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Emma, who hails from a small town in the American South, followed a very different path from most of her high school classmates. In fact, about a fifth of her class dropped out before their graduation—and many of those who did graduate did not go on to college.

Nevertheless, Emma was determined to find an educational environment that would challenge her. She applied to college through QuestBridge—a nonprofit program that seeks to match motivated students from disadvantaged backgrounds to selective schools with robust financial aid packages. She was selected as a QuestBridge Finalist, and although she did not match with Yale, she received a “likely” letter, a letter sent to a small portion of the regular-decision applicant pool prior to the official March decision date, signifying that they are “likely” to be accepted.

In the college search process, Emma focused on small liberal arts colleges, hoping to major in English. Although Yale is bigger than many of the other schools she applied to, Emma felt encouraged by the idea of the residential college system. At first, Yale presented a series of difficult adjustments: the rigorous classes, the cold climate, and the urban environment, to name a few. But Emma was thrilled to finally be around other students who were engaged and enthusiastic about learning.

For Emma, the best part of Yale so far has been the community provided by her residential college. She remarks that she was surprised by how accepting and understanding her classmates were in spite of the sometimes staggering differences in their backgrounds. She’s also loved the quirky residential college traditions, such as the annual water-gun fight, in which the college’s first-years try to invade its courtyard from Old Campus while the older students defend it.

Outside of her classwork and engagement with residential life, Emma works fifteen hours a week through Yale’s workstudy program. She also volunteers with New Haven REACH, a student-run organization that helps New Haven youth access higher education, and Matriculate, a national nonprofit that partners college students with low-income, high-achieving high schoolers to provide college admissions advice. Through these organizations, Emma hopes she can give other high schoolers the chance to access the same kinds of opportunities that she herself has found.

Emma’s essays include her Common App personal statement and her QuestBridge essay.

ESSAY 1 (COMMON APP):

Personal Statement

If I could write a letter to myself one year ago, when I faced one of the most difficult transitional periods of my life, it would start like this: “Dear Emma” . . . I would skip a line and mark so many others out as I try to put into words what I went through and how exactly I came out on top.

To understand my metamorphosis to adulthood, first imagine growing up in my Southern household: all the men are alcoholics; all the women never leave the men, no matter what. I was expected to get a boyfriend and eventually marry him, the

sooner out of high school the better. Education and feminism were not valued. The women cooked. The women cleaned.

My dad was probably worse than the others. The youngest child and physically disabled, he led a hard life that he’s never handled well. I think the longest period he’s went without drugs or alcohol is a month. He lives off disability and he always married a new woman to take care of him, after the old one got tired of it.

Now imagine possessing some above average intelligence that I got from my crazy, bipolar mother (my father’s words, not mine). Imagine living in a house where a NASCAR race or a new TV show was more important than homework; imagine wishing for a private bathroom and kitchen so you never had to leave your room and interact with your family.

Now imagine it’s your sixteenth birthday. Your father is in between wives and at the races on this day because he figured you wouldn’t mind. You honestly don’t. Your mother keeps saying her door is always open if you ever wanted to leave it all.

Imagine you take the jump. You move out while your father is away. He pulls in as you’re leaving with the last of your belongings. He realizes what is happening and he screams, “How am I supposed to survive without your Social Security check?” Not “I love you.” Not “Don’t go.” Just “I only need you for money.” You hope you made the right decision, yet in your new home, it is anything but easy. You struggle with your mother to live off $1,200 until your check is transferred over to her; you put up with her bipolar moods and the seemingly constant guilt from leaving your father. You are reminded of this sporadically, as a relative calls you a thief, as your father threatens to turn you in to the police for taking your personal belongings.

The stress from all this was unbearable. I could not stand to be happy with my mother as I wondered how I could leave my father when he needed me to take care of him.

Yet, if there was one thing I would say to myself a year ago, it would be that everything turns out alright. Life goes on. Making the decision to uproot yourself so you can grow in healthier soil is never easy, but as you blossom, as you grow, you soon realize the decision was the right one and that everything will eventually work out for the best.

