https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/sample-essays Here are some examples they just posted
Would any current or former UChicago students be willing to read my Why Chicago essay? I wrote it in a creative format, but I’m not sure if I’m sacrificing substance for creativity. Please PM me if willing to read – thank you so much 
I’ll be happy to read anyone’s essay if you pm it to me 
just got accepted to UChicago today so I guess my essays were decent
uchicago’s essays were so hard to write for
let’s revive this thread? would anyone accepted ED I or EA like to post their essays?
“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.” –Oscar Wilde. Othello and Iago. Dorothy and the Wicked Witch. Autobots and Decepticons. History and art are full of heroes and their enemies. Tell us about the relationship between you and your arch-nemesis (either real or imagined).
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Slipper in hand, I re-enter the bathroom.
I look to see if it is still there—and it is. With one sudden swing, the slipper meets the wall and kills it, its flattened image remains imprinted on the concrete.
Such is the dreaded disturbance that I must occasionally deal with, the disturbance by my greatest arch- nemesis: the cockroach, better known in my country as the ipis (pronounced /ˈipis/).
This aspect of the relationship is not exclusive; the ipis also has a special spot in Philippine culture. In this country, the trinity of the hand, the slipper, and the cockroach is second only to the Catholic Holy Trinity. Imagine a commuter train filled tightly with passengers pressed together like sardines in a tin, sharing sweat and sighs—a common sight in congested Metro Manila. The dull scene quickly turns to silent chaos with the appearance of an all-too-familiar character that makes even the most fearless cower: the flying ipis. As it cuts the air, the passengers, with barely any space even to breathe, can do nothing but silently follow its path of terror with their eyes, dreading to see where—or on whom—the cockroach would next land. The hand is immobile, the slipper absent. With the trinity incomplete, the cockroach is left free to spread fear.
I often consider the presence or absence of cockroaches as an indicator of the cleanliness of a place…or the lack thereof. A cleaner place is less likely to attract them, while a dirtier place is often swarming with them. In the Philippines, cockroaches are also pedestrians, diners, shoppers, and churchgoers—inhabitants of almost any public place imaginable, literally (though also figuratively, but that is for another story). And as much as the cockroach is disgusting in itself, my hatred towards the insect exceeds its mere presence.
The cockroach has become a symbol of my war on disorder and mess. I cringe at how trash strewn about has become a permanent fixture in public areas and common spaces, and at how this act of strewing trash about has devolved from simple irresponsibility to a paralyzing bad habit (that goes on to clog drainage systems and be the cause of floods). On a smaller, more personal scale, I cringe all the more when my room becomes disorganized and filled with clutter, and I rush to maintain the cleanliness that once prevailed.
When a cockroach escapes your slap and your sight, it is not merely a source of frustration, but also of great fear and paranoia: when you re-enter, armed to kill, but it has already vanished, or when the slipper misses and the insect flees—hopefully not flies—before your helpless eyes. Although there is always Baygon (a famous insect repellant) as a back-up, the toxic spray is really only to be used in desperate times. You don’t know when a cockroach will haunt you next, when it will dare to venture out of the comfortable home it has already made out of the trash and dirt you accumulate at home—and that is when it wins.
This month, however, the cockroach loses, and I win a battle in the unending war.
A sigh of relief follows the slap, then silence. My “Days Without Cockroaches” count returns to zero. All returns to normal, and I remain ever paranoid, in anticipation of its dreaded but inevitable appearance once more.
Rejected ED2 yesterday
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Wrote the vestigiality essay and got in with President’s Scholarship
Living deep within the forests of the Amazon are the famous unicorns. They prance around in their snowy coats finding rainbows, eating berries, and bringing joy to all the creatures in the wild. However, unicorns have not always been the stoic symbols of purity they are viewed as today. With retractable sharp teeth and needle-pointed horns, they were once the savage pillagers of the great and harmonious unigoats. Feared by many, they were once, and should be once again, associated with treachery and destruction.
When the unicorns first arrived in the Amazon, the indigenous unigoats greeted them with open arms and hoped to cooperate with them so that they both would prosper. By teaching the unicorns how to properly find non-poisonous berries and allowing them to build communities in their native lands, the two creatures forged a great alliance.
