Can you use "I" in a college admissions essay?

Could someone read over my college admissions essay?Thankss!?

• Now it's not done, but here's a rough version. Thank you so much for reading this over. --------------------------------------… Walking through the double door of the gym, the smell of sweat started to overwhelm me. I could hear the occasionally squeak from the players shoes, the slap of the ball, and the bounce of the ball on the other side of the court. It may be hard to believe, but I found my love for community service through sports. Volleyball had been a large part of my life since I first started in the sixth grade and although it as primarily a social activity, I loved the adrenaline rush that it gave me. As the try-outs progress, I worked harder than I’d ever worked in my life. Friday night approached sooner than expected, and at 10:00 p.m. I approached the girls locker room where the list was held. Unfortunately my name was not on the list, I was disappointed and confused, but I decided to make the best of this situation and go down to my comfort school, or my middle school, to share my problem. While at my middle school, I ran into my into the head of the athletics department, and soon realized that I had another option, besides quitting volleyball altogether. This was my chance and I had asked him about helping out with the volleyball team, he quickly grabbed at the offer, and I headed down to the gym for my first day of work. The only difference between this job, and a typical job, is that mine wasn’t paid. This didn’t matter. My reward was in those kids faces when they said hi to me before practice, or joked around with me while learning to play the sport that I loved. By the end of the season, I hadn’t just had volleyball experience, but I had made the lives of a few seventh graders more fun. Sixty-hour later, I realized that it’s not just the sport that I loved, but the community service aspect of the experience and helping others. The season ended and next year, I had to decided to assist with the same team. Once those eighth graders left middle school for the next stage in their life, I decided community service was what I wanted to do. Junior year was approaching fast, and a few of my friends and I decided to formulate our own community service club. Later this club formally became known as, Miramonte Reach Community Service Club. We provide community service opportunities for the entire student body, with events ranging from costal clean up and soup kitchens to making blankets for at risk infants. By the end of my Junior year, all of the participants of Reach’s events had totaled up to six-hundred hours for the school year. Needless to say, the four of us were impressed by our success. Throughout the year we hadmany events that I had participated in but there was one event that had the largest impact on me, this had been my trip to Shelter Inc. Shelter Inc, is an organizations that offers low-income families, living facilities for a short amount of time. Reach had decided to plan an activity for the children living in these facilities, and although I was extremely thrilled prior to the event I never thought that I would have had anything in common with them. Coming from a sheltered environment, I was naive to the type of problems that existed around me, primarily in the Bay Area. As our group started to set up for our event, the woman in-charge motioned to a larger women with many children. She told us that the women had five children, and that they had a contract to live at the facility for two years. When we started, four of the five children piled into the arts and crafts room. They weren’t the best behaved kids, but they were kids nonetheless. One boy started squeezing the glue all over the table, and his mother threatened, “If you don’t stop that, you’ll go home with dad.” Automatically those kids stopped. I saw the fear in their eyes, and it brought me back to my own childhood. I grew up in a family where on the outside we appeared normal, but inside stress, tension, and abuse were very prevalent. My lifestyle is nothing that I wish upon anyone, but because of my background I was able to relate to those children. Fear of coming home, fear of the man living in the next room ,and mostly scared of what he could do. But now I am much stronger because of this. I have learned to overcome this pain by helping others, and during my reach event I made sure that those kids weren’t sent back home to their apartment, because I knew what was behind the closed door. I’m now a senior, waiting to apply for college. Community Service is still a large aspect of my life, and I hope to continue this new passion throughout my college life. I’ve learned that it’s not the obstacle that you’ve over came, but the product that comes after. If I hadn’t been cut from the volleyball team, I never would have acquired a love for helping the community and our environment. I may just be that ordinary teenager, with the typical college essay, but what I want is to be a leader, and a

• Answer:

  You cover a lot of ground in this essay, a bit hard to read because it wasn't broken down into paragraphs, but you were able able to weave your devotion to community service in a nice chronological way. Your use of personal examples and actual benefit to others was also good. I also did not get your ending sentence, it started strong so I hope it finished that way. hope this helps a bit good luck...ps where re you applying?