Kenyon College
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Kenyon College’s 2023-24 Essay Prompts
Common app personal essay.
The essay demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice. What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response. Remember: 650 words is your limit, not your goal. Use the full range if you need it, but don‘t feel obligated to do so.
Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you‘ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.
What will first-time readers think of your college essay?
Kenyon College Undergraduate College Application Essays
These Kenyon College college application essays were written by students accepted at Kenyon College. All of our sample college essays include the question prompt and the year written. Please use these sample admission essays responsibly.
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College Application Essays accepted by Kenyon College
Drawing my life anonymous, kenyon college.
By now, color and form are two essential ways I express myself. In my art I often draw myself as a stick figure with a shock of bright red hair. My family, friends, and even strangers have always commented on the thousands of freckles that pepper...
“Buenos días, ¿cómo estás?” Anonymous
When my dad first began working in Mexico, I nonchalantly changed my schedule to include seventh grade “Intro to Spanish.” Naturally, I didn’t think twice about what would later prove a crucial decision—few seventh graders realize how such simple...
The Jeanne B. McCoy Center for the Performing Arts Piper Elizabeth Hill
Fingers at the ready. Arms at the ready. Feet at the ready. Stomach at the ready. Eyes at the ready. Keys, bow, steps, song, speech – all at the ready to create another person, another emotion, another world. This genesis, this nebula that hatches...
Charms Alison Georgescu
When I turned sixteen, my grandparents took me out to the lavish Sixteen restaurant in Chicago. “Sixteen for sixteen,” they said. Over microscopic spoonfuls of diced cucumbers, which the restaurant dubbed "a salad," my Grandma handed me a velvety...
The Outside of a Horse Anonymous
Most people are surprised to hear that I head from the suburbs to the city to ride a horse.. Just off a busy city avenue in Buffalo, tucked among white stucco apartment buildings sits The Buffalo Equestrian Center, a turn of the century polo arena...
Nightmare Julia Dupuis
This is how my nightmare begins.
I’m standing in the heart of a pristine university campus, surrounded by hundreds of teenage girls fidgeting with their luggage. Damp hair sticks to the backs of our necks; we can taste the heat and the salt and...
Flies Deeptansha Dwivedi
Sweat dripped from my brow as I carefully set my roll of tape onto the granite kitchen counter in front of me. My masterpiece was finally complete. As I slid down from my stool, I was careful to not let my knobby ten-year-old knees topple into the...
My body issues Anonymous
Why aren’t there campaigns for male plus sized models? I had no one to tell me I’m beautiful when I weighed 185 pounds in eleventh grade; all I got were offensive slurs and derogatory nicknames. I had shielded out the remarks, without retorting,...
Breaking Home Ties Anonymous
The painting is enormous. Its carved golden frame hangs squarely in the center of a muted red wall in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I lean in and read the information plaque to the right: Breaking Home Ties by Thomas Hovenden. Stepping back, I...
Recent Questions about Kenyon College
The Question and Answer section for Kenyon College is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.
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Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response. Remember: 650 words is your limit, not your goal. Use the full range if you need it, but don‘t feel obligated to do so.
Get in touch with us here today. Kenyon College is a free-spirited, quaint-but-mighty private liberal arts school in Gambier, Ohio. As intimate a college town as they come, Gambier has zero stoplights and is the hill-top home of this bastion of higher learning where 100% of students live on campus. The average acceptance rate is 34%.
Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio. It’s a small school with under 1,800 students and 100% of the student population lives on campus, which is rare. Fun fact: there are no stoplights in Gambier! The acceptance rate is around 34%. Another fun fact: Kenyon doesn’t have a supplement.
Building on Kenyon's renowned writing tradition, this program cultivates a vibrant literary science community. Students learn how to write artfully, creatively, and with precision about the natural world, with the goal of communicating complex issues to a general audience. Science and Nature Writing Mellon Science and Nature Writing Fellow.
Provide your professor with all the information they need. Give them: your application essay and your CV/resume. a list of the relevant courses you've taken (and the grades you obtained in them). a paper or lab from class (hopefully one on which you did well). information regarding the programs to which you are applying.
Kenyon meets 100 percent of demonstrated financial need. All applicants are considered for merit scholarships. You also may apply separately for talent scholarships in art, music or writing, or for our KEEP and STEM scholarships.
Kenyon’s Writing Center Community is both staffed and used by a diverse group of student, staff, and faculty members. We as a writing center are aware of the ways in which standardized academic language often perpetuates and legitimizes systems of oppression. As such, we respect and honor a myriad of lived experiences, offering support ...
Join Now to View Premium Content. GradeSaver provides access to 2355 study guide PDFs and quizzes, 11005 literature essays, 2762 sample college application essays, 926 lesson plans, and ad-free surfing in this premium content, “Members Only” section of the site! Membership includes a 10% discount on all editing orders.
The writing center hosts many opportunities to explore and expand your writing skills throughout the semester. Stop by this page regularly as we add new events and opportunities as well as additional information. We also update the campus calendar with our events, too!
of these areas, and I believe that a good historical essay must excel in all of them. Throughout the creation of this rubric, I made sure to contextualize each part within my own experience reading the writing of other Kenyon students. Essays that score mostly 1s are very poor; I would be surprised to see this type of essay at Kenyon, and if it