Little did the unigoats know that the unicorns were actually omnivores that go on meat eating sprees once a year in order to beef up for the coming winter. Savagely, the unicorns would hunt by sneaking behind their prey, stinging them with their horns, and injecting a large dose of incapacitating poison into the system of their prey. Within a few seconds, the prey would be paralyzed and the unicorn would eat freely.
Amicable relations turned sour on one autumn night in 1,300,000 BCE when the first unigoat was eaten by a unicorn. While most believed it to be merely a one-time occurrence, the following night two hundred unigoats were murdered. Unigoats learned about the unicorn’s primal meat-seeking nature the hard way. The pacifist unigoats hid and traveled in herds in order to avoid and protect themselves from the blood thirsty unicorns but to no avail. By the end of the first winter, the population of the once thriving unigoats was cut by 35 percent.
Come spring, the unicorns returned to their peaceful, berry eating selves; but the unigoats were skeptical of what they believed was a facade. Hundreds of new unicorns came flooding into the Amazon that year. They brought along something new and treacherous: the whooping pox. Since unigoats, unlike the unicorns, had no immunity to the pox, mortality rates increased exponentially and the creatures were left weak. By the fifth winter of murders and disease, only 3 percent of the original unigoat population remained and a few years after that, they were extinct. In half a decade, the unicorns had taken control of the entire Amazon.
The disappearance of unigoats also imposed a toll on the unicorns population, as many of them died due to insufficiency of protein during the following winters. The strongest ones survived thanks to the protein rich peanut, which they discovered within the jungle. Over the centuries, unicorns evolved into herbivores dependent mainly on peanuts. The unicorn’s poisonous qualities necessary for hunting live prey were no longer imperative and soon disappeared, but the transporter of the venom—the horn—did not.
Presently, nobody seem to remember the genocide against the unigoats, and it is paradoxical to find that the unicorn’s once poisonous horn has become a beauty mark for them that is now synonymous with grace and joy.
At the end of the past century, a group of explorers in the deepest parts of the Amazon saw a small group of animals that they believed to be unigoats. It became clear that the beasts once thought to be extinct are alive but that their numbers are miniscule. Far from the welcoming creatures they used to be before the genocide, they found a place to prosper in complete isolation.
Recognition for the genocide of the unigoats has only recently become mainstream. Many states still refuse to acknowledge the brutality faced by the unigoats as a means of protecting the integrity of the grandiose unicorn. For now, it is necessary to increase awareness that the view of unicorns as pure and peaceful creatures is not consistent with the bloody massacre that they once committed against innocent unigoats.
I wrote on the vestigiality topic and was accepted. A couple people pm’ed me asking for this so I figured I’d just post it in case it gives inspiration to someone. My essay was so long that CC said it didn’t fit (I think it was like 1300 words) so instead you can view it here: http://docdro.id/Fyx3zN6
Feel free to shoot me a message if you have any questions or comments
@CactusUsername Thank you for sharing!!
If you are posting your essays here I hope you realize that you run the risk of your essay being plagiarized by someone else.
That would be a bad move, as more than one of the admissions officers will review the essays for any of the admits, and if they were to recognize a plagiarized essay…
Yeah I would hope that anyone applying to uchicago would be smart enough not to ruin their chances by submitting another person’s work and if they do, that’s on them
I personally probably wouldn’t post them here, simply because of the high risk of plagiarism. But I do like seeing how other people approached the prompts. It’s quite interesting.
I don’t mind people posting them, however their usefulness is limited. Johns Hopkins will send you essays that they liked and why which is much more useful. BTW I highly recommend getting the “On writing the college application essay” book before attempting to write your essays.
does anyone from 2016-2017 application have any essays to share???
I second that ^^
Your essay brought back memories from elementary school! Do you mind posting what prompt this was?
An essay should be of your form, asking for others essays is personally very lazy and does not represent yourself. You better hope if you are copying someone that you can pull that off in an interview, because that’s what you’re selling yourself as.