This powerful essay about a painful childhood memory got a student into 14 colleges including Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton

Flickr/Paul Sableman We all have memories from our childhood that we'd likely rather forget. Sometimes it's those very same painful life lessons that have the most lasting impact on your world view. Recent Harvard University graduate Soa Andrian used one of her childhood memories as a jumping-off point on her college admissions essay. She told the story of a visit to Antananarivo, Madagascar, where she has relatives, and of an impending incident of bullying. A deeply personal story, at first she...