fingers for an exciting concert. No anxiety could undermine my confidence in my preparation, and my piano recital’s success was “in the bag.” I selected three pieces for my repertoire: the ambience of Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1 as the opener, a somber contemplation of Beethoven’s First Movement of the Moonlight Sonata , and Bach’s light and surreal Prelude in C Major for the conclusion.

My shining moment arrived, and I strode purposefully toward the piano. The building in which my performance was held was new, but its dwellers were old. Respect and prestige permeated the atmosphere as I took each stride to my seat. As I sat down, the chair creaked and moaned as if in sympathy with the audience’s aching desire to hear me play. I prepared my sheet music and commenced my epic moment.

Never was such an exhilarating performance heard. All of the little techniques and tricks that I practiced were executed perfectly. I captured the dynamics I wanted to express in Satie’s phonological experiment with each chord to which I applied varying pressure. Moving onto one of Beethoven’s most famous works, I crafted the cascading arpeggios of each new chord, which resonated unity uninterrupted in me and in the audience. When I concluded with the airy prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier , the room swelled with bliss. Having poured my heart and soul into each piece, I beamed with pride.

As customary for a stellar show, I rose to bow to the audience to thank them for their eruption of applause. Flowers were thrown, cheers elicited, and standing ovations bestowed. From the subsiding din came a faint question to rain on my parade: “Could you play something more lively, darling, say, a Neil Diamond song?”

I work on weekends at a long-term-care facility, and my geriatric audience, although a pleasure with whom to interact, can be brutally honest. Begrudgingly, I thanked Mrs. Hersch for her request, promised her better next time, and stewed in my own irrelevance. Going home that day, my feathers were ruffled. How could any civilized listener, after such a superb medley, disregard such time-honored compositions? The notion was absurd.

Yet perhaps more outlandish, as I later acknowledged, was my visceral reaction to the events that had transpired. Why did I react hesitantly to a simple request made in earnestness? It would have been easier, in fact, to practice “Sweet Caroline” than to break my fingers over Beethoven’s work. Then, in my moments of introspection, I concluded that my choice of musical pieces mattered little as long as my audience enjoyed them. Whether it meant recreating the most tortured and heinously composed pop song or a masterfully crafted Romantic concerto, I vowed to play them all.

Throughout my life, my adult mentors have succored me with platitudes when most needed, which laid the foundation for my confidence. Yet, while working with people who have lived five times longer than I have, experiencing so much more than I can imagine, I know that the world does not revolve around my tastes and interests. I’m okay with that. Thus, for a couple of hours each day in the living room, unlucky family members passing by are subjected to the torment of my tenth run-through of “Sweet Caroline” as I prepare for my next recital for an audience that has taught me more about personal preferences, and myself, than I anticipated.

Katherine “Katy” Appleman ’26,

Pittsburgh, pa..

I have never felt such palpable emotion, such profound grief emanating from a space, as I did while hiking through the forest fire scorch in Philmont, New Mexico. A universe had once existed under the protection of these Ponderosa Pine, now black and crusted, turning brittle in the wind. It was a landscape that didn’t sing its laments, but whispered of its loss through every pile of scalded timber and skinny, wavering shadow cast by the hollow towers of ash.

I felt prepared when I made the decision to become a scout. I love nature and camping. I love the Scouts BSA program. I love the people. I was definitely not prepared, however, for the numerous challenges I would face during my years as a scout.

I was the first female “boy scout” in my town, which continues to be both my greatest honor and a constant reminder of the isolation and insecurity that comes with being any “first.” I became a symbol, whether for good or bad, and my actions not only spoke of me, but of the future young women in Scouts BSA. I felt like an imposter.

I wasn’t a strong-willed leader like those who usually have “first” stitched into their title. My seventh-grade acting career did little to veil a shy and insecure girl who crumbled at overheard comments on how I didn’t belong or how girls like me were poisoning BSA’s spirit. As time passed, I found myself waiting to develop the toughened heart that the leaders that I knew held. As my troop and I backpacked in Philmont Scout Ranch this past summer, my doubts and insecurities seemed to echo from this inky forest.

Coming from Pittsburgh, I had expected the kind of desert with raspy air and coat hanger cacti. Nothing quite shattered this expectation as much as putting on my last pair of dry socks before the fourth day of downpours. We navigated steep cliffs and vibrant meadows, and pulled ourselves up peak after peak. As the sun set on one of our final evenings, the flat, mountain-ornamented horizon gave way to a modest footpath, daring into a new forest. This forest, differing from the field of burnt pines we had seen prior, had burned several decades ago. The fire had cleared everything and had left its signature singed onto the bottom 10 feet of every tree. The forest floor was clean. Wild grasses with accents of purple and blue flowers blanketed the ground below the pines like snow, which had fallen while the world was asleep, completely untouched and extending to infinity. Above the burnt limbs of the trees, thick bundles of green needles soared into the sky.

Not long after Philmont, I was awarded my Eagle Rank, the culmination of my experience as a scout. I believe that my time in Scouts BSA has been the first to the forest that is my life. Though scars remain from my experience, new change and strength have flourished out of the damage.

I have come to the conclusion that it is not always the fierce leader who becomes a “first.” It is the extra hours. It is finding a way to listen to criticism and try harder, rather than feel the thorns. It is using one’s own feeling of isolation to see others who feel alone. It is the act of going through the fire and staying with it, allowing it to advance you, which changes people who dare to be a “first” into the leaders that they go down in history as being.

As I think back on my experience in Philmont, the first forest we saw, this blackened graveyard, is what I picture. I remember the charcoaled ground so vividly, but more so, I remember the soft purple wildflowers hidden in the desert soil. Though few and far between, against the grieving timber, they were stars.

Claire Lazar ’26,

New york, n.y..

I’m 6. The sounds of hornpipe and laughter drift across the gymnasium-turned-cafeteria-turned-auditorium. Mum caught me dancing to some of her old Irish tapes — the Chieftains, Sinead O’Connor. She asked me if I wanted to do it for real. I said sure and went back to dancing. Now a freckled woman digs around in a cardboard box and pulls out a pair of dusty, worn black shoes. “Don’t worry,” she says, “you’ll learn eventually.” The shoes are too big; they sag at the toes. I approach the stage. Twenty-five pairs of eyes fix on me. In a room bustling with motion, everything stands still. It doesn’t matter that I feel like a clown in an ill-fitting costume. All that matters is the dancing.

I’m 9. I sit in the hallway of the Times Square Marriott watching girls in big wigs and sparkly dresses run around, squawking like glamorous, unhinged chickens. In my tartan skirt and simple bun, I feel like an ugly duckling. The bobby pins dutifully securing my bun in place make my scalp ache. My hands slide to my shoes. They’re too tight. Mum put them on her feet to “try and stretch them out a little.” I pass some over-enthusiastic dance moms who put the “mother” in “smother.” I reach the stage. A hundred pairs of eyes fix on me. In a hotel bustling with motion, everything stands still. It doesn’t matter that I’m out of place. All that matters is the dancing.

I’m 12. My brain won’t stop flipping through disastrous scenarios as I stand with my teammates in a hotel in Orlando, Florida. We’ve trained for months, sacrificed everything for this moment. I try to think of happy things: the pride on Dad’s face when he watches me dance, the freedom of flying across a stage on invisible wings. We recite our steps like a poem, the sequences like a song that carries us through an ocean of fiddles, pipes, and drums. My parents sacrificed a lot to send me here. I want to make them proud. I want to make myself proud. We approach the national stage. A thousand pairs of eyes fix on me. In a world bustling with motion, everything stands still. It doesn’t matter that I feel like a fraud. All that matters is the dancing.

