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8 Strong Ivy League Essay Examples

What’s covered:.

• Essay 1: Princeton
• Essay 2: Cornell
• Essay 3: Yale
• Essay 4: Brown
• Essay 5: UPenn
• Essay 6: Dartmouth
• Essay 7: Columbia
• Essay 8: Harvard
• Where to Get Your Essay Edited for Free

The Ivy League consists of eight private institutions on the East Coast, known for having extremely competitive admissions rates. The following schools are in the Ivy League: Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, Brown, and Dartmouth.

These schools all have their own supplemental essays, ranging from typical topics like “ Why This College? ” to more unique topics that change from year to year. Because the Ivies are some of the most competitive schools in the country, your essays are crucial for you to showcase aspects of yourself that might not be apparent from other parts of your application. 

In this post, we’ll provide a strong essay example for each Ivy and explain what each did well and where they could be improved. Read on to learn more about how to craft a compelling narrative!

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. 

Essay #1: Princeton

Prompt: Using a favorite quotation from an essay or book you have read in the last three years as a starting point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world. Please write the quotation, title and author at the beginning of your essay. (250-650 words)

“One of the great challenges of our time is that the disparities we face today have more complex causes and point less straightforwardly to solutions.” 

– Omar Wasow, assistant professor of politics, Princeton University. This quote is taken from Professor Wasow’s January 2014 speech at the Martin Luther King Day celebration at Princeton University . 

The air is crisp and cool, nipping at my ears as I walk under a curtain of darkness that drapes over the sky, starless. It is a Friday night in downtown Corpus Christi, a rare moment of peace in my home city filled with the laughter of strangers and colorful lights of street vendors. But I cannot focus. 

My feet stride quickly down the sidewalk, my hand grasps on to the pepper spray my parents gifted me for my sixteenth birthday. My eyes ignore the surrounding city life, focusing instead on a pair of tall figures walking in my direction. I mentally ask myself if they turned with me on the last street corner. I do not remember, so I pick up the pace again. All the while, my mind runs over stories of young women being assaulted, kidnapped, and raped on the street. I remember my mother’s voice reminding me to keep my chin up, back straight, eyes and ears alert. 

At a young age, I learned that harassment is a part of daily life for women. I fell victim to period-shaming when I was thirteen, received my first catcall when I was fourteen, and was nonconsensually grabbed by a man soliciting on the street when I was fifteen. For women, assault does not just happen to us— its gory details leave an imprint in our lives, infecting the way we perceive the world. And while movements such as the Women’s March and #MeToo have given victims of sexual violence a voice, harassment still manifests itself in the lives of millions of women across the nation. Symbolic gestures are important in spreading awareness but, upon learning that a surprising number of men are oblivious to the frequent harassment that women experience, I now realize that addressing this complex issue requires a deeper level of activism within our local communities. 

Frustrated with incessant cases of harassment against women, I understood at sixteen years old that change necessitates action. During my junior year, I became an intern with a judge whose campaign for office focused on a need for domestic violence reform. This experience enabled me to engage in constructive dialogue with middle and high school students on how to prevent domestic violence. As I listened to young men uneasily admit their ignorance and young women bravely share their experiences in an effort to spread awareness, I learned that breaking down systems of inequity requires changing an entire culture. I once believed that the problem of harassment would dissipate after politicians and celebrities denounce inappropriate behavior to their global audience. But today, I see that effecting large-scale change comes from the “small” lessons we teach at home and in schools. Concerning women’s empowerment, the effects of Hollywood activism do not trickle down enough. Activism must also trickle up and it depends on our willingness to fight complacency. 

Finding the solution to the long-lasting problem of violence against women is a work-in-progress, but it is a process that is persistently moving. In my life, for every uncomfortable conversation that I bridge, I make the world a bit more sensitive to the unspoken struggle that it is to be a woman. I am no longer passively waiting for others to let me live in a world where I can stand alone under the expanse of darkness on a city street, utterly alone and at peace. I, too, deserve the night sky.

What the Essay Did Well

There are many positives to this essay. To begin with, launching into the essay with multi sensory imagery in the anecdote was really effective at drawing the reader in. The audiovisual context (laughter, street vendors) keeps the scene alive and fully immerses the reader, while the internal narration illustrates how this student looks at the world. The contrast between the imagery of the external scene and the internal thoughts and feelings fully immerses the reader in the essay and alludes to the overarching theme of things being more complicated than they seem on the outside.

Another good thing this essay did was provide a personal account of this student’s experiences with harassment. This established their authority to speak on the topic and underscores their essay with authenticity.  They then “zoom out” to provide relevant background information that supplies additional context for readers who might not be that familiar with the extent of the issue at hand. By relating their personal stories to the large-scale issue at hand, they simultaneously develop a personal connection while demonstrating an understanding of a serious global issue.

What really could’ve made or broken this essay was the quote the student chose. Allowing you to choose any quote, this is an extremely open-ended prompt which gives students the opportunity to write about whatever they choose. This student did an excellent job of picking a quote that isn’t well-known or significant, but fit perfectly into the narrative they were trying to express in this essay. The approach the student likely took with this prompt is figuring out what experience they wanted to discuss and finding a quote that fit, rather than picking a quote first. This approach made for an essay that existed independently from the quote and didn’t rely on it as a crutch.

All together, the essay feels cohesive with every part relating back to the overarching theme of diving deeper than the surface level of things. The student’s vulnerability and personal reflection throughout the essay helps carry the theme through each paragraph. Even the conclusion does a great job of circling back to the anecdote at the beginning, bringing the societal problem the student addressed back down to the personal level to remind the reader the student’s personal stake in the issue.

What Could Be Improved

One potential criticism of this essay could stem from the ratio of background to active work. The author spends a lot of time setting up their personal connection and the global context of the issue; however, their essay could stand to gain from more content centered on their actual actions towards fighting harassment against women. They could discuss another small-scale discussion or project they led or elaborate more on their current inclusion. Dedicating two paragraphs to this rather than one gives admissions officers a better idea of their leadership skills and active role in fighting harassment.

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Essay #2: Cornell

Prompt: Tell us about your interest in engineering or what you hope to achieve with a degree in engineering. Describe what appeals to you about Cornell Engineering and how it specifically relates to your engineering interests or aspirations. (650 words) 

Storytime with my grandfather was a terrifying thing. With astounding skill, he would seep blood into our carpet and perforate our walls with bullets from a civil war fought before I was born. But what truly frightened me about storytime was my grandfather, who spoke of massacres gloriously, almost with nostalgia, like the people who had  died were not real.

He told the child I was every story he knew about that war but would not tell me about the battle that took his legs.

This was the reason I sat by his stumps each night and listened to stories I hated—because I wanted to know. But it was also because I understood that his storytelling was a kind of exorcism for him. He had not walked since 1970, would never walk again for a country that had not improved, a country spitting on the bloody sacrifices he and his generation had made of their innocence, their limbs, their lives. How does one live with that? My grandfather does not; he has created a different reality for himself where the war was a beautiful, worthy thing, and he lets me into it. The story of his legs did not belong in this reality, so I lusted after it with the brand of hunger I reserved for things I subconsciously knew I would not get.

My grandfather deserved a reality he could cope with enough to admit. I couldn’t reverse the war, couldn’t raise the friends he had lost, but I thought he should walk, that a man deserved to move his feet upon the land he loved.

Although there were indeed prosthetics in Nigerian hospitals, he had no income source whatsoever and could barely even afford a bag of rice to sustain himself.

Day by day, I searched for answers in my introductory science textbook, but to no avail. I carried on this search in high school and made my biology textbook my companion. I studied the body systems in-depth for clues, but I found nothing. One day, I came across Biomechanics, and seeing that it had my answer made me want to study it  in college.

Then came another mammoth task of deciding my place of study. I kept searching and researching, without seeming to find any place fit for me until I came across Cornell’s novel 3D printed prosthetic limbs in the “Silicon Review.” Light, flexible, and cost-effective –a miracle, just what grandpa needed. I had found my home, the home of this model – Sibley School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering.

I intend to channel the research experience I gained from Pioneer Academics into Cornell’s undergraduate research programs at Sibley – specifically, the research on orthopedic biomechanics currently ongoing at the Van der Meulen lab. I hope to work with intellectual, goal-driven scholars at Cornell and develop better and safer models of the 3D prosthetic. Also, Cornell’s Tech Summer Research Experience gives me an opportunity to work with engineers in different disciplines, thus diversifying my abilities and improving my innovation. I hope to work at the Nikolaos Bouklos faculty, where I would learn about the model’s unpredictability and explore ways to stabilize it while receiving guidance from Cornell’s world-class faculty mentors.

My life as a Cornell engineer would not be about theory alone. I intend to gain hands-on experience for medical school from the Hospital for Special Surgery and work with body systems to understand the physical, electrical and chemical connections between limbs and prosthetics – a fantastic opportunity for an outstanding, well-rounded education! I love to play soccer, and I hope to learn from the Big Red and become better while contributing my skills to give our opponents the claw.

Fearless and brave, grandpa has been more than an inspiration to me. I hope to repay him in the best way possible, and a Cornell education is what I need to actualize my dream.

So often, “Why Major?” and “Why School?” essays like Cornell’s include one anecdote showing a student’s interest in a topic and then spend the majority of the essay listing offerings at the school that don’t necessarily connect back to the anecdote. That can not be said for this essay.

The beauty of this essay is how focused it is around one central idea, yet it still has a captivating and heart-wrenching anecdote, an explanation of the student’s passion, and a variety of opportunities they plan to take advantage of. Everything in this essay stems from this student’s selflessness and compassion for their grandfather. The anecdote is extremely pertinent to the piece as a whole because the end goal of their major is to develop a prosthetic to help their grandfather.

An important part of the essay is to discuss resources and opportunities at Cornell, and this student accomplishes that so effectively because every resource they describe relates back to the idea of building and improving prosthetics. From working with prosthetic models in a lab to learning about implementation and the body in a hospital, this student frames every opportunity in the light of helping their grandfather. The reader knows exactly what this student intends to do, and what is motivating each extracurricular choice.

This essay leaves us with such a strong impression of who this student is and what motivates them. Their selflessness and dedication to their family has been a driving force throughout high school and will continue to be one in college. They are determined to persevere and want to use their education to help those around them. By revealing so much of their character in this essay, it demonstrates to admissions officers that this is the student they want on their campus.

In general, this is a very strong response and there is little to change. However, in such a highly-focused essay where every detail connects, this sentences feels very out of place: “ I love to play soccer, and I hope to learn from the Big Red and become better while contributing my skills to give our opponents the claw. “

While the student was likely trying to demonstrate a non-academic passion they will bring to Cornell, haphazardly throwing in a singular sentence without connecting it to anything else disrupts the momentum they have built throughout the essay. This essay was so strong because everything related to the common thread of helping their grandfather, but playing soccer is irrelevant to the other points being made. Since this sentence doesn’t tie into any other part of the essay, it would be better off without it.

This is a good example of not including details for the sake of including them. Admissions officers will see your accomplishments in other parts of the application, so you don’t need to work it into your essay if it doesn’t relate. Especially when the topic of the essay is so strong and focused, throwing in extraneous details will only confuse your readers and diminish the overall impact of your essay.

Essay #3: Yale

Prompt: Yale students, faculty, and alumni engage issues of local, national, and international importance. Discuss an issue that is significant to you and how your college experience could help you address it. (250 words)

A chaotic sense of sickness and filth unfolds in an overcrowded border station in McAllen, Texas. Through soundproof windows, migrants motion that they have not showered in weeks and children wear clothes caked in mucus and tears. The humanitarian crisis at the southern border exists not only in photographs published by mainstream media, but miles from my home in South Texas.

As a daughter of immigrants, I have heard countless stories of migrants being turned away by a country they desperately seek to love. After seeing the abhorrent conditions migrants face upon arriving in the U.S., I began volunteering with Loaves and Fishes, an organization that shelters and provides necessities to undocumented immigrants. This year, my experiences collecting donations and working at pop-up soup kitchens have made me realize that the communities in South Texas promote true American values of freedom and opportunity. The U.S. government, however, must do better.

During my university career, I aspire to learn how our immigration system can be positively reformed by considering the politics and economics that shape policy-making. Particularly, classes such as Institutional Design and Institutional Change will prepare me to effect change in existing institutions by analyzing various methods to bolster the economy. 

Additionally, I hope to join the Yale Refugee Project that volunteers at the southern border and prepares asylum cases for court. With the numerous opportunities offered by YRP, I will be part of a generation of activists and lawmakers that builds a more empathetic immigration system.

One of the benefits of this essay is how the student establishes the issue in detail prior to explaining her personal connection to it. The hook uses detailed imagery, typically seen in personal anecdotes, to describe the issue. Describing the issue at hand instead of an experience the student had helps the reader grasp the issue so they know exactly what the student is referring to when she explains her personal connection.

Having already established the issue, it then becomes much easier for the reader to understand the significance to the student without being explicitly told what it is. The combined details of her family’s background and the actions she has taken to address the issue help display her dedication to the issue and passion for solving it. The student never gives the reader an explanation as to why she cares so deeply about this issue, but through her writing, that reveals her internal identity and external actions, it becomes evident.

Another positive aspect was that the essay only discussed two resources at Yale that would be beneficial to the student. For “Why This College” essays, it’s all about quality over quantity. Elaborating on what the specific classes and the Yale Refugee Program will offer her in terms of professional development provides much more insight than if she had listed a bunch of Yale opportunities with no explanation of what made them special to her. 

Something this essay was missing was a conclusion to wrap up the essay. It ends by discussing the Yale Refugee Program, but fails to connect back to the student or the larger issue at hand. It’s understandable that she was pressed for space with a limited word count, but the ending felt abrupt. Adding one sentence to the end that shifts focus back to the student or how Yale as a whole would allow her to better the world would make the essay feel complete, leaving the reader satisfied.

There are many ways this student could tie the essay together in the conclusion, but one way would be to connect back to the observation the student made earlier that the “ U.S. government, however, must do better. ” This line isn’t really elaborated on and without a connection to how she plans to fix the mistakes of the current government it feels unnecessary. Saying something along the lines of “ With the tools Yale would give me I could tear down the barriers to immigration and construct new systems to steer federal immigration policy in an inclusive direction ” would provide a satisfying conclusion and an explanation of how this student will use her public policy degree to improve the government. 

Essay #4: Brown

Prompt: Brown’s Open Curriculum allows students to explore broadly while also diving deeply into their academic pursuits. Tell us about any academic interests that excite you, and how you might use the Open Curriculum to pursue them while also embracing topics with which you are unfamiliar. (200-250 words) 

My mother exclaimed in shock as she saw the title American Murder: The Family Next Door as the latest title on our Netflix watch list. “Why on earth would you want to watch that?” It made no sense to her that I spent free time watching documentaries about the psychopathic tendencies of serial killers.

From listening to neuropsychology podcasts on my long runs to reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment , I’ve been eager to explore the intersection between neuroscience, society, and the role they play in human nature. Brown’s Open Curriculum would allow me to double concentrate in Neuroscience and Science, Technology, and Society with a theme in Health and Medicine. Classes like Philosophy of Biology and The Moral Brain would begin to answer my questions about the relationship between neuroscience and human ethics. Perhaps I’ll finally understand why Raskolnikov thought he could get away with his crimes.

As an eight-year Latin scholar and five-time Percy Jackson reader, I hope to take classes in the Brown Classics department. I’m also intrigued by Ancient Greek Philosophy, and I plan to explore classic texts such as Plato’s Symposium in Introduction to Greek Literature. Courses like Hippocratic Medicine would allow me to learn about connections between the Classical world and medicine today. 

The brain’s unique composition creates an intricate link between science, history, and modern society that I can only explore at Brown. More importantly, Brown’s diverse environment would introduce me to people with entirely different opinions about Raskolnikov’s motives.

This essay is structured incredibly well. The author uses an anecdote to explain their interests in the opening paragraph. “ My mother exclaimed in shock ,” is the beginning of an opening sentence that draws the reader in, as the reader wants to learn the reason behind the mother’s shock. This opening allows the writer to speak about an interest of theirs, murder documentaries, then tie it to what they’re interested in studying. 

When discussing an academic interest, the author does a great job of providing specific examples connected to Brown. This allows the writer to share how they plan to take advantage of Brown’s unique Open Curriculum. They write, “ Classes like Philosophy of Biology and The Moral Brain would begin to answer my questions about the relationship between neuroscience and human ethics .” By sharing specific classes, it’s clear that the author has done some research about Brown and is truly interested in attending. 

The writer chooses to spend their last paragraph sharing more interests and how they could pursue these interests at Brown. They did a great job sharing a variety of interests, and they made it fun by writing that they’re a “ five-time Percy Jackson reader. ” Sharing details like this about yourself can help make your essays stand out because you come across as relatable, and your essay becomes more engaging and entertaining for the reader!

While it’s nice that the writer mentions various interests, including both neuroscience and classics, there doesn’t seem to be a strong connection between the two topics. The essay would be better if the author improved the transition between the second and third paragraphs. They could say how it’s not common to be able to study both neuroscience and classics because of how different the subjects are but that Brown’s open curriculum lets you pursue both.

More simply, the writer could share why they want to study both topics. Will they both be relevant for their career goals? Are they just curious about exploring a variety of subjects and classes at Brown? No matter the reason, a connection between their interests and a better transition would strengthen this essay.

Additionally, the essay prompt asks students to talk about both topics that interest them and “embracing topics with which you are unfamiliar.” It’s always important to keep the prompt in mind when outlining or writing it. This student wrote a lot about their interests, but it’s a little unclear how they plan to embrace topics with which they’re unfamiliar. Clarifying which topic in this essay the writer hasn’t studied would improve the response and ensure that it directly answers the prompt.

Essay #5: UPenn 

Prompt: How did you discover your intellectual and academic interests, and how will you explore them at the University of Pennsylvania? Please respond considering the specific undergraduate school you have selected. (300-450 words)

There’s a certain energy palpable at protests, each chant a powerful reminder that you are not alone in a seemingly futile fight- it’s why I love organizing. At Penn you will be sure to find me advocating for environmental education in local school districts with Eco Reps (gotta start them young), or even marching through the streets of Philly to demand climate action.

Despite my love for grassroots activism, I often feel frustrated in the weeks following a protest as the buzz dies down; despite overwhelming support for change, be it climate action, BLM, gun control, or Indigenous sovereignty, it often feels like our cries fall upon deaf ears. 

I believe in order for tangible change to occur, our leaders and policymakers need to reflect the diversity and interests of the public. Penn will equip me to be that leader.

Having the tools to understand both the science and history within issues like public health or climate change is something I believe will be invaluable to study in the Environmental Policy and Application program at Penn. Using the knowledge I gain from classes like Natural Disturbances and Human Disasters , which bridges my interest in the environment with the very tangible effects of human-made and natural disasters, I can be a better informed leader, learning from past mistakes to create preventative solutions for future catastrophes through policy. 

Integrated into West Philly, to me, the lack of barriers between campus and the city symbolizes the infinite space for growth and exploration. At Penn, I can study politics while also indulging in the arts at the Arthur Ross Gallery, or how to integrate principles of sustainability in an urban environment. And, of course, being able to admire the beautiful gothic architecture as I sit in class (gotta love that dark academia aesthetic) while also being able to experience the rich culture and diversity of the urban environment of Philadelphia is definitely a plus (I mean, Chinatown and cheesesteaks? Come on!). 

UPenn’s emphasis on global education is especially appealing to me; solving the climate crisis cannot and will not fall upon one country; it must be a collective effort. With that comes the need to understand (and learn from) sustainability in other countries, therefore, having the opportunity to take classes like Politics of the Global Environment in the Political Science program will allow me to gain a deeper understanding of the nuances of international policy and approaches to environmental issues in different countries, where they intersect and how they differ. 

I believe as global citizens it is crucial to approach learning from a global perspective as opposed to a nationalistic one; I believe UPenn will help me do just that. 

This essay does a very nice job of laying out what led this student to pursue politics and what they hope to get out of each opportunity at UPenn. We can see their strong sense of civic duty in the first paragraph when they discuss the excitement of protests, but telling us they feel “ frustrated in the weeks following a protest as the buzz dies down ” helps us understand their need to take things into their own hands.

When discussing different opportunities at Penn, this student chooses depth over breadth—describing why a small number of offerings are important to them and will be beneficial rather than providing a laundry list of items. For example, when they mention a class they are interested in, they elaborate by saying it “ bridges my interest in the environment with the very tangible effects of human-made and natural disasters .” Similarly, they demonstrate their forward-thinking approach when discussing global opportunities by noting their need to “ gain a deeper understanding of the nuances of international policy and approaches to environmental issues in different countries. “

Another positive aspect is how strong this student’s voice is throughout the essay. We see their passion and love for protesting at the beginning, they clearly express their position on representation in politics, and they inject a lot of humor into the paragraph about Philly. Having conviction and making an essay casual yet impactful is a hard balance to strike, but this student does a nice job of that. 

Although it’s important to not just focus on academic opportunities, students can sometimes make the mistake of writing about a city, rather than a school, when they discuss extracurriculars. The paragraph about the opportunities awaiting this student in Philly was great for including their personal voice, but it isn’t specific to Penn. 

Rather than making art galleries and cheesesteaks the primary focus of the paragraph, the student should have discussed a club or organization that is unique to Penn. Something related to climate justice would fit in nicely with the rest of their essay and would give the author the opportunity to further elaborate on what they hope to accomplish out of the classroom. They can still find a way to work in some humor, but it shouldn’t be the main aspect of the paragraph.

Essay #6: Dartmouth

Prompt: The Hawaiian word mo’olelo is often translated as “story” but it can also refer to history, legend, genealogy, and tradition. Use one of these translations to introduce yourself. (250-300 words)

As a child, darkness meant nightmares, so I would pester my grandmother to tell me stories while the sun was trapped amongst silver hues. My religious grandmother would proceed to tell me about the Supreme Being in Hindu mythology, made of Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer). Together, these Gods defined the cyclical nature of mortal existence through creation and destruction – life and death.

Although I found this idea interesting, each year in my life brought on a better understanding of these Gods’ purposes – I only had a certain number of years before I faced my life’s “destruction.”

My only answer to living more in my one life was to stuff my head into pages filled with the journeys of fictional characters. I was a member of a motorcycle club, a terminally-ill teenager, and much more than what I could be in my physical life. Authors let me experience hundreds of lives through literature, therefore, inspiring me to create fictional lives of my own.

So, hello! I’m Navya – named after a star shining the night I was born. For most of my life, I’ve struggled with the idea that we each experience life only once before our own lives are destroyed, but books have helped me find a way to live thousands of lives. I am an aspiring author and want to write historical fiction books that cheat the Gods, who said that everything must be destroyed, because my characters will never fade. And all this happened because of my grandmother and her love of Hindu mythology. Mythology sparked a quest for me to find how I could get the most out of my life but my mo’olelo is nowhere near its ending. I have more lives to experience and more lives to write. 

This essay beautifully combines this student’s life story with their passion for physical stories. Connecting these two types of stories gives extra depth and nuance to the essay, showing this student’s ability to think creatively. The idea that her life story revolves around fictional stories shines through in sentences like: “ My only answer to living more in my one life was to stuff my head into pages filled with the journeys of fictional characters .”

Our stories aren’t just comprised of the past though, and this essay does a great job of transitioning from the past to the future. Telling the reader “ Authors let me experience hundreds of lives through literature, therefore, inspiring me to create fictional lives of my own ” lets us appreciate how deeply engrained literature  is in this student’s personal story. The admissions officers reading this essay walk away knowing exactly what this student hopes to do one day and where the inspiration for that career came from. 

The idea of stories are woven throughout this essay, making it exceptionally well-connected. Although the beginning is meant to introduce a sense of fear at mortality this student encountered, it is done so through a story her grandmother told about her culture. Then the student explains the sanctuary and inspiration she found through famous stories, and finally it concludes with her describing the stories she will tell. Combined, all these pieces of mythology and literature form this student’s personal story.

The only real weakness in this essay is the conclusion. While it is well-written and nicely summarizes everything the author has explained, it doesn’t contribute anything new to the essay. The only new pieces of information the reader gains is that the student wants to “ write historical fiction books ” and that her “ mo’olelo is nowhere near its ending .”

To avoid redundancy, the conclusion could have been made stronger if it was simply focused on the future. Discussing this student’s aspirations to be a historical fiction writer—maybe including possible stories or time periods she dreams about—would have made the finale more focused and also have given the same amount of attention to the future of her story as she did the past and present. Then, the essay would chronologically follow this student’s life story from when she was young, to her current passion, to her future goals, allowing the reader to seamlessly see the progression, rather than having it restated for us. 

Essay #7: Columbia

Prompt: For applicants to Columbia College, please tell us what from your current and past experiences (either academic or personal) attracts you specifically to the field or fields of study that you noted in the Member Questions section. If you are currently undecided, please write about any field or fields in which you may have an interest at this time. (300 words)

The flickering LED lights began to form into a face of a man when I focused my eyes. The man spoke a ruthless serial killer of the decade who had been arrested in 2004, and my parents shivered at his reaccounting of the case. I curiously tuned in, wondering who he was to speak of such crimes with concrete composure and knowledge. Later, he introduced himself as a profiler named Pyo Chang Won, and I watched the rest of the program by myself without realizing that my parents had left the couch.

After watching the program, I recited the foreign word until it was no longer unfamiliar—”profiler”. I stayed up all-night searching the meaning; my eyes sparkled with the dim light of the monitor as I read the tales of Pyo Chang Won and his Sherlock-like stories. From predicting the future of criminals and knowing the precise vicinity of a killer on the loose, he had saved countless lives; living in communities riddled with crimes in my youth then and even now, I dreamed of working against crimes. However, the traditional path of a lawyer or a police officer only reinforced the three-step cycle of arrest, trial, and jail which continued with no fundamental changes for years; I wanted to work with the psyche of criminals beyond courts and wondered about the inner workings of the mind. 

Such admiration and interest led me to invest my time in psychology. Combined with working with the likes of the Victim Witness Agency, I decided to pursue psychology as my major for my undergraduate education. Later on, I want to specialize my research and education on behavioral/forensic psychology and eventually branch out to my childhood dream of becoming a criminal profiler. 

A major positive of this essay is how it is focused on one moment in time. This student goes into depth about the night they first fell in love with criminal psychology which allows the reader to feel like they are there watching TV with the student and researching afterwards. Having the essay focus on a snapshot of the student’s life opens the door to include more imagery and delve into the internal monologue of the student, thus creating a more engaging and personable essay. 

The student’s genuine fascination for the topic is evident through what they show the reader. They explain that they stayed to finish the show after their parents left, they stayed up all night researching what they just learned, and their eyes sparkled the more they learned about criminal psychology. Providing all these details shows the student’s fascination and passion for this topic without them ever having to explicitly say they were excited about it. 

This essay also does a good job of expanding past the requirements of the prompt to explain what they hope to accomplish with their degree. Including their goals reinforced their passion to pursue this field to admissions officers. It also demonstrated that they are a goal-oriented person who wants to make a difference in the world.

One thing that could be improved in this essay is the grammar. There were a few sentences where there were either typos or just clunky sentences that could be tightened up. In order to catch grammatical errors, you should always give your essay to at least one other person to read. CollegeVine offers  essay reviews that allows students to receive feedback on the grammar, structure, and content of their essays. It’s always a good idea to have a fresh pair of eyes read your essay to catch mistakes that might go unnoticed by you. Having someone review this essay would have likely helped this student fix their grammatical errors.

Essay #8: Harvard

Prompt:   You may wish to include an additional essay if you feel that the college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about yourself or your accomplishments. You may write on a topic of your choice, or you may choose from one of the following topics:  Travel, living, or working experiences in your own or other communities.

