50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays

Don’t Rely on Your SAT Vocabulary
“Be yourself. It is cliche and might not be as reassuring as other things, but 
with thousands of essays written, your SAT vocabulary and generic experi-
ences that ‘changed your life’ won’t get you as far as a starkly genuine voice.”
—Jason Y. Shah, Harvard University
Anything Is Possible
“First of all, remember anything is possible. When I told my advisors that 
I wanted to apply to Wharton with a 3.5 gPA, I got laughed at. I worked 
all summer on my application and my essay, and in the end, I was the one 
laughing. That being said, you really want your essay to be unique, not just 
creative. You want to have a story that nO OnE else can possibly have. This 
means don’t talk about being the president of a club, or about playing a sport. 
Although I had a pretty impressive resume (I started a nonprofit to raise money 
for children’s hospitals and did research with Caltech affiliated Jisan research 
Institute), I still knew that there were hundreds of other candidates out there 
who had done research and had been involved with non-profits. So, I decided 
to write about a movie I made for my dad’s 50th birthday that was a parody of 
Forrest Gump. I knew that even though this was completely irrelevant to any-
thing on my application, it would make me memorable and give the readers a 
glimpse into Alex volodarsky the person, not the student. When writing your 
essay, just remember: is it possible that there’s someone out there who can just 
change the name of the sport/club/organization and turn in the same essay? If 
the answer is yes, choose another topic.”
—Alex Volodarsky, University of Pennsylvania