I’m 15. An Irish accent lilts through the ballroom of the World Championships. It sounds like mashed potatoes and Sunday bests and the green hills of home that I know so well. We mutter a prayer. I’m not sure I believe in God, though I should. I look at my partner and wish we were more than friends. She smiles. I don’t think God believes in me. We ascend the stage. A million pairs of eyes fix on me. In a universe bustling with motion, everything stands still. It doesn’t matter that I’ll never be enough. All that matters is the dancing.

I’ll be 18. Murmuring voices will hover in the air of the gymnasium-turned-cafeteria-turned-auditorium. A little girl will approach me timidly, wearing a very old tartan skirt. I’ll reach out softly, adjusting her bun to soothe her aching scalp. Then, I’ll slide my hands toward her feet, toward a pair of small, dusty shoes. “You’ll learn,” I’ll say. They’ll sag at the toes, but I’ll reassure her: “Don’t worry. You’ll grow into them.” Then, she and I will look at my own beloved shoes. They’ll be worn, but I’ll tell her the creases are like a map, evidence of the places I’ve been, the heartbreaks I’ve suffered, the joy I’ve danced. My life is in these shoes. We’ll hear the music begin to play, the tide of fiddles, and pipes, and drums. I’ll take her hand and, with a deep breath, we’ll climb the stage. “Ahd mor.” It won’t matter that this is the end. All that has ever mattered is the dancing.

Katherine “Kat” Showalter ’26,

Los altos, calif.  .

The black void descends toward the young girl standing in the grassy field. It slowly creeps up on her, and as it reaches for her perfectly white dress … Swipe. I quickly wipe away the paint without a thought except for panic. Before I realize what I have done, the black droop becomes an ugly smear of black paint. The peaceful picture of the girl standing in the meadow is nowhere to be seen. Even though I successfully avoid having the spilled paint touch the dress, all I can focus on is the black smudge. The stupid black smudge. As I continue to stare at the enemy in front of me, I hear Bob Ross’s annoyingly cheerful voice in my head: “There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.” At this moment, I completely disagree. There is nothing happy about this, only frustration.

Actually, there is one other emotion: excitement. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not excited about making a mistake and definitely not happy about the accident. But I am thrilled at the challenge. The black smudge is taunting me, challenging me to fix the painting that took me hours to do. It is my opponent, and I am not planning to back off, not planning to lose.

Looking back at the painting, I refuse to see only the black smudge. If lacrosse has taught me one thing, it is that I will not be bested by my mistakes. I snatch my picture and run downstairs, carefully setting it against the living room window. The TV newscaster drones in the background, “California continues to be engulfed in flames as the fires continue to burn.” I slowly step back from my painting. California fires, I think, as I look up into the blood-orange sky. California Fires! I look at the painting, imagining the black smudge not as a black void, but smoke creeping up on the girl as she watches the meadow burn.

I grab my painting and run back to my room. The orange sky casts eerie shadows as I throw open my blinds. My hands reach first toward the reds, oranges, and yellows: reds as rich as blood; oranges as beautiful as California poppies; yellows as bright as the sun. I splatter them on my palette, making a beautiful assortment of colors that reminds me of one thing: fire. A rich, beautiful, bright thing, but at the same time, dangerous. My hand levitates toward the white and black. White, my ally: peaceful, wonderful, simple white. Black, my enemy: annoying, frustrating, chaotic black. I splat both of them onto a different palette as I create different shades of gray.

My brush first dips into red, orange, and yellow as I create the flame around the girl. The flame engulfs the meadow, each stroke of red covering the serene nature. Next is the smoke, I sponge the dull colors onto the canvas, hazing over the fire and the trees, and, most importantly, hiding the smudge.

But it doesn’t work. It just looks like more blobs to cover the black smudge. What could make the gray paint turn into the hazy clouds that I have been experiencing for the past several days? I crack my knuckles in habit, and that’s when a new idea pops into my head. My calloused fingers dip into the cold, slimy gray paint, which slowly warms as I rub it between my fingers. My fingers descend onto the canvas, and as they brush against the fabric, I can feel the roughness of the dried paint as I add the new layer. As I work, the tension from my body releases. With each stroke of my fingers, I see what used to be the blobs turn into the thing that has kept me inside my house for weeks. As I lift my last finger off the canvas, I step back and gaze at my new creation. I have won.

Want to work one-on-one with an Advisor from our team to draft your own winning essay? Get in touch! 

About Kat Stubing

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Essays that Worked

Below we have shared a few exceptional admission essays* written by enrolled Hamilton students (with their permission, of course). They offer a glimpse into the diverse backgrounds and experiences, as well as the writing talents, so many of our students bring to College Hill.

Sage Tzamouranis

Ridgefield, conn..

There is nothing more irrepressibly badass than the old women of southern Greece. They have never seen a dentist. They can clean their own teeth, thank you very much, all two of them. They are familiar with loss.

The women are like the olive trees, which reside in soil so dry that it crunches under your feet as you walk. Somehow, they manage to grow anyway; persistence and stubborn endurance are all they know. The trees can grow through rock, live without rain. They stagger, twisting and turning toward the heights despite the farmer’s careless pruning; the mere matter of amputated limbs will not stop them.

When I was 5 or 6, I thought that my Yaya was the most beautiful woman in the world, with her wiry white hair fresh out of curlers and laugh lines showing around her eyes like a map of all of her times spent smiling. She used to sing a song called “Μαρ?α με τα Κ?τρινα,” “Maria in Yellow,” and we would laugh because Yaya also had a yellow dress, but she did not emulate the risqué behavior of Maria, who couldn’t decide whom she loved more, “τον ?ντρα σου ? τον γε?τονα” her husband or her next-door neighbor.

As I got older, I realized that there are more worry lines than laugh lines. Deep trenches of lineaments cross her forehead, revealing the hardships of a childhood spent in poverty. More prominent than her crow’s feet are the wrinkles etched into her eyelids, from squeezing her eyes tightly shut, trying to block out the pain of having her daughter taken from her, after only 18 years on this earth, by the unrelenting grip of an untimely death. The most recent are the lines chiseled around her thin mouth, as if out of marble. They are from pursing her lips in an attempt to suppress the pain after my Papou was taken by the same merciless hands that took her daughter away, but this time, those hands looked like cancer.

The yellow dress went away after Papou died.

As did the levity with which we used to make fun of Maria’s foolish infidelity. The black clothes are suffocating; they invite the sun to beat down with more cruelty than before.

Once the sun starts to set and the day cools, my Yaya and the other women of the village venture out of their homes, carrying olive-oil lamps to their husbands’ graves, the lineaments of their faces illuminated by the lanterns. The lines are unforgiving, the trenches have been dug, the stalemate between the want of joy around the eyes and the stubborn endurance of suffering around the silent lips wages on.

However, I know a secret. When the sun sets in southern Greece, it rains.

No matter how helpless the olive trees look, rain will come. When Yaya gets home from the cemetery, she closes the shutters and peels off the black clothes, folding them carefully and placing them on the dresser, next to Papou’s old bifocals.

Yaya has a secret drawer of floral nightgowns that she only wears when the day has ended and the sun can no longer punish her misfortune. Maria’s yellow dress is long gone, but the pinks and blues and purples are still there. I like to think that the other widows also have secret stashes of light, brightly colored clothing. The olive trees flourish and yield fruit despite the oppression of the sun. There can be beauty in spite of loss.

