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How to Write a Winning Ivy League Essay
With early application deadlines upon us, guidance counselors, professors, and admissions consultants slipped Kathleen Kingsbury seven essays that helped get kids into top schools last year—and she examines exactly what they did right.
Scoring the winning touchdown. Volunteering for blood drives or building houses. What you learned about poverty on your $9,000 trip to Africa.
These are a few topics on independent consultant Arun Ponnusamy’s list of what not to write about in your college application essay. (A few more: Don't write about mom and dad's divorce, and no general philosophizing—you're 17, get over yourself.) Admissions season is under way, and with early applications deadlines starting November 1, you've only got a few more days to polish your make-or-break essay. Straight As and stellar SAT scores won't be enough. In a year where 10 brilliant kids are vying for every one slot at your average Ivy League school (yes, that statistic is accurate), the personal essay has become a tipping point that can turn a deferral into an acceptance letter.
So The Daily Beast tracked down seven college admissions essays that did work—seven essays that helped get the kids who wrote them into one of the country's top schools. The essays were slipped to us by college professors, high-school guidance counselors, independent admissions consultants, and even staffers at student newspapers. For confidentiality reasons, admissions officers can't talk about these essays expressly, so we chose essays that demonstrate the most salient principles to abide by when writing them. (Scroll down to read the essays, unedited and in full.)
You'll need the help: Competition at these schools is fiercer than ever. For every kid who’s hung prayer flags on a mountain summit in Tibet, there are a dozen others who’ve studied a Bantu language in Rwanda, worked with Guatemalan orphans, cooked with a celebrity chef, or been on reality TV. "To be honest," says Ponnusamy, "if you're thinking about the most selective of schools in the country and the most interesting thing in your life is your parents' divorce, you're not going to get in anyway.”
But even if your life hasn't been filled with experiences worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, you can salvage an essay about a ho-hum subject by having a novelist's eye for detail. For Greg Roberts, the admissions dean at University of Virginia, one of the most memorable essays he read was about a single at-bat in a high-school baseball game. The applicant wasn’t the star of the team, Roberts remembers, and didn’t even like playing baseball much. “But he talked about being nervous and excited at the same time, about how the freshly cut grass reminded him of his grandfather,” Roberts says. “I just felt like I knew him.”
Roberts worries that students tend to be too conservative with essays and are afraid to take risks. “There are no wrong answers here, and the last thing you want is a dry or boring essay,” he says. “We have 22,000 applications, so it’s easy to blend into the crowd.”
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• Kathleen Kingsbury: How to Choose a College RoommateThis year that may mean students want to reconsider before giving their take on the recent financial meltdown or the national health-care debate. At California’s Pomona College, the admissions staff anticipates an influx of essays on the economy, similar to what they saw post-September 11, 2001, when nearly half the applications essays dealt with the terrorist attacks.
“But it’s a different story if you watched the towers collapse from science class at [New York City’s] Stuyvesant High School than if you live on a farm in Iowa,” Pomona’s admissions dean Bruce Poch says. “Families are going through hell right now, and it’s the very personal experiences that will resonate the most.” Then again, Poch adds, “Sympathy isn’t the only reason we let kids in.”
Despite what admissions guidebooks tell you, there's no surefire formula to the college essay. Poch confesses even a small error or two will not necessarily kill your chances of getting in—as long as it's not on purpose. "I once heard one [essay-writing] professional brag about slipping in mistakes to throw off admissions officers," he says. "That's just disgusting."
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Top 10 College Admissions Tips
Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
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Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
The Best College Food
Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
Great essays and original ideas. But the essays always have to respond to a prompt--can you possibly add the prompts so we can see what the essay is in response to? That can show us even more how these writers were creative in their responses.
So, talk about all your non-white friends, criticize anything traditional, mock religion, mention anything that remotely sounds Bohemian and if possible, send it in a folder with an Obama sticker on the front. I don't blame these students. They seem smart and smart guys will feed them what they think they want. These college admissions officers, however, seem to be very one-dimensional. This is why I predict the leaders of tomorrow will come from State universities where they are less concerned about painting a social picture and more about personal achievement and responsibility. These exclusive schools are becoming a parody. One can only look forward to the next decade when most of the sixties hippies who never grew up and became squatters in our system of higher education will be gone to commune with whatever they have been seeking all these years.
it's true! does it call trustafarian???? you know the fake young hippie with rich parents.
Nice jab at "these college admissions officers." Maybe you can share some of your superior orientation with them and the rest of us by suggesting proper essay prompts! I'm looking forward to your reply.
(I went to a state university. Sorry: it was the top-twenty kind, which I'm sure you look down on. But thank you for appreciating my "personal achievement and responsibility." I keep them next to my Obama shrine. I love our president!)
I have nothing against top-twenty kids. I used to have many of them working for me before I sold the company I started using my third-rate, "at" state school education that I paid for by working 40 hours a week while graduating in four years. Its like the Chancellor of my school told me when he asked me to give the commencement address some years back and I mentioned my grades were not that great. He said, "The A students end up working for the C students and the B Students teach. I'm guessing the B- students become admissions clerks and the A- students worship politicians.
