50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays

Showing Creativity with a Photo
“The topic I chose was to attach a picture to the application and to write 
about that picture. I chose that topic because I was looking for something that 
would allow me to be creative and original. I think it’s so important to write an 
essay that no other student possibly could have written. I didn’t want to feel 
stuck giving a ‘cookie-cutter’ answer, and I wanted to let my silly side show, to 
complement my very serious academic/extracurricular record. I chose a pic-
ture of myself and a group of friends in shorts next to a 10-foot tall snowman 
we had built. I wrote about the experience of swimming in the ice-cold ocean 

---

186
50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays
in Maine in December. It was definitely not your typical essay, but I think it 
rounded out the rest of my application well.”
—Lauren Horton, Stanford University