How Lord of the Rings Helped Get Me into UNC
I have recently been rewatching the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies again, which has been long overdue. As I was watching The Fellowship of the Ring (the first installment of Lord of the Rings), I remembered that I actually wrote a college essay prompt for UNC about one of the main characters, Samwise Gamgee. Every time I watch the movies, I am reminded why they are my second favorite set of movies ever. (Star Wars is first, of course.) I am also reminded how I somehow figured out a way to incorporate “LOTR” into my college application.
Luckily for me, I wrote all of my college application questions on Google Docs, so it was very easy to pull this one out of the ol’ archives. The prompt I responded to was one of UNC’s supplementary questions, so the response had to be 200-250 words- no more, no less.
The prompt was: Tell us a story that helps us better understand a person, place, or thing you find inspiring. I could come up with a lot of answers for this question, but at the time, I gravitated toward my favorite character from Lord of the Rings: Samwise Gamgee. It can be found below! (For the blog, I put it on a nice Lord of the Rings inspired paper, but don’t worry, that is not how it got submitted- lol. However, if I worked in admissions, I would appreciate it.)
Before you read it, I feel like I must say a couple of things. First of all, some of it makes me kind of cringe. I mean, I wrote it four years ago when I was 17… who wouldn’t look back on their own writing at this age and think this way? Secondly, after reading it four years later, my basic thoughts of this response still stand, which shows how timeless Lord of the Rings is and how the lessons it teaches have continued to remain important in my life.
I really hope that the admissions person who read it was a Lord of the Rings fan; if not, they might not have understood the brilliance of the character I chose as my inspiration. I would love the chance to redo this, though! It was difficult enough trying to write this response in the first place with the word limit being 250, and I could say so much about Sam and my adoration for his character, from his bravery to his loyalty and everything in between.
Obviously, there were other prompts that I had to answer in order to be admitted to UNC, but that being said, this response was still one of the pieces that got me admitted to my favorite school. For this, I would like to thank J.R.R. Tolkien for being an amazing literary author, who truly created masterpieces, such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Secondly, in the most rare of cases, the movies are just as good as the books. Below, I have included my favorite speech of Sam’s in the trilogy, so you can understand why I think he is such an inspirational character in the first place! Real LOTR fans will understand why this brings tears to my eyes about every time I watch, especially (and I mean especially) when you watch it during a hard time in your own life.