A scream in the night.

In the town of Montagu, South Africa, the sun had set hours ago, leaving its place to a deep dark sky. Everything was peaceful and quiet. In a little lodge, a family of four people had just finished eating on a dimly lit terrace. The heat was so intense even the black silence seemed to suffocate – only a few crickets dared to break its density. The mother asked something to her daughter, who stood up, and bypassed the table. That’s when she screamed. An intense, long scream, that reverberated in the little town of Montagu.

How do I know that? It was me. 

Me, miserable as I had fallen down the terrace… into a plantation of cacti! I couldn’t move. I felt as if each cactus thorn contained poison that spread through my back, my arms, my entire body. The plants were engulfing me into the darkness. I was suffocating, trying to grasp some of the hot, heavy air. Until I felt her hand. My mom’s. 

She and my father organized this trip to South Africa. Valuing experiences more than material wealth, they liked to organize trips to foreign, far away countries. In addition to South Africa, I visited Cuba, Nepal and China. Four countries where landscapes and cities are dissimilar to France’s. Four countries that allowed me to discover numerous communities, recipes and traditions. Four countries where I met animals, plants and humans I had never seen before.

I am a city girl. As a little girl, I was never really fond of flora or fauna. However, during my trips, I was lucky to see animals in freedom and to interact with nature. A baboon broke into my car in South Africa and walked all over me – literally. I held an iguana in Cuba, did a safari in South Africa and talked with a parrot in Nepal. I saw the sun rising on the Machapuchare. I ultimately understood that all I had experienced was thanks to Nature. I realized its preciousness and its urgency to be saved. I gained proximity to the environment that I had always lacked. My blood turned green thanks to travels. 

In addition to animal discoveries, travels are encounter engines. From little to aged humans, from all genders, from everywhere, travels allowed me to meet incredible people. The uncanny apparition of a mysterious little girl particularly touched me in Ghorepani, Nepal. I had walked for seven hours that day, and was waiting for dinner, sitting on a bench. She slowly advanced towards me.

“What’s your name?” I asked the white figure in the obscurity.

The little girl stopped moving. Dark curly hair, dark deep eyes, white clothes covered in mud among the deep dark night. Our eyes locked in each other’s, the sound of our breathing floating in the dense silence, everything seemed to be suspended. After what felt like dozens of hours, she looked at me and silently walked away, a star in the ink black sky. 

Every person encountered made me grow. Some like the Nepalese little girl simply disrupted me, some opened my eyes on poverty, others opened my eyes on racism. Every person I met had a story to share, a fact to transmit. I visited an orphanage in a township in South Africa. The teacher, a frail and tiny woman, explained that racism was still so profound in the country that black and mixed race people were fighting to death in the neighbourhood. Centuries of abuse towards people of color, for children to pay the price, growing up parentless in the orphanage. The sound of the rain was echoing on the metal houses as the children sang their anthem. Wet furrows appeared as raindrops were racing on every cheek:

‘Let us live and strive for freedom,

In South Africa our land.’

Traveling is ultimately a chance. It is an opportunity to understand the complexity of the world by getting close to it. Traveling allowed me to realize the differences between each country and region. But beyond those dissimilarities, I saw singing, dancing and laughing everywhere in the world. Being away brought me closer to my home and my family and friends, my newspaper team, every community I’m involved in. Traveling represents a learning process. I integrated leadership and diligence in Nepal, watching children and old men transport wood on their back. Speaking foreign languages allowed me to acquire experience and put my theoretical skills to practise. I acquired a lot of adaptability through travels as part of their greatness comes from its unpredictability. Traveling truly enriches the intellect of those who have the chance to do it.

This is overall a delightful, very readable essay. The author starts with a dramatic hook to capture the reader’s attention, and they build on that initial story with vivid imagery like “ I felt as if each cactus thorn contained poison that spread through my back, my arms, my entire body. ” In general, the language is strong throughout the entire essay. Other beautiful gems include, “ The sound of the rain was echoing on the metal houses as the children sang their anthem ” and, “ The uncanny apparition of a mysterious little girl particularly touched me. ” The author has a way with words, and they proudly demonstrate it in their response. 

In addition to strong imagery, the author also does a satisfactory job at answering the prompt. The open-ended question not only means that students could answer in a variety of ways, but also that it might be easy to fall into a trap of answering in an unrelated or uninteresting manner. The author here does a good job of directly answering the prompt by providing clear examples of their travels around the world. Their response also goes beyond merely listing experiences; rather, they tell stories and describe some of the notable people they have met along the way. By telling stories and adopting a whimsical tone that evokes the wanderlust of travel, they elevate the impact of their response. 

We also learn a fair amount about the author through their stories and personal reflections. We see that they are concerned about social justice through their retelling of the interactions in South Africa. We see them reflecting on the universal joys of singing and dancing: “ But beyond those dissimilarities, I saw singing, dancing and laughing everywhere in the world. ” In the closing paragraph, we learn that they are adaptable and willing to undergo lifelong learning. Thus, another reason this essay shines is because it not only tells us what travels/experiences the author has engaged in, but it provides deeper introspection regarding how they have grown from these experiences.

While the essay is beautiful, and the fast-moving pace matches the feeling of seeing unfamiliar places for the first time, the narrative runs the risk of being too wide-ranging. The introductory story of falling onto a bed of cacti could warrant an entire essay unto itself, yet the author does not return to it anywhere else in their response. They missed an opportunity to bring the response full circle by ruminating on that once more in their conclusion. 

Another thing to be careful of is how the privilege inherent in international travel might cause the author to see the life through a certain lens. Although they remark upon how their family prioritizes experiences over material wealth, the fact is that extensive international travel relies on having material wealth to pay for costs like airfare and housing. It is important to demonstrate humility and awareness of privilege when responding to college essay prompts, and this is no exception. 

Where to Get Your Essays Edited 

At top schools like the Ivies, your essays account for around 25% of your admissions decision after you clear the academic thresholds. Why is this? Most students applying to the Ivy League will have stellar academics and extracurriculars. Your essays are your chance to stand out and humanize your application.

After reading your essays over and over, it can be difficult to judge your writing objectively. That’s why we created our Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. Since they don’t know you personally, they can be a more objective judge of whether your personality shines through, and whether you’ve fully answered the prompt. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

How To Write Great Ivy League Essays (With Examples)

Introduction

College admissions are a tiresome process. The decision-making processes of hyper-selective Ivy League schools can seem mostly cloudy to applicants. 

You may have heard about the Common App Essay, and supplemental college application essays provide the opportunity for students to display some of the harder-to-summarize, technical aspects of their application. Through such essays, students give a chance to admissions officers to display a sense of their personality, likings that fall outside the scope of their resume, or moments that matter to them.

When nearing the personal statement and supplemental essays for hyper-selective schools, parents and students often wonder what Ivy League schools are be looking for. 

This article will discuss successful Ivy League essays’  qualities and offer step-by-step guidance to help you produce such work.

Let’s start by identifying what makes Ivy League applications and expectations qualitatively different from the others. There’s a type of trickle-down effect that we can see from Ivy League schools to liberal arts schools, so preparing your child for top schools’ applications can train them to apply to mid-tier schools as well.

But, mainly, we notice that the most selective colleges ask for students to demonstrate strong passion, leadership, competence, initiative, and memorability.

Admissions committees evaluate these essays as part of a holistic narrative of a student—a good essay doesn’t guarantee admission. Admissions—especially at Ivy League schools—is a complicated, multi-faceted, and ever-changing process. What might make one essay perfect in any given year might not apply to essays in upcoming years.

Keeping that in mind, we’ve collected successful Ivy League essays from applicants who were accepted into one or more Ivy League or Ivy+ institutions (such as Stanford, MIT, UChicago). By properly going through these essays, we’ve compiled a list of strategies for writing essay competition in a highly selective applicant pool.

Ivy League essay prompts

Supplemental prompts change a little bit every year. But we’ve systemized a list of the prompts from Ivy League schools from the 2018-2019 Common App. Between all of these questions and the Personal Statement, you will easily find several routes into demonstrating your best qualities. 

Keeping that in mind, we’ve first listed all of the prompts for the Ivy League schools. 

( Note: Cornell University is excluded from this list because their prompts vary by program. )

Princeton University essay prompt

In addition to the essay you have written for the Common Application, please write an essay of about 500 words (no more than 650 words and no fewer than 250 words). Using one of the themes below as a starting point, write about a person, event, or experience that helped you define one of your values or in some way changed how you approach the world. Please do not repeat the essay you wrote for the Common Application in whole or in part.

1. Tell us about a person who has influenced you in a significant way.

2.“One of the great challenges of our time is that the disparities we face today have more complex causes and point less straightforwardly to solutions.” Omar Wasow, assistant professor of politics, Princeton University. This quote is taken from Professor Wasow’s January 2014 speech at the Martin Luther King Day celebration at Princeton University.

3. “Culture is what presents us with the kinds of valuable things that can fill a life. And insofar as we can recognize the value in those things and make them part of our lives, our lives are meaningful.” Gideon Rosen, Stuart Professor of Philosophy and Chair, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University.

4. Using a favorite quotation from an essay or book you have read in the last three years as a starting point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world. Please write the quotation, title, and author at the beginning of your essay.

Harvard University essay prompt

You may wish to include an additional essay if you feel that the college application forms do not provide sufficient opportunity to convey important information about yourself or your accomplishments. You may write on a topic of your choice, or you may choose from one of the following topics:

• Unusual circumstances in your life
• Travel, living, or working experiences in your own or other communities
• What you would want your future college roommate to know about you
• An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science, or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you
• How you hope to use your college education
• A list of books you have read during the past twelve months
• The Harvard College Honor code declares that we “hold honesty as the foundation of our community.” As you consider entering this community committed to honesty, please reflect on a time when you or someone you observed had to choose whether to act with integrity and honesty. 
• The mission of Harvard College is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society. What would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission? 
• Each year, many students admitted to Harvard defer their admission for one year or take time off during college. If you decided in the future to choose either option, what would you like to do? 
• Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development, or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates. 

Columbia University essay prompt

List a few words or phrases that describe your ideal college community. (150 words or less)

List the titles of the required readings from courses during the school year or summer that you enjoyed most in the past year. (150 words or less)

List the titles of the books you read for pleasure that you enjoyed most in the past year. (150 words or less)

List the titles of the print, electronic publications, and websites you read regularly. (150 words or less)

List the titles of the films, concerts, shows, exhibits, lectures, and other entertainments you enjoyed most in the past year. (150 words or less)

Please tell us what you value most about Columbia and why. (300 words or less)

MIT essay prompt

We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it. (100 words or fewer)

Although you may not yet know what you want to major in, which department or program at MIT appeals to you and why? (100 words or fewer)

At MIT, we bring people together to better the lives of others. MIT students work to improve their communities differently, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to being good friends. Describe one way in which you have contributed to your community, whether in your family, the classroom, your neighborhood, etc. (200-250 words)

Describe the world you come from; for example, your family, clubs, school, community, city, or town. How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations? (200-250 words)

Tell us about the most significant challenge you’ve faced or something important that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation? (200-250 words)

University of Chicago essay prompt

Choose one of the six extended essay options and upload a one- or two-page response. 

1. In 2015, the city of Melbourne, Australia, created a ''tree-mail'' service, in which all of the trees in the city received an email address so that residents could report any tree-related issues. As an unexpected result, people began to email their favorite trees sweet and occasionally humorous letters. Imagine this has been expanded to any object (tree or otherwise) in the world, and share with us the letter you'd send to your favorite. 

Inspired by Hannah Lu, Class of 2020

2. You're on a voyage in the thirteenth century, sailing across the stormy seas. What if, suddenly, you fell off the edge of the Earth?

Inspired by Chandani Latey, AB'93

3. The word floccinaucinihilipilification is the act or habit of describing or regarding something as unimportant or of having no value. It originated in the mid-18th century from the Latin words ''floccu,'' ''naucum,'' ''nihilum,'' and ''pilus'' - all words meaning ''of little use.'' Coin your word using parts from any language you choose, tell us its meaning, and describe the plausible (if only to you) scenarios in which it would be most appropriately used.

Inspired by Ben Zhang, Class of 2022

4. Lost your keys? Alohomora. Noisy roommate? Quietus. Feel the need to shatter windows for some reason? Finestra. Create your spell, charm, jinx, or other means for magical mayhem. How is it enacted? Is there an incantation? Does it involve a potion or other magical object? If so, what's in it, or what is it? What does it do?

Inspired by Emma Sorkin, Class of 2021

5. Imagine you’ve struck a deal with the Dean of Admissions himself, Dean Nondorf. It goes as follows: you’re guaranteed admission to the University of Chicago regardless of any circumstances that arise. This bond is grounded on the condition that you’ll obtain a blank, 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, and draw, write, sketch, shade, stencil, paint, etc., anything and everything you want on it; your only limitations will be the boundaries of both sides on the single page. Now the catch… your submission will always be the first thing anyone you meet for the first time will see for the rest of your life. Whether it’s at a job interview, a blind date, arrival at your first Humanities class, before you even say, “Hey,” they’ll already have seen your page and formulated that first impression. Show us your page. What’s on it, and why? If your piece is essentially or exclusively visual, please make sure to share a creator's accompanying statement of at least 300 words, which we will happily allow to be on its own, separate page. PS: This is a creative thought experiment, so please note: selecting this essay prompt does not guarantee your admission to UChicago or forgive poor grades, criminal mischief, or any other “circumstances” that “may” “arise.” 

Inspired by Amandeep Singh Ahluwalia, Class of 2022

6. In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, pose your question or choose one of our past prompts. Be original, creative, thought-provoking. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, a citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun. You can find our past prompts here.

How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your wishes and how they relate to UChicago.

Yale University essay prompt

What is it about Yale that has led you to apply? (125 words or fewer)

Please respond in no more than 200 characters (approximately 35 words) to each of the following questions: 

1. What inspires you?

2. Yale’s residential colleges regularly host conversations with guests representing a wide range of experiences and accomplishments. What person, past or present, would you invite to speak? What question would you ask?

3. You are teaching a Yale course. What is it called?

4. Most first-year Yale students live in suites of four to six people. What do you hope to add to your suitemates' experience? What do you wish they will add to yours?

Please choose two of the following topics and respond to each in 250 words or fewer. 

1. Think about an idea or topic that has been intellectually exciting for you. Why are you drawn to it? 

2. Reflect on your engagement with the community to which you belong. How do you feel you have contributed to this community?

3. Yale students, faculty, and alumni engage local, national, and international issues. Discuss an issue that is significant to you and how your college experience might help you address it. 

Stanford University essay prompt

• What is the most significant challenge that society faces today? (50-word limit)
• How did you spend your last two summers? (50-word limit)
• What historical moment or event do you wish you could have witnessed? (50-word limit)
• What five words best describe you?
• When the choice is yours, what do you read, listen to, or watch? (50-word limit)
• Name one thing you are looking forward to experiencing at Stanford. (50-word limit)
• Imagine you had an extra hour in the day — how would you spend that time? (50-word limit).
• The Stanford community is curious and driven to learn in and out of the classroom. Reflect on an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning. (100 to 250 words)
• Virtually all of Stanford's undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate – and us – know you better. (100 to 250 words)
• Tell us about something meaningful to you and why. (100 to 250 words)

University of Pennsylvania essay prompt

How will you explore your intellectual and academic interests at the University of Pennsylvania? Please answer this question given the specific undergraduate school to which you are applying. (400-650 words) 

Dartmouth University essay prompt

While arguing a Dartmouth-related case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1818, Daniel Webster, Class of 1801, delivered this memorable line: “It is, Sir…a small college. And yet, some love it!” As you seek admission to the Class of 2023, what aspects of the College’s program, community, or campus environment attract your interest?

Choose one of the following prompts and respond in 250-300 words:

• “I have no special talent,” Albert Einstein once observed. “I am only passionately curious.” Celebrate your curiosity.
• The Hawaiian word mo’olelo is often translated as “story,” but it can also refer to history, legend, genealogy, and tradition. Use one of these translations to introduce yourself.
• “You can’t use up creativity,” Maya Angelou mused. “The more you use, the more you have.” Share a creative moment or impulse—in any form—that inspired creativity in your life.
• In the aftermath of World War II, Dartmouth President John Sloane Dickey, Class of 1929, proclaimed, “The world’s troubles are your troubles…and there is nothing wrong with the world that better human beings cannot fix.” Which of the world’s “troubles” inspires you to act? How might your course of study at Dartmouth prepare you to address it?
• In The Bingo Palace, author Louise Erdrich, Class of 1976, writes, “…no one gets wise enough to understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.” Discuss.
• Emmy and Grammy winner Donald Glover is a 21st century Renaissance man—an actor, comedian, writer, director, producer, singer, songwriter, rapper, and DJ. And yet, the versatile storyteller and performer recently told an interviewer, “The thing I imagine myself being in the future doesn’t exist yet.” Can you relate?

Brown University essay prompt

Why are you drawn to the area(s) of study you indicated earlier in this application? (You may share with us a skill or concept that you found challenging and rewarding to learn or any experiences beyond course work that may have broadened your interest.) (250-word limit)

What do you hope to experience at Brown through the Open Curriculum, and what do you wish to contribute to the Brown community? (250-word limit)

What do all of the prompts mentioned above have in common? 

Remember the qualities we talked about above? Intense passion, leadership, competence, initiative, and memorability! Every one of these prompts is, in some way, planned to get you reflecting on something original and enthusiastic manner. 

After doing the close-reading of the Ivy+ prompts, we can notice a few key things.

Whether it’s Yale asking about something you are “intellectually excited” about, or Brown speaking about something to reflect on the particularities of the Open Curriculum, or Stanford extracting a note to a roommate, these schools want you to detail their most particular obsessions, and to be able to speak about them in a way that shows intelligence and unique way of thinking. 

They want to be sure that you will share your passions with your classmates, roommates, etc.

Yet again, these are the things any university school would love to see in your Common App PS. But the Ivy+ colleges’ questions are mainly to test such qualities.

What follows is advice that can apply to both the PS and the supplementals, given the wide range of topics one can address across each type of essay.

How to pick an Ivy League essay topic

Successful students write about what interests them. The topic shouldn’t be something weird or reflects the student’s central academic and extracurricular activities. It should be about something the student can write about with belief, excitement, and specificity.

We’ve four examples of students who pulled off successful admissions cycles to Ivy+ schools. Let’s see how they chose their subject matter.

Our first example student is Angela. Angela is passionate about the environment, though she’s also involved in activities like playing basketball, and she is also part of the French club. When choosing a topic for supplemental essays, one might expect Angela to select something related to her interest or that in some way reflects on her academic prowess in the humanities. 

Instead, in one of her supplemental essays, Angela chooses to write about a topic that may at first seem unrelated to her application. She decided to write about one of her favorite teachers, who significantly impacted her life.

Our second example student is Jenna. She’s interested in politics and history.  For her supplemental essays, she decided to write about her love for the musical. Hamilton .

In each essay, the students’ genuine interest in the subject shines through. By way of their interests, we learn, indirectly, more about each student herself.

In other words, it’s not so much the topic but the voice and tone in which these students write about their chosen subject that will give an admissions committee insight into their personalities and characters. In the next section of this post, we’ll break down how Angela and Jenna use tone, voice, and detail to communicate something about themselves while writing about Hamilton or a favorite teacher.

Our third student, Simon, his grades and test scores are high in math, science, and history. In extracurricular he has achieved in a mock trial but has also succeeded in art competitions. One of his supplemental essays for Princeton asked that he respond to a quotation of his choosing.

Like Angela and Maria, Simon didn’t pick anything they used to do regularly: he introspected and chose something that had genuinely piqued his curiosity in the things he’d studied in the past few years. In response to the quotation, the resulting essay is associative and spontaneous rather than a rehash of Simon’s impressive resume.

Let’s look at another example of a student name Rhea, who is the opposite of Simon. Rather than being “well-rounded,” Rhea is what the Harvard Admissions website might call “well-lopsided.” She loves writing and reading and has shown interest through her involvement with her school’s slam poetry team and national writing competitions. Besides that, she struggles in subjects like math. Rhea’s supplemental essay for Yale underlines the quality that makes her “well-lopsided”—she writes about it with pure intensity. 

In short, you should try to choose a topic you’re excited to talk about. What could you talk about with your friends endlessly for hours? How you spend your free time? Who’s the person in your life in your everyday life that has influenced or changed you? Are there moments in your life that have made you feel part of something larger?

How to decide on an essay structure

Once you have chosen a topic that you’re interested in, the next step is to decide the proper structure for the essay. An Ivy League-quality essay is not just about five paragraphs. An Ivy+ quality essay takes narrative and storytelling thoughtfully. It must read like beautiful fiction.

If you are genuinely passionate about your subject matter, an organic design can emerge—indicating that they weren’t just following a static set of building blocks. While we can’t backpedal engineer passion, we can give you some advice regarding storytelling brain rather than their resume-summary brain.

Let’s start with Jenna’s Hamilton essay and her supplemental essay about her favorite teacher. The first design element that makes these essays successful is the opening.

Strategy 1: A “Hook”

Jenna starts her essay with a hook that 1) draws the reader in and 2) forms her voice and enthusiasm instantly. Here’s the opening to her Hamilton essay:

A coal scuttle. A woman on stage, crying, singing, and burning a series of old-looking papers the tea color. All this: a way to tell the audience about someone history has forgotten. This is what happens at one of the emotional climaxes of my favorite musical: Eliza Hamilton, spurned by her husband, removes herself from the historical narrative by burning their letters. I saw Hamilton when my father won a lottery for tickets on a visit to New York City. A drama nerd, I was thrilled to get a chance to see the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning production. I didn’t know how much it would affect how I thought about the past and the present.

For comparison, let’s look at Angela’s opening to the essay about her favorite teacher:

“ Uncertainty could be my guiding light .” – U2

“ Do or do not. There is no try .” – Yoda.

“ Life’s what you make it, so let’s make it rock. ” – Hannah Montana.

A broad group of unconnected aphorisms? Not at all. More like drops of inspirational “Zachary-isms” splashing the drab cinderblock walls with colorful insights.

Observe that these essays open with a focus on something beyond the student: they start by stealing the reader’s attention. They also start small. Rather than declaring what the essay is “about,” Angela and Jenna focus on the specific images to draw the reader in.

It can be unsettling to sit in front of a blank page, trying to convey a big idea. The subject of Jenna’s essay is Hamilton. The idea she communicates in the rest of the essay is that she’s into drama. As a way to take the spotlight and settle for your best self, this musical showed her how through entertainment, she could communicate big ideas about history and politics while inspiring present-day audiences to remember that they’re living through history all the time. She put an essay that subtly links back to her favorite interests while not always keep talking about them too directly.

Observe, that she initiates the essay not by instantly making her love for Hamilton into a metaphor. Instead, she starts with a concrete detail—the climax of the show.

If you are stuck—say you’re trying to write an essay about how your desire for antique shopping taught you to listen to different people, brainstorm specific details about the things they like and are enthusiastic about. What do they know, particularly, about this thing? Jenna knows about the type of prop used onstage because she geeked out and asked around when she dreamt of putting on her version of the show at her high school.

Starting small and going big is a great idea. Also, a successful essay opening can also begin to big. Simon’s essay, which is written in response to a Machiavelli quotation he chose, begins with the following. 

The cosmos call to me. Whether in a city, where only the brightest stars break through the noise, or away from all distractions, where their number can overwhelm, I welcome the perspective the heavens bestow. Even though I try to tame the sky with books or a telescope, it never ceases to make me feel powerless. 

Establishing your essay with the cosmos is about as big as you can get. But a critical similarity between Simon’s opening and Angela’s is that he still uses a particular image, provided with curiosity and joy. It communicates to admissions committees: this guy knows what they’re talking about, and they’re talking about it from a place of intellectual vitality.

Strategy 2: Establish Larger Significance

So, you started your essay. You finally settled on a topic that excites you. You’ve written an attention-grabbing hook that uses specific knowledge, a sensory image, or fs the essay’s perspective. What next? 

Yes, the essay is about the student’s selected topic, but it’s about the student. The next section of the essay, after the hook, should fulfill two things. First, it should exhibit the student’s voice. Second, it should show that the student has thought about why this thing might grab their interest.

Let’s begin with that first goal, establishing voice.

Jenna’s voice comes even in her hook, but her voice becomes even more vital as the essay goes ahead past the hook into the second paragraph. 

What defines a unique student voice in an admissions essay? It’s things like word choice, word repetition, and when the student writes more formally vs. more informally. 

Sometimes students writes using a formal SAT-word-strewn language in order to impress an admissions committee. On the contrary, ideally, using informal language can humanize the candidate and give the essay a voice. Here’s an example, from Jenna’s Hamilton essay:

Okay, okay. Musical theater can be hammy and campy. I should have learned to love history in school, right? But every year, my class began with the same old recitations about documents that seemed ancient. It wasn’t until I watched Eliza Hamilton rendered with such humanity onstage that I connected to what I later learned was called “historiography,” or how we write history .

Jenna’s voice easily blends the informal—phrases like “Okay, okay” and “right?”—with specific formal language—words like “rendered” and “historiography.” She displays a grasp of vocabulary without coming across as stiff or like a know-it-all.

Repetition can also be a good idea in structuring an essay and establishing voice. Let’s return to Rhea, our “well-lopsided” aspiring writer. One of her supplemental essays for Yale takes as its subject the realization that she uses the written word to understand herself and learn about her family history. The essay begins on a broad, personal note, with an organizing topic sentence in the second paragraph:

When I reflect on my life, everything ties back into the power of the written word.     

As the essay goes ahead, it opens up—Rhea links the personal importance of writing to something larger. Thi happens through repetition:

Words make me who I am. The terms of my grandparents told me how lucky I am to be growing up in America, instead of Nazi-occupied Poland or Stalinist Russia, like they did.

In both Jenna and Rhea’s essays, repetition and “opening up” to a larger topic are vital in establishing voice and great significance—both of which will help admissions committees gain a better sense of the students.

How to write Ivy League essay

Now that we’ve done a deep dive into structure—hook, voice, more considerable significance, takeaway—we’ll get into the nitty-gritty of what makes successful Ivy League essays not only structurally compelling but also fascinating and richly textured.

Tip 1: Mention lots of detail

Essays that are successful in the Ivy League stock often use very precise details to impress the essay. You should avoid cliché and generalizations as you write essay.

Let’s look back at Angela’s essay about her favorite teacher. Here’s how she presents him:

The rays beating onto his back seem to infuse him with an enthusiastic energy which he passes on to his drowsy students. The well-worn spine of The Brothers Karamazov is plopped in one open hand, complete with the ubiquitous highlighted passages and illegible margin notes. The other madly gesticulates.

Observe that Angela sets the scene here. We can see the teacher she’s describing: the sun rays, the tired high school students. Instead of saying “a book” she mentions a a specific title. She zooms in to show not just details, but telling details. 

We know that this is an lively and dedicated teacher from the description of his gesticulation and the description of the marginalia. Not only do these details tell us something about the teacher: by saying us what Angela see and admires about the teacher, we learn more about Angela. She’s the kind of  person who admires devotion to one’s work. 

Tip 2: Go with the a humble tone

Essays are not the place to brag. You are in the Ivy League pool, and the non-qualitative parts of the application—the Common App, the resume, etc.—will give the admissions committee idea about your accomplishments.

On the contrary, the essay is a good place to acknowledge faults, contradictions, and uncertainty.

Take Rhea. She writes: 

Words are the thread that ties me to the people and events around me. Words help me understand a universe that is at once united and divided. Words remind me that I am at once minusculeseesThese. Insignificant, and at the same time, an essential link in the chain of history.

