Williams College Excerpt

According to Williams College admissions (via their website):

Our Mission

The Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Williams College dedicates itself to a community where all members can thrive. We work to eliminate harmful bias and discrimination, close opportunity gaps, and advance critical conversations and initiatives that promote inclusion, equity, and social justice on campus and beyond.

As a residential learning community, Williams believes that some of the most important experiences happen while living and learning alongside those different from oneself.

Diversity is central to Williams’s mission and it furthers important goals:

It enhances the life-long learning of all members of our community, both inside and outside of the classroom, by bringing in a range of perspectives and experiences.

It deepens our understanding and expands our knowledge of a growingly complex world.

It builds cultural intelligence and prepares all members of our community for global citizenship.

It challenges and encourages critical thinking about systems and structures of oppression.

It fosters equity and inclusion; cooperation and collaboration; empathy and compassion.

It broadens our contributions to the communities around us.

It adds multiple perspectives to help us to achieve excellence in research, learning, teaching, and service.

It increases student retention and persistence, by creating inclusive and supporting learning and living environments for those of all identities.

How to write a successful essay: The Williams essay is unique in that it is not a traditional supplemental essay. The paper may be creative or analytical. Students must submit a Williams College supplemental essay. The Williams supplemental essays allow admissions officers to understand your academic interests. Additionally, the Williams essay lets you showcase a piece of work that you’re proud of and demonstrate your academic writing skills. This means you should take the Williams supplemental essays seriously, even if they are not required for the Williams College application. The more information you can give to admissions officers, the better. They want to know your academic interests and your writing abilities. You should take advantage of this great opportunity to share something you’re proud of.

Common App Essay Example: Two red dumbbells sit on my windowsill. Might seem funny that two clunky metal blocks are in a girl’s bedroom, but they’re my most prized keepsakes. My grandpa’s a blacksmith, and I’d go with him every morning as a kid to the foundry to watch him cast iron. The best moment was when the hot, molten came out. He’d remove the scum and pour the fiery red liquid into a giant bucket. Under the glow of 1500 °C magma, was grandpa’s unshaven face: resolute and radiant.

In this modern automated world, Grandpa is an anachronism. He sticks to primitive production, making every tool by hand from scratch. Under heat, dirt, exhaustion, and danger, people in blacksmithing possess incredible strength and camaraderie. Grandpa and the others would chant sonorously, “one, two, three, lift!” as they carried an injured friend from the foundry.

When I left my home to study abroad, I never forgot the blacksmiths’ – nowhere else did I meet people as caring and who I aspired to be. There was one thing about them that was hard to attain – their strength. That was when Grandpa, hearing that I’d play squash at school, promised to make dumbbells. He worried I was too skinny and vulnerable. But, he was unable to fulfill this promise because in the winter, he got cancer, and I rushed home to see him languishing. He was smiling. “There’s no need to worry,” he told me pointing at his friends at his bedside, “We blacksmiths are made of iron.” What he said hit me like a like a hammer on the anvil. He was indeed made of iron. Over forty years ago, he hammered vigorously to support his family. Now under treatment, he fought disease like iron as his strength multiplied like waves of heat and ore turning into steel.

I made up my mind...

I’d go to the foundry to make him a pair of dumbbells. Grandpa’s friends agreed to teach me.

So, I spent all summer embarking on it. From designing the shape, to refining the wooden mold, to cutting the sprue, to pouring the metal on my own, and putting my body and mind to the test! Although I’d visited the factory many times, it was only when I labored myself that I understood the phrase “made of iron”. Even the easiest tasks were backbreaking: shoveling sand, squatting for hours to shape sand, making sand compact by pounding it with a heavy iron rod... unable to keep up with everyone, on the third day, it was utterly unbearable. I plopped down, my last energy drained.

I resolved to quit. But, as I got up and passed the furnace and workers, I was instantly brought back to the past, when I watched Grandpa pouring the molten metal. I thought... growing up, I never had to cast iron like Grandpa or tend crops like Grandma or wander the city penniless like my parents. I was the most refined in our family, but also the crudest. These thoughts intertwined with the workers’ silhouettes, convinced me to keep casting. I clenched my teeth, and after a month, I chiseled a pair of shiny, red dumbbells. Handing them to Grandpa, his eyes welled up. Holding my rough hands covered by band-aids, he said: “You’ve grown up, Yuchen. You can be a blacksmith, too.”

Today, whether it’s conducting research for pancreatic cancer or running cross country, I remember this time. My grandpa even used my model and cast me a pair of red dumbbells. Every day, I try to use this positive strength to empower people. Outside, that late afternoon sky from grandpa’s hospital room flamed with red and orange like the glaring light of the furnace. This moment is etched forever. I offer gratitude for the blacksmiths, a sense of accomplishment for my dumbbells, an appreciation for my grandpa, and the realization that I, too, am made of iron.