Dylan Morse

Ithaca, n.y..

I kept a firm grip on the rainbow trout as I removed the lure from its lip. Then, my heart racing with excitement, I lowered the fish to the water and watched it flash away.

I caught that 10-inch fryling five years ago on Fall Creek using a $5 fly rod given to me by my neighbor Gil. The creek is spectacular as it cascades down the 150-foot drop of Ithaca Falls. Only 100-feet further, however, it runs past a decrepit gun factory and underneath a graffitied bridge before flowing adjacent to my high school and out to Cayuga Lake. Aside from the falls, the creek is largely overlooked. Nearly all of the high school students I know who cross that bridge daily do so with no thought of the creek below.

When I was a toddler, my moms say I used to point and ask, “What? What? What?” Even now my inquisitive nature is obvious. Unlike my friends, I had noticed people fly fishing in Fall Creek. Mesmerized by their graceful casts, I pestered Gil into teaching me. From that first thrilling encounter with a trout, I knew I needed to catch more. I had a new string of questions. I wanted to understand trout behavior, how to find them, and what they ate. There was research to do.

I devoted myself to fly fishing. I asked questions. I woke up at 4 a.m. to fish before school. I spent days not catching anything. Yet, I persisted. The Kid’s Book of Fishing was replaced by Norman MacLean’s A River Runs Through It . Soon Ernest Hemingway’s essays found their place next to Trout Unlimited magazines by my bed.

I sought teachers. I continued to fish with Gil, and at his invitation joined the local Trout Unlimited Chapter. I enrolled in a fly-tying class.

There I met Ken, a soft-spoken molecular biologist, who taught me to start each fly I make by crimping the hook to reduce harm to fish, and Mike, a sarcastic Deadhead lawyer, who turns over rocks at all times of year to “match the hatch” and figure out which insects fish are eating. Thanks to my mentors, I can identify and create almost every type of Northeastern mayfly, caddisfly, and stonefly.

The more I learned, the more protective I felt of the creek and its inhabitants. My knowledge of mayflies and experience fishing in many New York streams led me to notice the lack of Blue-Winged Olive Mayflies in Fall Creek. I figured out why while discussing water quality in my AP Biology class; lead from the gun factory had contaminated the creek and ruined the mayfly habitat. Now, I participate in stream clean-up days, have documented the impact of invasive species on trout and other native fish, and have chosen to continue to explore the effects of pollutants on waterways in my AP Environmental Science class.

Last year, on a frigid October morning, I started a conversation with the man fishing next to me. Banks, I later learned, is a contemporary artist who nearly died struggling with a heroin addiction. When we meet on the creek these days we talk about casting techniques, aquatic insects, and fishing ethics. We also talk about the healing power of fly fishing. I know Banks would agree with Henry David Thoreau, who wrote “[Many men] lay so much stress on the fish which they catch or fail to catch, and on nothing else, as if there were nothing else to be caught.”

Initially, my goal was to catch trout. What I landed was a passion. Thanks to that first morning on Fall Creek, I’ve found a calling that consumes my free time, compels me to teach fly fishing to others, and drives what I want to study in college.

I will be leaving Fall Creek soon. I am eager to step into new streams. 

Addison Amadeck

Kirkland, wash..

It’s 6:52 a.m. on a frosted-over Friday in September, and my dad and I are running late as we wind down our steep hill to school. My dad ducks down and peeks out the sliver of visibility at the bottom of the windshield. I sit on my hands to keep them warm as sherbet skies rise behind the Cascades. We are harmonizing to The Wood Brothers’ “Keep Me Around.” He sings the melody; I try to find the major third. We click into tune on a word, then I wince as my pitch slips to dissonance until I slide back in. We belt out the lyrics: “Hello, I’m Faith, and I might be blind,” I hit the minor fifth. “But I’m the one who’s gonna keep towin’ the line,” I climb to the octave. “And you land on your feet almost every time,” I drop down to the one, exploring different tones within the key.

At some point in everyone’s life, a promise stops being forever. Marriages end in divorce, BFFs drift apart. But no matter how many times a promise is broken, I’ve always wanted to believe that someone will keep one to me.

That night, my dad was due to fly home. And he did: most of him anyway. I noticed that no matter how much I stared at him, he wouldn’t make eye contact. He eventually sat down and looked at me. In that moment, I didn’t know if I wanted to hear the truth or anything but. Anything other than: “I’ve been drinking.”

My ears rang. My mind went blank. All I could hear was the same toxic phrase in my head, over and over, as I stared at a freckle on the wall. I started to worry that if my dad couldn’t keep this promise, no one would ever be able to keep one to me. I couldn’t understand how after all the years of work he’d done, after how much he’d grown, after missing my 7th birthday while in rehab, he could just throw it all away. I had always assumed that this promise would be kept, especially from my dad, and I couldn’t help but feel disappointed and betrayed.

After that night, dad immediately resumed working his AA program, but I found myself stuck to work out my emotions alone. After weeks of songwriting and immersing myself in music, I determined that trust, vulnerability, and acceptance are love’s inherent ingredients. The behavior of others is unpredictable. I found I could apply my acceptance of his relapse to different experiences in my life, whether teenage gossip or catastrophe. I can’t control the actions of others; I can only alter my perspective.

I look over at the driver’s seat on that September morning. My dad plucks the strings of the stand-up bass as I beat the drums on the dashboard. We sing at the top of our lungs, “Try askin’ the dark where the light comes from.” No matter the pitch, every note can be harmonized. I need only transcribe the key.

Alexander McLaughlin

Lexington, mass..

Throughout my childhood, I felt the need to be in control — a need which came to an abrupt halt in June of 2015. I laid down on the balcony of a hotel in the middle of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, staring down the long, straight street that led to the pier. My fresh shirt had long collapsed against my damp chest as the sun ascended into the sky. A crescendo of voices from the street market far below snapped me out of my daze and reminded me of how different this place was from my home. On this trip, the powerful combination of travel and soccer taught me that liberation actually doesn’t come from being in control, but rather comes from fully immersing myself in my surroundings and opening myself up to those around me.

Under the Puerto Rican sun, I stood up from the balcony, using my arm to raise myself off the sizzling tile. I strained my ears in an attempt to make out the rapid Spanish coming from the streets below. As my chest swelled with feelings of curiosity and excitement, I decided it was time to explore. I’d been taking Spanish for six years, mastering every tense and memorizing every irregular conjugation, but as I stepped onto the cobblestone streets of Old San Juan, I was too nervous to string more than two Spanish words together. I dribbled my soccer ball between the street vendors and their stalls, each one yelling to convince me to buy something as I performed a body feint or a step over with the soccer ball, weaving myself away as if they were defenders blocking my path to the goal.

My previous need for control had come from growing up with strict parents, coaches, and expectations from my school and community. Learning in an environment without lenience for error or interpretation meant I fought for control wherever I could get it. This manifested itself in the form of overthinking every move and pass in soccer games, restricting the creativity of my play, and hurting the team. After years of fighting myself and others for control, I realized it was my struggle for control that was restricting me in the first place.

A man hurrying by bumped into my shoulder as I continued down the street, bringing my mind back to the present. Nobody there knew who I was or cared about my accomplishments. I seemed to be removed from the little town as I continued to wander. I felt naked as my safety blankets of being recognized or at the very least understood on a verbal level were stripped away, for the Puerto Ricans did not care about my achievements or past life. I was as much of a clean slate to them as they were to me.