In the last paragraph of the essay, Rhea ends by introspecting on her own insignificance, which can be a counterpart to an application geared to show an admissions committee how she stands out from the crowd. This ending suggests modesty, humility and perspective, as well as a contradiction. Writing is essential to her in part because she’s good at it, but also because it reminds her that the world is much bigger than herself.

Tip 3: Switch up your word choice

Simon and Jenna’s essays seldom repeat keywords—unless, as in Jenna’s, the repetition is helpful to establish voice. Don’t reach for formal words, but do try to use language that’s firm and particular.

Remember that, as former Princeton Dean of Admissions Janet Lavin Rapelye writes, your essay not only communicates something about you, but also should showcase your writing skills: “Your ability to write well is critical to our decision because your writing reflects your thinking. No matter what question is asked on a college application, admission officers see how well you convey your ideas and express yourself in writing. It is our window to your world .”

Tip 4: make your message simple and clear

You have to avoid bragging in these essays, but it’s essential that you are clear and confident in the subject matter and the message you’re conveying. We’ve touched on the “takeaways” as a practical structural element of a successful essay. It can also be helpful to pepper these “takeaways” throughout the essay.

Here’s an example line from Rhea’s essay: “ Words have whispered to me my whole life. They have been my comfort, my refuge, my outlet, my joy. ”

At first glance, this might seem like an generalization. But this clarity and communicates vital information to an admissions committee: this person is serious about their interests.

Tip 5: Add a title

In the full-length essays mentioned below, some successful essays have a title. This suggests that you have put extra effort into highlighting the essay’s central idea, and you consider it a complete, polished piece of writing.

Tip 6:  Try to read interesting people’s college essays

The students we’re highlighting in this post are great writers in part because they’ve been genuinely occupied with the narrative for many years. Check out a few essays by genuinely great writers. Not writers of college essays, but the great ones 

Try James Baldwin’s ‘ Letter from A Region in My Mind ’ or ‘Notes of a Native Son,’ Joan Didion’s ‘Goodbye to All That ’ or ‘ Notes from a Native Daughter ,’ Nora Ephron’s ‘ A Few Words About Breasts ,’  Annie Dillard’s ‘Total Eclipse,’ or any number of essays by David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, John McPhee, David Sedaris, Meghan Daum, Maggie Nelson, or Anne Fadiman.

Ivy League essay example

Check out successful college essay examples on our site.

Here’s Jenna’s essay on her favorite teacher:

Mr. Zachary’s Opus

“Uncertainty could be my guiding light.” – U2

“Do or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda.

“Life’s what you make it, so let’s make it rock.” – Hannah Montana.

An eclectic group of unrelated aphorisms? Not at all. I like to think of them as drops of inspirational “Zachary-isms” splashing the drab cinderblock walls with colorful insights. To call room 134 a “classroom” is an understatement. I prefer to think of it as a sanctuary where students are free to disagree, take risks, and derive their own sense of meaning.

Room 134? Hardly. It’s an extension of Mr. Zachary himself.

Each English class with “Zac Attack” is a unique experience. He sits on the windowsill digging his elbows into his knees, a panorama of hazy trees stretched behind him in the early morning sunlight. The rays beating onto his back seem to infuse him with an enthusiastic energy which he passes on to his drowsy students. The well-worn spine of Great Expectations is plopped in one open hand, complete with the ubiquitous highlighted passages and illegible margin notes. The other madly gesticulates through the air as he conveys the literary beauty of the passage he’s reading aloud to his awakening audience. He reads faster and faster, gradually increasing the intensity in his voice until suddenly he stops—catching us all by surprise with his silence. A smile spreads across his face as he watches the words he’s just spoken permeate our thawing brains. That is Mr. Zachary in his pure, unadulterated genius.

He finds subtle ways to sneak in references to his proud Irish-Catholic roots. One day, he recited all of Yeats’ “Second Coming” from memory. I could almost see the “widening gyre” behind his dancing eyes. Remarkably, he never intimidates with his boundless knowledge. To be honest, most of the ti, I forget he’s my teacher. I’m genuinely convinced Mr. Zachary is a kid stuck in an adult’s body. He’s the only teacher I know who will walk you to the cafeteria if a conversation spills over into the lunch period. He’s the only teacher I know who conducts class from a beach chair on Fridays. He the only teacher I know who has snappier wisecracks than the class clown. Mr. Zachary is half-Yeats, half-Bono—the perfect Irish combination of intellect with that classic “cool dude” persona.

His passion is contagious. Never before have I felt so liberated sitting in front of a blank computer screen. One of Mr. Zachary’s “inviolate rules” is to write for yourself, not for a grade. He’s taught me to catch the thoughts in my head and crystallize them on paper. He’s taught me to harness the therapeutic power of words flying across the page. He’s taught me to be unafraid of words—to love words. He’s helped me find the writer in myself. He’s a sage, a muse, a bard, a mentor, and a savant. More importantly, he’s my friend. 

No one totally figures how you out what the Ivy League wants. 

But here’s a summary of the strategies we’ve learned based on over a decade of working with successful Ivy League applicants. We’ve also mentioned the ways your begin outlining and prewriting for an Ivy League essay that impresses the admissions committee.

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How to Write College Application Essays

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

College Application Essay Fundamentals 

How to prepare to write your essay , how to approach different essay types, how to structure your essay , how to revise your essay, how to find essay writing help , resources for teaching students how to write a college essay, additional resources (further reading).

Of all the materials in a college application, the essay provides the greatest opportunity for you to set yourself apart. Unlike the transcript or resume, the essay is creative and expressive; in it, you can show the admissions counselors who you are and what you can do (that is, how well you can write!). A good application essay should have a memorable main idea, a cohesive structure, and a strong introduction and conclusion. Although essay topics can vary by college, the most common prompts deal with personal experiences and aspirations for the future. This guide   contains a diverse set of resources to help you orient yourself to the college application essay and, ultimately, to write the most competitive essay possible. 

The college application essay is a requirement for admission to almost all institutions of higher learning. Though in some ways it resembles essays you've written in class or on standardized tests, in other ways it's a unique writing exercises with its own particular requirements. Use the resources below to help you understand how the essay should be structured and what kind of content to include. 

"How Long Should College Application Essays Be?" (Learn.org)

This webpage guides you through some basic tips on writing the college essay—including essay length, sticking to the prompt, and maintaining an original tone. 

"College Application Essay" (College Board)

This webpage from the College Board discusses the different types of application essays, what length you should aim for, and most importantly, why colleges value this aspect of the application so much. 

"College Essays, College Applications" (College Board) 

The College Board's website is a great resource for any student looking to apply to college. This webpage contains several links to helpful resources, including sample essays and genuine student interviews. 

"Timeline for College Applications" (College Essay Guy)

This colorful, one-page guide from a college application specialist offers an illustrated timeline for high school students looking to apply for college. 

Before putting your ideas down on paper, it's important to conceptualize your essay, to craft strategically your tone and style, and,  crucially, to choose a topic that suits you and the school to which you're applying. The resources in this section include writing tips, lists of common mistakes you should avoid, and guides dedicated to the college application essay.

How to Plan Your Essay

"3 Common College Essay Mistakes to Avoid" (CNBC)  

This article from CNBC broadly outlines the most common mistakes students make when writing their college application essays. Although these mistakes may seem obvious, even the most experienced writers can fall into these common traps.

"7 Effective Application Tips" (Peterson's)

This article from Peterson's (a company providing academic materials for test prep, application help, and more) lists seven pieces of advice designed to make your writing pop. 

"The Secret to Show, Don't Tell" ( The Write Practice Blog)  

You've heard it before: show, don't tell. This is a great writing tip, but how do you pull it off? Here, the writing blog  The Write Practice  outlines how you can make your writing more descriptive and effective. 

"Passive Voice" (University of North Carolina)  

Avoiding passive construction is a subtle yet effective way to upgrade any piece of writing. Check out this webpage from a university writing center for some tips on recognizing and avoiding passive voice. 

"Using Appropriate Words in an Academic Essay" (National University of Singapore)

There are many ways to upgrade your vocabulary. Often, words can be replaced with more impressive substitutes, phrases can be shortened or lengthened depending on context, and transitions can be used for a smoother flow. The link above expands on these strategies and offers several others. 

How to Brainstorm Topic Ideas

"Bad College Essays: 10 Mistakes to Avoid" (PrepScholar)

This article from a well-known tutoring service and test prep program describes what to avoid when writing your essay. Essays that are too graphic, too personal, or too overconfident are all problematic, and this article explains why. 

"5 Tricks for Choosing Your College Essay Topic" (CollegeXpress)

Lost on how to choose a topic? This webpage from CollegeXpress outlines five sources of inspiration you can mine for ideas as you're getting started.

"The College Admission Essay: Finding a Topic" (The Choice Blog)

This article from New York Times  blog The Choice  breaks down three essential questions to ask yourself when choosing a topic for your college essay. 

"COLLEGE ESSAY GUIDE: Choosing a Prompt for the Common Application" (YouTube)

In this five-minute video, a Yale student discusses how to choose a college essay prompt and how to approach the essay writing process. His channel is filled with original videos on the college application process. 

"Where to Begin? 3 Personal Essay Brainstorming Exercises" ( CollegeVine Blog)

Approaching the Common App essay prompts can be difficult. This blog post explains several tactics you can use to narrow down your options, such as writing down a list of your greatest convictions.

"Using First Person in an Academic Essay: When Is It Okay?" (WritingCommons.org)

Most high school students are told to avoid using the first person point of view; this can be confusing when writing college essays, which typically ask what  you  think. This article breaks down when (and why) it's acceptable to write in the first person. 

Although all college essays serve the same purpose - articulating why you should get into a college - they come in different kinds. While topics on the Common Application are relatively consistent from year to year, personal statements and so-called "supplemental essays" vary by institution. Each of these essays requires a slightly different approach. The resources in this section will prepare you to answer the various types of essay prompts you're likely to encounter. 

Common Application Essays

CommonApp.org

The Common Application's official website is the best place to start getting acquainted with the service to which the majority of US colleges and universities now subscribe - a service which allows you to streamline your application process and minimize duplication of materials.

"What's App-enning" Blog (Common App)  

The Common App runs a blog with a wealth of information on common application-related news, including periodic updates on common application essay prompts for each application cycle. You can practice brainstorming with old prompts, or even start preparing your application by looking at this year's prompts.

125 College Essay Examples (PrepScholar Blog)

Here, PrepScholar provides a variety of Common App essays that got their respective applicants into their desired schools. Along with the body text of the essays, the website provides analysis on  what  makes the essays so great. 

A Few Essays That Worked (And a Few That Didn't) (NYTimes Blog)

This article analyzes unsuccessful essays, illuminating the ways in which they fell short. Although you should exercise caution and adjust your approach to your specific school, it's always good to pick up on general things to avoid. 

Personal Statements

What Is a Personal Statement? (PrepScholar Blog)

Although personal statements and Common App essays are similar, not all personal statement essays are administered through the Common App. This article from PrepScholar's blog will provide you with everything you need to know about writing a personal statement.

Examples of Successful Statements (Purdue OWL)

The Purdue OWL online writing lab collate links on this page to several successful personal statement. It can be useful to read successful statements and to consider how and why the statements made an impact on their readers. 

Past Threads on Advice for Writing Your College Essay (Reddit Post)

Although not about the personal statement  per se , this Reddit post has links to several past threads that may be of use to any prospective college applicant. 

What 10 Things Should Your Personal Statement Include? (Which University UK)  

This site outlines ten things to consider when writing a personal statement, including outlining what you will bring to the course, not what the course will bring to you. 

Supplemental Essays

How to Write Great Supplemental College Essays (IvyWise Newsletter)

Supplemental essays can often be challenging, asking a range of questions from the mundane to the oddly specific. This article from college application site IvyWise will break down example prompts to make them more approachable. 

Write Your Supplemental Essays (College Essay Guy)

Looking for a comprehensive guide to supplemental essays? Look no further than this page provided by the "College Essay Guy," who breaks down how to write supplemental essays that ask different kinds of questions. 

An Awesome Guide to the UChicago Supplement (Dyad)

Dyad, a college mentoring service, walks you through how to approach UChicago's supplemental essay question. Although the article is specific to UChicago, it contains general tips that are helpful to any college applicant. 

Reading My Yale Supplement Essay (YouTube)

Josh Beasley is back in this short YouTube video, where he reads the supplemental essay that got him into Yale and extrapolates advice for current and prospective applicants. 

A college application essay (like any academic essay) should have an introduction, a conclusion, and body paragraphs. Additionally, it should have overall coherence (that is, it should make a point) and cohesion (that is, it should flow well from paragraph to paragraph). We've collected the most relevant resources here to help you structure your college essay correctly and efficiently. 

How to Make Your Essay Stand Out 

College Essays That Stand Out From the Crowd (NYTimes)

This NYTimes article includes links to several recent essays that caught the eyes of the admissions readers by taking risks. You can even listen to an essay being read aloud by a current Princeton student.

50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays (Gen / Kelly Tanabe)  

If you have some time on your hands, this hefty PDF document contains 50 essays from successful Ivy League applicants. After reading these essays, consider what they have in common and how they might be a model for your own essay.

Make Your Application Essay Stand Out (CampusExplorer.com)

In this article from CampusExplorer, you'll find general tips on how to make your essay more appealing to the admissions readers. The writers include general writing tips as well as more targeted advice for the tone and audience of the application essay.

How to Write a College Application Essay that Stands Out (Boston University)

This short video from BU's own admissions department touches briefly on what impresses their admissions readers, including risk-taking, memorable stories, and honesty. 

Essay Structure (Monash University)

This chart from Monash University visually demonstrates how your content should be organized in order to keep your argument or story on track. 

How to Write an Introduction

How to Start a Personal Statement: The Killer Opening (Which University UK)  

Any good introduction both forecasts what your essay will be about and catches the reader's attention. This page will give you some helpful advice on starting your essay with a bang. 

How to Start a College Essay Perfectly (PrepScholar Blog)

This article from PrepScholar shows you how to "hook" your reader at the start of your application essay with colorful language, a vivid story, and an "insightful pivot" to your main point.

Let Me Introduce Myself (Stanford University)

This article from Stanford U's alumni page details the first-line openings of the essays for some current Stanford undergrads. 

Five Ways to NOT Start Your College Application Essays (PowerScore)

In this article, you'll learn five techniques to avoid, as they typically land a college application essay in the "reject" pile; these include beginning with dictionary definitions or famous quotations. 

How to Write a Conclusion 

Ending the Essay: Conclusions (Harvard University)

Harvard's writing center suggests bringing closure to your essay (that is, wrapping up your argument) while still expanding outward to broader applications or insights in your final paragraph.

Concluding Paragraph (Easybib)  

Although you may have used Easybib to make a bibliography before, did you know they have many resources on how to write a good essay? Check out this page for succinct advice on what your conclusion should entail. 

5 Ways to Powerfully End Your College Essay (College Greenlight)

This blog post instructs you to end with action (that is, a story or anecdote) rather than summary, giving you five ways to do this effectively, including addressing the college directly.

How to Write the Best Conclusion for a College Application Essay and Supplement (Koppelman Group)

The Koppelman Group, a college application consulting firm, warns you, above all, not to end "in conclusion" or "to conclude." They also provide targeted advice for the Common App and Supplement essays, respectively. 

No essay is perfect in its first-draft form; college application essays in particular are limited by word counts that can be difficult to meet. Once you've communicated your ideas, you'll want to edit your essay in order to make sure it's the best it can be. You'll also need to cut or add words to make sure it's within the specifications set by the institution. The resources in this section include tips and tricks for revising your college application essay. 

3 Ways to Increase Word Count (WikiHow)

Complete with illustrations, this WikiHow page outlines several ways you might go about substantively expanding your essay. These tips include clarifying points, reworking your introduction and conclusion, adding new viewpoints and examples, and connecting loose threads. 

Admissions 101: What an Essay Word Limit Really Means (Veritas Prep) 

In this blog post, Veritas Prep's college preparation tutors assure you that being a little over or under the limit is acceptable, recommending ways you can think about the word limit's purpose.

College Essay Word Limit - Going Under? (College Confidential) 

In this College Confidential discussion forum, students discuss the possible ramifications of writing under the word limit for a college essay. 

How to Increase Your Essay Word Count (WordCounter)

This article from WordCounter outlines different ways you might go about meeting word count, including addressing different viewpoints, adding examples, and clarifying statements. 

Hitting the Target Word Count in Your College Admissions Essay (Dummies.com)

This article details how to hit the target word count. Scroll down to the middle of the article for advice on where you should cut words from to meet word count. 

Some Tricks to Reduce Word Count (EastAsiaStudent.net)

This article recommends simplifying your style, deleting adverbs, deleting prepositions, and revisiting connectives and adjectives to reduce word count. 

Advice on Whittling Your Admissions Essay (NYTimes) 

In this New York Times article, Andrew Gelb discusses how to go about cutting down your admissions essay in order to meet the requisite word limit.

How to Shorten an Essay Without Ruining the Content (Quora) 

This Quora post from a concerned student yielded useful community responses on how to effectively shorten an essay without losing the original message. 

Feel like you've hit a wall revising your essay on your own? You're not alone, and there are plentiful resources on the web through which you can connect with fellow college applicants and/or professional tutors. The links in this section will take you to free services for improving your college application essay, as well as two of the top paid writing tutor services.

College Confidential Forums 

College Confidential is a free, public forum in which you can post your essay and receive feedback from current college students, current college applicants, and even teachers or other experienced users. 

/r/CollegeEssays (Reddit)

This subreddit is a great place to look for crowdsourced help on your essay, ask questions about college essays, or even find a private tutor. 

Essayforum.com

Essayforum.com provides another platform for students to share their application essays. Although this link takes you to the site's forum for applicants to undergraduate degree programs, you can submit and review essays in other categories as well.  Varsity Tutors

Varisty Tutors offers tutoring services from freelance tutors based on location. Prices and services vary, but their site is easy to use and there are many tutors available to choose from.

Princeton Review

Princeton Review, one of the largest providers of college preparation tutoring (ranging from standardized test preparation to essay help) offers online essay tutoring services with a free trial period. 

Using in-class time to prepare your students to write college application essays is, of course, rewarding, but can also be challenging. If you're a teacher looking to incorporate the college essay into your curriculum but you're not sure where to start, take a look at the useful resources below.

TeachersPayTeachers

College Essay Writing

This product includes material for more than one full lesson plan, including powerpoint presentations, assessments, and homework on the topic of college essays. 

Narrative Writing Ideas and Prompts

Appealing to students 9th grade and up, this product includes lesson plans, handouts, and homework for developing narrative writing for the college essay process. 

College Essay: Comprehensive 7-Session Workshop Series

This PDF includes entire courses, manuals, and handouts designed to teach students the ins and outs of the college essay process, either in an individual or group setting. 

College Essay Revision Forms & Rubrics

These PDFs provide students with visual organizers and rubrics to assess their own writing and learn how to become better college essay writers. 

Free Resources

Teaching the College Essay (Edutopia) 

Teaching your students about writing the college essay can be incredibly intimidating -- as a teacher, how should you approach the process? This article from Edutopia outlines how to go about introducing the college essay to your students. 

Essay Lesson Plan Ideas for College Applications (EssayHell)

If you're a teacher looking for a concrete lesson plan on college essays, this guide recommends using the first day to discuss the importance of the essay, the second day for brainstorming, and so on. Click on the link above to examine their full guide. 

Help Your Students Write a Killer College Essay (EdWeek Blog)

This blog post goes over various techniques designed to help your students choose an appropriate topic and write their essay with passion. 

The Biggest College Essay Mistakes & How to Fix Them (Talks With Teachers)

Looking to help your students avoid the minefield of mistakes in the college essay field? Check out this post from Talks With Teachers, a journal that shares "inspiring ideas for English teachers." 

Curious to read more about college application essays, or to see fun and unusual examples of what students have written? The articles, blog posts, and books in this section are a good place to start surveying the field.

One Over-the-Top Admissions Essay (Huffington Post)

This piece from the Huffington Post talks about a humorous response to a Stanford supplemental essay topic, the so-called "letter to my future roommate."

College & University - Statistics and Facts (Statista.com) 

In the process of writing your college essay, you may find yourself wondering who exactly goes to college, how many colleges there are in the United States, etc. This site gives the up-to-date statistics for various US demographics, both in aggregate and by university, as well as other information.

Who Made That College Application? (NYTimes)

This piece from the NYTimes outlines the history of the college essay from its origins in the 1800s, to the first "modern" college application, produced by Columbia University in 1919, to the present.  

How They Got Into Harvard (Staff of the Harvard Crimson)

This highly-rated collection of successful Harvard application essays, available on Amazon, is both an entertaining read and an instructive resource for anyone looking for exemplary essays to use as models. 

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How to Write Ivy League Application Essays

While all colleges hope that applicants will demonstrate passion, leadership, initiative, and intelligence in their application essays, the colleges and universities in the Ivy League as well as the Seven Sister schools and other top-tier colleges expect to see evidence of intellectual enthusiasm and curiosity as well. In other words, no matter whether a supplemental prompt asks you to reflect on part of the college’s curriculum (as does Brown’s) or asks you to write a note to a potential roommate (as does Stanford’s), Ivy League and other elite colleges want to know that your intelligence and intellectual curiosity drive you.

Above all, Ivy League supplemental essays must reveal your intellectual vitality

To help you write an admission-winning supplemental essays, we’ve compiled seven essential strategies that will help ensure your success. While reading these, you might want to refer to the supplemental prompts distributed by the Ivy League colleges and a few other top-tier universities that we’ve reproduced below (taken from last year’s Common App). As you review these prompts, please keep in mind that each year some of the Ivy League and other college supplemental prompts change a bit.  Please also note that we have not reproduced the prompts from Cornell University as their supplemental essay prompts are determined by program.

The Secrets of Writing an Essay to Get to the Ivy League

If you’re reading this, chances are your goal is to get into an elite school such as Stanford, Yale, or Harvard. A quick investigation into these schools reveals that the increasing number of applications leads to stricter admission guidelines and lower acceptance rates.

In fact, acceptance rates have been everything but encouraging in recent years. For example, this year’s admissions cycle had the lowest rates in history at all except one Ivy League school.

Just look at these facts:

The acceptance rate at Harvard — 4.59 percent — was the lowest in several decades.

Yale’s acceptance rates for classes of 2018 and 2020 were just 6.26 and 6.27 percent, respectively.

Stanford was the most selective Ivy League university with the lowest acceptance rate of 4.3 percent.

In fact, here’s a chart showing the trends in Ivy League schools’ admission rates that The Crimson compiled in April.

Since all of the students applying to Ivy League schools have overwhelming academic achievement and impressive scores, it’s easy to come to the startling realization that your academic performance may not be enough to get accepted.

Therefore, the main thing that can help you stand out from the fierce competition is the admission essay. That’s why we’re going to see what it takes to craft a personal statement that beats others by speaking to admission professionals in a unique and personal way.

Let’s begin.

1. Write About Something That is Deeply Personal

Grace Kim, a former Stanford admissions officer, said in a recent interview with CNBC that she has encountered hundreds of essays about a short but rewarding experience. The sheer number of works written about these experiences made them a cliché in the college admissions community.

Instead, Kim advises writing an essay about something personal:

"We always said when I was an admissions officer, we want it to be so personal to the student that you couldn't put anyone’s else name on that essay and have it still be true about that other student.”

These essays are the best for determining personal values and personalities of students, which are critical requirements for universities.

So, avoid writing essays about short experiences and try to come up with a topic that has a profound personal importance to you. Admission officers will appreciate that.

2. Avoid a Detached Style

Many applicants write their admission essays in a detached style — a style that makes the reader feel disconnected from the author of the essay or the person described there. This is not a good way to go about essay writing.

If you go with a topic that doesn't matter to you, it won't matter to those reading it.

Simply explained, writing an essay in a detached style won’t make admissions professionals fall in love with you. On the other hand, if you get personal and show that there’s no other candidate like you applying with the same kind of passion, strengths, and characteristics, your chances of getting accepted will increase dramatically.

How to make admissions professionals fall in love with you? Before you even begin writing an essay, think of a topic that you really want to write about. If you go with a topic that doesn’t matter to you, it won’t matter to those reading it. Don’t be afraid if the topic is complex — a great topic is always complex!

3. Don’t Try to Be Funny

Of course, there are some examples when a humorous essay helped students get into an Ivy League university , but the truth is, not everyone is funny. And it’s totally okay! Just think about this: how would it feel to read an essay where an applicant is trying too hard to be funny?

Right, it would be a cringe-fest.

While experimenting with different styles of essay writing is strongly encouraged, don’t write a humorous essay just because you think that admissions professionals will appreciate it. Humor can make your essay unique, but it can also make it memorable for the uncomfortable experience someone had while reading it.

4. Essays Succeed or Fail in the Details

One surefire way to engage readers and transport them into your story is to give vivid details. For example, tell them about the weather, your feelings, or the look on someone’s face. Make them taste that delicious apple pie you had on the 4th of July this year.

This essay writing technique is called imagery and it allows the readers to see the world through your eyes and cheer for you in situations you faced. In other words, it introduces you as a human being, not just another applicant. So, be descriptive about the situation or the moment you’re addressing in your essay, because the admissions officers will want to smell it, touch it, and see it.

A good example of using imagery to get accepted to an Ivy League university comes from a student from California, referred to as Bobby in a recent review, whose descriptive writing scored him an acceptance to Harvard. In this review of his essay , The Crimson Brand Studio writes that imagery was one of the most prominent facets of his writing:

Use of imagery in the introduction: “It is first utilized to bring the reader into the piece and make the introduction pop, with “Late evening rays [...] casting a gentle glow…”

Use of imagery in the body of the essay: “Bobby’s use of imagery brings his essay to life…” Also, it illustrates “the contrast between his organized, type A persona and the abstract art he eventually creates.”

Read the full review using the link above to get all details on Bobby’s use of imagery that got him into Harvard.

5. Proofread, Proofread, Proofread

This one goes without saying: an Ivy League application essay should never be a one-and-done deal. Even a small piece requires a lot of proofreading (checking for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes).

Remember — only one, simple grammar or spelling mistake will get you in the reject pile immediately.

Don’t rely on your text processor’s spell check function — make sure to proofread it by yourself. When you’re done editing, ask your English teacher or even a friend to proofread some more. Remember — only one, simple grammar or spelling mistake will get you in the reject pile immediately.

Be careful when giving your essay to others, though. Keeping the number of people you ask for proofreading is a great idea because having too many people giving you advice may result in your voice getting lost.

As acceptance rates in Ivy League schools showed, your overwhelming academic performance may not be a deciding factor. To increase your chances of getting accepted, you have to write a superb essay that follows the best practices. Use the ones above to guide you to the success and help to beat stress associated with writing application essays.

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An Ivy League Expert on How to Write a College Application Essay

Harry Bauld has been helping students navigate the dreaded college application essay for more than 30 years. He has some suggestions for how to make yours better.

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On Writing the College Application Essay

The 650-word personal statement, or essay, is a centerpiece of the common application. For those applying for early decision or early action, it is due on November 1. For those applying for regular admission, it is typically due January 1. Untold legions have agonized over this writing assignment. Many of them have turned to Harry Bauld for help.

In 1987, during a break between working in the admissions office of Columbia University and teaching high school English at Horace Mann (where he still works), Bauld published a book called On Writing the College Application Essay . In it he laid out prescriptions for how to approach the essay and warnings about what to avoid. Since then, an entire industry has grown around college essay advice, but Bauld’s book (a revised version was released in 2012), and the services he offers as a member of the team at New Bridge Educational Consulting , remains the gold standard.

Fall is prime worry season and we, like so many others before us, reached out to Bauld for advice.

T&C: Do you get a lot of calls from panicked parents this time of year?

