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A Great Fordham Essay Example

Well-renowned for its undergraduate teaching, Fordham University is known for its small class sizes and location in New York City. Fordham gives students the freedom to choose between its Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses. 

Fordham is rather selective, so it’s important to write strong essays to make your application stand out. In this post, we will discuss an essay that a real student submitted to Fordham, and outline the essay’s strengths and areas of improvement. (Names and identifying information have been changed, but all other details are preserved).

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized. 

Read our Fordham essay breakdown to get a comprehensive overview of this year’s supplemental prompts. 

Sophie Alina , an expert advisor on CollegeVine, provided commentary on this post. Advisors offer one-on-one guidance on everything from essays to test prep to financial aid. If you want help writing your essays or feedback on drafts,  book a consultation with Sophie Alina or another skilled advisor.

Essay Example

Prompt: You may choose to respond to the optional question below. At Fordham, we expect students to care for and engage with their communities. Please share a specific instance in which you challenged yourself or stepped out of your comfort zone in order to impact your community (for example, your family, friend group, high school, or town). Or, share a way you hope to do so at Fordham. (150 words)

When the cast list for my junior year play came out, I expected to find my name next to a character name. Instead, I found it next to “swing.” Over the next few months, instead of getting a moment in the spotlight where I thrive, I stood just off stage and read cue lines to actors as we filmed their scenes for a virtual production. I had no costume or character name in the playbill, but despite my worries, my director and fellow cast members made it clear that I contributed immensely to the production. I originally joined theater with the vision of being praised for my acting skills and stage presence. As I’ve learned since, stepping out of my comfort zone and uplifting other actors is just as valuable. Some of my fondest memories come from being a swing, and I’m grateful that I challenged myself with this role. 

What This Essay Did Well

I love the writer’s attitude in this essay! In a humble way, the writer details the role they played in supporting other actors.  The writer details how they didn’t have a costume or character name, contrasting the parts of a typical actor role with the one that they played. 

The most important part of writing about a difficult situation is detailing your response to the situation. The writer does this well. They talk specifically about the role they played, without diminishing their responsibilities, and give us a lesson of what they learned at the end (“As I’ve learned since…”) The writer also mentions being grateful for the opportunity, further adding to the humility that the writer is showing. I love how the values shine through in this essay. 

What Could Be Improved

At the beginning of this essay, the writer “tells” what happened when they saw the cast list. Instead of telling, this writer could have brought us more into the story by “showing.” The writer could have written, “It was 2:30 pm, and I was scanning a list that would determine my future. I scanned the character list– my name wasn’t there. I scanned again. Then, I saw it. I was a “swing.” This adds a few more details and words to the essay, but makes the experience richer and can connect more to the reader through the strong visuals. 

I would suggest some reorganization here. I would have put the details about the original vision (these details are scattered throughout the essay) first, then what the writer actually did, and then how they felt about it. A clearer structure could take this essay up a level.

I would also include some examples of specific actors that relayed the info that they felt “uplifted.” Were there instances of other actors telling the writer how much they appreciated them? I’m assuming so, because of how the other cast members “made it clear” how much the writer had contributed.

These examples, shown through visual details, could make this essay even better. The writer could have done this through “At the end of the play, my director thanked me for taking this role, and the lead cast members told me how much I had helped them. One cast member, Caroline, told me that practicing with me gave her confidence to perform. I never realized that I could thrive in a different kind of spotlight, one located just off stage.” This last detail about the spotlight could parallel the initial detail that the writer has a swing role “instead of getting a moment in the spotlight where I thrive.” 

Where to Get Feedback on Your Essay 

Want feedback like this on your Fordham essay before you submit? We offer expert essay review by advisors who have helped students get into their dream schools. You can book a review with an expert to receive notes on your topic, grammar, and essay structure to make your essay stand out to admissions officers.

Haven’t started writing your essay yet? Advisors on CollegeVine also offer expert college counseling packages . You can purchase a package to get one-on-one guidance on any aspect of the college application process, including brainstorming and writing essays.

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The  Fordham Law Review  hosts a number of symposia each academic semester.  Professors, legal scholars, and other academics meet, confer, and discuss various law-related subjects.  The  Fordham Law Review  then publishes articles, essays, transcripts, and videos resulting from the symposia.  For information about upcoming symposia and symposia-related events, please click  here .

The Fordham Law Review is now accepting symposia proposals for Academic Year 2024–2025 through Friday, March 29th.    Proposals are expected to include a title, a brief summary of the topic, the name(s) and CV(s) of the organizing professor(s), a preliminary outline of panels, and a projected list of panel invitees. Proposals should be between two to five pages and indicate a preference for hosting in the fall, spring, or an indifference between the two. Proposals should be submitted to  [email protected] .

For more information about  Fordham Law Review  symposia and how to get involved, please email our Executive Symposia Editor at  [email protected] .