I learned that when I open myself up to others, I am free to attain this rare state of creativity in which I can express myself without restraints or stipulations.

Alexandra Reboredo

Hialeah, fla..

When my mother started a cosmetology business to support our family, I lost my sense of home. Our dining table was no longer for sharing a steaming plate of white rice, ground beef, and black beans. Instead, it was for crisp white towels, bundles of thin, pointed wooden sticks, sterilized tweezers and scissors, and hundreds of bottles of polish.

At first, her clients were quiet. I heard nothing but the gentle hum of the air conditioner accompanied by the whirring of the electric foot rasp, and the occasional ring of a phone echoing through the hallway of closed doors. As her clients returned, they developed familiarity — the one with bleach-blonde hair in heaping curls bound together on the top of her head, her shrill, high-pitched voice wanting her nails lacquered in the darkest crimson; the 50-year-old Cuban woman who always brought pastelitos and complained about her single life, hoping a new haircut would bring her the man of her dreams; the hearty laugh that boomed through the house every Saturday morning was my human alarm clock when a mother of three was happy to have a break from tracking her toddlers. My mom had become a therapist attending her clients’ hands and feet under a white-bulb lamp with watchful eyes and open ears.

“Mami, why don’t you talk to me?” I’d ask as she was hunched over the sink and up to her elbows in soap suds.

“Why don’t you come out of your room for once?” she’d scold in Spanish.

Maybe she had a point. To me, “home” was a small room with a twin bed, a desk piled with yearbooks, magazines, newspapers, and a dresser covered in college flyers, polaroid photos, and an assortment of candles. It was my own world. To my mom, however, “home” was where family met work — all her little worlds collided. Six years after she fled from Moldova to Cuba, she and my father headed for the U.S. by raft. My mother left her own family behind, but keeps the door open to those who seek to be a part of ours. Reluctantly, I realized I had to open my own door as well.

Now, when I hear the voices of my favorite clients through the paper-thin wall separating my bedroom and the dining table, I join them. Vivian, dyeing her roots to hide the gray, recounts the stories of her son hitching rides through France, Ukraine, Italy, and Spain. My mother — the diligent listener — occasionally chimes in with questions. Tania comes in for her weekly manicure at 3:50 p.m., complaining about the day’s difficult clients at the attorney’s office where she works. Lily comes on Fridays, taking clients’ phone calls and documenting therapy sessions on her laptop while my mother tends to her toenails. From these women who seek comfort and find vanity, I hear endless stories about family betrayal, the neighborhood chisme about who’s being evicted from the apartment complex, and complaints about overcharged phone bills.

These conversations constructed my new “home”: maybe someday I’ll backpack across Europe, or work for a law firm, or travel with clientele right in my pocket. In the meantime, my mom and I talk more than ever before, trading the whereabouts of my day at school for the moments she shared with her clients. We share our own moments together — and a new definition of home.

Mitchell Greene

St. petersburg, fla..

It all comes down to the essay. Before the college application process began, I was already keenly aware that an essay has the potential to impact and change lives. A personal essay, written before I was born, has influenced my life and is, in a way, responsible for my existence!

Eerily similar to the college application process, there were many qualified donor applicants. Choosing one donor from the pool of applicants was an insurmountable task for my mom until she realized there was an essay buried in the back of each profile. After reading my donor’s essay, she chose him because he spoke so eloquently about his passion for music and the arts.

My donor’s file is the first item I packed when I recently had to evacuate my home during a hurricane. I treasure and protect the papers because they contain the only insight I have into half of my DNA. His essay is the sole connection I have to a man I will never meet. I will never know more about my donor than what he chose to reveal in his personal essay.

When I was in second grade, I read the essay for the first time and learned the donor was a professional musician and an accomplished guitar player. This knowledge was the catalyst for me to begin exploring my own musical abilities. I quickly learned to play the clarinet and joined the elementary school band. As soon as I was physically big enough to carry around a mini Fender electric guitar, I begged to take guitar lessons. Perhaps it was subconscious at the time, but while many of my elementary school friends were playing sports with their dads, I was looking for a way to connect to my donor through music. During middle school and high school, my enthusiasm for music and performing accelerated in tandem with my talent. In addition to pursuing instrumental music, I began singing in theatre and in an a cappella group.

Through his writing, my donor taught me that when someone is passionate about something, they are willing to make sacrifices and to suffer for it. I have made numerous sacrifices to be a conscientious student at a challenging school and, at the same time, be fully committed to a rigorous performing arts program. My former athletic endeavors and successes are now a distant memory. Over the years, I have missed many social events and spending time with friends and family. I am proud of my academic record, although I suspect my GPA would be a little stronger if I would not have devoted so much time to music and theatre! Looking back, the sacrifices were worth it, and I would not change the decisions I made!

There is not a time I play my clarinet or guitar, step up to a microphone to sing, or take a bow after a performance that I do not wonder what my donor would think of me. I am still searching for a connection to him through performing and music. I am thankful his personal essay swayed my mother to choose him as my donor, and that his writing compelled me to discover and pursue all of my passions in the classroom and on the stage.

Charlotte Guterman

Andover, mass..

I used to whirl this world recklessly, close my eyes, point a finger, and imagine living wherever I landed: in Tel Aviv or Tegucigalpa or Islamabad. After each imagined journey, I traced my way home. Traveling through the Sahara, over the Andes, and past the Nile, until I reached just above Boston, just below New Hampshire. Until I was safe in my little house in a town too small to see.

Once, after looking at my model Earth, I asked my mother about East Germany. She laughed wearily, “That map is old.” And I realized that so many places I had imagined no longer existed. On my globe, the Soviet Union would always spread across a whole hemisphere, the northern ice sheet would never slide into the sea, African nations doomed to divide and recombine and divorce bloodily would forever lie flat and whole beneath my palms.

When my parents divorced my world moved. It was packed up and driven to my mother’s new house where it stood in a corner as I grew up. Each week I walked between two homes, charting the topography of awkward phone calls, overnight bags, and email conversations. At first I mourned the loss of that confident sense of place and of belonging that I experienced when I was little. I felt like I was searching for a feeling, for a country that didn’t exist anymore.

But as I continued to navigate my way through this different type of geography, I would occasionally go back to the hollow model world, watch it wobble on its axis and begin to understand how to live, even grow, despite imperfection.

I am now taller than the globe; my mother has the armoire and my father kept the couch. Yet I do not feel split in half. I no longer have one home to trace my way back to, but I don’t mind. I have learned to make homes for myself: in the art rooms of my high school, in a tent at camp each summer, in the people I am surrounded by — my friends. In my mother, in my father. I have found small places for myself, hung drawings on their walls, bought carpets for their floors, come to know myself beneath their roofs.

I am an artist. I am a writer. I am a daughter. I have paint under my nails and charcoal dust in my hair. I check out too many books from the library and always bring them back overdue. I scribble notes on my hands and in my journals and find scraps of paper in my pockets. I am perpetually in love with hiking boots, the clunky kind. I am an okay cook. I am an awful liar.

I am developing self-awareness, but I still have so much to learn. I want to speak new languages. I want to read all the time. I want to travel to actual countries and take pictures on a bunch of disposable cameras because there is something magic about those blurry images that develop in the dark. I want to scale real mountains, close my eyes and sit cross-legged on their tops while the whole world around me spins wildly into the future.