Harry Bauld: Absolutely, although at New Bridge we usually work with students who, prodded by their parents, begin in the spring of their junior year and even sometimes earlier. But just two weeks ago I got a call that was very, “It’s Thanksgiving Day and I burned the turkey!” But instead of the turkey it was, “I burned the essay.” So we did three quick sessions.

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Can you help someone in three sessions?

It depends on how badly the turkey is burned, but even three sessions is helpful for people who don't know what to do. In general, that feeling of needing help comes when a student realizes they’ve written something incredibly conventional. They have become paralyzed by the idea of writing for a readership they do not know, which is understandable, because they’re used to writing for people who are paid to like them and help them. It’s often the good students who just want to get things right who get paralyzed. A lot of what I do is say, “Let’s try writing the wrong thing, shall we?”

You’ve been watching kids go through this for more than three decades. Have they gotten better at the essay?

Yes and no. Yes, because I don’t necessarily have contact now with those who, for example, have read not only my book but the many other books, articles, etc. written about the college essay and just absorb all the advice and go off and do it. I work with people who can’t quite get their heads around it. Sometimes all they need is a little push. Other times they need to find a way to trust themselves more. For those students, in the first or second session, I’ll say, “Do you mind if I record this?” Inevitably, students will mention something they think is a throwaway idea or a joke. And I say, “Go back and do that! Go there!” One of my jobs is to give them confidence. That hasn’t changed in 30 years.

Something that has changed—I know it sounds facile—is that students read less than they did when I started in the 1980s. That’s true even in good schools. You used to be able to assign 30 pages of the Odyssey [per night], now it’s 20 or 25, max. There are so many demands on students’ time, some of which are legitimate. But reading makes you a better writer. If you’ve watched Nadal play tennis closely enough, you have a pretty good idea of how to hit a backhand when you go out there on the court yourself.

Is there more pressure now?

When my book first came out, many top schools were taking 20, 30 percent or higher of applicants. Now Bowdoin, say, is taking 8 percent and Columbia is taking 5 percent. So, yes, more pressure.

Have schools made it harder?

I’m very severe about what has happened in the aftermath of the institution of the common application. The idea was to make students’ lives easier while also making it easier for the colleges to administer their admissions programs. To make it so that students, if they were applying to 12 schools, didn’t have to write 12 essays. What happened, though, is that all the schools reacted with, “Well, okay, so we’ll just plug in all these supplements for students to write.”

So now, in addition to the 650-word common application personal statement, students have three supplemental 250-word essays and one supplemental 400-word essay to write. On top of that, they must also use every chance or opportunity they have to communicate about the things that they are interested in and who they are. When you are allotted 150 characters to describe activities, don’t just make a list. Let them hear your voice. Not, “I play violin.” Instead tell them about your instrument or what you are playing.

Is the “Why Us” question a different type of challenge from the personal essay?

Students think they have figured out how to do this, and they’re partially right. Google everything about the school, get the whole course catalog. If you’re interested in, say, STEM classes, look up the STEM classes and faculty at the school and write, “I'm really looking forward to studying string theory with Professor Knittingbottom.” This is something students are good at. Figuring out what a teacher wants and then giving it to them. But that’s the standard response. I ask, “What else can you add?”

The “Why Us” question is a weird kind of institutional vanity [on the colleges’ part]. The schools’ excuse is, “We have so many applicants, we’re just trying to sort out the ones who are just tossing an application our way.” Meanwhile they’re rubbing their hands together in glee after the huge recent increase of applications. Really, the truth to this question is often, “Because I’m applying to college, I’m a senior, and you have a college program that’s supposed to be pretty good.”

How do you make the most of a bad question?

You start out by asking, why are you really applying? Sometimes there is no good answer. You’re doing it because it’s one of the top 30 schools in the country. Well, then you need to probe and push to find what the personal thing is that is actually underneath your decision to apply. And it differs, and that, of course, is what I'm looking for. I don’t want them to just go through the catalog. This is one of the places where you must look, anecdotally, into your own experience and your own self first. A lot of times for one of these 250 word “Why Us” questions, they’re going to have to write 750 or 1,000 words in different directions until they find something that actually sounds like them.

Anyone who has had to write anything authentic for which there are some stakes involved understands that this is the process. There are conventions, you want to kind of acknowledge that the conventions are there and then you want to slightly subvert them. I think “Why Us” really is the toughest supplement. And unfortunately there is kind of a lot riding on that one because of the institutional vanities.

You recommend avoiding certain subjects: the Trip, the Pet Death, the Jock.

It’s about avoiding a formula. For the Jock it would be, “Through wrestling, I have learned fabulous attribute A, incredible quality B, and very, very good thing C.” It’s tempting because everybody tells students, “You have to sell yourself.” And this formula seems as though it does that. But I say, “Stop selling yourself.” Instead, find a way to connect with the reader.

Sounds stressful.

Yes, but that’s the point. If I’m Aaron Judge and I’m coming up on the home run record, if I think every time I have to hit a home run, I’m just gonna ground out or pop up. What I have to do is make contact. “Only connect,” as E.M. Forster wrote. If I make contact with a ball, the home run’s gonna take care of itself because of who I am. And my advice to students about this whole process is the same. Make contact. Just hit the ball in front of you.

It’s a way to take the process back from the universities. They’ve created their conveniences by adding all the supplements. Instead of surrendering to it, take it back. Make contact with what it is that you have to say and use this for your own purpose. Stop trying to get into college and instead start thinking about how you appear on the page.

Norman Vanamee is the articles director of Town & Country.

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5 Ivy-level Personal Statement Examples [Updated 2023]

by Winning Ivy Prep Team | Apr 4, 2023 | College Essay Examples , Personal Statement Examples

Here, we have 5 high quality   Personal Statement essay examples  from my students over the years. Great Common App Personal Statements tend to give a glimpse into each student’s life, thought processes, growth, and maturity.

Another trend that you may notice with these essay examples is that they’re not entirely CAREER or ACADEMIC based. It depends on the vibe you’re going for, but the general rule of thumb is to think about these essays from the perspective of the admissions officer.

In other words, it’s NOT as simple as “showing off your personality” in personal statement. You might hear this or read this somewhere, but, seriously, don’t listen to it. Your personality will not get you into a top school (unless you’re trying to hustle your way into a party when you’re not on the guest list, then that’s different.)

Think about it rationally: An admissions officer’s JOB is to assemble a cohort of great students into his/her university. Upon reading each application, an admissions professional is thinking: “How will this student contribute to our school? What will this person bring to the table?”

So, your personal statement needs to help answer that question. 

Note: O fficial Common App Personal Statement Prompts are posted here.

Remember, the word count is 650 words! And, just an FYI — titles for college app essays are completely unnecessary. I just included them in this post to refer to them more easily.

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Ivy League Prep is passionate about helping students craft outstanding college admissions profiles . In this article, we discuss our approach to an important section of the college application: the personal essay.

Your child’s personal essay is the ideal opportunity to take all the grades, scores, honors, activities, and other elements of their application and weave them together into a cohesive narrative.

The personal essay will show the admissions officer who your child is, how they think, and what they are passionate about. This brief snippet of prose should be the centerpiece of your child’s admissions profile, and all the other parts of the application should point toward it. Your child must effectively communicate their unique narrative through the personal essay.

However strong your child’s application is, they should strive to write a captivating personal essay that, if nothing else, takes a great application and makes it even better.

The Purpose of the Personal Essay

The personal essay is a 650-word written component of the Common Application that offers several diverse prompts. The short length of the essay and the narrow scope of each prompt means that the essay must provide a focused glimpse into who your child is and why they will be valuable to the college.

Most of the essays submitted to top colleges are average and don’t attract much attention. If your child’s essay doesn’t quickly grab the admissions officer’s attention, they might only spend a few minutes reading it.

So, what must your child’s personal essay communicate to the admissions officer to be interesting, effective, and memorable?

Quality Writing

Your child’s essay needs to show that their writing meets a satisfactory standard of quality and maturity. The essay should prove that your child has a firm grasp of English grammar, diction, writing style, form, and logic.

Effective Narrative

Admissions officers are looking for prose that effectively communicates your child’s narrative. If your child’s essay is banal and uninteresting, an admissions officer reading it will likely be bored. Your child’s essay needs to showcase their personality and unique perspective .

Conciseness

The online Common Application essay allows for no more than 650 words. While this may seem like too small a space for everything your child wants to communicate, it isn’t. Admissions officers have piles of applications to go through, so they consider brevity a virtue. Make sure you write concisely .

Narrow Focus

Being concise is not the same thing as having focus. It’s possible to write a short but scatterbrained essay or one that is longer but focused. The key is for your child to keep the essay both concise and focused. To do so, your child should focus on a single experience and use it to communicate their overall narrative.

Individuality

Admissions officers want to see a unique individual. Your child’s classes, grades, test scores, and activities will likely be common among college applicants. Therefore, your child needs to focus on their unique narrative, showing why they are exceptional . This means that your child must demonstrate authenticity, maturity, a unique perspective, and specialized knowledge or skills.

The personal essay is one more place to show the admissions officer that your child will add value to the campus. Your child should use the essay to show how their unique perspective, skills, and passions will inspire other students and enhance the college’s learning experience.

Top schools want applicants who are mature enough not only to handle the rigors of a challenging academic environment but also to take full advantage of those opportunities. The personal essay is one of the ways an admissions officer will gauge your child’s maturity level.

Passion and Ability

Admissions officers are looking for students with a high level of passion and ability. Passionate students tend to lead and inspire others, and highly skilled students tend to contribute to the success of the college’s programs. Your child’s application will likely already reflect their passions and interests, but the personal essay is an opportunity to breathe life into the facts included in the application.

In the personal essay, your child can use their unique experiences to show why they are so passionate and focused. Clearly, it is a significant part of the college application.

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How They Got Into The Ivy League (25 essay examples)

Andrea Schiralli , Jun 09, 2021

Introduction 

If you are even considering applying to an American college, you are well aware that the process is quite laborious. From researching schools, to test prep, to test taking, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Writing a personal statement essay is perhaps the most daunting aspect of the entire college application process. Your test scores may be perfect, your transcript spotless, your activity sheet full of awards and accomplishments, and your recommendation letters may extol your intelligence as well as your virtues, but without impressive essays, all the aforementioned is rendered null.  

Fear not! This ebook presents examples of personal statement essays that got Ivy & Quill clients into Ivy League universities. By perusing these essays, you will understand how to present yourself as the type of student an admissions officer is looking for. You will learn what is expected from your college admissions essays and how you can play upon both your strengths and weaknesses to shape yourself into an ideal candidate for admissions: an introspective, self-aware young man or woman with the ability to grow from the vicissitudes of life. 

Personal Statement 1 

Accepted into: Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia, Brown  

The first time that I attended a water ballet performance, I experienced a synesthesia of sorts as I watched the swan-like movements of the swimmers unfold with the cadence and magic of lyrical poetry, the precisely executed sequences melding with the musical accompaniment to create an ethereal beauty that I had never imagined possible. “You belong out there, creating that elegance with them,” I heard the quiet but powerful voice of my intuition tell me. For the next six years, I heeded its advice, training rigorously to master the athletic and artistic underpinnings of synchronized swimming.  

I flailed and plunged with all the grace of an elephant seal during my first few weeks of training. I was quickly and thoroughly disabused of the notion that the poise and control that I so coveted would be easy to obtain. During the first phase of my training, I spent as much time out of the water as in it, occupying myself with Pilates, weight training, and gymnastics in order to build my strength and flexibility. I learned things about the sport that outsiders seldom realize: that performers aren’t allowed to touch the bottom of the pool, relying on an “eggbeater” technique also used by water polo players to stay afloat; that collisions and concussions are all too common; that sometimes the routine demands staying underwater for so long that the lungs burn and the vision becomes hazy. My initial intervals in the water were marked by a floundering feeling that seemed diametrically opposed to the grace that I sought. I began to question whether I was really cut out for the sport.  

I persisted through all of this and slowly but certainly I saw myself progress. My back tucks became tight and fluid, my oyster maneuvers controlled and rhythmical, my water wheels feeling so natural that I could have executed them in my sleep. Moreover, I became comfortable enough with my own role in the water that I was able to expand my awareness to the other members of my team, moving not just synchronistically, but also synergistically. During one of my first major performances, our routine culminated as I launched myself out of the water in a powerful boost, surging upward on the swelling currents of the symphonic accompaniment. I owned the elegant arc that I cut through air and water, my teammates and I executing the leap with the majestic effortlessness of a pod of dolphins frolicking in the sea. I reveled in the thunderous applause at the conclusion of our routine, for it meant that I had helped to create the kind of exquisite beauty that I had so admired years before.  

Though I never would have guessed this at the outset of my training, synchronized swimming has provided one of the central metaphors of my life. The first and most fundamental lesson that I learned was persistence, which I absorbed humbly and viscerally by way of aching muscles and chlorine-stung eyes. More subtly and powerfully, the sport also lent me an instinctive appreciation of the way that many parts interact to form an emergent whole, an understanding which I have applied to every area of my studies, from mechanical systems to biological networks to artistic design. I have become cognizant of the fact that, as when I am in the water, my own perception of myself is narrow and incomplete, that to really understand my role in life I need to see myself in terms of my interactions with those around me. Six years after my training began, I still pursue the sense of harmony and unity that synchronized swimming has instilled in me, riding the soft swells of destiny forward as I move on to the next phase of my life.  

Personal Statement 2 

Accepted into: Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth, Brown  

Every night when the clock struck seven, I was tormented by the “entertainment” Mary provided. In oversized pants and a dazzlingly shirt, she would sing and dance awkwardly to Latin music. Mary was my host mother last year during an international exchange program in La Porte high school, and apparently, also a salsa aficionado. Upon hearing that I had taken piano lessons for over ten years, she encouraged me to take part in the school’s annual musical.  

“It’s the biggest party of the year! Cathy, you’re good at this. Just go for it and have fun!” Unable to say no to such an enthusiastic face, I nodded, auditioned, and eventually scored a role in the chorus. It was a backstage role, which might be the only reason I had so quickly acquiesced to Mary’s request.  

Practices went smoothly—I made several new friends and shared laughs with the other cast members. Just one day before the performance, however, the director announced an unexpected change: the chorus members were to perform in the middle of the audience instead of just standing behind the orchestra. While most of the others cherished the chance to publicly display themselves, I became uncontrollably anxious. The memory of my last stage performance haunted me.  

You see, my first (and only) piano concert was a catastrophe. At first, the notes flowed smoothly from my fingertips, effortlessly dancing across the ivory keys. Unwisely, I lifted my head from time to time to steal a glance at my parents and teachers in the audience. Trying to distinguish their emotions through their facial expressions, I found my attention gradually drifting. Before long, the melody completely escaped me! Empty-minded and petrified with embarrassment, I froze on the bench for the longest two minutes of my life before dashing offstage. All I could see when I finally mustered the courage to peer out from behind the curtain was the disappointment in my parents’ eyes and the overwhelming darkness of the stage.  

Since then, I have avoided such public shows, lest I re-experience such humiliation and fail to meet others’ expectations. But this time, it was too late to quit. I had already made a commitment to not only Mary and myself, but to the entire cast of the musical. Despite being just one member of the chorus, every voice mattered and my duty simply could not go unfulfilled. So, I rehearsed repeatedly that evening. Unfortunately, the more I practiced, the more nervous I became, and the more mistakes I made. My nerves were shot.  

The dreaded moment still came. I stood in the darkness like before, awaiting the guillotine. Unintentionally, my eyes found Mary’s face in the audience, and it was a sight to behold: it gleamed with appreciation, joy, and grace as her body swayed to the music. Her rhythm was not perfect, but it evoked my remembrance of my initial impetus to practice music. Something in me changed in that moment, as I observed Mary freely surrender.  

Spellbound, I sang naturally and danced harmoniously. For the very first time, I did not feel that I was performing for someone else, neither my parents nor my teachers, but for myself. Even when the music ceased and the applause rose, I was still singing. Not until the other choristers came to hug me and roared with excitement did I realize that I had successfully completed the show.  

For years, I had been a timid girl always content to hide behind others and blaming my diffidence and cowardice for my lack of familiarity with the circumstance I faced. Now, I realized that what intimidated me were never actually the expectations from my parents or the audience’s gaze, but rather, my inner insecurities. With the new understanding of music as a means of creative self-expression, I finally embraced my newfound strength and maturity.  

Personal Statement 3 

Accepted into: Yale, UPenn, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown  

Spencer looked directly at me rather than at the camera for the first time, her pale blue eyes muted and melancholic.  

“To my parents, it's like losing me,” she explained, “as though the child they raised had died and a stranger had walked into their family.”  

I glanced again at the questionnaire, which I had developed as a guide for the interviews that I was conducting for a documentary film I was making on transgender issues, a much-talked-about topic at the time. I was intrigued on a personal level, my fascination leading me to conduct extensive background research on the subject, focusing especially on criminal justice and anti-discrimination legislation. I hoped to become a pundit who could compassionately educate viewers on transgender individuals' struggles and rights. On the basis of my research, I compiled a questionnaire that I believed would elicit important insight into the plight of the transgender individual.  

My first scheduled interview was with Spencer, who sat down in front of the green screen and politely deflected my attempts at small talk, no doubt anxious at the prospect of revealing her transgender identity, of which few people outside of her family were aware. I dutifully moved down my list of questions, and Spencer dutifully produced the same facts and figures that I had encountered in the academic papers I had reviewed while preparing for the documentary. It became clear to me that I needed to break through the cold objectivity and impersonality that had suffused our conversation, so I abandoned the next item on my questionnaire in favor of a simple inquiry regarding how Spencer's family had reacted to her “coming out” as a transgender individual. It was at this moment that Spencer locked eyes with me and equated her decision to change her gender to a kind of living death in the eyes of her family. Spencer's candid confession led, in turn, to more personal, interesting, and original questions. I was awed by the raw truth of Spencer's story, which included therapy her parents had forced her to undergo; her mother's continued rejection of Spencer's decision to take puberty-delaying drugs that would facilitate her eventual gender reassignment surgery; by the precious refuge she took in a gender-neutral bathroom near her house, which she fled to as the one location that accepted her true identity completely, shielding her from the scorn and criticism of the outside world. In the face of such sad and shining virtue, of such intimate and potent human connection, I quickly abandoned my role as wannabe pundit, adopting instead my true identity, that of faithful listener and humble ally.  

The golden rule of my film education was that stories must always be told truthfully, and the documentary I made on transgender individuals was the first time that I fully lived up to this fundamental precept. During this and other projects, I love feeling myself becoming part of a story, connecting with the people who populate it and exploring their fervor and their frights. I convey these elements to my viewers through light and sound, blessed with the vision and the technology necessary to render such intimate revelations accessible to my audience. Filmmaking has allowed me to share my own passion and perspective on a wide range of topics, from scientific advancements to social justice. The results of this particular quest for truth were that Spencer was able to “come out” to the whole school and that the school itself decided to transform its sex education curriculum to embrace transgender individuals.  

When the lights go out and the screen lights up, I hope that I can give my audience insight into the complexity of a human mind, celebrating with them the beautiful, difficult, defining diversity of the world—the way I did when Spencer looked at me for the first time, on that day that now feels so long ago.  

Personal Statement 4 

Accepted into: UPenn, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown  

Can a beauty turn into a beast? In my first year of high school, my classmates would praise my porcelain skin and lovely face. My smile was like sweets, spreading dopamine to others. During breaks, girls would ask me to accompany them to grab snacks, and boys surrounded me asking for academic help. After class, we would play badminton, and I even joined the cheerleading team. Feeling like the center of my group, I savored school life.  

Alas! Perhaps Maleficent envied my beauty and put a curse on me. When I awoke one fateful day in the tenth grade, the surrounding areas of my eyes and jaw were covered in a painful rash. I didn’t want to go to class, as I feared tarnishing the impression my friends had of me. I couldn’t even look in the mirror: I didn’t recognize the horrid reflection. The sorceress’s power was so strong that the medicines prescribed to combat my diagnosed Atopic Dermatitis proved useless. Rashes covered my whole body within months. The itch made sleeping impossible; I lived in a zombie-like state. My skin resembled a hundred-year-old tree bark, and when I shook my arms, scurf fell like snowflakes. I felt helpless and disappointed, not only with my physical condition, but also with my friends’ attitudes. They promptly ignored me, except to flash despising eyes. I was alone, walking in the dark hallway listening to girls’ ringing laughter in their rooms. The popular girl had turned into a monster.  

After that semester, my condition became so severe that I had to be hospitalized. The AD had turned into Erythroderma, and doctors wanted to inject me with medicines that would cause life-long reliance and have harmful effects on my kidneys and liver. I refused, unwilling to put my long-term health at risk for short-term alleviation of symptoms. Instead, I decided to only take the anti-inflammatory treatment while exercising, as my background in alternative medicine had led me to believe that allergies often stem from weak immune systems.  

At first, I could only do gentle exercise like hiking. Every time I sweated, the itch felt like millions of ants running through my body. I had to grit my teeth and divert my attention to resist the impulse to scratch. The biggest motivator that steadied my faith of persistence is the last line of Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind : If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? When I came across that line one ordinary afternoon, it was imprinted in my heart. I would repeat the line like a mantra when hope seemed dim. Determined to become healthy again, I continued exercise and finally witnessed miracles. The itch gradually diminished and I perspired more, which meant that toxins were being expelled. Then, I worked my exercise up to badminton and tennis. I am now fully recovered, with no recurrence.  

However, when I went in for a routine hospital check-up, I noticed countless allergy patients, which stimulated me to help. On weekends, I would head to hospitals and send them skin-care handbooks and creams. Most importantly, I shared my recovery story to ensure them that nothing is insurmountable. I also set up a social media platform to reach more people. In forums, patients’ parents could share their pains, solutions, preferred creams, and medical tips. Seeing their thankful notes and patients’ happy faces, I realized the worthiness of my experience.  

This experience taught me that no matter how difficult adversity seems, confidence, persistence, bravery, and hope can direct me to light. No matter how powerful Maleficent is, good always trumps evil. This experience also helped me realize the importance of making social contributions, and I hope to found my own charity for helping AD patients in the future. Now when I look in the mirror, not only do I see a beautiful reflection, but I also see an altruistic, fierce, modern-day Princess smiling back at me.  

Personal Statement 5 

Accepted into: UPenn, Columbia, Brown  

I simply couldn’t hold back the deluge of tears that flooded like water through a leaky dyke. Our new music teacher, Ms. L., hadn't shown up for the orchestra rehearsal, and we had been plagued with problematic microphones and harassed by security guards who insisted on closing up early. Accustomed to how our old teacher had helped us prepare, we had focused on perfecting the pieces, paying little heed to tedious administrative issues. Consequently, we were facing a grim and disordered reality as the big night of our annual concert.  

When I vented to a close friend, he told me my frustrations fell under the umbrella of the “small stuff,” which he believed must be compartmentalized for the sake of emotional survival. I recalled the recurring pings of the microphones, the off-putting demands of the new teacher, and the last-minute editing of emcee scripts and I knew that in this case sweating the small stuff was a necessity.  

The rest of the arrangements for the concert proceeded with much sweating on the part of all concerned, which was not only a result of Singapore's warm weather. Ms. L.'s approach to things was radically different from what I had grown accustomed to, and we butted heads over issues as trivial as the color schemes of the posters and the prospective candidates for emcee. Many members of the orchestra had given their grudging acceptance to Ms. L.'s new regime, but I maintained my obduracy. I found it difficult to accept that “this is just the way things have to be,” a phrase that I believed was often employed to absolve ourselves of personal and communal responsibility.  

As I meandered home in the balmy Singapore weather, I turned on some Janáček, whose melodies have never failed to bring me comfort. I started to ruminate on the orchestra issues in a logical, quasi-detached way, as the soothing music spread across me like a gentle painkiller and rendered all related negative emotions remote. I realized that the problem with refusing to deal with the small stuff as it arises is that this becomes the accepted norm. Within the shadow of this norm, we often confuse weakness with resilience, continuing to make concessions, unable to back away from the Faustian bargain that we make in exchange for short-term comfort.  

My playlist reached Sinfonietta when I had finally plopped into bed. The piece begins and ends with a phalanx of fanfares—not the usual grandiloquent kind that you hear in festivals, but one that connects a subtle web of melodious relationships, branching out into many variations on the original theme, so that its return at the end of the work seems not just a glorious, riotous coda, but also the logical conclusion to a compelling symphonic process. It begins subtlety, even quietly, intertwining shifting musical ideas to create a cinematic effect, moving somewhat counter to the conventional symphonic principles, paving the way to the sheer, blazing thrill of the coruscating brass salute at its very end.  

The Sinfonietta created an epiphany for me—a sense that I had to find a way to create order from chaos, beauty and meaning from broken pieces. The solution, I realized, was neither relinquishing focus on the small stuff, nor ignoring the reality of the situation, but finding compromise by maneuvering deftly through it. By understanding the needs of the various parties involved, I could navigate toward a Nash solution that, although not ideal, was the best that the situation allowed. Later that night, I took out my cello and played a part of the Sinfonietta in silence, feeling the music ebb and flow, rise and recede like water moving over rocks whose sharp edges had been smoothed by grace and time. 

Personal Statement 6 

Accepted into: Yale, UPenn, Columbia, Brown  

After 21 hours of flights and bus rides, I was finally smack in the middle of downtown Concord, standing in a record shop called Pitchfork. It was a cozy little shop that smelled faintly like McDonald’s and had hardcore rock music on, with a cashier whose belly was so big that his suspenders were audibly tearing.  

I surfed through the racks, hoping to see some familiar names of American pop icons, such as Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber. As I flipped through thousands of records, however, I was only greeted by simple yet extremely American-sounding names like Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, and Paul Simon. There were also some oddly familiar graphics that were almost too abstract to be true: a prism with dispersed light; a crotch wearing tight black jeans and unnecessarily visible zippers.  This must be true American pop culture.  

The mixture of smell, sound, and visuals gave me a strong dose of America. I could feel my feet moving and my head shaking to the guitar riff, the drumbeats, and the singer’s tearing voice. Everything about this shop clicked in my heart, so I purchased a box of albums and a turntable and spent months in my room soaking up this addictive American music. I wanted to become part of this culture!  

It took me a couple of school dances to realize that my perception of America was a whopping thirty years off. As one of my peers put it, I had the music taste of an old man. Instead of modern America, I was living in the time of Afros, bell-bottoms, and disco-skating rinks.  

Since then, I always walk past Pitchfork with my heart aching from a failed, anachronistic assimilation, until one day, I saw my engineering teacher, Mr. Wardrop emerge from the shop. We chatted about my situation and he invited me to a session in his lab, where a group of oldies, young and old, gathered together for some quality lunchtime music.  

Surprisingly, these people didn’t listen to music quietly as I did. They rambled about their family fishing trips, about their experiences through the Cold War, and their Christmas traditions. Although half a century apart, people in this group bonded over the memories that these songs carry.  

I soon realized that the American thing about these songs, which were mostly made by British artists, were the American memories they created. What my peers possess and I don't are memories of a grandfather nagging about ‘Nam and parents who grew up wanting to become rock stars. What I didn’t have were the unpleasantly long road trips and the tense Thanksgiving dinners with foul-mouthed drunk uncles—the moments when music flows and continues like a tradition.  

This group encouraged me to really live this country, to drive up and down I-93, to learn the pronunciation of obscure Massachusetts town names, to knock on doors and get to know my community. This group, which is now the Music Appreciation Society, crafted my American memory that usually takes decades and generations to foster. As all of us share a shiver to Dylan’s desperate cry for peace and Fleetwood Mac’s gentle whisper of love’s bittersweet nature, we are all reminded of the memories that makes us who we are in this country.  

I guess I did assimilate after all.  