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Mikhail Lomonosov

Born: Denisovka, Archangelsk Province - 19 November 1711 Died: St. Petersburg - 15 April 1765

Mikhail Lomonosov was the great polymath of the Russian Enlightenment. Born in the deepest provinces of Northern Russia, he managed to gain a first-class education through a combination of natural intelligence and sheer force of will, and went on to make significant advances in several fields of science, as well as writing one of the first Russian grammars, several volumes of history, and a great quantity of poetry. In short, he was instrumental in pulling Russia further into the modern world, and in helping to make St. Petersburg a centre of learning as great as almost any in Europe.

Lomonosov was born in the village of Denisovka (now Lomonosovo), a village about 100 kilometers south-east of Arkhangelsk on the Severnaya Dvina river. His father was a peasant fisherman who had grown rich transporting goods from Arkhangelsk to settlements in the far north. His mother, the daughter of a deacon, died when he was very young, but not before she had taught him to read. From the age of ten, he accompanied his father on voyages to learn the business.

In 1730, however, determined to study, he ran away from home and walked over 1 000 kilometers to Moscow. Claiming to be the son of a provincial priest, he was able to enroll in the Slavic Greek Latin Academy, where he studied for five years before being sent on to St. Petersburg's Academic University. The following year (1736), he was a select group of outstanding students sponsored by the Academy of Sciences to study mathematics, chemistry, physics, philosophy and metallurgy in Western Europe. Lomonosov spent three years at the University of Marburg as a personal student of the philosopher Christian Wolff, then a year studying mining and metallurgy in Saxony, and a further year travelling in Germany and the Low Countries. While in Marburg, he fell in love with and married his landlady's daughter, Elizabeth Christine Zilch.

Due to lack of funds to support his young family, Lomonosov returned to St. Petersburg at the end of 1741, and was immediately appointed adjunct to the physics class at the Academy of Sciences. In 1745 he became the Academy's first Russian-born Professor of Chemistry, and in 1748 the first chemical research laboratory in Russia was built for him.

Throughout his career at the Academy, Lomonosov was a passionate advocate for making education in Russia more accessible to the lower ranks of Russian society. He campaigned to give public lectures in Russian and for the translation into Russian of more scientific texts. In this, he found himself in conflict with one of the founders of the Academy, the German ethnologist Gerhard Friedrich Miller (whose views on the importance of Scandinavians and Germans in Russian history Lomonosov also hotly disputed). By composing and presenting at an official Assembly of the Academy in 1749 his ode to the Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, Lomonosov gained considerable favour at court and a powerful ally in his pedagogical endeavours in the form of Elizaveta's lover, Count Ivan Shuvalov. Together, Lomonosov and Shuvalov founded Moscow University in 1755. It was also thanks to Shuvalov's influence that the Empress granted Lomonosov a manor and four surrounding villages at Ust-Ruditsa, where he was able to implement his plan to open a mosaic and glass factory, the first outside Italy to produce stained glass mosaics.

By 1758, Lomonosov's responsibilities included overseeing the Academy's Geography Department, Historical Assembly, University and Gymnasium, the latter of which he again insisted on making open to lowborn Russians. In 1760, he was appointed a foreign member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, and in 1764 he was similarly honoured by the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna. The same year, he was granted by Elizaveta Petrovna the rank of Secretary of State. He died 4 April 1765, and was buried in the Lazarev Cemetery of St. Petersburg's Alexander Nevsky Monastery.

Much of Lomonosov's work was unknown outside Russia until many years after his death, and even now it is more the extraordinary breadth of his inquiry and understanding, rather than any specific grand advancements in a particular field, that make him such a seminal figure in Russian science. Among the highlights of his academic career were his discovery of an atmosphere around Venus, his assertion of the Law of Conservation of Mass (nearly two decades before Antoine Lavoisier), and his development of a prototype of the Herschelian telescope. In 1764, he arranged the expedition along the northern coast of Siberia that discovered the Northeast Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. His works also contained intuitions of the wave theory of light and the theory of continental drift. He made improvements to navigational instruments and demonstrated the organic origin of soil, peat, coal, petroleum and amber. Without knowledge of Da Vinci's work, he developed a working prototype of a helicopter.

He wrote the first guide to rhetoric in the Russian language, and his Russian Grammar was among the first to codify the language. His Ancient Russian History compared the development of Russia to the development of the Roman Empire, a theme that would become increasingly popular in the 19th century. His poetry was much praised during his lifetime, although it has been largely ignored by posterity.

Lomonosov is remembered in central St. Petersburg in the names of Ulitsa Lomonosova ("Lomonosov Street"), Ploshchad Lomonosova ("Lomonosov Square") and the adjacent bridge across the Fontanka River. During the Soviet Period, his name was given to the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, and hence to the nearby metro station, Lomonosovskaya. The Soviets also renamed the suburban town of Oranienburg as Lomonosovo. In 1986, a magnificent monument to Lomonosov was unveiled in front of the Twelve Colleges, the main campus of St. Petersburg State University, acknowledging the enormous debt that institution owes the great polymath who is rightfully considered the father of Russian science.

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