BYU Scholarship Application

Not only is this essay exactly 300 words, but it's also only one grammatically correct sentence!

Essay #1
Please write a brief biographical sketch about yourself. Limit your response to 300 words.

As I sat at the computer, struggling to organize my thoughts on how to write a biographical sketch and understand exactly what a top-notch, state-of-the-art scholarships committee would require of a man not yet 22, distracted by the sound of a baby crying in the distance and an earlier meal that just wouldn’t seem to digest, knowing that not even a Dickens novel could encapsulate the array of characters that make up one Dallen Kistfeldt, I knew a committee of educators, handsome and intelligent devils that they are, picking from amongst hundreds—maybe thousands—of applicants, uniformly writing the same dribble, wouldn’t want to hear all the mumbo-jumbo about how I grew up in a small town with my school-teaching mother and older brother, making my way through Payson High School and captaining track and cross-country teams—no, they wouldn’t care to hear about my mission to San Jose, California; and as I reached for the fruit decorated tumbler of Juicy-Juice that sat next to my monitor, it became clearer and clearer to this home-spun, humble servant of the meek and down-trodden, that a successful essay about my math award for outstanding achievement in AP calculus, or my credentials as an amateur pilot at UVSC, or my love for sculpture and aspiration to become an author seemed quite out of reach; and, almost falling victim to a nasty case of discouragement, which creeps in so quickly and hits suddenly like a cold breeze or a flaming arrow to the breast…no, I think I’ll just sit back a moment, kick up my feet, stare at the imitation Rembrandt hung thoughtfully by the landlady on the library wall, and be satisfied in knowing that at least I, Dallen Kistfeldt, whose mama never taught him the word fail, did not buckle under the awful weight of conformity.

... I didn't get the scholarship.