Personal Statement 7 

Accepted into: Dartmouth, Brown  

Growing up, I took no interest in Barbie dolls. Instead, I would strut about with my beloved remote-control cars and transformer toys, jump up and down on the sofa with other boys, and roar like Mufasa on all fours in the kindergarten playground until concerned adults would chide, “How can a girl be as naughty as boys?” Yet my coming of age witnessed my steadfast rebellion against such social dos and don’ts. Why couldn’t a girl be like boys?  

Soccer was my first step to fight such stereotypes. It was almost like a ritual for me during the European Champion Club’s Cup to wake at three am and watch the game in the freezing February winter. As I enthusiastically started a discussion about the game with the boys in my class the next day, however, I received no more than their taunts. “Girls know nothing about soccer. You can’t even play soccer!” Trying to prove them wrong, I started to join my dad’s weekly games at the amateur club, juggling, scoring a spinning goal, mastering every new trick, and enduring the subtropical humidity. As I finally earned my place on the school soccer field, I became the only girl warming up in a group of boys before a match. No one could help but stare at the only flapping ponytail on the field!  

After conquering more physical arenas, I started to extend my exploration to another male-dominated field—competitive gaming. Yet prejudice emerged almost instantly: seeing my feminine avatar, other male players, in the worst-case scenarios, would immediately quit the game before it even started; when teaming with me, they would either be patronizing or blame me for every loss. Infuriated by their unfair stereotyping, I changed my username to a gender-neutral one. And as I tactically triumphed over my enemies, scoring aces and penta-kills and eventually leading my team to victory, I would then reveal my identity as a girl. Seeing their astonishment, I gained an unprecedented sense of accomplishment.  

Yet, my supposed invincibility in both physical and intellectual domains was soon faced with an insurmountable challenge – cooking. As someone who despised all feminine traits for years, my hands were tied in the kitchen. The chiffon cake that was supposed to puff high and fluffy turned out as thin and solid like pancake; the sugar in the sweet and sour ribs became carbonized instead of caramelized. Hearing of my woes, my friends advised me to simply give up. “Arwen, just accept the fact that girly is not your thing.”  

Having been a fighter of gender stereotypes for years, I ironically became another stereotype in people’s eyes. Is femininity something I should break away from? Is embodying masculinity the only way of proving myself? I itched for an answer, and mastering cooking seemed to be my very first step. Consuming dozens of charred chiffon cake and scraping dozens of burnt woks, I painstakingly endeavored to develop my culinary talents. When I finally brought the fluffiest chiffon cake to my friends, I once again received the expected look of shock – yet this time, I aimed not at proving them wrong, but at proving myself capable of putting on any identity I desired.  

One’s character goes far beyond the limited factors defined under male and female. Every Saturday, I would start with a drenching yet fulfilling soccer practice; in the afternoons, I would devote myself to playing DotA with my friends; around dusk, I would remove the marinated beef from the refrigerator to prepare a big dinner for the family. Now, I have found an answer for my rebellion: to go beyond the troubling two-dimensional definition of an individual and to embrace the undeniable fluidness of identity.  

Personal Statement 8 

Accepted into: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, Brown  

“Not so nasty now!” I thought with satisfaction as a pleasant organic aroma drifted upward from my experimental apparatus, within which reddish pupae squirmed with the distinctive discomfort of all newborn beings.  

Two years earlier, I had subscribed to the commonly-held notion that flies were disgusting and harmful pests. After all, they hang around garbage, are dirty and smelly, and spread dangerous bacteria. One day, my father brought home a hundred flies in a glass container. Although I wanted nothing to do with them at the time, this event marked the beginning of my unlikely passion for insects.  

I learned from my dad that the larvae of flies, called maggots, will feed on decomposing organic material, which they transform into organic fertilizer and animal protein. Intrigued by this concept, I decided to do an experiment to validate the environmental effects of the loathsome creatures. Under my father's careful tutelage, I placed a waterlogged sponge in a small container, making sure that the sponge occupied nearly all of its volume. This way, I knew, the flies would be able to perch on the sponge to drink without drowning. I created a cube-shaped metal framework using thin wires, fashioning it so that it optimized visibility without allowing the flies to escape. Meanwhile, my father made an egg-gathering container containing crusts of wheat and ammonia. With our experimental set-up ready to go, we added the flies, half male and half female, and prepared to track the outcome.  

For two weeks, I patiently observed the processes unfolding. For the first three days, the flies buzzed around their enclosure, seemingly without purpose, and nothing of note seemed to happen. By the fourth and fifth days, however, large amounts of eggs appeared in the egg-gathering container. These were tiny, white, and spherical, their clusters forming strange runes and sigils. Three days later, the eggs morphed into wiggly maggots whose reek was intense. Struggling to overcome my nausea, I collected the maggots and scattered them over the food scraps, covering them with a transparent container to ensure that they did not escape. Imperceptibly but inexorably, something was changing. When I removed the containers two days later, some of the maggots had become reddish, ellipsoid pupae. Most amazingly, the foul smell had disappeared from the container, implying that the maggots had in fact transformed the decaying organic material into more palatable elements!  

Having experienced my first major entomological excitement, I was inspired to share the bug that I had caught, so to speak. I reported on my experiment at school and was encouraged to find that my peers were more interested in it than I had expected. Out of continued curiosity, I founded the Biodegradables Environmental Science Club, as part of which I repeated my initial experiment several times both to instruct new members and to collect data on different variables. When I look at newborn maggots now, I feel not revulsion, but rather interest and wonder. Most gratifyingly, I have seen other club members experience the same shift in attitude as we put science into action together. With time, our club became popular enough that we decided to organize a “Pest Camp” for this coming summer, during which we will teach younger students how to transform what humans have always been bothered by into some of nature's best gifts.  

Much to my surprise, I have been changed from a girl who screamed at any kind of bug into a budding entomologist who finds insects captivating and beautiful. Though they might at first glance appear to be the lowliest of this world's creatures, flies and maggots have much to teach us about life: That the value of raw material can rarely be assessed at first sight (or smell!), that nature can transform coal into diamond, and that science can weave spider webs into steel.  

Personal Statement 9 

Accepted into: Cornell, Columbia, UPenn  

History has always been my greatest interest, yet through my years of learning I have come to understand that teaching history is anything but an easy job. My years of suspicion were confirmed in the first class of my history tutorship. With students resting their chins on one hand like a half-hung telephone and staring at me with blank, unfocused eyes, I knew I had to figure out some way to grab their attention. I returned home that evening with the best intentions, yet after I opened up my fifth blank Microsoft file in a state of pure frustration, my concentration and confidence faded. It seemed strange that even though I was surrounded by various historical artifacts in my father’s library, I was unable to garner inspiration from such an ambience. I was like a waif lost in the crowd until I noticed a thick, familiar album that whisked me into a remembrance of the days my father and I used to spend pouring through its crisp pages.  

When I was a child, instead of fairy tales, my father would tell me stories about the antique porcelains in the album. I obtained an unexplainable pleasure from sitting on his knees and unraveling the intricate veils from those charming porcelains, the intense aroma of which indicated their historical nature. But not until I climbed the two-meter tall shelf to see the porcelain jars atop it did I begin to discover the real source of my father’s pleasure. Holding a reading glass and a dictionary of seal characters, I would stand on the table for hours trying to understand the depictions on the jars until I was convinced it was impossible. Frustrated, I would relent and ask my father, who patiently illuminated whatever mysteries I came across. Inspired by his brilliance, I started my journey of learning Chinese calligraphy in hopes of one day being able to appreciate the porcelains like my father did.  

Spurred by these sweet memories, I stood up and headed towards the shelf. My eyes strayed to a section that had been my favorite as a child, one containing fragments from a porcelain vase that I had accidentally broken long ago. Although shattered, every piece represents a moment of the Stone Story with its vivid painting. Throughout childhood, I tried many times but failed to glue these pieces together, yet always found it exhilarating and thought-provoking to rearrange the broken segments and build my own Stone Story in different ways.  

That was it! I rushed back to my computer and without hesitation abandoned the clichéd presentation format that only showcased my personal interpretation of historical events. I began typing up my plan for centering the course around storytelling. This way, everyone could present their opinions and imaginations by telling stories just as I did for myself based on the vase debris.  

My new plan for the tutorial class proved itself effective almost instantaneously. Students were filled with passion when they presented their own understandings of history. As we dove into the history of the African Americans, various perspectives were introduced: the “musician” in our class turned his sight to the connection between aboriginal African music and modern genres such as jazz and blues; the feminists actively explored the sufferings of African American women, highlighting their importance in combating racial discrimination; our “poet” probed into Walt Whitman’s attitude towards slavery with an in-depth reading into his poetry. Everyone found their respective niche and together, we weaved an intricate and fascinating picture of African American history with our diverse conceptions.  

History is like a broken vase. Its ultimate “truth” is always irretrievable, and thus any one-dimensional interpretation of history is prone to be problematic. Nevertheless, true historians get close to this “truth” by viewing the fragmented facts through different lenses, forming diverse perspectives, and seeing more clearly what history means for our present-day interpretations of the world.  

Personal Statement 10 

Accepted into: Yale, Cornell, Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth, Brown  

What I most remember about my arrival in California is the ubiquity of the color yellow. It was mid-autumn, and golden leaves piled on the side of the road, crackling when I jumped on them. I shortly became close friends with a blonde German girl named Pauline in my elementary class, who invited me to pick ripe lemons from her family’s lemon tree. I remember holding a plump fruit under the sun, admiring how it glistened in the yellow light. The first English song that I completely understood was Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree. The song told the story of a man returning home from prison, hoping with all his heart that his wife still loved him; the yellow ribbon symbolized her positive answer. Yellow was the color of hope, anticipation, and enjoyment.  

Two years later, I returned to China, and my world was red. Every day I wore a red scarf, the item all my peers were wearing to symbolize the country; the outer casing of scholarship medals were bright red, and they had a fuzzy texture. In Chinese celebrations, crimson lanterns hanged on doorknobs, each with a candle glowing inside, lighting the streets with warm rays. During Chinese New Year, I received red envelopes containing lucky money from my parents and elder relatives that carried their best wishes to me. Red was the color of prosperity, happiness, and tradition.  

Every color had its own characteristic and emotion that linked to my memory in some way. I’ve started to think more about colors and the emotion that they carry in my artworks. If I’m in a joyous mood, my painting will be full of orange, red, and yellow; however, when I am feeling blue, my paintings will have a grayish tone. At that point in my life, I was satisfied using different shades of the same color in my paintings.  

As time went on, I started to feel that my painting lacked authenticity. There didn’t seem to be connections in my works: the colors were singled out, with clear, sharp boundaries around the outlines. My emotions are not sheer blue or complete green with straight lines surrounding them. No one color dominates me; my emotions are the result of a mixture of colors—all of equal importance—that synthesize, connect with, and interact with each other. Realizing this, I embarked on my search for a new way of painting that resembles the way my emotions are formed.  

I found the answer in watercolor. When my paintbrush touches the paper, the color diffuses on the page, another tint of a different color touches the first color, and a connection is formed. The colors seep into each other slowly and then stop, almost like water seeping into soil. When the colors dry, an irregular edge forms between them; this random, spontaneous natural interfusion is what makes watercolor breathtaking. The colors take on a life of their own.  

Watercolor is now more than a reflection of my emotions—it has inspired me to become a person who can effectively interact with those around me. In the end, life is about interacting with others, as humans are by definition social beings. Connections are vital to building relationships; in a society, different roles are of equal importance, and we need different elements to form a community. Just like how watercolor depicts emotions, the roles in our communities are not defined in straight, rigid lines. Rather, through interactions and communication, people can flux between roles and groups, creating a fluid society. Thanks to watercolor, the way I interact with others will enable me to lead a more colorful life.  

Personal Statement 11 

Accepted into: Yale, Cornell, UPenn, Dartmouth 

My sixth birthday dinner was illuminated by a magical dish—baked orange-spotted grouper. Beneath that nose-tickling scent of cooked garlic and the refreshing herb sauce was a tantalizing sweetness. Crisp shredded ginger and spring onion contrasted with the slightly seared, golden fish skin. I could not wait to grab my first slice, even dismissing the Chinese tradition that I should serve my parents first. The dish soon vanished before our eyes, yet the flavor lingered in my mind and has become one of my most cherished childhood memories.  

The memory of that flavor continued to tantalize me as I grew up. Every year on my birthday, my father would take me to that same seafood restaurant. Every time I browsed through the menu, I noticed that the price of the orange-spotted grouper increased while the prices of most other fishes, once as costly as the grouper, decreased. I asked the owner why the groupers were so expensive. Apologetically, he replied that because groupers can only survive in a very specific environment, they are much more difficult to raise than other types of fish.  

This experience aroused my curiosity—why were groupers so difficult to raise? I researched until I learned about concepts of DNA polymeraseandgel electrophoresis, which concerns the dissection of DNA and DNA analysis. I began to speculate that a virus might be the culprit. If we could extract the DNA of the virus, we might be able to solve the problem. To verify my hypothesis and gain hands-on experience of analyzing DNA so that I could take a concrete step in the direction of solving this mystery, I applied for an internship at the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, where research on viruses killing orange-spotted groupers are conducted and where vaccines are created.  

Working as a research assistant and under the guidance of my colleagues, not only did I learn to use equipment that had previously only existed for me in a textbook, but I also gained an appreciation for the importance of observation and intrepidity in a young scientist. Daily, I repeated monotonous experimental procedures to find the unknown virus. Most of the time, we ended up getting nothing. Every day, the pungent odor of buffers and agarose solution strongly contrasted with the lovely image of the grouper dish in my mind, infusing the lab with a pleasant, imaginary aroma. Like the path to revolution, the path to deliciousness is arduous. Still, with a firm belief that I would find the key to increasing the population of farmed groupers, I kept trying. During the following experiments, I photographed every result to record the brightness and the length of the bands, identifiers of the DNA’s characteristics.  

One day, the results finally captured my attention. The bands were bizarrely long and had a slightly different hue than I was used to. I immediately compared it with all the others. That’s it!  Believing that this DNA segment belonged to the virus, I immediately informed my colleagues. We redesigned the DNA primers, confirmed the difference, and found out the unknown virus SGIV. The lab is now designing vaccine for groupers based on the virus, and I feel honored to continue this research to help more people enjoy the delicacy of orange-spotted groupers.  

From this experience, I have come to understand that all science is not necessarily as metaphysical or complicated as string theory. Science can also be as down-to-earth as designing detergent or figuring out a vaccine so that more people can afford to enjoy a delicious meal.  

Our vaccine is now used by some fish farms, and we have already heard promising results. Some farmers even sent us groupers as a token of gratitude. The deliciousness of literally tasting the fruits of one’s labor is simply unparalleled!  

Personal Statement 12 

Accepted into: Yale, Columbia, Cornell, UPenn, Dartmouth  

Law enforcement officers are the first fence to impose public justice; meanwhile, this common notion holds them to higher standards and closer scrutiny in the justice system. The unique nature of the job can easily incite tension and often puts police officers under the spotlight. Therefore, when I heard about the controversies around ex-NYPD Officer Peter Liang’s indictment in early 2015, I curiously searched for more information.  

In addition to familiarizing myself with the case’s details, I began examining different perspectives on social justice in social media groups. As I saw myself agreeing with some arguments of each side, I wondered if such a case could ever be handled to satisfy everyone’s sense of justice. As we all hold our own values, it’s impossible for people to converge on a single belief, or a definitive justice. Instead, the justice system is based on compromises and the essence that people should be treated equally.  

It didn’t take me long to discover that Liang was the first NYPD officer indicted for a fatality in over a decade. Compared with other cases in which officers were set free of indictment due to “a lack of credible evidence proving the intentionality of shooting” in court, this case seemed to have gotten a harsher-than-usual response. Unable to determine the rationale behind this disparity, I was perplexed and irked.  

Eager to explore justice and raise awareness to the peculiarity of this case, I began sharing news articles and writing about my opinions on this in my school’s community forum. At first, my opinion seemed to be on the opposite side of campaigns against police brutality. However, as I went to different lunch tables and debated with those who dismissed my thoughts, I actually convinced many of my peers of my viewpoint: Liang’s indictment (and later conviction), due to its unusual deferral in comparison with other cases, distorted fairness, the cornerstone of a common law system. If we couldn’t restore this relative justice, people would fear getting different punishments for the same act. If we couldn’t respect precedents, the justice system would be more vulnerable to manipulation by individual power. However, I realized that merely talking in abstract terms wasn’t enough. To have a real impact, I needed larger platform.  

Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long. A few days after Peter’s conviction in February 2016, I came across savepeterliang.org . A white background with just a few grammatically incorrect sentences, the website was barren and boring. However, one sentence at the bottom of the page caught my attention: “Looking for more minds and hearts.” I immediately drafted an email to the contact address and attached my latest writing piece. When I was about to hit “Send”, however, I hesitated. How much impact could one website actually have? How much time would I need to put into this project? A series of questions flooded my mind, and I lifted my finger from the mouse.  

At the same time, I reflected on my initial motives for wanting to become involved. While police violence that violates people’s rights must be stopped, it is also important that we work to make sure that political pressure does not blur the justice system. With a crisp click, my email was on its way. After getting on board, I edited the site’s content and addressed the uniqueness of the case. I also created an online petition and worked with other volunteers to gather signatures for the judge. Before the sentencing date, over 20,000 people had signed our petition.  

While it’s impossible to say that my efforts had any influence on the judge’s decision, this experience strengthened my understanding of justice and the justice system: the best referee is not one who goes hard or soft on fouls, but one who is consistent. A definitive justice is hard to find, but fairness is always a resort. When the equality of justice gets violated, I’ll always stand up.  

Personal Statement 13 

Accepted into: Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, UPenn  

Enter Ava. Tall, thin, clad in black, eyes hardened by a mask of charcoal eyeliner. She struts nonchalantly in her combat boots, looking so incongruous (and dangerous) in the school. Appearances can be deceiving. More than a nonconformist, Ava would turn out to be the most courageous and independent girl I’ve ever met.  

I first met Ava at an art exhibition in Oregon. It surprised me that a girl so punk-rock could love still life paintings. Since then, we became friends and she would tell me her stories. She told me of her travels to Germany alone when she was just fifteen, how she devotes herself to gender inequality and LBGTQ issues, and how she swears to stop the demolition of old houses in Kyoto. Ava also told me that growth is the process of constantly breaking and rebuilding one’s current outlook, and that the only way to do this is to leave one’s comfort zone.  

Ava’s words shocked me. I realized that I had been stuck in my comfort zone for a while, and I did not want to leave it. For example, on the morning of my first Thanksgiving in the US, I was treated a bowl of white rice, without any side dishes or even a glass of water. That moment, I missed my mother’s Japanese dishes, made with love and care. I missed my buddies, not people who just treated me as a bookish Asian girl. I doubted my decision to have left behind the country I knew, to enter a nation where cultures collide.  

Ava made me realize that I had wasted precious time gingerly safeguarding my sensitive inner world and didn’t realize that those around me tried to care for me in their own way. Even the host family assumed that I, a Japanese girl, would prefer rice over pizza. Slowly, I started to empathize and see situations from other perspectives.  

Due to my fascination with Spanish culture, I attended a camp in Barcelona last summer, which was the most unforgettable experience. Starting from Placa de Catalunya at 8 am, my friend Sarah and I, who had also been admiring Gaudi’s works for a long time, walked along the Paseo de Gracia. We went to Casa Batillo, La Pedrera, La Sagrada Familia, and finally reached Park Guell twelve hours later. Gaudi’s architecture was simply fascinating; I was amazed by his magical use of curves, light, and genius ideas from nature. However, Barcelona shines not only because of Gaudi, but also the vintage buildings, the cozy sunlight, and the warm smiles on people’s faces.  

We decided to measure the city with our feet. Using a map as guide, we walked five miles. Rather than talking, we looked and experienced with our hearts. When this walking meditation ended, I felt a strong connection to Barcelona, as if I’d been acquainted with the city for a long time. I discovered a different me. I would never imagine walking five miles to explore a city with only a map, or traveling alone in Spain. I forgot my non-professional Spanish and the fact that I was a total stranger to the city. I even forgot my resistance to approach strangers. When I asked a passing elegant old lady for directions, when I danced to the music with buskers on the square, I was inexplicably satisfied.  

Humans’ greatest fear is uncertainty. Our comfort zones represent safety and ease. However, after constantly reaching beyond my limit, I found that Ava’s words were true: leaving one’s comfort zone is really the only way to grow. Stepping outside the boundaries of comfort, a much more glamorous and expansive world awaits. I hope that through the upcoming years, I can discover the art world of major international cities, further expanding my mind and heart. As Ava and this trip to Barcelona taught me, everybody is welcome by world, and I am no exception.  

Personal Statement 14 

Accepted into: Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown  

It was a cloudy spring day with mosquitoes in the moist air, yet I was thrilled. For the first time in my life, I was going to plant a tree.  

Dad and Grandpa shoveled a hole in our front yard. I gently lifted the sapling and placed it into the dirt and filled up the hole. Mom stabled the sapling with a few poles. Grandma watered it. For years, it grew in our yard, nurtured by sunlight and tropical rains, producing a kind of tart, juicy fruit named wampee . Twice a year when I pick the wampee, I am reminded of those in my family who planted the tree with me.  

My grandparents anchored the roots of my life. Grandpa was enlisted in the army for five years and later worked as an engineer in the ship manufacturing industry. Yet, he never lost his passion for literature and calligraphy. He taught me how to recite classical poetry, tucking me into bed with stories and parables. In contrast, Grandma spent her adolescence moving across the country with her family. Away from her hometown, she became independent and persevered in the face of challenges: bearing the hot weather and spicy cuisine, practicing burdensome physical tasks, and fitting into a new community. As the roots of my family tree, Grandpa and Grandma gathered experience from hardship, absorbed the marrow of life, and eventually passed them on to my parents and me.  

My parents are the supportive trunk of the family tree. Inheriting the trait of persistence from my grandparents, they founded an International Trade Corporation that exports household appliances. For the past ten years, they have achieved recognition in the local industry and made millions of dollars in annual trade volume. My parents were hands-on entrepreneurs: they worked long hours, negotiated deals with factories, trained new employees, and built relationships with clients. Though I did not witness the beginning of their entrepreneurship, I have seen the stack of contracts in their bedroom and heard their voices on the phone as the dinner on the table grew cold.  

Growing up under the sufficient moisture and fertile soil my family provides, I am increasingly aware of my responsibilities in the family business. Using statistical knowledge and information gathered from my family firm’s database, I conducted marketing research about the electrical fans we produce and export to Latin America. I noticed that the United States, which has been importing most fans made in China, would be a potential market for expansion.  

Moreover, since electrical fans are a seasonal product, I recommended my parents to export heaters to countries like the U.S. as well, since in such way the firm would run more evenly and profitably during the full business year. Through this experience, I was able to learn more about our firm’s operation, which is a micro-representation of the international trading system. I learned to write proposals, contribute ideas, and assist my parents.  

This summer, I went back to visit the wampee tree. The rising sun kindled the sky, and where we planted the sapling stood a leafy tree laden with fruits. Looking back, I have come to see how my family has shaped my identity from childhood to adulthood, just like the sapling that has transformed into a tree. The roots went deep, like my grandparents who nurtured my mind fundamentally; the trunk was erected steadily, like my parents spreading nutrition into my every veins. My grandparents have taught me the importance of traditional values, both cultural and personal. My parents have nurtured and protected me while allowing opportunities for me to develop multiple interests and widen my horizon. Their support enables me, the leaves, to reach the light and the air. Now, I will be replanted across the Pacific, where I hope to be nourished by the soil of my future college and blossom into someone my family would be proud of.  

Personal Statement 15 

Accepted into: Yale, Cornell, Dartmouth, UPenn  

I used to think that my camera only captured scenes of life; in fact, it delivers voices, voices of  p owerless children from Liangshan, one of China’s poorest regions. Every time I look through   my Canon 7D’s viewfinder, I’m eager not only to capture but also to convey and create, hence   empowering the lives of others.  

Capture.  

A group of kids playing rope-less tug-of-war. Bad angle, awkward placement, could’ve used a   larger aperture with a higher shutter speed. It's not a great shot, but it pictured the   fifteen-year-old me trying to immortalize a moment. The girls interlock their hands, some wrap   their arms around those before them, some clutch to others' shirts. My hands feel the friction  b etween their hands and the nylon. My scapula aches as the girls lean back. Innocent laughter   echoes around me. The rope-less tug-of-war might seem dull to us, but their faces sparkled with   glee. They didn’t have much, yet they lived with gratitude.  

From this point onward, every year these kids, who had never seen a camera before, patiently await my envelope full of photos: photos of them chasing hogs, photos of them planting potatoes, photos of them doodling on ragged walls, photos of them waving goodbye.  

Convey.  

A girl clings fast to the window frame, the glass separating two worlds. The texture of the  p itifully smeared glass, the placement of the dreadfully-welded iron…these elements jerk at   viewer’s heartstrings. Hope glides in those gazing eyes, penetrates the blurred glass, and incites   tears. Their hope, enthusiasm, and desire were never smothered by poverty but rather kindled by   life’s extremities. She hopes to break through that glass, to tear down that rusty iron frame, to   crack open the restraints set by destitution, to finally emerge into our world.  

Indeed, we dwell in opposite worlds. We have high technology and sports equipment for   entertainment; we travel thousands of miles to the Caribbean, to the Alps. They have nothing but   a backpack, maybe a few pencils; the adjacent town four hours’ walk away is the farthest they’ve  b een; eating three meals a day is a privilege. Everything we take for granted is mere fantasy to   them.  

Her eyes planted seeds deep in my heart. These seeds prompt me to sow their dreams in other hearts. These seeds prompt me to fundraise, to study architecture, to one day build them better schoolhouses with clear windows that do not separate, but join, our worlds.  

Create.  

A monochromatic background draws attention to the heart-rending shoes. The torn clothes,   dangling threads, and cracked rubber document the hours the kids walk to school. The dim and   coarse concrete illustrates their lackluster background: childhood. We all must tread up and down   countless muddy knolls through our trail of growth. However, these kids don’t have our   Timberlands to soften the journey; they don’t have a GPS to navigate the road. They only have   the roughly paved dirt road wriggling into the village. They have thorns and lurking vipers. They   have loot—woodchips, dirt, rocks, lichen—that their shoes collected, proof of their experience   and strength. We pray that they will walk out of the dirt road, out of the dark shadow, and pave a   wider, smoother, brighter future.  

Glancing through these old photos, I found myself treading through my own muddy trail of   growth. Desire, wonder, and desperation were vividly conveyed through texture, lines, and   colors. My photos morphed into powerful and touching storytellers who narrate my emotions and those of the otherwise ignored. Through these years, I gushed with pride at seeing the kids grow, a series of my photos reposted 600,000 times, and over 30,000 volunteers sign up to teach at  Liangshan .  

The word “grown” has now become less abstract. The camera—the responsibility—has grown heavier on my shoulders. I’m not sure whether it’s the camera itself or the development it captured that weighs me down, but it’s a weight I embrace.  

Personal Statement 16 

  Accepted into: (Oxford), Columbia, Cornell, UPenn, Brown  

“Where do you think you belong to, Chongqing or Canton?” In whichever city I happened to be, this was the most frequently asked question I encountered during numerous family meetings every Chinese New Year. Stuffing myself with mouthfuls of food was the best way to avoid the following awkward silence. Hastily wiping away the soup dripping down my chin, I mumbled under the gaze of countless of relatives, their eyes brimming with anticipation. “I…I have no idea,” was all I could lamely utter.  

