50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays

Tying a Tragic Event to Family History
“I chose to write about my older brother’s death, while also tying in pieces 
of my family history. My brother’s death changed my life—I had to write about 
it.”
—Timothy Nguyen Le, Yale University
From Environmental Issues to Halloween Costumes
“I was really into environmental issues so I wrote about how I came to join 
different groups and what I liked about them. I also did AP environmental 
science as an independent study. I just talked about why I liked the environ-
ment, what fueled me to work on that area. I remember one essay asked 
about something I created and I talked about how I always made really intense 
Halloween costumes. I made a gumby, a Chiquita banana lady, mermaid, etc. 
Some essays I talked about being a Mexican American and what it meant to 
me as a teenager in a Los Angeles public school.”
—Anonymous, MIT
On Challenges
“I selected the essay that revolved around my life experiences and the chal-
lenges I faced because I felt that this question really helped connect me to the 
admissions officers. They would get to read into my personal life and see how 
hard I had worked to make it where I was. It would also a way to let them 
know about me and sell myself, because every challenge was a chance for 
failure, and maybe I did fail at times, but I managed to work hard and endure. 
This meant that regardless of the challenge I would face, that Stanford would 
be the place for me, because no challenge was hard enough that I could not 
work though, as my life was a time of much challenge so far.”
Andres Cantero, Stanford University