When I was a kid, I thought that an "ivy-league" education was irrelevant. Now, after a BA and a masters from a state school and comparing what I learned to what folks I know learned, I see that while the data taught is similiar the intense discussions that occur in a small class helps sharpen the mind in a way that the large class sizes in public schools and universities cannot.
As Darth Vader said, "It's too late for me. Tell your mother you were right."
i don't know why you assume that classes in "private" schools are always small. Check out lectures in the Ivy League. A class on "justice" at Harvard, for example, consists of lectures to a thousand students at a time. Hands held up have to be very sure of themselves.
Ummm Ivy League schools don't have any smaller classes than your average state school. I go to a big state school and my elective classes have 20-50 while the cores can have up to a thousand. Just like the Ivys.
Ivy League? America's idiot President George W. Bush had degrees from Yale and a graduate degree from Harvard; so that is what Ivy League means? Believe it, there are no American intellectuals! America has an Afghanistqan/Iraq mentality. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki America succumbed to toxic nuclear reasoning. George Washington, you're American democratic Republic is brain dead.
You miserable sot, where the hell are you from to say such a thing like America has no intellectuals? I think about 300 Nobel laureates will disagree with you.
Generalizations are of no help. BTW President Obama went to Columbia, that's Ivy league is it not?
I do wonder about how scenarios like this play out. After all, your typical student's family isn't going to have the means to undertake a lot of the exotic types of adventures that supposedly distinguish an applicant. I suspect that for many teenagers, a big adventure is taking a trip to Hawaii.
Since grades are the primary determinant in whether a student is able to handle a school's curriculum, the student essay is probably an easier way for a kid to eliminate himself from consideration than gain acceptance. Most of the essays are likely to be quite banal, given that their authors are children. An unusual essay may stick out for the wrong reasons as well as the right ones.
The one upside to the student essay I can think of has to do with the students from poorer backgrounds; not because they can tell stories of their trials and tribulations, but because their families can't afford the heavy coaching that many wealthier kids can. The latter are more likely to produce a cookie-cutter essay that may be technically correct but is devoid of individuating features. The poorer student is more likely to use his own imagination because he doesn't have the paid guidance to do otherwise.
While grades are important, a story here several months ago quoted a Harvard Admissions clerk who said they could have easily filled three freshmen classes of kids with the same grades. It seems schools have some "liberal social quotas" that are actually more important than grades. My daughter attends a very rigorous private high school where the college admission counselors have told us bluntly that some "elite" schools now view the traditional, private prep school experience as a negative. They say while test scores have gone up, the number of Ivy bound students has declined. In the past, admission to an Ivy was based on grades and money. Today, it seems it is based on grades and a liberal viewpoint.
Better that than money.
You should try money, you might like it.
It would be fairer to put the names of all student with top grades into a hat. What is the point of a university education if students already "know" the answers before doing the work? Closed minds entering. Closed minds leaving. It explains the pedestrian intellects that dominate media and politics these days.
It isn't liberal to exclude people who don't agree with you. It is what liberals have become these days: fascist/stalinist. Pick one, doesn't much matter which.
Isabella, why should fairness be the first criterion in admissions? Do the students choose a college based on fairness? Do you choose a spouse, a home, or a job based on fairness?
I think we all know why you don't get the point of a university education. . . .
Are you saying the Ivy League schools are not being liberal ("It isn't liberal . . .") and you're upset about that?
Stalin killed ten million of his own people (and took his country's economy from #5 in the world to #2). Care to explain how liberals are Stalinist?
Did you know that the fascists (Italians) and the Communists (Russians) actually fought against each other in WWII? And Hitler sent Communists to concentration camps. How are stalinism and fascism so similar in your mind?
"I was through with pain, through with foot surgeries and obsessions and disappointments, and saying goodbye to a lifelong pursuit of ballet would be no exception."
That's not even acceptable English -- "would be no exception" makes no sense. Have these kids been taught to think before they write, or do they just spout whatever cliché comes to mind?
My early decision application is due in 5 days. Cumulatively my essays have gone through over 15 drafts. The effort put into these essays is unimaginable and I find it incredibly insensitive to attack the first weak sentence you see. We are all 18 years old and not perfect writers yet. Please rethink your initial reactions to these essays. There is so much more depth to them than one "cliche" sentence.
Oftentimes, academic success doesn't lead to career or life success. Admission officers should try to ferret out students with the most potential to lead productive lives. The ability to master schoolwork is a somewhat limited indicator. I know plenty of highly educated losers.
Exactly. Unfortunately, too many of them wind up in government.
The secret is this- ENTERTAIN the "C" students who hold these jobs as gatekeepers to the best schools. Think about it- even if you have top credentials coming from an Ivy League institution why would you take a job in an admissions office - there isnt another job on the planet better than reading rank essays and putting thumbs up or down on kids lives?? Like I said- "C" students opening the gates or slamming them shut on brilliant kids- I have not been terribly impressed by the Ivy League process. Entertain them and don't be too highbrown- they are not as bright as the students they are rejecting or accepting lol.
Thank you.
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