I wasn’t lying. Having spent the first six years of my life in Chongqing and the next eleven in Canton, I have learned both dialects and grown used to the flavors of both cities. My family is a peculiar composition featuring two different tastes: my Chongqingnese mom, hot-tempered, addicted to chilies; my Cantonese stepdad, even-tempered, fond of every flavor but spicy. I savor the zesty flavor of Chongqing hotpot during mother-daughter dinners, while feeling a delicious shiver of pleasure when I sip the fresh and mild stock of Cantonese hotpot in my stepdad’s hometown. The two cities have been so intertwined in my memories that I can hardly tell which one I belong to. Yet this is not the case for my parents: their rooted cultural backgrounds have   endowed them with distinctive accents, different tastes for food, and unique temperaments.  

The other day, I saw a split pot in Wal-Mart which was divided by a copper slice in the middle,   resembling a “yin-yang” symbol. After bringing the pot home, I stewed a spicy Chongqing broth   in one half and a thin Cantonese stock in the other. The two coexisted peacefully in one pot, one   hot and dense, the other mild and light. My family resembles this yin-yang pot, with my   Chongqing mom and Cantonese stepdad living together in harmony, yet maintaining unique   attitudes towards life.   

My mum and stepdad have grown to love this pot. Gorging myself with food from both halves while my parents choose their preferred soups, I suddenly find the answer to the where-I-belong-to question. Experiencing the values of both cities, I am the copper slice in a hotpot. I belong to neither half, yet I have direct experiences from both, enriched with the  p rofound system of the two values. It is my existence that allows the two broths to coexist peacefully. I have helped each broth preserve its unique flavor while breaking down cultural barriers so that they have become more tolerant of each other. Bombarded by a constant ebb and flow of flavors from both sides, my copper slice absorbs both tastes. As I dip my spoon into one half, my taste buds explode, reminiscent of my stepdad’s upbringing. I dip it into the other half and am transported to my mother’s childhood. Being the copper slice in the middle, I am free to delve into whichever culture suits me most the moment. I have a multiple-entry visa between these two distinct worlds, and I plan taking advantage of it.  

“I belong to the middle,” I answered without hesitation the next time I was asked. My relatives shrugged, obviously not content with my strange, vague answer. But I like being the cooper slice between the Chongqing and Canton broths. Why shouldn’t I be able to taste both worlds, to experience life from two different cultural viewpoints? Likewise, I hope to be the hyphen in “Yale-NUS”, experiencing both the East and the West simultaneously. With my experience of living in China and studying under an American system, I wish I can better the understandings between different cultures, facilitating everyone to coexist harmoniously in the Yale-NUS campus and working towards a better future.  

Personal Statement 17  

Accepted into: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, UPenn  

N o one is ever really his or her “own” person. Rather, we are all products of a larger societal   context and upbringing. The world I come from — m y family, my community, and my   school — h as shaped me into the girl I am today, presenting me with experiences and   opportunities which have allowed me to unearth my passions.  

My parents introduced me to animation when they took me to watch Finding Nemo . I loved the   movie so much that I begged my parents for the DVD, which I have seen at least thirty times.   This charming film left a deep impression on me, both visually and emotionally. T he advanced computer graphics presented the sea in such a unique way that each frame was resplendent with  b eauty. The more animated films my parents took me to, the more my love and fascination for   CGI animation grew. Movies such as Kung Fu Panda and Up taught me invaluable life lessons,   such as the power of faith and the importance of family, respectively. Through animation, my   family built a castle of love, imagination, and wonderment. These movies continuously shape my   dream: to be an animator, employing advanced computer technology to create art which will   hopefully spread optimism and happiness to viewers.  

My school allowed me to share my passion for violin with others. Standing onstage before the   chamber ensemble, I took a deep breath and raised the instrument to my shoulder. I slammed the  b ow on the strings and was instantly transported into Vivaldi’s Spring . The movement advanced   from the joyful chirp of birds to the languorous flow of a fountain to the climax- the tempestuous   storm. All eyes were on me, the orchestra’s soloist; as lightning and thunder clashed, my fingers   frantically danced across the strings. The storm calmed and the piece ended with a slow vibrato.   Thunderous applause brought me back to the real world. I beamed with pride, honored that my   classmates and teachers had delighted in my performance.   

My community has instilled in me a sense of belonging. Since 2014, I volunteered at a primary   school. During my last class, I decided to teach paper-cutting, as art is usually not emphasized in the curricula of smaller schools. I patiently watched an eight-year-old, Min, clumsily cut along   the pre-sketched lines on a triangular piece of folded paper. After twenty minutes, she unfolded   her work, exhilaration spreading across her face. "A snowflake! Whoa, how beautiful!" To my   surprise, she placed her masterpiece in my hand and covered it with hers; I could feel her warm   fingertips transmitting her appreciation. At this endearing gesture, the word “community”   transformed from a vague notion into a tangible one. Through actively volunteering in the   community, I created a strong bond with the local school and its students.  

Consciously and unconsciously, my world has provided me with opportunities and unforgettable   experiences which have given rise to my potentials. I have discovered what I love- animation and have learned the value of contributing to one’s academic and local community. I hope that   when I enter a new world, university, I will discover more fields of interest. Be it a programmer   or an animator, an artist or a professor, I know that my world will support me in becoming who I   want to be.  

Personal Statement 18 

Accepted into: Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia, UPenn  

A mother’s love is something more often than not, taken for granted. A mother’s sacrifice—time, money, energy—for the sake of her child is a given in most parental relationships. However, growing up, my mother practiced a draconian child-rearing method, which caused me doubt her love for me. You see, my father left my family when I was just two years old. My entire life, I believed that it was my mother’s sense of bitterness at not being able to hold onto a family that caused her to speak to me so harshly and maintain an icy distance.  

As I found no comfort in my mother, I had no one to share my day-to-day events with. If things at school went poorly, such as a bad grade on an exam, my mother would rap me over the knuckles or make me stand in a corner. If I pushed it and answered back, she would send me to bed without dinner. Rather than simply making an imaginary friend, like most children my age and lacking maternal comfort would do, I found solace in the only outlet I could: the arts.  

When I was five, my mom enrolled me in drawing lessons. Sheets of sketch paper overflowed with elements from my overactive imagination- detailed, wordless stories. As I grew older, the process of creating helped me develop a habit of doing things earnestly and persistently. After school, I would escape to my room and draw for hours. When I am lost in the world of art, images in my mind materialize as sketches on a page. The feeling of satisfaction when I realize that my pencil or brush has accurately recorded my inspirations is inexplicable and incomparable. When I am in the art world, a world in which creativity is King, anything is possible.  

A couple of years later, my mother decided that it would be prudent to take music lessons, as she probably realized that academics were just not my forte. I chose the violin, which provides a totally different aesthetic experience than drawing. With the organic dynamics of tempo and notes come either fervent movement or peaceful tranquility. Whether picking up the pace in one of Bach’s Partitas, meditating almost religiously on Pachelbel's Canon in D, or reveling in self pity while playing a minor key, I learnt to interpret each piece for myself. I learned to interject my full emotions into the familiar notes, sprinkling each piece with my personality.  

As an artist and a violinist, creative aesthetics are as essential as air. Expressing myself through art allows me to share what I deem visually or aesthetically pleasurable with others in the hopes they that will derive joy from my works as well. Having such a creative outlet of self-expression saved me from an otherwise emotionless existence. No matter what my mood or thoughts, there were multiple ways of conveying them either through my sketching pencils or through that hollow wooden instrument. The arts became the means by which I grew on my adolescent process of self-discovery.  

By the time I decided to set off to high school in the United States, I was much more self-aware and developed than before. My artistic skills had empowered me with confidence to handle daily tasks on my own as well as hope for the future. However, the day of my flight, I received jarring news: my mother confessed that she had been suffering from cancer for the past XX years. However, she did not want to burden me with the stress and sorrow that comes with such a dreaded disease, so she kept quiet. She admitted that her strict ways of raising me were to guarantee that I would be able to take care of myself and earn my own living in the likely case that she did not survive much longer.  

Upon hearing this news, tears started to uncontrollably flow from my eyes. I forgave my mother for having been so strict and thanked her for the seemingly little ways that she demonstrated her love—spending precious money that could have been used on her treatments to keep me in art and music classes—that in reality, made the world of difference in determining my fate. Thanks to my mother’s sacrifice, not only have discovered my passion for the arts, but I have honed my art and music skills through years of lessons and practice. On a larger scale, I have become self-sufficient and am mature for my age, which I noticed while living in St Paul’s dorms with other boys my age. Despite not having been the warmest of mothers, in her own way, my mother helped me grow my wings to fly toward a better future, one in which she may not be a part of. And that, I will never take for granted.  

Personal Statement 19 

The black water, filled with a mélange of industrial raw materials but showing no signs of life, aroused in me a sense of unease. The gray grass, covered in colorful, organic garbage but no flowers, disturbed me. It wasn't until a weekend last spring, when I finally returned to my native village, a small town near Jiangsu, that I had my impression of Chinese rural communities profoundly overturned.  

The scenery wasn't tidy or beautiful like it was in my memories of times past. Rather, it had become a place of utter rubbish, dirty and disordered. The river where I had learned how to swim, once clear and bustling with playing children and even teeming with fish, was now dark, green, and silent. It showed no signs of marine life or human activity—only flies and floating garbage. Plastic bags floated upon the water’s surface, soda bottles replaced reeds, and the river took on the look of a literal liquid trash bin.  

Equally astounding was the fact that the villagers—both adults and children alike—seemed to have grown accustomed to this new state of affairs. To my dismay, they dumped their garbage at random, as if the world were their personal trash bins! I was horrified at the amount of reckless littering that I observed—not only in the river, but also along the sides of the roads. Every hundred meters or so was a new little “pile” of trash, competing to see which could mount highest, even though there were actual trash bins around. How could people simply act as if man had not invented trash bins? How could man disrespect nature so blatantly and shamelessly? How could one not care about what one’s hometown looked like? Dwelling on the similar scenes that I had witnessed throughout my life in China, I realized that the pollution of my village was unfortunately not a single, isolated, or accidental phenomenon. Rather, it was the norm, as was this disturbingly flippant attitude toward one’s physical environment.  

As soon as I returned from my native village, I decided to take action. I gathered together seven like-minded pals from my high school, and we set to work on the problem. We chose six typical villages around Jiangsu as our field survey destinations and carefully designed our survey parameters. I divided our group into three teams, each responsible for two villages, and we spent three weeks visiting, observing, surveying, and recording. We obtained a number of gruesome photos of pollution and interviewed local villagers as well as public officials, focusing our efforts on finding information and documentation about plastic and other daily pollution, tree-felling, and river pollution.  

We spent two weeks integrating the information we had gathered and writing up a proposal in which we detailed the current village pollution problem using representative data and photo evidence. We also analyzed the likely causes, stating our belief that the rapid economic development of rural areas, which had not been accompanied by expansion of the public environmental consciousness, was a key driver of the problem. Therefore, the proposal that we submitted to the government's advice e-mail address centered upon getting local government authorities to devote publicity to the issue. We made numerous additional recommendations regarding other measures that could be taken, including limiting plastic use, investing in more advanced garbage delivery and disposal systems, increasing penalties for tree felling, and implementing a strict fine system to help prevent river pollution.  

We weren't sure whether the government would immediately see the value in our proposal or whether all of its suggestions were even feasible at this time. However, the more important thing is that we have noticed this issue, drawn attention to the problem, and done what we could to help. We won't stop our efforts until Chinese villages are on their way to being restored to the pure, pastoral communities of my childhood. 

Personal Statement 20 

Accepted into: UPenn, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, Brown  

Clang!  

The dumbbells crashed against the floor. I turned to see Moka lying on the bench, her arms dropping downwards.  

"How was that? Good, huh?"  

Moka glared at me, panting.  

"It's good when you feel the pain,” I say. It’s proof you’re alive.”  

"Then I’ve never been so ‘alive,’" Moka retorted.  

It’s been a few weeks since I first dragged Moka to exercise with me. Everyone in school was shocked that Moka, the stereotypical CS genius and antisocial library dweller, was frequenting the gym.  

It all started with a random discussion about a math problem. Moka was explaining the solution, which nobody else had thought of.  

"If the thought process can be compared to a tree, each branch develops when a certain assumption is made. You may think you’ve enumerated all the possible situations, and upon finding no feasible solution, you give up. But you actually didn’t realize that your initial assumptions were false, so you’ve reached a branch where no solution exists."  

"Interesting perspective," I said.  

"When you deal with these kinds of things all day, you have to try to make some meaning from it.”  

"You never get tired of solving theoretical puzzles?”  

"Sometimes. But it's not like I have anything better to do."  

"Like you just said, if you limit yourself to doing things you’re familiar with, your life will never change. You may think you’ve tried everything, yet you wonder why things turn out as normal. Maybe you can try things from the earlier branches."  

Something in this must have resonated with her, for the next day Moka met me at the gym after school. Watching her sweat on the elliptical, I realized that she was an outlier, her willing attitude a pleasant surprise. The only others in the gym were athletes; it occurred to me that those who benefit most from exercise are those who also resist it most. They think the gym is just a niche for jocks, somewhere they don’t belong. Inspired by Moka, I determined to see more students using the gym.  

So, I signed up as a gym leader and was given the opportunity to give grade-wide talks about my personal fitness journey. I organized weekly training sessions for girls, in which I give either a 40-minute Pilates or Spinning class during lunchtime; also, if there is a newcomer to the gym, I make sure that they know how to use all of the machines in proper form. My efforts have made the gym a less intimidating place for my peers, and I am proud to notice a significant increase in the number of people coming to the gym during my shifts as gym leader.  

In particular, I’ve been focusing on encouraging more girls to hit the gym, as in gyms girls are a rare species, usually only found in the aerobics corner, steering clear of heavy lifting as if weights were the plague. They believe they are intrinsically weak, and this self-fulfilling prophecy is difficult to rectify. Having been there, I know that the best way to overcome the fear couldn't be simpler: (pardon the cliché) just take it one step at a time. Another problem with girls is that many attempt to “shortcut” weight loss through eating disorders, which are rampant in Asia, especially amongst teenagers. To persuade girls to get fit in a healthy manner, I devoured psychology and sports science books, and reminded them that if they wanted to have a better body, there is no replacement for time or effort.  

My personal influence may be small - there's a limited number of people I can speak to, as well as a gym holding capacity - but the changes nevertheless make me feel warm and fuzzy. I’m on a mission to not only develop gym rats, but more so to build muscle and character and to help the other Mochas of the world “feel alive.”  

Personal Statement 21 

Accepted into: UPenn, Cornell, Brown  

The Initiation  

Sitting inside an Indian restaurant for the first time, I tweaked my imaginary mustache and tapped the tip of my fountain pen against the cream-colored paper. I was mentally prepping myself to document whatever would hit my taste buds first.  

“May I take your order, Ma’m?” The genial restaurant owner with a real mustache kindly brought me back to earth from my food-critic daydreams.  

“Uh… yeah… I’ll have the….”  

I skimmed the menu before I found a combination of letters that made sense. “… curry fish head,” I finally mustered. 

Back then, I didn't know that that dish was simply a Singaporean adaptation of an Indian dish, but who cares? It sounded exotic and exciting to this slipshod foodie.  

However, when the food arrived, the smell of spices and the “Pantone” overwhelmed my olfactory senses. The cauliflower, cabbage, eggplant, kidney beans, and fish were mushed into a monochromatic, soup.  

Coldplay’s, “they are allllll yelloooow” came to mind, and I chuckled.  

My initial fears faded fast. After all, nothing could be worse than that aloe vera with meat soup I tried when I was ten. With newfound courage, I fished a suspension from the soup.  

I opened my mouth and closed my eyes, bracing for the worst. I finally understood what “spicy” meant. After a brief dizzy spell during which I wanted to simultaneously faint and burst into tears, I started to notice the base note of various spices. And then, a slight euphoria started to spread throughout my body. “The effect of endorphin triggered by chili in the soup,” meticulous neuroscientists would say. I need no explanations. That fateful meal, I fell into a headlong love affair with Indian food and spices.  

As I pushed away the empty plate, it dawned on me that this was a love I’d been seeking all my life.  

School  

Despite this newfound love of spiciness, I was quite aware that Life doesn’t do a 180 with a single decision. If I wanted more spiciness, apart from changing a restaurant, I would have to start ordering spicier dishes.  

Joining Math Interest Group (MIG) was definitely such decision, one I almost found too spicy. I was plagued by an inferiority complex among the club’s Olympiad veterans and almost wanted to quit, to retreat back to my comfort zone, to reduce the spiciness to mild.  

Then, one day I noticed MIG’s shabby notice board pinned on the least strategic location in school. The papers on the board fluttered like handkerchiefs waving goodbye, and the letters disappeared to make us “Mth Intrest Grop.” I suddenly understood why everybody had this Is it some kind of secret society ? look on their faces whenever I mentioned MIG.  

To prepare for a new round of recruitment, my advocacy for a “less modest” publication was endorsed by the club advisor and soon implemented. Beginning with a notice board that I designed, more students started to contribute manpower, ideas, and resources. Members like me that had previously felt insignificant started to become more involved. I was glad to see the transformation from “handkerchief collection” into a well-organized and informative notice board.  

Throughout this process, I’ve become close with many MIG members, some of whom possess extraordinarily diverse talents. During our regular “notice board meetings,” I ended up learning 

to fold Kawasaki’s Rose, fill in 35*35 Magic Square, and play Dragons & Dungeons. This was a totally new level of spicy for me: simultaneously stimulating yet amusing.  

Present Day  

Now, sitting in front of the computer, mouse hovering on the “Submit” button, a similar fear creeps in. I’m that girl hesitating in the Indian restaurant again, both intimidated and fascinated by the uncertainty inherent in “spiciness.” Well, that girl hasn’t changed. I will take a bite of whatever spice life throws my way, confident that with a playful attitude and open mind, I’ll be able to handle it.  

Personal Statement 22 

Accepted into: (Cambridge, Oxford), Yale, Cornell, Columbia, UPenn, Brown  

I was haunted for weeks after first hearing the song “Memory” in the Japanese film Okubirito  (2008). The cello melody was so pained yet powerful that I could not let it go. I already had many years of experience playing the guzheng , or Chinese zither, but I begged my parents to let me take cello lessons. In the years since, I have grown proficient enough to perform the song flawlessly, and it is one of my favorites. Every time I play it, I cannot help but think about the film, which follows the life of a failed Japanese cellist who becomes a nōkanshi , a Japanese ritual mortician. His difficulties as someone working in this highly taboo field revealed to me the deep discomfort that people face regarding death.  

I recently got to confront this discomfort myself. This past summer, I attended Georgetown University for a summer course in Medicine. I vividly remember the day we performed a human dissection.  

The heavy smell of Formalin filled the room, reminding me of the taste of salted fish. The other students were white with silence. I could hear my pounding heart and the ticking of the clock on the wall. Cold and stiff, a female corpse lay in a half-opened bag on the table. Swirling feelings of respect and distance mingled when my gloved hand touched the corpse. The skin was unexpectedly hard, the arms and thighs scattered with brown speckles. The right knee was injured with a deep wound. Her painted pink nails presented a stark contrast with a burn mark on her left hand.  

I found myself shaking as I stepped closer to the table. I breathed deeply in an effort to calm myself down, and at the instruction of the professor began exploring the internal organs. I gently opened the corpse’s breast skin and took out her ribs. Her lungs were spotted black and abnormally tiny. Reaching deeply down to her abdominal cavity, I pulled out a long strand of solid fat to observe her dislocated stomach. The organs did not bother me, yet I was still uncomfortable. I paused and drew myself into meditation. The taboo from the movie suddenly made sense; there was something far too intimate about this experience. I was invading her privacy somehow, learning information never intended for me. Her lungs and fat, her burn and leg wound, were evidence about her private life. I could see that she had an unhealthy diet due to the accumulated fat; I knew she was a smoker due to the cigarette burn on her hand; and I knew she had trouble breathing due to her small thoracic cavity. Yet as I resumed the dissection, I realized her life must have had more meaning than these health conditions.  

What do we know about a person after death? We can see from the body if she was healthy or sick, injured or not. But the important things in a person’s life are rarely visible. As I mussed with her organs, my mind meditated on the melody of “Memory,” like a mantra. Every time I play that piece, I discover something new in the music. After I die, the music will be gone. Yet that does not bother me, because it obviously stops even sooner than that—I withdraw my bow from the strings and the room goes silent.  

Nevertheless, what I do in my life can never be taken away, no matter what happens to my body posthumously. The significance I give to my life is my own, just as the existentialists claimed. I cultivate my life’s meaning today and every day. I can make it beautiful or hideous depending on the actions I take and decisions I make at various stages in my life. Silence is inevitable, but I do not feel helpless to play. What matters is simply that the music was ever made at all.  

Personal Statement 23 

Accepted into: (Cambridge), Princeton, Yale, Columbia, UPenn  

A long, shrill whistle jolts me awake. As the other raucous sounds—the harsh bellows of strict officers and the heavy thuds of boots stomping in unison—precede my alarm clock, I jump to my feet and mechanically start making my bed. After I tuck in the sheets and compulsively smoothen the blanket, I sit by the windowsill and observe the scene below.  

Hundreds of uniformed soldiers stand in perfect lines. Backs straight, eyes forward, expressions stoic, their legs march up and down like disconnected limbs. After the morning processions, these soldiers run eight miles, train combat and weaponry skills, and perform a variety of menial tasks, such as scrubbing the barracks, before they are allowed a monochromatic lunch of rice and noodles.  

Observing these soldiers on a daily basis instilled in me a disdain for rules and routine. I pitied them for having to eat the same, insipid meals. Perhaps they were lucky to only have four-minute eating windows-their brains wouldn’t have time to process the grimness of their reality. I didn’t understand why these men had to live under such austere conditions. What if they never made it back home from a hypothetical war? Didn’t they deserve at least some luxuries now? The commanders’ rules seemed arbitrary and inhumane.  

Living in such an environment was stifling, but inescapable, as my father is an army officer. Since I was little, he has disciplined me like a soldier. I called him “Sir” instead of “Daddy,” and the only three acceptable answers for a slip-up were: “Yes, Sir; No, Sir; No Excuse, Sir.” I was strictly reprimanded for slovenly bed-making or slouching. I vowed that as soon as I was old enough, I would break free from the shackles of tedious rules and instead, write my own. ***  

As soon as I reached Dallas airport, I gulped my first taste of freedom. I instantly felt lighter, like a drifting balloon. Intoxicated with this newfound liberty, I began my journey in America.  

I had kept true to my word - as soon as I was seventeen, I left to study abroad. My history teacher, Mr. Lorenzo, passionately taught us through stories. This new teaching method intrigued me, but I was not prepared for it. Mr. Lorenzo didn’t provide students with packets of study material like Chinese teachers do; rather, he only put a few bullet points on each slide and said that it was our responsibility to do the assigned readings. Since he never “ordered” us to take notes, I didn’t- feeling triumphant leaning back while my classmates scribbled away.  

Unexpectedly, I failed my first exam. I lay in bed that night, thinking: Do I only need to do what my teacher assigns, or do I need self-discipline? I recalled the soldiers marching in the scorching sun. They needed discipline so they could be ready to fight for their country. As an individual blessed with newfound freedom, I had to impose my own restrictions in order to fight for future opportunities.  

Subsequently, I adjusted my attitude. Dismissing the idea that “rules are made to be broken,” I realized that perhaps they exist for legitimate reasons. In class, I became my strictest officer. I started recording each lesson, which I would transcribe afterwards. I did all of the assigned readings, even when there was no correlating assignment. I jotted notes furiously, no longer the nonchalant. Unsurprisingly, my grades skyrocketed.  

This experience taught me that my younger notions of rules were naïve. Though I still have not come to terms with every social rule, I nevertheless respect them. I have also created my own set of rules - of conduct and morality – which I live by. By following my own rules, as well as society’s, I can grow into the young lady I aspire to be.  

Personal Statement 24 

Accepted into: Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell, UPenn, Brown  

The sacred ceremony commenced again. The leader of our choir inserted the tuning fork—an acoustic resonator used to determine intonation—into her bun. The fork was the crown of impeccable technique and skill, only allowed to be held by the most skillful performer. Consumed with a desire to hold that fork, I painstakingly practiced my scales and melodies. Under our teacher’s instruction, I colored my tunes with the imaginations of sensory details after carefully researching the songs’ lyrics and historical background. My hard work paid off. While singing a ballad of the Yi ethnicity, The Spring Is Coming , I could understand how there was supposed to be a young lady dressed in lime green approaching, dancing in front of me. During our performance in Cincinnati’s competition, I still did not get the honor of holding the tuning fork despite my satisfaction with the music I created with impeccable technique and artificial imageries.  

After the competition, we started our tour in America by watching The Phantom of the Opera . Sitting in the back row without glasses and with a limited understanding of the dialogue and content, I was lost with the plot progression. Yet, I magically understood what they sang: I knew what their mood was, and I knew what they were trying to express. In show-within-the-show scene in which Christine suddenly pulled down Phantom’s robe, revealing the silver mask on his face, there was a sudden silence. That deafening silence was a prelude to a storm of emotional outbreak. A second later, Phantom slowly began to sing, plaintively but beautifully, with a voice so gripping and sorrowful. Something resonated within me, as my heart ached and my eyes involuntarily started to tear. Walking out of the theater, I couldn’t get my mind straight. A question emerged from the confusion— why was I about to burst into tears even though I could not follow what Phantom said?  

Two years later, I found my answer when our choir went to Latvia for the 8th World Choir Game. Becoming the second in command under my minister, I could finally put the tuning fork in my hair. Singing again, the feeling differed substantially. In the competition, we sang The White Crane , whose lyrics are derived from a classic Chinese poem. Sensing the responsibility brought by the tuning fork, I carefully gathered up all the imageries and historical background from my repertoire and memorized the most “emotional” version. Yet, maybe because of over-preparation or the weight of the tuning fork, my mind blanked and my delicately engineered imageries slipped away as I performed.  

My confusion continued until the solo’s high-note and crisp voice floated lightly aloft the stadium, and when approaching the climax, four departments neatly extolled “the white crane, please lend me your wings, I would not tour to remote places, but stay in Litang for a while and I would come back.” At this moment, a scene spontaneously emerged. I felt like standing under a cloudy and foggy sky, riding the enormous saint bird, and soaring to the dazzling light. The crane steadily flapped its huge wings as if every fluttering created potent wind. My eyes watered, and I was again shocked by this unprecedented experience. Why was I moved?  

Upon reflection, I found the answer to both this question and the one raised when watching The Phantom of the Opera . Emotion, the source of music, is not created; rather, it creates itself. It overflows from the music spontaneously. It transcends the boundaries of language, reason, logic, and intended human efforts. All I need to do is grant it ample freedom, and it will carry me into the heart of each audience, connecting mankind through spiritual commonality. This musical journey also reminded me that despite our growing emphasis on numbers and rationality, emotions are what enable us to better understand ourselves and this world.  

Personal Statement 25 

Accepted into: Dartmouth, UPenn, Columbia, Brown 

“Join the school choir – it will boost your team spirit;  

Learn how to folk dance – it cultivates your femininity;  

Study abroad – you will have better chances of finding a profitable job…”  

Growing up, I have been bombarded by incessant preaching about what I should become, forced into paths carved by my parents’ expectations. Oftentimes, I felt frustrated and disoriented – it seemed that my destiny had been predetermined, and I was hell-bent on escaping from it. The two-dimensional animated world had long been my safe haven: Miku Hatsune sings and dances perfectly for her millions of fans with adorable emotions; Homura Akime fights crime with her magic power in order to save the world she loves; Victorica buries her head in books by day and moonlights as an assistant crime fighter. Impressed by their outfits, abilities, and adventures, I fell in love with cosplay – the act of forging new, exciting identities for myself.  