*These essays were published in the Hamilton Magazine and illustrated by Andrew Vickery. These essays follow three similar collections from the Class of 2018 , Class of 2012 , and Class of 2007 .

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Hamilton Hello?!

Just received my Hamilton portal credentials. To be honest, the biggest factor I added it to my application is coz they don't have a writing supplement. Only to see a heck long list of "OpTiOnAl" supplementary materials, including a supplemental essay.

Also, one of the options is a small Q/A called "Hamilton Hello" in which you have to listen to a question prepare for 90 seconds and then give an answer in 90 seconds!!! Does anyone know what type of questions are there and if it's one-try or not?

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Class of 2012

These essays are in addition to similar collections from the Class of 2026 ,  Class of 2022 ,  Class of 2018 , and Class of 2007 .

The Rhythm of My Days, Measure by Measure

By zane glauber bedford, n.y..

“Time to get up!”

I make the journey from my warm bed to the hard oak of the kitchen table downstairs. Racing thoughts about the day's events, upcoming tests, hours of inevitable homework are silenced as the Miles Davis sextet walks out onto the stage in my mind. There’s a round of applause and the group starts playing.

The men look at Paul Chambers on bass as he thumbs the familiar riff of “So What.” My focus is not on him, however; my eyes digress to the sparkling silver Gretsch drums in the middle of the stage. This is what I've been waiting for. Philly Joe Jones sits behind the carefully crafted set and, in a couple of measures, digs into his ride cymbal while keeping time with his left foot on the hi-hat pedal, his face shining with sweat, his smile beaming excitement, every pore of his body oozing jazz.

I finish my eggs and venture back upstairs to clean up, put on some clothes, and organize my backpack before leaving for school. I hold the toothbrush to my mouth with my right hand and play out the ghost notes of Jones’ snare drum with my left hand on my thigh. I go down the stairs for the last time, taking each step in rhythm, the thud of each foot a kick on the bass drum.

A school day ensues. The bell rings, time for seventh period BC Calc and another derivative quiz. I methodically go through the formulae in my head. Should I use the quotient rule, or change the exponent of the second function and use the multiplication rule with the chain rule? I feel like Philly Joe given a straight-ahead 4/4 bop groove; he could keep it at 4 or he could spice it up with two groups of 3 and one group of 2 with quick Swiss Army triplet fills. My hands express the mathematical directives in my head, they feed one off the other, just as Elvin Jones grooves off the blazing solos of Trane. While trading fours, Coltrane blares out sixteenth-note triplets and Jones responds with thirty-second notes between the snare, the toms, and his vintage Zildjian Ks. My quiz asks me for the derivative of a complicated polynomial — my pencil draws variables, exponents, coefficients and parentheses, much the way Elvin responds to the tenor sax with comping paradiddles, accents, ruffs and cymbal hits. The solo is finished; I hand in the paper.

It’s now five o’clock. I sit at my desk, contemplating my approach to an English assignment. My confusion mirrors the playing of a complex time signature, say 19/8. Counting 19 beats every measure while keeping perfect time is close to impossible. I ponder solutions. Would I divide it into two groups of 7 and a group of 5 or count it in four groups of 4 and then a quick group of 3? I complete the assigned essay by seven.

The clock strikes ten. I lie in my bed, my head reaping the benefits of the cold side of the pillow. Before I drift off, I hear the soft sighs of Jack DeJohnette’s brushes on the skins, complementing a mellow Michael Brecker ballad. Lights fade into darkness as one day’s end blends into another’s beginning.

I live my life through music. The complex rhythms of jazz drumming inspire me to be spontaneous and creative, to play off the sundry challenges I face every day. Time perpetually moves forward; I will always be there to keep it.

By Samuel Choate Weston, Mass.

Cranky and wheezy from her latest cigarette, Auntie El walked into our house on her first day wearing her flowered apron and carrying a plastic grocery bag in which she packed her clothes for the week — not exactly Mary Poppins. Both my parents did not see this arrangement working, but were grateful for her services until a suitable caretaker could be found. She took care of me for two weeks until she went on a previously scheduled trip to Las Vegas. I guess she must have softened to the idea of caring for me because, halfway through the trip, she called my mother and told her she wanted the job full time. Auntie El started the next Monday.

No longer able to smoke because of my fragile lungs (I was on a respirator for several days after I was born), Auntie El had to find activities to take her mind off cigarettes. She took me on long walks every day and, as I grew older, would play catch with me in the backyard. Her health improved dramatically. We were good for each other.

As the years passed, we became even closer. By the time I was in first grade, she was a faculty favorite at my school and could be found waiting for me every day in the parking lot in her white Cutlass Ciera Oldsmobile with her BINGO plate on the front. She quickly became a school legend when she was the only adult in memory to join the Halloween parade which took us through every classroom in the school in costume. Auntie El wore a witch’s hat and a black and orange polka dot apron; I was a fireman.

Through our years together, we had numerous adventures. One night, her nose bled profusely and she could not stop the bleeding. Since my parents were at work, she had to call an ambulance and was forced to take me with her. With the sirens blaring, I hopped in the back, dressed in my red Power Ranger pajamas.

Auntie El’s tough, gritty mentality made me a stronger person. She grew up without a father and her family was poor. She and her siblings were taken out of school by tenth grade in order to help support the family. She never missed a chance to point out how hard my parents worked to provide me with great opportunities and called the town in which we lived “la de da land.” I always had Auntie El to give me a dose of reality.

The littlest things seemed to pull Auntie El and me together. Our passion for food was a regular topic, and we would have daily discussions on what I had to eat for lunch that day at school. Late at night, I would sneak up to her room and watch episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond and would laugh until my parents heard us and ended the fun. No matter where we were, you could always find Auntie El and me laughing about something and enjoying the moment.

In the fall of my freshman year, Auntie El was diagnosed with colon cancer. After a successful operation, she spent some time in a rehabilitation center to regain her strength. On Thanksgiving evening, 2004, Auntie El suffered a heart attack. She fell to the floor, and hit her head. She was found later the next morning, and was pronounced dead. I found out when I heard my mother scream on the phone with the hospital. Auntie El’s passing affected our whole family, but it was particularly tough for me. My good friend, my partner in crime and my teacher was no longer with me. Coming home to her every day for fifteen years was something I really enjoyed. Arriving home to an empty, quiet house and having days pass without talking to her was the worst experience of my life. I did not know life without Auntie El.

However, my family and I had to adjust but I did not know how to start over. I found myself thinking about Auntie El a lot and, one day, realized that she was still with me when I would hear her voice in the back of my mind during a test or a game or just when I was making dinner for myself.

More importantly, I realized that Auntie El instilled in me the values that I admired in her. She was genuine, caring and respectful. She taught me to work hard, and be mentally tough for life’s challenges. Her perseverance and grit showed me a lot and provided me with the perfect role model for life.

Why My Friends Didn’t Visit Last Summer

By riley smith '12 rhinelander, wis..

I shouldn’t have told them I live on a farm with a barn, ten chickens, a dog, a canary, two thousand deer, coyotes and beautiful Silver Bass Lake. When I say beautiful lake, I mean it in the past tense. Each year the water level drops several inches, and we now refer to it more accurately as “the puddle” threatening to transform into a wetland. But even though you can't swim because of the weeds that entangle your appendages, you can still kayak! Just be sure you wear muck boots with your swimsuit because we traditionally portage the kayak a quarter mile down the bank to find water deep enough to push in. The bloodsuckers are also a turnoff. In the last year I have only had two bloodsuckers (leeches with small teeth) attach to me. The anticoagulant kept my leg bleeding for around two hours while I lay with my leg elevated; my neurotic mother pacing the room and crying while on hold with the local ER. But really, that's no reason to postpone a visit!

