In December 2022, Tam News reporter Kitty Stauffer imparted college essay wisdom on the Tam community. She wrote that there is no universal college advice, and I believe this still stands. Students spend countless hours brainstorming ideas, and even more time deciding which narrative accurately and uniquely represents their identity, accomplishments, and passions. In addition, seniors often struggle with enduring questions about who to involve in the college application process, when to begin brainstorming and writing, and what essay topics or prompts they should stay away from. In this article, I have included a compilation of college essays and advice from Tam’s class of 2025. Whether or not you are in the process of applying, I hope these essays serve as answers to the aforementioned questions, inspiration, and a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the enthusiasms and personalities of the graduating seniors. 

May the college essay gods be on your side, 

Emerson Swift 

Canyon Sallady

Prompt: In college/university, students are often challenged in ways that they could not predict or anticipate. It is important to us, therefore, to understand an applicant’s ability to navigate through adversity. Please describe a barrier or obstacle you have faced and discuss the personal qualities, skills or insights you have developed as a result.

Three years ago, my grandma passed away from alcohol-related causes. This hit me particularly hard as I hadn’t contacted her for nine months since she supported my dad’s alcoholism. Through dealing with my guilt and regret, I learned one thing: maintaining relationships with people you love is worth overlooking differences in values. Of course, it’s not necessary to completely disregard their views and actions, but setting up boundaries can allow for more harmonious relationships. Recently with my dad, who shares similar qualities to my grandma, I’ve openly expressed my anger to create an environment that allows for discussion. I also maintain a healthy distance to avoid being hurt by his alcoholism yet sustain an amicable relationship. By accepting that I’ll never get to fix my relationship with my grandma, I’ve learned maturity, self-advocacy, and communication skills that will support my own health and development as I enter adulthood.

Advice: “The key to a good college essay is just showing growth: having an obstacle, strategies to overcome and persist, and then telling the admissions officer what you learned.”

Daphne Hulquist

Prompt: If you could pick one song to be the soundtrack of your life, what would it be? What is your connection to the song? 

Growing up, I never really understood why my dad was such a big fan of the Eagles. I’d listen to him argue with my uncle and cousins over the quality of their music and every time he turned on his music in the car my siblings and I complained as the default song on his phone, “Hotel California,” began to play. There were a lot of things I didn’t understand about my dad. I didn’t understand how he wasn’t annoyed by sand getting in his shoes when we went to the beach. I didn’t understand how he never complained when he got the wrong order at a restaurant. I didn’t understand how he was so unbothered by all the little disturbances in life.

As I grew up I realized that the Eagles aren’t just my dad’s favorite band, their music is also his “how to” guide for life, especially the song “Take it Easy.” For the longest time, I thought that my dad didn’t care about anything, but his strategy is actually to care more about the important things and not get caught up in the small annoyances of daily life. This attitude taught me that the problems that we create for ourselves are simply a waste of time and effort.

At times, getting stuck in my own head has prevented me from having fun and meaningful experiences. But then I remember the chorus of “Take it Easy” and try to apply it to my own situation and push past my insecurities. This is much easier sung than done, but the moments when I overcome my doubts have proven to be the most fulfilling of my life so far. From jumping off the scary rock at summer camp to acting in an improv show this fall, I’ve learned how to focus on what is important to me and let the rest go. Stressing over inconsequential issues is easy but as Glenn Frey sings, “Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.”

This song will forever be my personal anthem, transporting me back to adventures with my dad that made our afternoons feel like a movie but also taught me not to be the biggest obstacle in my own life. Sometimes these lessons can take a lifetime to achieve, but thanks to my dad and the Eagles I’ve discovered my truth in the three and a half minutes of “Take it Easy.”

Advice: “It’s really hard to write an essay about something that isn’t that important to you, so focusing on the things that have had a genuine impact on me made the essay writing process much less draining. You obviously want to portray yourself in a positive light but don’t get overly caught up in what you think colleges want to see or being too professional, letting your fun and creative side show is a perfect way to prove who you are.” 

Wilson Adkins

Prompt: 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?

“Oh, you’re into magic? Can you show me a trick?”

I hear it every time I mention my favorite hobby, which has nothing to do with magic tricks. In fact, I’m so frequently asked about my supposed magical talents that I learned a neat illusion that I can use in response to these misguided questions. Because it turns out that making a pencil disappear behind my ear is easier to do than explaining my love for the card game Magic the Gathering. 

I first experienced Magic the Gathering when I was five years old, peering over my cousin’s shoulder, as an ornate card titled “Macabre Waltz” moved from his hand to the table with a crisp snap. From that moment on, I was hooked.

Since then, I’ve come to understand that the card game is more than engrossing pictures. It’s a game that involves extensive planning, requiring the construction of a hundred-card deck with seven different types of cards, each with distinct strengths and weaknesses, many often building off of other cards depending on the order in which they are played. But planning is not enough. Once you build your deck, it is shuffled and drawn at random, leaving each player to decide how best to play out their hand. Thus the game requires creativity and flexibility depending on your strategy and, importantly, on the cards that your opponent plays. 