Hunting for gorgeous costumes online, designing accessories, and sporting colorful wigs, I began to fulfill my wildest imaginations: Miku always wears short skirts and fancy tops; Homura carries a sharp sword and magic diamond while fighting; Victoria dresses like an old-fashioned doll with fancy dresses and hats, always carrying heavy books. Soon I discovered these cute, vivacious teenage-girl characters enjoyed a tremendous popularity, as all the posts of my cosplay photos received countless “likes” on social media. Drunk off compliments, I clung to the belief that cosplayer had become my newfound identity.  

My self-appreciation in cosplaying was, however, soon challenged when a senior cosplayer asked me a simple question. “Who is the favorite character you’ve cosplayed as?”  

Though a self-proclaimed cosplay zealot, I was startled that my mind went blank. I had cosplayed most of the characters solely because they were attractive and popular, and for the number of “likes” popping up on my personal page. Even in my safe haven, I was doing nothing different than in the three-dimensional reality: fulfilling other’s expectations and becoming who they wanted me to be.  

Yet, this time I resolved not to escape. I began to search for a character I truly adored, and finally came across Reborn. Cosplaying this character was an unprecedented challenge: for starters, Reborn was a male character, which meant I needed to cross-dress; and like his pet chameleon, he was constantly shifting his image – sometimes a cold mafia leader, the next moment shrunken into a cute, innocent kid with a high-pitched voice. As I strutted in man’s attire, with the cruelest grin one moment and the sweetest laughter the next, I felt not at all awkward but instead empowered. The magic within cosplay lies not in pleasing people’s eyes, but in the incessant exploration into identities that sometimes cannot be accurately defined. And maybe, being undefinable is the best definition of an identity, which grants it boundless possibilities in exploring, imagining, and transforming. And now, even all those teenage-girl characters of my previous endeavor made sense too – they were part of my journey in the exploration of a true self.  

In retrospect, I see all endeavors in locating one’s identity – whether in reality or in the animated world – as acts of cosplaying. We don garments sometimes of our own choice, and sometimes out of others’ expectation. Yet in both situations, we are down the path of exploring ourselves: I indulge myself in the resonances I create with my group members when I sing in the choir; I am surprised by the artistic expression through body language as I folk dance. In the acts of fulfilling others’ expectation, I also create boundless possibilities for my own identity. And as I look beyond, I aspire to see what further characters I am about to “cosplay” as when I set foot in the States. 

Additional Resources 

We hope you enjoyed reading our ebook, and more importantly, that you learnt from it!  

For more information on how we can help you tell your story to college admissions officers, check out our essay coaching process . Our services include detailed coaching for the perfect personal statement and supplementary essays as well as simple proofreading/editing.  

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Your Ivy League Application Journey: A Step-by-Step Guide

So, you've set your sights on the Ivy League. Congratulations! Applying to Ivy League universities is a big step, and it's natural to feel excited and maybe a little overwhelmed. But fear not! With the right guidance and preparation, you can navigate the Ivy League application process with confidence and increase your chances of success. In this comprehensive guide, we'll walk you through everything you need to know about applying to Ivy League schools, from understanding what makes them unique to crafting a standout application that catches the eye of admissions officers. So, let's dive in!

What Makes the Ivy League Special?

First things first, let's talk about what sets the Ivy League apart from other universities. The Ivy League is a group of eight prestigious universities in the United States known for their academic excellence, rich history, and selective admissions process. These schools include Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Each Ivy League institution has its own unique culture, strengths, and traditions, but they all share a commitment to providing a world-class education and fostering a diverse and intellectually vibrant community. As such, competition for admission is fierce, with acceptance rates often hovering in the single digits .

Understanding the Ivy League Application Process

Now that you have a sense of what makes the Ivy League special, let's talk about the application process itself. Applying to Ivy League schools involves several key steps, including:

Researching Schools : Take the time to research each Ivy League university to understand their academic programs, campus culture, and admissions requirements. This will help you determine which schools are the best fit for your interests and goals.

Gathering Materials : Most Ivy League schools require applicants to submit standardised test scores (such as the SAT or ACT), high school transcripts, letters of recommendation, and a personal essay. Be sure to gather all necessary materials well in advance of application deadlines.

Crafting Your Application : Your application is your chance to showcase your strengths, experiences, and aspirations to admissions officers. Take the time to craft a compelling personal statement and highlight your achievements in extracurricular activities, leadership roles, and community service.

Submitting Your Application : Once you've completed your application, be sure to review it carefully for any errors or omissions before submitting. Pay close attention to deadlines and submit your application well ahead of time to avoid any last-minute stress.

The Ivy League Application Process: A Step-by-Step Guide

1. personal essay.

The personal essay is a crucial component of your Ivy League application. This is your opportunity to showcase your personality, values, and unique experiences to admissions officers. When writing your personal essay, be authentic and reflective. Share meaningful anecdotes that illustrate who you are and what matters to you. Remember to proofread your essay carefully and seek feedback from teachers or mentors to ensure it's polished and impactful.

U2 Tuition’s Top Tips

Review the structure of the essays carefully to make sure the structure is tightly controlled and that the ideas flow from one paragraph to the next;

Show, don’t tell. Absolutely everyone falls into the trap of telling what they’ve done rather than showing, but it’s better to give examples that create imagery in the readers’ minds. 

2. Supplementary Essays

In addition to the personal essay, many Ivy League schools require supplementary essays that delve deeper into specific aspects of your background, interests, or aspirations. These essays provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate your fit for the institution and your readiness to contribute to its community. Be sure to carefully read and respond to each prompt, tailoring your essays to each school's values and priorities.

U2 Tuition’s Top Tip:

Read the questions very very carefully and be sure that your final essays respond to these . No matter how good or interesting the essay is, if it does not respond in a very focussed way to the question, the essay will not serve the purpose set out by the admissions committee.

When tackling supplementary essays for Ivy League applications, focus on highlighting aspects of your background or experiences that haven't been fully explored in your personal essay or other application materials . Use these essays as an opportunity to showcase different dimensions of your personality, interests, and achievements.

Be specific, authentic, and concise in your responses , and make sure to tailor each essay to the values and priorities of the specific institution you're applying to.

Finally, don't hesitate to seek feedback from teachers, mentors, or peers to ensure your supplementary essays are polished and impactful.

At U2 Tuition, we have a fantastic team of Ivy League-educated tutors who specialise in guiding students through the intricacies of the college application process . Whether you're brainstorming ideas, outlining your essays, or polishing final drafts, our experienced tutors will work closely with you to ensure your essays are compelling, authentic, and reflective of your unique voice and experiences. With their expert guidance and feedback, you'll gain the confidence and clarity needed to make a lasting impression on admissions committees. Get in touch for more information.

3. Admissions Tests

Standardised tests, such as the SAT or ACT, are often a requirement for Ivy League admissions. Additionally, some schools may require or recommend subject-specific tests, such as SAT Subject Tests. It's essential to familiarise yourself with the testing requirements of each school you're applying to and prepare accordingly. Consider taking practice tests, enrolling in test prep courses, or working with a tutor to maximise your scores.

U2 Tuition’s Top Tips:

Test-Optional Policies : Understand the specific test-optional policies of each university. Some universities may genuinely consider applications without test scores equally, while others may still prefer applicants who submit strong test scores. Consider your strengths and weaknesses in standardised testing. If you excel in standardized tests and believe you can achieve high scores, taking the optional admissions tests may strengthen your application.

Develop effective test-taking strategies to maximise your performance. Practise time management techniques to ensure you can complete all sections within the allotted time. Learn how to prioritise questions, eliminate answer choices, and make educated guesses when necessary.

Our team of Ivy League-educated tutors also specialise in providing targeted support to help students prepare for the SATs and ACTs. Whether you're looking to boost your scores in specific subject areas, improve your test-taking strategies, or simply build confidence for test day, our tutors help students create study plans and offer targeted practice sessions to meet your individual needs and goals. They'll work with you to identify your strengths and weaknesses, develop effective study strategies, and track your progress over time.

4. Interviews

While not all Ivy League schools require interviews, some may offer them as part of the admissions process. If offered an interview, seize the opportunity to showcase your personality, enthusiasm, and fit for the institution. Prepare by researching the school, reflecting on your experiences and goals, and practising common interview questions. Remember to dress professionally, maintain eye contact, and express gratitude for the opportunity to interview.

Practise mock interviews with friends, family members, or mentors to simulate the interview experience and receive constructive feedback. Prepare responses to common interview questions, such as "Tell me about yourself," "Why do you want to attend this university?" and "What are your strengths and weaknesses?"

Practise articulating your thoughts clearly and concisely , maintaining good eye contact, and projecting confidence and enthusiasm. Additionally, anticipate potential curveball questions or challenging topics and brainstorm how you would respond. The more you practice, the more comfortable and prepared you'll feel on interview day, increasing your chances of making a positive impression on the admissions committee.

5. Letters of Recommendation

Letters of recommendation provide admissions officers with insights into your academic abilities, character, and potential for success at their institution. Choose recommenders who know you well and can speak to your strengths and achievements. Provide your recommenders with ample time to write thoughtful letters, and consider providing them with a resume or summary of your accomplishments to assist them in crafting their recommendations.

Provide each of your recommenders with a short CV and, if possible, suggest to them what they could highlight in their recommendation.

For example, you could suggest to a teacher that he or she write about your research and writing skills, while another teacher could speak to your contributions to the class.

You should also be sure to check whether these teachers have written US recommendations before. If they haven’t, they could be sent some examples of US recommendations.

Key Ivy League Dates for Your Calendar

To help you stay organised, here are some key dates to remember for the Ivy League application process:

Early Decision/Early Action Deadlines (typically in November): Early Decision (ED) and Early Action (EA) are options for students who have a clear preference for a particular Ivy League school. Early Decision involves a binding commitment to attend if accepted, usually with a deadline in November. Early Action, on the other hand, is non-binding and offers an early response on admission, typically with a deadline also in November.

Regular Decision Deadlines (Usually in January or February) : For those who choose not to apply through the early options, Regular Decision (RD) is the traditional route. The deadlines for Regular Decision applications usually fall in January or early February. It's important to thoroughly research each Ivy League school's specific deadline to ensure timely submission.

Notification Dates (Typically in March or April): After diligent waiting and anticipation, Ivy League schools typically release admission decisions during the spring. Notification dates vary by university, usually falling in late March or early April. Be prepared for the emotional rollercoaster that comes with waiting for these life-changing decisions!

Be sure to check the specific deadlines for each Ivy League school you're applying to, as they may vary slightly.

Navigating the Ivy League application process can be challenging, but with careful planning and preparation, you can position yourself as a strong candidate for admission. By understanding each stage of the process and investing time and effort into crafting a compelling application, you can increase your chances of securing a coveted spot at one of the world's most prestigious universities. So, take a deep breath, stay organized, and trust in yourself as you embark on this exciting journey toward your academic and personal goals. Best of luck!

Looking for an Ivy League Tutor?

Ready to tackle your Ivy League application with confidence? At U2 Tuition, our team of Ivy League tutors is here to support you through every stage of the process. Whether you need help crafting compelling essays, preparing for admissions tests, or acing your interviews, our experienced tutors provide personalised guidance and expertise to help you reach your goals. You can book a complimentary 20 minute initial consultation to learn more about our tutoring services and start your journey to Ivy League success.

Check out our US/Ivy League Admissions page for more information on how we can help.

The Ultimate Guide to the US University Admissions Process

Our ultimate guide to st paul’s school 11 plus (11+) entrance.

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50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays

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I was accepted to Yale. Here's everything I included in my successful Ivy League application.

• I got into Yale University after submitting a successful college application.
• I included my SAT score and high GPA in the application, along with an essay about my culture.
• Ultimately, I tried to highlight all the ways I would be a benefit to the Yale community.

I recently reviewed my Yale admissions file after being a student there for three years. It was strange but enlightening to read what the admissions officers really thought of my application.

Since then, many people have respectfully requested to hear about my stats, extracurriculars , and essays.

I believe that everyone's college application journey is unique and that mine is just one sample, but I equally understand the urge to hear about other people's experiences. I devoured hundreds of college decision reactions on YouTube just three years ago, hoping to find that secret formula.

So, I'm now sharing a deeper look into my college application. But I want to first emphasize that as complicated and stressful as the process of applying to college may be, the best application you can ever show others will be the one you enjoy writing the most. I know I enjoyed every second of writing mine.

My GPA and standardized test scores were important factors in my application

With colleges such as Yale and Dartmouth reinstating standardized testing requirements , the reality is that academics will always be the first line of assessment for admission.

The GPA I submitted to Yale was 98.23/100. An admissions officer commended my GPA in the context of my financially underprivileged upbringing.

I also tried to take the most rigorous workload possible while also prioritizing my mental health , ultimately sending in six AP test scores. My SAT score was 1590.

I credit a lot of my academic achievements to the fact that I surrounded myself with peers who were very serious about their education.

My pre-calculus teacher's recommendation — the one that the admissions team rated higher — emphasized that I held the second highest grade in her class over her 20-year teaching career.

I tried to highlight my passions in my extracurriculars

My activities were a confusing mosaic of interests and impulses, but one that perfectly captured this 17-year-old boy who was still very unsure about who he was and what he wanted.

I researched human visual perception at a local community college , I performed spoken word poetry, and I hit about 80% of the notes in the choir (on a good day).

Related stories

My primary extracurricular, however, was the one I connected with most. At the start of the pandemic, I founded a language-learning program for children called "Spanish Meets You." I used the proceeds I made from the program, which featured tutoring and pen-palling services, to host community giveaways of essential health supplies — such as masks, face shields, and hand sanitizer.

"Spanish Meets You" evolved from my experience growing up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which was predominantly Hispanic and Asian. I loved going to cookouts and finding a diligent spread of both spicy tamales and fried rice. Despite our cultural differences , the two groups were united in our challenges and our respect for each other.

When I submitted my application, I worried that I didn't have a coherent theme for my extracurriculars, nor enough leadership — but based on the admissions team's comments, my genuine passion for one or two activities mattered in the end.

I wanted to capture who I truly am in my college essay

When I started drafting my essay, I knew I wanted to capture what was unextractable from my résumé: my curiosity, thick skin, and mistakes.

I decided to make the topic of my college essay about Chinese New Year, a holiday I celebrated with my 14 floormates in this tiny Brooklyn apartment building that we all called home for two decades. Every year, I would wait for my father by the door with mandarins, only to be disappointed by his absence.

Ultimately, however, I learned to enjoy this holiday — even if my celebration was unorthodox. My 14 floormates and I are unrelated by blood, but I remember we would gather over food every holiday, tell stories, and play a game of JENGA. Their laughter still ricochets in my ears hundreds of miles away as I now sit in my college dorm room , wrapping up my junior year.

I tried not to overthink the other essay questions

I would jot down whatever came to mind in the first 30 seconds, asking myself: "How would 7-year-old Brian answer this?"

Whenever I took too long to craft a response, it was a sign that I was probably sacrificing genuineness to make a false good impression.

One of the essays asked about my favorite intellectual concept. Instead of showing off by detailing some obscure scientific theory, I moved forward with writing about the diversity of motherhood in the animal kingdom, tying it back to my close relationship with my own mother.

My application was focused on proving how I would fit into the Yale community

Colleges are searching for those who will enrich the lives of their peers in different ways.

Therefore, in my application, I tried to highlight all the parts of me that would prove to Yale I would benefit their campus and their students. In doing so, I was accepted and met students doing just that.

One of my friends, for instance, is studying law. She also loves to rap and surprise her friends with midnight ice cream. Another is a science journalist who gives the best dating advice .

I would say Yale wouldn't be home even if one of them were missing. Everyone is here; everyone ends up where they are.

For students applying to Ivy League schools , I implore you to tell your dynamic, unique story — to think about how your rhythm will fold into a community's song.

• Main content

I was accepted to Yale. Here’s everything I included in my successful Ivy League application.

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• Environment

I recently reviewed my Yale admissions file after being a student there for three years. It was strange but enlightening to read what the admissions officers really thought of my application.

Since then, many people have respectfully requested to hear about my stats, extracurriculars , and essays.

I believe that everyone’s college application journey is unique and that mine is just one sample, but I equally understand the urge to hear about other people’s experiences. I devoured hundreds of college decision reactions on YouTube just three years ago, hoping to find that secret formula.

So, I’m now sharing a deeper look into my college application. But I want to first emphasize that as complicated and stressful as the process of applying to college may be, the best application you can ever show others will be the one you enjoy writing the most. I know I enjoyed every second of writing mine.

My GPA and standardized test scores were important factors in my application

With colleges such as Yale and Dartmouth reinstating standardized testing requirements , the reality is that academics will always be the first line of assessment for admission.

The GPA I submitted to Yale was 98.23/100. An admissions officer commended my GPA in the context of my financially underprivileged upbringing.

I also tried to take the most rigorous workload possible while also prioritizing my mental health , ultimately sending in six AP test scores. My SAT score was 1590.

I credit a lot of my academic achievements to the fact that I surrounded myself with peers who were very serious about their education.

My pre-calculus teacher’s recommendation — the one that the admissions team rated higher — emphasized that I held the second highest grade in her class over her 20-year teaching career.

I tried to highlight my passions in my extracurriculars

My activities were a confusing mosaic of interests and impulses, but one that perfectly captured this 17-year-old boy who was still very unsure about who he was and what he wanted.

I researched human visual perception at a local community college , I performed spoken word poetry, and I hit about 80% of the notes in the choir (on a good day).

My primary extracurricular, however, was the one I connected with most. At the start of the pandemic, I founded a language-learning program for children called “Spanish Meets You.” I used the proceeds I made from the program, which featured tutoring and pen-palling services, to host community giveaways of essential health supplies — such as masks, face shields, and hand sanitizer.

“Spanish Meets You” evolved from my experience growing up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which was predominantly Hispanic and Asian. I loved going to cookouts and finding a diligent spread of both spicy tamales and fried rice. Despite our cultural differences , the two groups were united in our challenges and our respect for each other.

When I submitted my application, I worried that I didn’t have a coherent theme for my extracurriculars, nor enough leadership — but based on the admissions team’s comments, my genuine passion for one or two activities mattered in the end.

I wanted to capture who I truly am in my college essay

When I started drafting my essay, I knew I wanted to capture what was unextractable from my résumé: my curiosity, thick skin, and mistakes.

I decided to make the topic of my college essay about Chinese New Year, a holiday I celebrated with my 14 floormates in this tiny Brooklyn apartment building that we all called home for two decades. Every year, I would wait for my father by the door with mandarins, only to be disappointed by his absence.

Ultimately, however, I learned to enjoy this holiday — even if my celebration was unorthodox. My 14 floormates and I are unrelated by blood, but I remember we would gather over food every holiday, tell stories, and play a game of JENGA. Their laughter still ricochets in my ears hundreds of miles away as I now sit in my college dorm room , wrapping up my junior year.

I tried not to overthink the other essay questions

I would jot down whatever came to mind in the first 30 seconds, asking myself: “How would 7-year-old Brian answer this?”

Whenever I took too long to craft a response, it was a sign that I was probably sacrificing genuineness to make a false good impression.

One of the essays asked about my favorite intellectual concept. Instead of showing off by detailing some obscure scientific theory, I moved forward with writing about the diversity of motherhood in the animal kingdom, tying it back to my close relationship with my own mother.

My application was focused on proving how I would fit into the Yale community

Colleges are searching for those who will enrich the lives of their peers in different ways.

Therefore, in my application, I tried to highlight all the parts of me that would prove to Yale I would benefit their campus and their students. In doing so, I was accepted and met students doing just that.

One of my friends, for instance, is studying law. She also loves to rap and surprise her friends with midnight ice cream. Another is a science journalist who gives the best dating advice .

I would say Yale wouldn’t be home even if one of them were missing. Everyone is here; everyone ends up where they are.

For students applying to Ivy League schools , I implore you to tell your dynamic, unique story — to think about how your rhythm will fold into a community’s song.

The post I was accepted to Yale. Here’s everything I included in my successful Ivy League application. appeared first on Business Insider .

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May 9, 2024

How to Get Into Harvard University: The Ultimate Harvard Admissions Guide

Maybe you’ve watched one of the many “how to get into Harvard ” movies out there, and felt inspired to throw your hat in the ring. Maybe you’ve simply heard about Harvard’s reputation for excellence and prestige, and set your sights on the Ivy League university. Many try and fail to achieve admission into Harvard, which ranked #3 on the  2024 US News & World Report  annual college ranking. What sets apart those chosen few who make it through the Crimson gates?

What Is Harvard University?

Located just outside Boston in scenic Cambridge, MA, Harvard College consists of a student body with 7,240 undergraduates. According to the  2022-23 Common Data Set , 3,471 full-time undergraduate males and 3,735 undergraduate females are currently enrolled.  The Class of 2027 profile  reveals that 15.4% of current first-years come from outside of the United States, and 15.9% come from within New England. As far as the intended field of study, 16% say they will concentrate in the humanities, 28.2% in the social sciences, and 49.2% in STEM.

How to Get Into Harvard University

Harvard admissions requirements.

Getting into Harvard is no small feat. Every year, countless students with perfect grades and test scores face rejection. But all hope is not lost. By reviewing the characteristics of competitive applicants, and the strategies they use to gain admission, a clearer picture of how to get in emerges.

Harvard GPA Requirements

The Harvard College Office of Admissions and Financial Aid states that they conduct a “ Whole Person Review ” of applications that evaluates each applicant “in context.” This is a fancy way of saying that there is no minimum GPA or testing requirement, as academic performance is just one of several dimensions that are evaluated. However, Harvard still values students who have challenged themselves by taking the most rigorous coursework available to them. 

Does Harvard Look at Class Rank?

According to the 2022-23 Common Data Set, 74.3% of enrollees in the Class of 2027 had a 4.0 GPA in high school. 20.47% had a GPA between 3.75 and 3.99, and 4.04% had a GPA between 3.5 and 3.74. 92.2% of enrollees graduated in the top tenth of their high school class, and 97.6% graduated in the top quarter. The average weighted high school GPA for a student admitted to the Class of 2027 was 4.2.

Is a 4.0 (or higher) necessary to be admitted to Harvard?  Not necessarily , but it sure does help!

Harvard SAT/ACT Score Requirements

Harvard  recently announced  that SAT/ACT testing requirements have been reinstated for the upcoming application cycle. Students will be required to submit either an SAT or an ACT score.

Amongst members of the Harvard Class of 2027, 55% submitted SAT scores and 28% submitted ACT scores. 

Does Harvard Superscore Students’ SAT or ACT scores?

A  superscore  combines the highest section scores from each individual test sitting for admissions evaluation. Harvard  does not  superscore test results. However, they “ note ” the highest test scores from each sitting.

At  Ivy Coach , we caution against submitting more than one test administration for admissions evaluation. It shows Harvard that you had to work harder than many to achieve your highest scores, and that your testing performance has inconsistencies. That said, while it’s not ideal, sometimes students have no choice but to superscore.

What High School Courses Does Harvard Require?

Harvard recommends the following  high school curriculum  to prepare for the academic rigor of the College:

• “ The study of English for four years: close and extensive reading of the classics of the world’s literature
• Four years of a single foreign language
• The study of history for at least two years, and preferably three years: American history, European history, and one additional advanced history course
• The study of mathematics for four years.
• The study of science for four years: physics, chemistry, and biology, and preferably one of these at an advanced level
• Frequent practice in the writing of expository prose ”

It is not advisable to take history (or any core subject, for that matter) for fewer than four years. Highly selective institutions across America look for students who have excelled in their core subjects for all four years of high school. What’s more, foreign language study should begin by eighth grade.

What Extracurriculars Does Harvard Look For in Applicants?

There is no silver bullet extracurricular activity that will automatically wow Harvard admissions officers. Applicants should focus their efforts on pursuing their one passion or speciality to the fullest extent possible. Harvard prizes such “ well-lopsided ” students who “contribute significantly to the education of their classmates.”

Harvard admissions officers build incoming classes that are “dynamic, talented, and diverse.”  Well-rounded  students  do not cut it , because they do not contribute much to the variety of an incoming class. The world-class painter, groundbreaking scientist, or budding politician, on the other hand, will always stand out over the well-rounded applicant.

Harvard University Application Requirements

Harvard accepts both The Common Application  and the  Coalition Application . Students must submit a counselor letter of recommendation, two teacher letters of recommendation, their standardized test results, and Harvard-specific supplemental essay responses. 

Let’s focus on each individual component and discuss how students should complete them to give them the best shot of admission.

Who to Ask For Letters of Recommendation

Applicants to Harvard should ask two teachers — ideally two junior year teachers in core subjects — in addition to their school counselor for letters of recommendation.

Does Harvard Require an Alumni Interview?

No, any interviews conducted with Harvard alumni are  at the discretion of the admissions committee . Students will only be assigned to interview with a Harvard alum if they live in a designated interview area. Across all highly selective colleges, the interview component of any given application is one of the least important aspects.

What are Harvard’s Supplemental Essay Topics?

Essays, on the other hand, are one of the most important aspects of a competitive college application. In addition to The Common Application Personal Statement or the Coalition essay, Harvard applicants have to complete the Harvard supplemental essay questions, a.k.a. “The Harvard Questions.” 

The Harvard Questions  are as follows:

“Each question has a 200 word limit. 

• Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?
• Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you. 
• Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are.
• How do you hope to use your Harvard education in the future?
• Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you.”

Harvard University Application Deadlines

Harvard’s two admissions rounds are termed Restrictive Early Action and Regular Decision. 

Restrictive Early Action applications are due on November 1st of each year. Admission through this round is non-binding. Regular Decision applications are due on January 1st of each year. 

Harvard University Acceptance Rate and Statistics

The competitiveness of Harvard admission is notorious across the world, but just  how  competitive is the process? For admission to the Class of 2027, 56,937 students applied, and 1,966 were accepted, for a 3.5% overall acceptance rate.

How Much Does Harvard University Cost?

In the 2024-25 academic year, the  full cost of attendance  for undergraduates at Harvard will be $82,866, which breaks down as follows: 

• Tuition: $56,550
• Health Services: $1,592
• Housing Rate: $12,922
• Student Services: $3,534
• Food Rate: $8,268

How Ivy Coach Helps Students Get Into Harvard

We at Ivy Coach are not daunted by the Harvard hype. We know what they’re looking for, and it shows! 93% of Ivy Coach’s package clients earned admission in Harvard’s Early Action round over the past five years. 

If you’re interested in Ivy Coach’s assistance in optimizing your child’s case for admission to Harvard, fill out our  complimentary consultation form , and we’ll be in touch.

You are permitted to use www.ivycoach.com (including the content of the Blog) for your personal, non-commercial use only. You must not copy, download, print, or otherwise distribute the content on our site without the prior written consent of Ivy Coach, Inc.

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Reflection: Dartmouth Essays That Worked

One writer looks back on her admissions process in light of the dartmouth’s new book, “50 dartmouth application essays that worked.”.

Five years ago, I began my Common Application essay with the following sentence: “To quote Ferris Bueller, ‘Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.’ I don’t intend to miss my life.” Half a decade later, those words still ring true. 

Any college was taking a chance when they admitted a girl who quoted a film famous for encouraging students to play hooky. Not only did I open with this line, I hammered the point home as I described my disillusionment with valuing academic learning over personal experience — I was done running on the high school hamster wheel. When people ask me what essay got me into Dartmouth, I usually respond, “An essay about having a really fun summer.” While those words are true, there’s a deeper moral to the story — as incredible as Dartmouth’s academic resources are, and as academically rigorous as my high school had been, I wanted to learn outside of the classroom, to learn by doing, to learn from my friends. “As much as I value my academic identity and as far as my passion for learning goes, my interpersonal relationships teach me just as much,” I wrote.