Another fabulous addition to our “farmstead” is the field that Papa was able to mow into a running trail. In order to escape the locusts that cling to your legs and spit brown juice on anything they come in contact with, you have to run early in the morning, and by early I mean quarter to five and still dark. However, this does pose another problem. Recently we’ve spotted some bear scat, indicating there is a bear somewhere on our property. This was confirmed when my sister ran into two cubs and a mother sow during her morning run. Rule number one for human survival; do not run into a mother bear with her two cubs. Luckily my sister is an elite cross country runner and was out of the woods by the time the bears even realized an intruder’s presence. But I still find it an excellent excuse to not use the “awesome” running trail.

Being a true-blooded Wisconsinite, naturally winter is my favorite time of year. The amphitheatre in our field provides ideal opportunity for break-neck tobogganing, and the running path is converted annually into a cross country ski trail. Two years ago we recorded five feet of snow in our field. It’s great for my brother and sister who just prance around happily on the icy surface, however, I tend to sink down to somewhere around my mid-thighs. If you’ve ever watched the movie A Christmas Story with Ralphie’s little brother in the intense snowsuit that resembles the Michelin Man, you would understand what I look like. Adding to my attire of boots, mittens, hat, scarf, face mask, long johns with snow pants and two sweaters, my mother insists I wear an oversized blaze orange jacket, because in Rhinelander, every season is deer season.

It probably wasn’t the best idea to mention my two uncles. Uncle Pete is fun; he always comes to watch the Packers game on Sunday and enjoy my mother’s home-cooked brunch. But the partial he received last year, after he knocked out his two front teeth dog sledding with his huskies through downtown Rhinelander, does at times make you lose your appetite. My Uncle John sometimes can be mistaken for a mountain man. His assortment of furs and strange bags full of fishing gear and other odd tools whose uses are a mystery to everyone but Johnny himself, add to his “Yooper” appearance. To clarify for those non-Midwesterners, a Yooper is a term used to describe those from the backwoods of the Upper Peninsula. So sometimes he’s a little strange. However, he is probably one of the most well-known men in all of northern Wisconsin; famous for providing fresh bluegills to the Franciscan nuns, his state-renowned loon calls, and his never-ending repertoire of jokes. He’s burst into our house on several occasions with a dripping and still-twitching forty-eight-inch musky. And did I mention he’s a part-time grave digger?

But no matter how hick it may seem, in the end, I just feel sorry for everyone who scoffed at a visit to Rhinelander. Long nature walks in the woods, fresh little red potatoes from the garden, glowing sunsets off the porch, families of loons and whippoorwill calls, rhubarb and asparagus patches, freshly fallen snow, fiery reds, tangerine oranges and the sunburst golds of autumn, making apple pie with the apples from our orchard, playing piano at night in front of a blazing fire — they’re the ones missing out.

Music for Prague 1968

By ryan park moraga, calif..

Just as Music for Prague shattered my perspective of music, my mother’s unsuccessful battle against leukemia shattered the stability of my life. In October of 2005, after eight years and several failed treatments, it was determined that nothing more could be done for my mother. Over the next several months I watched as she withered away, living the last of her days with the feebleness of an old woman. When my mother lay too still in her sleep, I feared that I had lost her. And when she was awake, I was haunted by the images of her shivering violently in bed, the images blurred by the tears I tried to suppress in order to be strong for her, and the demoralizing feeling of helplessness that came with my inability to comfort her. I was torn emotionally. I wanted her suffering to end, but that meant losing her forever.

May 17 was the night of the concert and however nervous I was, all I can remember about that night was my mother, still a mother despite her physical state, harassing me for not taking a shower. It was for her that I vowed I would perform the song.

Mr. Benstein raised his baton and the melody of a bird song echoed from the flutes; the audience fell silent. The peaceful aura was broken by the minor chords of my clarinet, calling forth a looming presence. His baton strokes widened, and machine guns blasted from the snare drum, adding to the roaring of the brass tanks. My instrument emanated the cries of suffering, the notes shivering off my tongue. With the final upswing, he summoned the Hussite War song, and much of the pain that had built up inside my heart over the past months was lifted. My father told me later that he was deeply shaken by the piece as well. I realized that Music for Prague was not about the structure or the visual images it conjured, but instead it was the very lack of structure that allowed for Husa’s emotions to stand out.

She passed away only a couple of hours after the performance. For the first time in months she looked at peace as she lay still in the presence of her family and I was able to accept that she was in a better place. It was Karel Husa’s ability to capture the loneliness and the pain of losing a loved one that allows Music for Prague to move us all. The rhythm and beat of music describe emotions not restricted by words, flowing together with the beating of the heart.

There is Something About Africa

By sorina seeley paris, france.

“Sawubona”

“Then the person says ‘Sapela.’”

“Sapela”

“Then you will reply ‘Sakhona snez wa nena.’”

“Sakhona snez wa nena” “Remember if someone gives something to you or helps you, say ‘ngiyabonga kakhuku.’ It means thank you.” “Ngiyabonga kakhuku” “Got it all?” “Yes.” “Good, because we’re almost there.”

My heart skipped a beat, we were almost there, we were just minutes away from the a world that so far, only existed inside my mind, inspired through bedtime stories and faded photographs. I was minutes away from a place completely strange, yet so familiar to me. As we drove through the vast open land, my father rolled down the windows and said, “Stick your head out, smell that? That’s Africa.”

Despite the many travels that characterized much of my childhood, I had never been on a trip quite like that of my first visit to South Africa. To me Africa existed through my father’s journals, letters exchanged between my grandparents, an array of photographs and wonderful stories of what it was like having Africa as a home. However now for the first time, I was actually arriving at the small town on the eastern coast of South Africa where four generations of my paternal side had grown up. Driving through the town of Estcourt for the first time seemed somewhat like a dream. As we passed the small stone church where my grandparents were married, a small black- and-white picture rushed to my mind. The beautiful stained windows over my grandparents' heads were somehow familiar. Jacaranda trees stood proudly between houses and along sidewalks with little blue flowers seated delicately on the top of most branches, so fragile due to the heat that when a warm breeze ruffled the branches, the flowers would float slowly to the pavement.

Soon the individual trees disappeared into a park in front of which stood a small sign that read: “Drummond Park.” “It was named after your great-grandfather,” my dad explained. “He was the first mayor of the town.” Soon the houses became more scarce and once again the landscape became littered with cows, horses, zebra and small flightless birds. Five minutes into this we had arrived at a house at the top of a hill. Glen Roy was etched on the wooden arch marking the entrance.

My dad’s cousin rushed forward to meet us, welcoming my dad home and welcoming my brother and me to our heritage. She guided us around the property, together with my dad, pointing out various places where events had happened: the rose garden overlooking the dam where my father and mother were engaged; under the tree where lunches were eaten when it was not too hot; and the back shed where the half-a-meter-long pet tortoise was kept. That same afternoon, exhausted from traveling yet full of excitement to see everything, my dad announced that he had someone he wanted us to meet. Her name was Josephine and she had been his nanny when he was a child and continued to look after him until he left Africa for London to find a job.