Seems simple enough, right? Not really. With over 27,500 cards in the game, it takes a lot of trial and error to build a winning hand. When I first started playing, I was completely overwhelmed. But I was also curious and driven to master the game. I spent countless hours watching podcasts, studying professional games, and even competing in local tournaments. Eventually, I had a sturdy grasp of the official rules and developed my own personal style of play. While the complexities are far too extensive to fully explain here, just know that essentially anything you can imagine exists in the world of Magic, from ornithopters to jellyfish-hydras. 

Magic didn’t just teach me the benefits of planning and strategy, it has shown me the power of bringing together people from disparate backgrounds who share a common passion. Through Magic, I have found that learning from each other and our shared experience is more important than winning. As I entered high school, I wanted to replicate this experience with my peers. As president of the Magic Club, I’ve organized tournaments, after-school events, and lunch meetings all with the purpose of creating a space for our (somewhat eclectic) community to gather, compete, and have fun doing so.

The same things that draw me to Magic – complexity, planning, and creativity – also inform my lifelong passion of caring for animals. This may at first seem incongruous, but it’s not. From my earliest memories, I was upending rocks in the backyard, searching for bugs or lizards. But just as I eventually came to realize the complexities of Magic, I also have come to understand the complexities of animals and their ecosystems. Our planet faces a multitude of urgent environmental issues that need immediate solutions: microplastics, ecosystem collapse, mass extinctions. To learn more about the impacts of these problems, I worked at a wildlife rescue center, interned at the Audubon Society and, yes, continue to turn over rocks and wonder at what is underneath. But, much like with Magic, understanding and planning are not enough; we must be flexible and creative because you don’t always know how some ideas, or others’ responses to them, will play out. I believe it is through this approach that we will protect animals and their ecosystems. This is my life’s goal.

To many, it may seem odd to find such inspiration from a card game. But when I think about all that it has taught me, I realize Magic the Gathering is exactly that: magic.

Advice: “Pick a topic that you could talk about for hours, especially one that other people may be uninterested in—that’s what makes it unique! It’s also important to write with the admission officer’s perspective in mind. If you know what it is they’re looking for, you can angle your essay to their priorities. Lastly, I know this sounds cliche, but BE YOU! It’s a lot harder to write a great essay when you’re also pretending to be someone else.”

Dola Tibbs

Prompt: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

I press record and watch the camera light turn red. Through the viewfinder, I see Ana, a Guatemalan immigrant whose contact I had received from my childhood babysitter. She is clearly nervous, her hands trembling as she asks if she looks okay. I assure her that she looks beautiful, despite the effects of Bell’s palsy which had frozen half her face, caused by the stress of domestic work. I wanted to amplify her voice, just as I have always aimed to do for the women around me. Female relationships have always been the most important thing in my life, influencing everything I do. I grew up with three sisters and a mother who engraved the word “feminism” into me at a very early age. The Academy of Integrated Humanities and New Media, the documentary program that I was accepted into, gave me the perfect opportunity to do this. 

Equality and empowerment for women have always been a cornerstone of my beliefs. I had learned about intersectional feminism and realized I wanted a more nuanced view of the effects of sexism in society. The perfect opportunity came to me when my documentary program announced the prompt for the documentary: Tell a story of economic inequality in the Bay Area. I have been greatly influenced by the women around me and I have learned how to work hard and persevere, but most importantly I learned how to be compassionate, empathetic, and curious. I was ecstatic when I found out that not only would I be working with an all girl group, but that they also shared an admiration for the women in their lives. Because of this, we decided we needed to center this documentary around women. 

Motivated by each other, we were heads down in research for days. Never before had I felt this excited about a project and the enthusiasm from the girls around me propelled me to work hard. I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and talk to people we wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to learn from. So when deciding our documentary topic, I thought about women whose voices I had rarely heard. Through lots of research, my group found that there is an exclusion of domestic work as a form of employment in California’s Labor Code, making domestic workers, a group that is 95% women and 51% Latinx, the only workers who do not have guaranteed minimum wage and benefits. Discovering this was extremely upsetting and unsettling. My previous nanny, who had had such a profound impact on my life and the way I was raised, was a domestic worker in California, and was being impacted by this exclusion. When making this documentary, we had to overcome language barriers and create an atmosphere that felt safe for our interview subjects. While interviewing, we had to learn how to earn our interviewees trust by being good listeners and making sure these women knew they had control over what they said, while simultaneously asking hard questions. These women had gone through traumatic experiences such as leaving their home countries and receiving dehumanizing treatment from their employers. Yet we needed to remain unbiased and seek other sources throughout the documentary. 

During the production of this 7 minute documentary I learned a lot about myself. I realized that having sisters has helped me learn to navigate conflict: I am a good listener and I always look at every perspective possible. I learned that I have a passion for storytelling.  Most importantly I learned that when I feel passionate about something, I am happy and successful at what I do. I was thrilled when this documentary won a Student Emmy in short-form Non Fiction, but what I’m most proud of is when I showed it to my childhood babysitter, a Mexican immigrant and domestic worker, she teared up and told me she was proud of me.

