If you were asked to articulate who you are in less than 650 words, what would you say?

As Common Application deadlines creep closer, current Verona High School seniors spend time attempting to capture their essence and fit it into a textbox. Although the Common Application, widely referred to as the “common app,” poses five essay prompts for prospective college students, the variety of ways VHS seniors are answering these questions is vast.

For Lia Golick, there is an important part of herself that wasn’t communicated through the other sections of the Common App: she was adopted from China. Since it is such a key component of who she is, and it is a distinguishing characteristic, Lia believes her application would be simply incomplete without it.

Some students were incredibly influenced by more specific aspects of their lives. Mira Braneck uses the fact that her grandmother never finishes crossword puzzles as a metaphor for how she lives her life– it has taught her the importance of accepting failure and trying things again in the future. In her essay, she articulates the lessons she has learned through her grandmother’s seemingly simple but actually meaningful habit.

Carli Castellano chose to go a different route, and wrote her essay based on her long-term goal of working in the restaurant business. Carli aspires to open her own restaurant one day, so she wrote about the bakery business that she started in fourth grade in order to express her ambition and present her goal to colleges.

After her trip to China, Natalie DeRosa knew that studying linguistics was her passion. She aspires to pursue a career in the field and is using her travel experience to explain her interests and plans for the future.

Although Carli and Natalie were affected by specific events in their lives, Brianna Semeraro is discussing a more general part of herself: the gradual change of her academic achievements over the years. Claire Rysavy is using the same method and writing about her transition from wanting to be a makeup artist to wanting to be an occupational therapist.

Joseph Ballantyne is choosing to tell the story of his friendship with a disabled classmate when he was in preschool. He believes that it is so telling of who he is as a person and his values in life that colleges simply need to be aware of it to understand him.

It is somewhat difficult to recreate the self in a couple paragraphs. Overall, the individuality of a piece is really what makes it shine. Due to the varying personalities and goals of 2015 seniors, their college essay ideas are all over the map– which is what makes them so meaningful and telling.