That day, on my sixteenth birthday, I not only changed in age, but I also changed in character. No longer was I going to allow someone to use me for his gain; no longer was I going to stand idly by as my life was poured down the drain and replaced with an empty beer bottle. That day, I made the decision to become my own person and to do what’s best for me, for my life, for my education. I transformed from a person to be used into one who would not be tamed. I made my life my own, and I knew then that it would never be the same.

ESSAY 2: QUESTBRIDGE ESSAY

We are interested in learning more about you and the context in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations, and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors helped you grow? I was a child without a future, a girl without a name, a person without a drive. Now, I am none of these things. I used to simply exist, but now I am getting ready to live and to leave my mark upon the world, a world that had never noticed me until I gave it a reason to.

I was born into this world to parents who divorced before I was even a year old. My father is physically handicapped: he attempts to make up for his lack of legs with the sheer amount of alcohol he regularly consumes. My mother suffers from bipolar disorder: her manias and depression force her and me to ride  a rollercoaster of emotions. Both of my parents receive Social Security checks for their disabilities, and that is how we have survived my entire life: living paycheck to paycheck and hoping it all worked out, yet never applying pressure or willpower to shape our existence into something more.

For the longest time, I believed that such a family situation was normal: every child had as much family responsibility— doing all the cooking and cleaning by age eleven after my father divorced my first stepmother; every dad drank and belittled every kid’s mother when she wasn’t around; every time a child asked for new clothes, she was told there wasn’t enough money even as two thirty packs sat cooling in the fridge. For the longest time, I never realized the childhood I had experienced was anything but the regular American upbringing. Transferring to a larger school system in eighth grade, expanding my knowledge through a better education, and being exposed to a wide array of books and other types of lives revealed to me that the family I had, the childhood I had experienced, was anything but normal.

Being raised in a household when one has to force her parents to help her study for a first grade spelling test does not influence a child to strive to become smarter. It was my own drive and need for shelter from my life that led me to read books deep into the night, as my dad screamed louder and louder at the TV. It was my own intelligence that had my new school teachers asking me to move up to more advanced math and science classes despite the fact that I didn’t believe I was capable. It was my own search for knowledge and understanding that led me to the truth about my life and revealed to me the pit of my existence alongside the ladder of education by which I could escape it.

By freshman year, with no encouragement from my father (with whom I lived at the time), I decided to finally push myself and see if I was capable of taking all advanced classes. In these advanced classes, however, I was not just capable: I excelled at them, and by the end of the first semester of high school, I was ranked number one out of three hundred students. Nearly all  of my grades were a hundred and it became a personal goal of mine to see how many times I could have one hundreds across my report card. By sophomore year, I joined UIL, an academic competition where I was finally able to stretch the wings of my mind and write the thoughts I had never been greatly encouraged to express.

In the summer preceding my junior year, I finally moved out of my father’s unstable home and into my mother’s more tolerable one. We now struggle to live off of her and my Social Security checks. When I left my father’s house, he was angry about the loss of my check, but not the loss of his daughter. He now contacts me only on holidays. Yet, despite the stress of my living and financial situations, I have managed to keep a firm grasp on my valedictorian rank and excel at the extracurricular and work activities that I simultaneously balance.

When a person is her own greatest motivation, she can accomplish almost anything. Despite her background and childhood, with a determination and an education, any person can become anything. After taking seventeen years to realize this, I have finally found the path of achievement that I will continue down, the path that I will follow for the rest of my life. With a solid education and firm self-resolve, I now know I am capable of breaking the cycle of my family and beginning a positive one of my own. I am not doing this for anyone else: I’m doing it for me, for the girl who once had no future, no drive, and no name.

From 50 Yale Admission Success Stories: And the Essay That Made Them Happen, edited by the Yale Daily News Staff. Copyright © 2020 by the authors
and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group.