I was honestly surprised when Dartmouth accepted me in April 2020. I had been deferred early decision, and the last student who had gotten into Dartmouth from my public Florida high school was a cross-country recruit in 2016. Like tens of thousands of high school seniors, I had the grades, test scores and extracurriculars, but I was full of self-doubt. I was also completely burnt out. Was I really “Ivy League material”? I certainly didn’t feel it. Looking over my statistics, I was just another data point. Not Ellie Anderson, but applicant 8,677. 

My “Why Dartmouth?”  and supplement essays allowed me to make my case. I crafted three versions of the former, and I could have kept going. I labored over my words carefully, drafting response after response, but it was challenging only having 250 words to respond, in some form, to a prompt that every Dartmouth applicant has read: “It is, Sir … a small college. And yet, there are those who love it!” Other than the encouraging words and flamboyant edits from my high school English teacher, I didn’t know if they were any good. Where to begin …

I would have loved to understand what makes an admissions essay compelling when I was in the throes of applying to college. Recently, The Dartmouth published “50 Dartmouth Application Essays That Worked,” a compilation of successful admissions essays. Looking through this collection, I felt like I was stepping back into my 17-year-old self. The selection includes essays featuring many of the qualities Dartmouth seems to be looking for in its students, or at least those I’ve found in my friends: compassion, curiosity, humility and a collaborative spirit. 

The book opens with essays about environment and nature before progressing to the expected categories: academic interest, arts, heritage, identity, sports and, of course, “miscellaneous.” 

A few stories grabbed me for their honesty, especially one that begins, “I have a complicated relationship with the truth.” I was hooked — it was real and raw. Her father suffers from bipolar disorder even though, to the outside world, nothing appears to be wrong. She has a secret too — she’s seeing a girl. How is one supposed to apply to college when their entire world is being torn apart, “standing in the middle of the bridge and setting fire to both ends,” as she says. But she learns a valuable lesson — to live her own truth, not anyone else’s. 

When I was applying to colleges, I was given the following advice: “Don’t make your admissions essay a sob story.” But this essay certainly isn’t a pity party, which proves you can be honest and address your difficulties in the span of a few hundred words. These kinds of essays instead place their writers’ most beautiful strengths and flaws on full display.

Another such essay begins, “My feet live in infamy.” Yes, you can write your Common Application essay about your gnarled and calloused feet. Although the story begins with an anecdote of “ugly” feet, it becomes so much more — a toe-centric reflection. As the writer’s skin became thicker, she found her voice as well. She comes out of her shell in high school, learning to speak up after several tumultuous adolescent years as an introvert. By the end, she’s finally ready to bear her infamous feet and use her voice.

A deep current of intellectual curiosity runs across the essays, too. I laughed when I read a story about an applicant playing Super Mario Bros on a childhood road trip. The writer makes an in-game blunder, sending Mario hurdling into a turtle. “It was then that the terrible realization that curled my six-year-old toes hit me: Mario would return to play again, but when I die, I will not,” they said. What could have been a decade-long existential spiral instead drove the writer to philosophy and math, where they found solace in understanding the world rather than cowering at the unknown. 

These writers are brave — both for sharing their stories to the black-box admissions panel and for allowing us readers a peek years later. On a campus where we often interact in passing “Hey, what’s up”-isms, reading the diverse selection of essays has grounded me once more in an understanding of what makes Dartmouth, Dartmouth. Students here are radically courageous in their quests for knowledge, acts of kindness and pursuits of greatness. In these essays, 650 words no longer looks limiting but becomes the etchings of a beautiful cohort.

After re-reading my own essay alongside those published, it struck me. As a 17-year-old sending off a piece of yourself to a nebulous online portal, it can be difficult to envision your future — your story is a moment in time caught in between all that you’ve been and all that you hope to become. I’m asking myself this question again as I look forward to my senior year at Dartmouth and re-read my ambitions and fears from the essay I penned in 2019. It’s been a lot of laughing at my naïvete, cringing at a heavy-handed application of adjectives and finding pride in my values.

Not only is this book a tool for Dartmouth applicants, but it’s a time capsule from the Class of 2023 to the Class of 2026, whose essays are included. This is who we were at 17. Looking back at my essay, so much has changed between now and then. How could it have not? But I see the seeds of who I’ve become in my essay, like an incantation: “I learn to understand others and to understand myself.”

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TTLG: Having the Final Word

Campus encampments live updates: protests yield mass arrests, college clarifies stance on professor annelise orleck’s arrest, dsg fails vote of no confidence in college leadership, beilock: college president apologizes for community harm, letter to the editor: we dartmouth faculty members support the recent actions by college president sian leah beilock.

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Opinion Guest Essay

This Is Peak College Admissions Insanity

Credit... Illustrations by Pete Gamlen

Supported by

By Daniel Currell

Mr. Currell, a lawyer and consultant, was a deputy under secretary and senior adviser at the Department of Education from 2018 to 2021. He is a trustee of Gustavus Adolphus College.

• May 1, 2024

Selective college admissions have been a vortex of anxiety and stress for what seems like forever, inducing panic in more top high school seniors each year. But the 2023-24 admissions season was not just an incremental increase in the frantic posturing and high-pressure guesswork that make this annual ritual seem like academic Hunger Games. This year was different. A number of factors — some widely discussed, some little noticed — combined to push the process into a new realm in which the old rules didn’t apply and even the gatekeepers seemed not to know what the new rules were.

It happened, as these things often do, first gradually and then all at once.

It started with a precipitous rise in the number of people clamoring to get in. The so-called Ivy-Plus schools — the eight members of the Ivy League plus M.I.T., Duke, Chicago and Stanford — collectively received about 175,000 applications in 2002. In 2022, the most recent year for which totals are available, they got more than 590,000, with only a few thousand more available spots.

The quality of the applicants has risen also. In 2002, the nation produced 134 perfect ACT scores ; in 2023 there were 2,542 . Over the same period, the United States — and beyond it, the world — welcomed a great many more families into the ranks of the wealthy, who are by far the most likely to attend an elite college. Something had to give.

The first cracks appeared around the rules that had long governed the process and kept it civilized, obligating colleges to operate on the same calendar and to give students time to consider all offers before committing. A legal challenge swept the rules away, freeing the most powerful schools to do pretty much whatever they wanted.

One clear result was a drastic escalation in the formerly niche admissions practice known as early decision.

Then Covid swept through, forcing colleges to let students apply without standardized test scores — which, as the university consultant Ben Kennedy says, “tripled the number of kids who said to themselves, ‘Hey, I’ve got a shot at admission there.’” More applications, more market power for the schools and, for the students, an ever smaller chance of getting in.

Last year, the Supreme Court’s historic decision ending race-based affirmative action left colleges scrambling for new ways to preserve diversity and students groping in the dark to figure out what schools wanted.

Finally, this year the whole financial aid system exploded into spectacular disarray. Now, a month after most schools sent out the final round of acceptances, many students still don’t have the information they need to determine if they can afford college. Some will delay attending, and some will forgo it entirely, an outcome that will have lasting implications for them and, down the line, for the economy as a whole.

These disparate changes had one crucial thing in common: Almost all of them strengthened the hand of highly selective colleges, allowing them to push applicants into more constricted choices with less information and less leverage. The result is that elite admissions offices, which have always tried to reduce the uncertainty in each new year’s decisions, are now using their market power to all but eliminate it. This means taking no chances in pursuit of a high yield, the status-bestowing percentage of admitted students who enroll. But low uncertainty for elite colleges means the opposite for applicants — especially if they can’t pay the full tuition rate.

Canh Oxelson, the executive director of college counseling at the Horace Mann School in New York, says: “This is as much uncertainty as we’ve ever seen. Affirmative action, the FAFSA debacle, test-optionality — it has shown itself in this one particular year. Colleges want certainty, and they are getting more. Families want certainty and they are getting less.”

In 2024, the only applicants who could be certain of an advantage were those whose parents had taken the wise precaution of being rich.

The Early Bird Gets the Dorm

For Ivy Wydler, an elite college seemed like an obvious destination, and many of her classmates at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School in Washington, D.C., were headed along the same trajectory. After her sophomore year of high school, she took the ACT and got a perfect score — on her first try, a true rarity. Her grades were stellar. So she set her sights high, favoring “medium to big schools, and not too cold.”

Touring campuses, she was dazzled by how great and exciting it all seemed. Then she visited Duke, and something clicked. She applied in the binding early decision round.

It’s a consequential choice. Students can do so at only one college, and they have to promise to attend if accepted, before knowing what the school’s financial aid offer will be. That means there is at least a chance an applicant will be on the hook for the full cost, which at Duke is $86,886 for the 2024-25 year. Students couldn’t be legally compelled to attend if they couldn’t afford it, but by the time they got the news, they would have already had to withdraw their other applications.

If full tuition isn’t a deal killer, as it wouldn’t be for Ivy’s family, the rewards are considerable. This year, just over 54,000 high school seniors vied to be one of only 1,750 members of Duke’s incoming class. The 6,000 who applied in the early decision round were three times as likely to get in as the 48,000 who applied later.

Until recently, early decision was a narrow pathway — an outlier governed, like the rest of this annual academic mating season, by a set of mandatory practices laid out by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which is made up of college admissions officers and high school counselors. Those rules said, for example, that colleges couldn’t recruit a student who was already committed to another school or actively encourage someone to transfer. Crucially, the rules said that colleges needed to give students until May 1 to decide among offers (noting early decision, which begins and ends in the fall, as a “recognized exception”).

The Justice Department thought those rules ran afoul of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which bars powerful industries from colluding to restrain competition. At the end of 2019, NACAC agreed to a settlement mandating that the organization “promptly abolish” several of the rules and downgrade the rest to voluntary guidelines. Now, if they chose to, colleges had license to lure students with special offers or benefits, to aggressively poach students at other schools and to tear up the traditional admissions calendar.

At that point, nothing restrained colleges from going all in on early decision, a strategy that allows them to lock in students early without making any particular commitments about financial aid. Of the 735 first-year students that Middlebury College enrolled last year, for example, 516 were admitted via binding early decision. Some schools have a second round of early decision, and even what amounts to an unofficial third round — along with an array of other application pathways, each with its own terms and conditions.

With the rules now abandoned, colleges got a whole new bag of tricks. For example, a school might call — at any time in the process — with a one-time offer of admission if you can commit on the spot to attend and let go of all other prospects. Hesitate and it’s gone, along with your chances in subsequent rounds. “We hear about colleges that are putting pressure on high school seniors to send in a deposit sooner to get better courses or housing options,” says Sara Harberson, the founder of Application Nation, a college advising service.

To inform these maneuvers, colleges lean on consultants who analyze applicant demographics, qualifications, financial status and more, using econometric models. High school seniors think this is checkers, but the schools know it’s chess. This has all become terrifying for students, who are first-time players in a game their opponents invented.

Application season can be particularly intimidating for students who, unlike Ivy, did not grow up on the elite college conveyor belt. When Rania Khan, a senior in Gorton High School in Yonkers, N.Y., was in middle school, she and her mother spent two years in a shelter near Times Square. Since then she and her younger brother have been in the foster system. Despite these challenges, she has been a superb student. In ninth grade, Rania got an internship at Google and joined a research team at Regeneron, a biotechnology company. She won a national award for her study of how sewage treatment chemicals affect river ecosystems. Looking at colleges, she saw that her scores and credentials matched with those of students at the very top schools in the country.

One of the schools she was most drawn to was Barnard. “I like that it’s both a small college and” — because it’s part of Columbia — “a big university. There are a lot of resources, and it’s a positive environment for women,” she said. And it would keep her close to her little brother.

Barnard now fills around 60 percent of its incoming class in the early decision round, giving those students a massive admissions advantage. It would have been an obvious option for Rania, but she can’t take any chances financially. She applied via the general decision pool, when instead of having a one in three chance, her odds were one in 20.

Officially, anyone can apply for early decision. In practice it’s priority boarding for first-class passengers.

Unstandardized Testing

When selective colleges suspended the requirement for standardized testing, it didn’t really seem like a choice; because of the pandemic, a great many students simply couldn’t take the tests. The implications, however, went far beyond mere plague-year logistics.

The SAT was rolled out in 1926 as an objective measure of students’ ability, absent the cultural biases that had so strongly informed college admissions before then. It’s been the subject of debate almost ever since. In 1980, Ralph Nader published a study alleging that the standardized testing regimen actually reinforced racial and gender bias and favored people who could afford expensive test prep. Many educators have come back around to regarding the tests as a good predictor of academic success, but the matter is far from settled.

Remarkably, students still take the exams in the same numbers as before the pandemic, but far fewer disclose what they got. Cindy Zarzuela, an adviser with the nonprofit Yonkers Partners in Education who works with Rania and about 90 other students, said all her students took the SAT this year. None of them sent their scores to colleges.

These days, Cornell, for example, admits roughly 40 percent of its incoming class without a test score. At schools like the University of Wisconsin or the University of Connecticut , the percentage is even higher. In California, schools rarely accept scores at all, being in many cases not only test-optional, but also “test-blind.”

The high-water mark of test-optionality, however, was also its undoing.

Applicants tended to submit their scores only if they were above the school’s reported median, a pattern that causes that median to be recalibrated higher and higher each year. When Cornell went test-optional, its 25th percentile score on the math SAT jumped from 720 to 750. Then it went to 760. The ceiling is 800, so standardized tests had begun to morph from a system of gradients into a yes/no question: Did you get a perfect score? If not, don’t mention it.

The irony, however, was that in the search for a diverse student body, many elite colleges view strong-but-not-stellar test scores as proof that a student from an underprivileged background could do well despite lacking the advantages of the kids from big suburban high schools and fancy prep schools. Without those scores, it might be harder to make the case .

Multiply that across the board, and the result was that test-optional policies made admission to an elite school less likely for some diverse or disadvantaged applicants. Georgetown and M.I.T. were first to reinstate test score requirements, and so far this year Harvard, Yale, Brown, Caltech, Dartmouth and Cornell have announced that they will follow. There may be more to come.

The Power of No

On Dec. 14, Ivy got an answer from Duke: She was rejected.

She was in extremely good company. It’s been a while since top students could assume they’d get into top schools, but today they get rejected more often than not. It even happens at places like Northeastern, a school now ranked 53rd in the nation by U.S. News & World Report — and not long ago, more than 100 slots lower than that. It spends less per student on instruction than the Boston public schools .

“There’s no target school anymore and no safety school,” says Stef Mauler , a private admissions coach in Texas. “You have to have a strategy for every school you apply to.”

Northeastern was one of the 18 other schools Ivy applied to, carefully sifting through various deadlines and conditions, mapping out her strategy. With Duke out of the picture, her thoughts kept returning to one of them in particular: Dartmouth, her father’s alma mater. “My mom said, ‘Ivy, you love New Hampshire. Look at Dartmouth.’ She was right.” She had wanted to go someplace warm, but the idea of cold weather seemed to be bothering her less and less.

Meanwhile Rania watched as early decision day came and went, and thousands of high school seniors across the country got the best news of their lives. For Rania, it was just another Friday.

A Free Market in Financial Aid

In 2003, a consortium of about 20 elite colleges agreed to follow a shared formula for financial aid, to ensure that they were competing for students on the merits, not on mere dollars and cents. It sounds civilized, but pricing agreements are generally illegal for commercial ventures. (Imagine if car companies agreed not to underbid each other.) The colleges believed they were exempt from that prohibition, however, because they practiced “ need-blind ” admissions, meaning they don’t discriminate based on a student’s ability to pay.

In 2022, nine current and former students from an array of prestigious colleges filed a class-action antitrust lawsuit — later backed by the Justice Department — arguing that the consortium’s gentlemanly agreement was depriving applicants of the benefits of a free market. And to defang the defense, they produced a brilliant argument: No, these wealthy colleges didn’t discriminate against students who were poor, but they sure did discriminate in favor of students who were rich. They favored the children of alumni and devoted whole development offices to luring the kinds of ultrarich families that affix their names to shiny new buildings. It worked: Early this year, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Emory and Yale joined the University of Chicago in conceding , and paying out a nine-figure settlement. (They deny any wrongdoing.) Several other schools are playing on, but the consortium and its rules have evaporated.

This set schools free to undercut one another on price in order to get their preferred students. It also gave the schools a further incentive to push for early decision, when students don’t have the ability to compare offers.

For almost anyone seeking financial aid, from the most sought-after first-round pick to the kid who just slid under the wire, the first step remained the same: They had to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, or FAFSA.

As anyone knows who’s been through it — or looked into the glassy eyes of someone else who has — applying for financial aid can be torture at the best of times. This year was the worst of times, because FAFSA was broken. The form, used by the government to determine who qualifies for federal grants or student loans, and by many colleges to determine their in-house financial aid, had gotten a much-needed overhaul. But the new version didn’t work , causing endless frustration for many families, and convincing many others not even to bother. At mid-April, finished FAFSA applications were down 29 percent compared with last year.

“The FAFSA catastrophe is bigger than people realize,” says Casey Sacks , a former U.S. Department of Education official and now the president of BridgeValley Community and Technical College in West Virginia, where 70 percent of students receive federal funds.

Abigail Garcia , Rania’s classmate and the 2024 valedictorian of their school, applied to in-state public colleges as well as Ivies. She couldn’t complete the FAFSA, however, because it rejected her parents’ information, the most common glitch. She has financial aid offers from elite schools, all of which use a private alternative to the government form, but she can’t weigh them against the public institutions, because they are so severely delayed.

For most students, 2024’s FAFSA crisis looks set to take the uncertainty that began last fall and drag it into the summer or beyond. “That’s going to reduce the work force in two to four years.” Ms. Sacks says. “FAFSA completions are a pretty good leading indicator of how many people will be able to start doing the kinds of jobs that are in highest demand — registered nurses, manufacturing engineers, those kinds of jobs.”

As the FAFSA problem rolls on, it could be that for the system as a whole, the worst is still to come.

Can Any of This Be Fixed?

On the numbers, elite college applicants’ problems are a footnote to the story of college access. The Ivy-Plus schools enroll less than 1 percent of America’s roughly 15 million undergraduates . If you expand the pool to include all colleges that are selective enough to accept less than a quarter of applicants, we’re still talking about only 6 percent of undergraduates. The easiest way to alleviate the traffic jam at the top is to shift our cultural focus toward the hundreds of schools that offer an excellent education but are not luxury brands.

Luxury brand schools, however, have real power. In 2023, 15 of 32 Rhodes scholars came from the Ivies, nine from Harvard alone. Twenty of this year’s 38 Supreme Court clerks came from Harvard or Yale. If elite colleges’ selection process is broken, what should we do to fix it?

Here’s what we can’t do: Let them go off and agree on their own solution. Antitrust law exists to prevent dominant players from setting their own rules to the detriment of consumers and competitors.

Here’s what we won’t do: Legislate national rules that govern admissions. Our systems are decentralized and it would take a miracle for Congress not to make things worse.

But here’s what we can do: Hold the schools accountable for their processes and their decisions.

Institutions that receive federal funds — which include all elite colleges — should be required to clearly state their admissions criteria. Admissions as currently practiced are designed to let schools whose budgets run on billions of taxpayers dollars do whatever they want. Consider Stanford’s guidance to applicants: “In a holistic review, we seek to understand how you, as a whole person, would grow, contribute and thrive at Stanford, and how Stanford would, in turn, be changed by you.” This perfectly encapsulates the current system, because it is meaningless.

Colleges should also not be allowed to make anyone decide whether to attend without knowing what it will actually cost, and they should not be allowed to offer better odds to those who forgo that information. They should not offer admissions pathways tilted to favor the rich, any more than they should offer pathways favoring people who are white.

It just shouldn’t be this hard. Really.

The Envelope Please …

Ivy has the highest academic qualifications available inside the conventional system, and her family can pay full tuition. Once upon a time, she would have had her pick of top colleges. Not this year.

Over the course of the whole crazy admissions season, the school she had come to care about most was Dartmouth.

Along with the other seven Ivies, Dartmouth released this year’s admissions decisions online on March 28, at 7 p.m. Eastern. Ivy was traveling that day, and as the moment approached, she said, “I was on the bed in my hotel room, just repeating, ‘People love me for who I am, not what I do. People love me for who I am, not what I do.’”

She was rejected by Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Columbia and the University of Southern California, where Operation Varsity Blues shenanigans could once guarantee acceptance but, as Ivy discovered, a perfect score on the ACT will not. She landed on the wait list at Northeastern. She was accepted by Michigan and Johns Hopkins. And Ivy was accepted at both her parents’ alma maters: the University of Virginia and Dartmouth, where she will start in September.

For Rania, the star student with an extraordinary story of personal resilience, the news was not so good. At Barnard, she was remanded to the wait list. Last year only 4 percent of students in that position were eventually let in. N.Y.U. and the City University of New York’s medical college put her on the wait list, too.

A spot on a wait list tells applicants that they were good enough to get in. By the time Rania applied to these schools, there just wasn’t any room. “It was definitely a shock,” she said. “What was I missing? They just ran out of space — there are so many people trying to get into these places. It took two weeks to adjust to it.”

She did get lots of other good news, a sheaf of acceptances from schools like Fordham and the University at Albany. But then came the hardest question of all: How to pay for them? Some offered her a financial aid package that would leave her on the hook for more money than undergraduates are allowed to take out in federal student loans. Even now, some colleges haven’t been able to provide her with financial aid information at all.

Rania had all but settled on Hunter College, part of the City University system. It’s an excellent school, but a world away from the elite colleges she was thinking about when she started her search. Then at almost the last moment, Wesleyan came through with a full ride and even threw in some extra for expenses. Rania accepted, gratefully.

For Rania, the whole painful roller coaster of a year was over. For so many other high school seniors, the year of broken college admissions continues.

Daniel Currell, a lawyer and consultant, was a deputy under secretary and senior adviser at the Department of Education from 2018 to 2021. He is a trustee of Gustavus Adolphus College.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Here’s How Ivy League Schools Evaluate Student GPAs

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One of the main gates on the Brown University campus, decorated with the University crest. (Photo by ... [+] Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images)

A stellar GPA is one of the building blocks of a successful Ivy League application, and as the school year winds down, many students are anxiously seeking to give theirs a final boost. While most students and families understand the importance of a 4.0, few are aware of how top colleges evaluate student GPAs or what they look for when reviewing student transcripts. Though your GPA may seem to be a simple metric, nothing could be further from the case—colleges consider more than just the number, accounting for complexities such as diverse grading systems across schools, trends in grade inflation, and level of course rigor.

Here are three important facts to keep in mind about your GPA as you choose your courses:

1. Your GPA isn’t directly comparable to GPAs of students at other schools.

One common misconception among college applicants is that they can compare their GPAs with those of students attending different schools. However, the GPA is not a universal metric but rather a reflection of an individual's academic performance within their specific educational environment. As a result, comparing GPAs from different schools is like comparing apples and oranges. For instance, some schools offer a plethora of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and honors courses, while others may have limited options or offer none at all. Additionally, the weight assigned to AP versus honors versus regular classes varies from school to school. So, your GPA may not hold the same weight as those of your peers at different schools, even if you all have 4.0s.

Admissions officers understand that schools vary in their rigor, curriculum, and grading policies. Therefore, they evaluate your GPA in the context of your high school, considering the courses offered and the academic challenges presented. Instead of fixating on how your GPA compares to your friends’ from other schools, focus on challenging yourself and taking advantage of all the opportunities available to you at your school.

2. GPAs across the country are inflated—and colleges know it.

The last few years have seen surges in high school student GPAs nationwide. While GPA inflation has been on the rise over the last decade, average ACT composite scores are steadily declining. “For the 1.4 million ACT test-takers in the high school class of 2023, the average composite score on the exam was 19.5 out of 36, the lowest score since 1991,” according to The New York Times New York Times . The parallel differences, coupled with academic differences across schools, suggest that GPA must be considered in tandem with multiple other factors. Simply put, an A no longer means what it used to on a transcript.

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Ivy League schools and other top colleges are well aware of this trend and evaluate student GPAs alongside other metrics such as standardized test scores and AP exam scores in order to better understand a student’s academic skill sets. While some Ivy League and other top schools remain test-optional , they still emphasize course rigor and the context from your high school profile to understand the grades on your transcript.

3. Colleges will recalculate your GPA.

Given the abundance of variables in GPA calculations, colleges often recalculate the metric to create a standardized baseline for comparison between students across different schools. The recalibration may involve adjusting for variations in grading scales or the weighting of honors, IB or AP courses. The University of California system, for example, calculates students’ UC GPAs by converting grades to grade points (an A is equivalent to four points, a B to three points and so on) for classes taken between the summer after 9th grade and summer after 11th grade, and adding one point for each honors class, and dividing by total classes taken to yield final GPA. (Variations exist for in-state versus out-of-state students and by high school. Be sure to calculate your GPA following the UC issued guidelines.)

Other colleges also take additional factors that impact academic performance into consideration, and envelop GPA into a broader, holistic consideration. For instance, the lawsuit by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard University over affirmative action practices revealed that Harvard rates students on a scale of 1 to 6 (with one being the most desirable) in academic, extracurricular, athletic and personal categories. A student’s GPA and test scores are folded together into an academic score which “summarizes the applicant’s academic achievement and potential based on grades, testing results, letters of recommendation, academic prizes, and any submitted academic work.”

This process aims to provide a fair and equitable evaluation of students from different educational backgrounds. Keep in mind that Harvard considers not only your grades, test scores, and academic rigor in this score, but also “evidence of substantial scholarship” and “academic creativity,” which can make the difference between a 1 and a 2 in the scoring system. These systems underscore the importance of taking advantage of every opportunity, showcasing your unique personality and creativity, and seeking to maximize opportunities to improve your performance within the academic landscape of your institution.

By understanding the complex way by which colleges evaluate students’ GPAs, you are better equipped to present a comprehensive and competitive picture of your academic achievements on your transcript and stand out in the competitive Ivy League admissions landscape.

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Does Wisconsin have any Ivy League schools? It does now, according to Forbes

America's Ivy League institutions have faced complaints in recent years over admissions policies and, in response, Forbes recently introduced its list of the " New Ivies "— the 10 public and 10 private universities it says are producing successful and driven graduates.

On the list is the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which also ranks among the top national universities in the state, and across the country.

Forbes used 2022 admissions data, and then screened schools with high standardized test scores to whittle down a list of 1,743 colleges of at least 4,000 students to create its top 10 list. Here's a look at the survey.

These are the top 10 public Ivy League schools, according to Forbes

Forbes selected the following 10 public universities as its "New Ivies." Military academies aren't included in this list, and California universities were excluded because they don't consider test scores.

• Binghamton University (New York)
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• University of Florida
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• University of Maryland-College Park
• University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
• University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
• University of Texas-Austin
• University of Virginia
• University of Wisconsin-Madison

RELATED: The scene from the UW-Milwaukee and UW-Madison student protest encampments on Friday, May 3

These are the top 10 'new' private Ivy League schools, according to Forbes

These are the 10 private schools, located in nine states and Washington D.C., picked by Forbes as its "New Ivies." This analysis excludes schools with fewer than 4,000 students, the eight old Ivies and four "Ivy-plus" schools —Stanford, MIT, Duke and Chicago.

• Boston College (Massachusetts)
• Carnegie Mellon University (Pennsylvania)
• Emory University (Georgia)
• Georgetown University (District of Columbia)
• Johns Hopkins University (Maryland)
• Northwestern University (Illinois)
• Rice University (Texas)
• University of Notre Dame (Indiana)
• University of Southern California
• Vanderbilt University (Tennessee)

The original Ivy League schools:

• Brown University (Rhode Island)
• Columbia University (New York)
• Cornell University (New York)
• Dartmouth College (New Hampshire)
• Harvard University (Massachusetts)
• University of Pennsylvania
• Princeton University (New Jersey)
• Yale University (Connecticut)

RELATED: Here's how Wisconsin universities ranked in the 2024 Best Colleges list