We walked around to the back of the house to the hill that leads down to Wagon Drift Dam. I lowered myself onto the grass, in between my brother and my grandmother, slipping forward as the dry earth crumbled a bit beneath me. My eyes swept the grass around me, yellow from the heat and lack of rain. By the dam at the bottom of the hill lay ten or twenty small huts raised from the earth. Up the hill from the huts marched a figure followed by many other smaller figures. “That's her,” my dad said laughing. A tiny woman no younger than ninety reached the top of the hill and embraced my father, both with tears in their eyes they sat down around me. After a moment's silence Josephine started to speak. She spoke so quickly, the Zulu words rolling out of her mouth indistinguishable from each other. Yet the unfamiliar words told a familiar and wonderful story. My grandfather and father were laughing as my grandmother translated the fast-paced monologue into stories of my father’s childhood. It was incredible to see my family’s history and my father’s past told through someone like an aunt to my dad, someone who had been a part of all the stories my father told me. I was seeing a part of me through someone else’s eyes that before had only been a bedtime story.  

At first, Josephine’s small frame contradicted the image of a strong black Zulu woman I had imagined from my father’s stories, but her strength, vigor and powerful presence greatly surpassed my previous image of her. Finally the fast-paced discussion slowed, and the laughter was replaced by a peaceful smile. She said very slowly in broken English that it was her first pilgrimage back up the hill to Glen Roy since my dad left over 30 years ago. Her dignified, serene stature remained dominating as many of the smaller figures came closer, around twenty small children gathered around her, the smaller ones crawling into her lap, the older ones tentatively remaining a few meters away. My grandmother explained that most of Josephine’s children and friends had died of AIDS, and she was now the matriarch of the village raising orphaned children as her own. She gazed at the children with such love and care, the same affection that saw my father’s upbringing.

As we stood up to leave, Josephine turned her head and looked at my brother and me. “Singabangane,” she said. The word sounded so familiar and beautiful. My grandmother leaned forward and whispered translation into my ear. “Singabangane,” I replied. It meant we are friends.

“There is something about Africa,” my father always says, “something that runs deep in your veins, something that will always draw you back.” When I lie in bed at night, I still imagine myself in far-off countries, immersed in exotic cultures, yet after a while my mind always returns to Africa. I feel the hot sun pushing me into the ground, the vast openness around me and the connection to the country that means so much to my family and me. I see the thatched roof of the house where my father spent his childhood and the landscape that makes my heart beat fast and hard. I think of the hot air that wrapped around me and the beauty and mystery of Africa that cannot be put into words, but remains a constant ache in my heart to return. On the plane ride back home to Prague, I wrote in my journal:

In the distance a hot wind Sways the branches of a lone acacia tree Giving futile shade to a lonely bird It doesn’t sing or dance, just sits there Staring out to nowhere Too hot to move, too hot to think Just sitting there, staring into the distance, Into the eternity of Africa. Jan 2002  

By Danielle Burby Huntington Station, N.Y.

One by one, my friends stood before us, dancing their stories. First went James, his tap shoes ringing out like pealing bells against the springy floor, telling a funny story about doctors. Then Sally, her beautiful red hair, newly cut, swinging and swaying along with her and her bubbly tale of band camp. Then Katie, intricately weaving a pattern across the floor, speaking about her open heart surgery. Then my little sister, the youngest one there, timidly striking her feet against the ground, quietly recounting the time she and my father had gotten lost canoeing.

Finally, it was my turn. I was the last to go, and I still had a hundred stories racing through my head. I stood up and slowly walked across the long room, my tap shoes clickety-clacking with every step. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched my reflection follow me in the mirror. I turned around and faced five pairs of expectant eyes. Of their own accord my feet took up a rhythm: ba da dum bum, ba da dum bum. And above the metallic sound of my tapping flew a story I hadn’t consciously chosen; a story I had been keeping locked tightly away from even my deepest thoughts.

As I realized what I was saying, my feet quickened and the tapping grew more frantic. But the tapping couldn’t drown out my words; a story about my grandmother. I began with the surprise visit my mother and I decided to pay. I told of the window through which I watched my grandmother fall. I told of the glass door, the locked glass door, and my grandmother’s slumped form lying unmoving on the floor with just a door barring us from her. And my mother, my clean-mouthed mother, cursing and struggling to find a key, finally finding it and thrusting the door open. The two of us rushing to help my grandmother, me a few steps behind, unsure of what to do, of what was going on.

As I told the story, my feet and words felt clumsy and I didn't know what they would do or say next. Five pairs of eyes, full of pity, watched me. I choked on the words. My feet faltered. But I had begun, and now I had to see it through. I described the sour smell of alcohol seeping out of my grandmother’s very pores; the blood, the crimson translucent blood, puddled and smeared across the floor. And worst of all, her eyes, bleary and unfocused, facing in different directions. I told of my own eyes, wide as steering wheels. Blood oozed out of the cut on her head. And my grandmother — my grandma — tried to act as though nothing had ­happened, as though she weren’t drunk, as though she wasn’t an alcoholic.

My tapping faded out after the words had finally stopped running out of my mouth. The tale hadn’t been told in a cohesive manner and my dancing had been disjointed. But my story was out in the open. And as I stood there, I suddenly felt naked. I was utterly exposed. I had dug up a piece of my soul that I suddenly wasn’t sure I should have uncovered. Even an hour later, riding shotgun in my mother’s minivan, with the trees flying past me, I felt as though a piece of me had been scooped out and left for the vultures.

But miraculously, after I got beyond my feelings of vulnerability, my wound started to mend. It was as though by telling the story I had let out an infection. My anger toward my grandmother was scabbing over; my resentment was being changed into a small scar. And even though none of the people who had heard my story ever brought it up again, sharing that small piece of myself with them allowed me to accept what had happened and to heal.  

Hameau Farm

By hayden kiessling pound ridge, n.y..

Thirty curious girls surrounded the calm haven that I had created in the stall for Petoria. The campers watched through the bars of the stall, waiting quietly and patiently for something to happen. I thought back to five years before, when I had first seen a calf being born. The mother was out in the pasture, so my friends and I watched in awe and anticipation as the massive creature lay down on her side and started pushing. A new calf was always an exciting change at the farm. Chores were put on hold as we wondered at the slimy, skinny animal trying to take its first steps.

The day Petoria went into labor, the girls were supposed to go to the state park for a barbeque and a swim, but they chose unanimously to stay and watch Petoria bring her first baby into the world. These are the kinds of girls that come to Hameau Farm: inquisitive, hardworking, independent girls who would rather spend two weeks feeding a baby goat with a bottle than splashing around in a town pool with their friends or playing soccer for their travel team. Even though my days as a camper ended long ago, I still consider myself a Hameau Farm girl, and this was my ­seventh summer.

For the moment my place was in the stall, sitting in the hay with Petoria. She let out a soft moo, and I stroked her soft brown-spotted coat. She was ready. I moved aside so that she could lie on her side, first coaxing her to the center of the stall so that the campers would get a good view. She started pushing. A series of hushed whispers rippled through the line of young girls. I loved that they were so excited. These were a bunch of city girls who had been dropped off almost a week ago, not knowing what to expect, but willing to try something new. I thought back to my first week at camp, and how I hadn’t even known how to wash my own dishes. When it was my chore group’s turn in the kitchen after dinner, I not only learned how to scrub, rinse and sanitize, but by the end of the night, I learned how to make the perfect beard out of soap bubbles, and I picked up some great dance moves to Britney Spears songs. Everything was an adventure at camp, and today was proving to be no exception.