Advice: “The final version of my Common App essay turned out very different from my first draft! I would start writing over the summer so you have as much time as possible to revise and make edits. First semester of your senior year is hard but you figure it out as you go!” 

Max Boyd

Prompt: 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.

Some people don’t believe me when I tell them my grandfather lives in our basement and pees in a Prestone bottle. Sometimes, it’s a Safeway-branded apple juice bottle. It can be confusing when he’s less hydrated, as his urine resembles the original contents of the bottle.

I try to avoid looking at the bottles, but occasionally, he leaves one behind after coming upstairs to empty them. Sometimes, a bottle sits near the toilet in my bathroom, or I find one when I go downstairs to his basement room to grab something. I avert my eyes and suppress a gag because while urine doesn’t generally bother me, it does when it’s in a bottle and belongs to someone else.

Despite his quirks, what my grandpa Wayne, or “Grumps,” cares most about surfing. In his younger years, when he lived in LA, he would check the surf 14 times a day. Now, at 77, he watches surf cams from places he’ll never visit. When he isn’t surfing or thinking about surfing, he’s doing puzzles or making something.

I might have buried the lede here. Not only did Grumps visit me hours after I was born, but he’s lived with us since I came home from the hospital. Even after my parents divorced and my dad moved out, Grumps stayed. So, I’ve never not lived with him, and my mom has never lived without her ex-father-in-law since I was born. She often says he’s the greatest roommate ever, always fixing things and doing chores a single mom shouldn’t have to do alone.

The results are almost perfect, marked by regular imperfections that will always represent Grumps to me. One tile out of place, a paint drop dried in the shape of a drip, or skewed floorboards. It’s always just one thing keeping it from being perfect.

And in a way, I get much of my creative and artistic pursuits from him. I make things from other things. I make art that reminds me of the ocean and how I was raised on a surfboard. I construct things. Sometimes, it looks haphazard, in an homage to Grumps, but it is always planned. 

From day one, Grumps and I were close. As an introverted kid who hated loud parties and group activities, I preferred sitting with my grandpa. When it got too much, I would say, “Grumps, take me home.” And he would. We’d watch documentaries on doomsday prepping or ice road trucking while the rest of the family arrived later.

Seventeen years later, things are similar, though with more bickering. Grumps incessantly complains about ailments and has loud cussing fits when his day trading doesn’t pan out. But he’s there every morning and night, opening and closing our internal shades like clockwork, wearing his gray sweats or Levi’s 501 jeans.

His predictability is comforting. We often imitate him, repeating his favorite phrases until we dissolve into laughter. He’s frugal yet generous, complaining but willing to help anyone. He never says “I love you” but shows it through acts of kindness. We never question his love even when we resent his attitude.

And so there is this dynamic in my household – I live with a cranky old man who complains constantly but shows his feelings through his actions. His generosity shines through his pugnaciousness. His love shines through his sneer. He has shown me how to build with wood and stone. He has taught me the value of action and discipline, and these are lessons that I believe have affected me more deeply than most of the things I have learned in school.  

Living with Grumps is unique. Unlike friends who see their grandparents annually, we’ve never been without him. He’s constantly present, from making popcorn to fixing things around the house. Our friends have grown to understand the comfort of his constant stories and presence. Grumps is always home. Grumps IS home.

Advice: “Writing with the idea of admissions officers reading your essay will take away the magic of your own voice. Write about what you love and let that love shine through.” 

Madeline Mickelson

Prompt: Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

After I earned a good recommendation at my Marin Art and Garden internship, my school’s College and Career Center offered me the opportunity to join an environmental journalism internship at the Richardson Bay Audubon Center. 

Each week at my internship, I was assigned an environmental topic and then conducted extensive research for my article. I learned to find reliable, accurate sources and weave scientific data into my writing. I researched a multitude of climate-related topics and learned about factors leading to blue whales’ extinction, increased fire risks due to climate change, how people of color are disproportionally affected by environmental impacts, and more. 

One of the most impactful units of my internship was exploring how environmental issues intersect with social justice. I researched one prominent example:  Cancer Alley, a predominantly minority community that contains over 200 petrochemical plants. When researching Cancer Alley, I found articles explaining the issue and anecdotes from those living there. As a journalist, I believe it is my responsibility to ensure that the public is well-informed about environmental racism–marginalized communities that are less equipped to deal with climate disasters and are increasingly exposed to environmental hazards.

I was proud that my article on invasive species’ devastating environmental consequences got published on the Audubon website as it was a topic I felt incredibly passionate about. To witness the issue firsthand, I went to our local beach and saw ice plants, an invasive species, consuming native foliage. I wrote the article using storytelling techniques to hook readers, describing how a local resident saw local fauna deteriorating because of ice plants.

Advice: “It can be difficult to find four different topics to write about that don’t overlap. Beforehand, write down as many activities, topics, and anecdotes that highlight your special characteristics. Having strong topics to write about makes the writing process much easier.”