Petoria was breathing harder. I could see the feet starting to emerge. I knew that the front hooves would come out first and the calf would literally dive out of its mother. This calf had some of the biggest feet I had ever seen, and Petoria had clearly noticed as well. As pushing got harder, Petoria became more vocal, and then she stopped. She was out of energy, but she needed to push or the calf ­wouldn’t survive. I tried to feed her grain and give her water, but Petoria would have none of it. She was exhausted.

After deferring to the camp director, I had to gather up twine from the bales of hay around the barn, tie them together, and tie the long string around the calf's exposed hooves. It was my turn to do the work. I pulled on the twine, but couldn't get a good grip on it. My fellow counselor and I tied our end of the rope around a pitchfork. That provided us with at least a little leverage. Three of us pulled on that handle for what seemed like an hour. By then there was no point in trying to keep the campers quiet and relaxed. They were all concerned, shouting words of encouragement to Petoria and clapping and cheering whenever a little more of the calf emerged.

It is a Hameau Farm custom to name a new baby animal something starting with the first letter of its mother’s name, so when that little bull calf finally came out of Petoria, the campers voted, and we named him Presley, after The King. He was the center of attention for days after, but as I made my way down to the farmhouse to shower away the slime, dirt, and sawdust, I knew that he was just one of the many adventures that each one of those campers would have at Hameau Farm.

Block by Block, Word by Word

By daniel steinman short hills, n.j..

In elementary school, I was fanatical about my LEGOs. I would build the medieval castle, complete with the moat and the drawbridge and guard stations and the throne room for the king and queen and their royal dog, Patches. (Coincidentally, Patches was also the name of my dog.) I would kneel for hours, hunched over the hundreds of blocks spread over the carpet, to select just the right piece for each part of the structure.

Once the castle walls were erected and the knights on horseback were set to approach from the other side of the moat, I was done. I didn't really play with the castle afterward. I moved it to the corner so that my sister’s Barbie convertible wouldn't crash into it and ruin my little “Ages 3 and Up” masterpiece.

Looking back on my childhood, I was a bizarrely obsessive little kid. For days after building a fort or a spaceship, I would stop and examine that every plastic block was still in place.

It’s strange to think that between the age of riding a tricycle and the age of driving a car, I am, in some ways, exactly the same. I don't play with LEGOs anymore, but I am a construction worker of types. Now I write essays and stories and newspaper articles, and I approach it with the same compulsion.

Every word is painstakingly selected with the same intensity I exerted as a child choosing the right color block. Every phrase is turned around and around in my head like arranging the walls of the castle gate. Every sentence is examined for its structural quality. At my desk — like kneeling over my rug — I craft meticulously.

By writing, I hope to create the grand and intricate images in my mind, to give them some physical incarnation. Inked on a page, a nebulous mass of related thoughts can be forged into something real. A story or essay can be erected as the fulfillment of a single concept. My gratification comes from being able to perfectly embody an idea. This can be frustrating because I’ve never written anything close to perfect. For as much as I agonize over my words and methodically rework every draft, my ideal eludes me. Still, I return to my desk and keep writing, editing, and rewriting because if I don’t return to my desk, I’m sure I’ll never write the essays, stories, and newspaper articles that I know I want to write.

You can make almost anything out of words. You can build planet-sized spaceships, long-lost medieval castles, or cities of glass structures that pierce the clouds. If my construction work is solid enough, I believe I will be able to make these worlds — real and imaginary — come alive on paper the way they did on the rug of my basement. So I continue to build — block by block, word by word, sentence by sentence — in the hope that I will end up with something I can put to the side of my desk and examine every once in a while to see that every word fits in place.

These essays are in addition to three similar collections from the Class of 2022 , Class of 2012 , and Class of 2007 .

College Essay Writing Tips

The Hamilton Admission Team offers these tips for you to consider when sitting down to write your college application essays.

Office of Admission

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by Lin-Manuel Miranda

Hamilton essay questions.

What style is a majority of the music in Hamilton and what does it contribute to the play?

What makes Hamilton so unique, and what many critics and audiences loved about it when it first came out, is the fact that it anachronistically blends early American history with contemporary American rap traditions. Early American history, which is notably white and from the 18th century, does not exactly beg the influence of hip-hop, a musical style adopted by musicians of color. Thus, the marriage of rap with history becomes an unlikely pairing, but one that pays off. The typically dry historical narrative is given a boost of vitality and relevance in its hip-hop treatment, as the stakes of a treaty or a compromise are made as high as that of a rap battle.

Why are Burr and Hamilton such fierce rivals?

When Hamilton first meets Burr, Burr advises him to "smile more, talk less." With this advice he is referring to Hamilton's tendency to be rather outspoken and longwinded. Hamilton is passionate and fights for what he believes in, while Burr is more tight-lipped and strategic, waiting for the right moment to act, rather than acting without inhibition. This difference is playful at first, but it eventually becomes more and more tense as the two men ascend in government. Hamilton's outspokenness and Burr's underhandedness keep raising tension until the two men duel.

What is funny about King George's song?

King George represents colonial authority, the evil force of the English government trying to maintain control of the American settlers. In this way, he is the ultimate villain. Yet, the way he is written in the musical transforms him into a more comic figure, and he sings an upbeat (but subtextually resentful) song about how Americans are nothing without him. The song is in the style of a breezy pop love song, so the contrast between the romantic tone and the controlling, imperial scenario strikes a comic chord.

What is the song "Hurricane" about?

In "Hurricane," Hamilton sings about the fact that when he was a boy and a hurricane devastated his home, he ended up writing about the devastation, and the strength of the writing led to him getting sent to America to start a new life. From a moment of hardship, he managed to find a positive outlet that brought him success and the ability to overcome difficult circumstances. Now, he has betrayed his wife, and he worries about the news getting out, a situation that he compares to standing in the eye of the hurricane. Like he did when he was young, he is going to write his way through the problem, penning the Reynolds Pamphlet to reveal the affair on his own terms. The song is about how writing has always helped Hamilton get through difficult situations.

How does the show address the theme of legacy?

Throughout, Hamilton is worried about his legacy, how he will be perceived in the broader scheme of history. While he wants to be free to determine his own destiny and is anxious not to throw away his "shot," he also learns, from his own experience and from mentors like George Washington, that men cannot explicitly control their legacies. By the end, when he has died, Eliza takes it upon herself to carry on her husband's legacy, picking up the pieces of his chaotic political career and singing the song, "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story." Legacy is important to the characters, and they want to have some influence over their own legacies, but they also must grapple with their limited control.

Hamilton Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Hamilton is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

How does the play illuminate the complexity of Jefferson's and Washington's relationship with Hamilton?

In "Cabinet Meeting" what is it talking about?

The opposing sides are Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, which in case of #1, are debating about Hamilton's financial plan.

How is time a motif in Alexander Hamilton?

Throughout the musical, Hamilton tries to make the most out of every minute of his life. Burr asks Hamilton why he writes like he is running out of time. Hamilton works ridiculously hard, with an almost obsessive work ethic. Since Hamilton dies at...

Study Guide for Hamilton

Hamilton study guide contains a biography of Lin-Manuel Miranda, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Hamilton
• Hamilton Summary
• Character List

Essays for Hamilton

Hamilton essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

• Reshaping Historical Narrative in 'Hamilton'

Lesson Plan for Hamilton

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Hamilton
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Hamilton Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Hamilton

• Introduction