USE THESE TWO WORDS ON YOUR COLLEGE ESSAY TO GET INTO HARVARD
ADMITSEE CRUNCHED THE DATA IN 15,000 ESSAYS
FROM THE ADMISSIONS FILES OF SUCCESSFUL COLLEGE APPLICANTS. THE FINDINGS ARE
FASCINATING.
Getting into an elite
college has never been more cutthroat. Last year, Harvard's admissions rate dipped to
a record low, with only 5.3% of applicants getting an acceptance letter. Stanford's rate was even
lower, at 5.05%.
These days, it takes
more than impressive grades, a full roster of extracurriculars, and a deep
commitment to community service to get into a well-ranked school. Experts say that a stellar essay is the linchpin that will win the
admissions department over. But what is less well known is that different
colleges favor particular topics and even specific words used in essays.
This is a key finding
from AdmitSee,
a startup that invites verified college students to share their application
materials with potential applicants. High school students can pay to access
AdmitSee's repository of successful college essays, while college students who
share their materials receive a small payment every time someone accesses their
data. "The biggest differentiator for our site is that college students
who share their information are compensated for their time," Stephanie
Shyu, cofounder of AdmitSee, tells Fast Company. "This allows
them to monetize materials that they have sitting around. They can upload their
file and when they check back in a few months later, they might have made
several hundred dollars."
Shyu says that this
model has allowed AdmitSee to collect a lot of data very rapidly. The company
is only a year old and just landed $1.5 million in seed funding from investors
such as Founder.org and The Social + Capital Partnership. But in this short time, AdmitSee has already
gathered 15,000 college essays in their system. Many are from people who got
into well-ranked colleges, since they targeted these students first. The vast
majority of these essays come from current college students who were admitted
within the last two or three years.
AdmitSee has a team
that analyzes all of these materials, gathering both qualitative and
quantitative findings. And they've found some juicy insights about what
different elite colleges are looking for in essays. One of the most striking
differences was between successful Harvard and Stanford essays. (AdmitSee had
539 essays from Stanford and 393 from Harvard at the time of this interview,
but more trickle in every day.) High-achieving high schoolers frequently apply
to both schools—often with the very same essay—but there are stark differences
between what their respective admissions departments seem to want.
Harvard's Widener
Library
WHAT DO YOU CALL YOUR
PARENTS?
The terms
"father" and "mother" appeared more frequently in
successful Harvard essays, while the term "mom" and "dad"
appeared more frequently in successful Stanford essays.
HARVARD LIKES DOWNER
ESSAYS
AdmitSee found that
negative words tended to show up more on essays accepted to Harvard than essays
accepted to Stanford. For example, Shyu says that "cancer,"
"difficult," "hard," and "tough" appeared more
frequently on Harvard essays, while "happy," "passion,"
"better," and "improve" appeared more frequently in
Stanford essays.
STUDENTS WHO TAKE
RISKS WITH THE CONTENT AND THE STRUCTURE OF THEIR COLLEGE ESSAYS TEND TO BE
MORE SUCCESSFUL ACROSS THE BOARD.
This also had to do
with the content of the essays. At Harvard, admitted students tended to write
about challenges they had overcome in their life or academic career, while
Stanford tended to prefer creative personal stories, or essays about family
background or issues that the student cares about. "Extrapolating from
this qualitative data, it seems like Stanford is more interested in the student's
personality, while Harvard appears to be more interested in the student's track
record of accomplishment," Shyu says.
With further
linguistic analysis, AdmitSee found that the most common words on Harvard
essays were "experience," "society," "world,"
"success," "opportunity." At Stanford, they were
"research," "community," "knowledge,"
"future" and "skill."
WHAT THE OTHER IVIES
CARE ABOUT
It turns out, Brown
favors essays about volunteer and public interest work, while these topics rank
low among successful Yale essays. In addition to Harvard, successful Princeton
essays often tackle experiences with failure. Meanwhile, Cornell and the
University of Pennsylvania tend to accept students who write about their career
aspirations. Essays about diversity—race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation—tend
to be more popular at Stanford, Yale, and Brown.
Based on the
AdmitSee's data, Dartmouth and Columbia don't appear to have strong biases
toward particular essay topics. This means that essays on many subjects were
seen favorably by the admissions departments at those schools. However, Shyu
says that writing about a moment that changed the student's life showed up
frequently in essays of successful applicants to those schools.
Stanford's Hoover
Tower
RISK-TAKING PAYS OFF
One general insight is
that students who take risks with the content and the structure of their
college essays tend to be more successful across the board. One student who was
admitted to several top colleges wrote about his father's addiction to pornography
and another wrote about a grandparent who was incarcerated, forcing her mother
to get food stamps illegally. Weird formats also tend to do well. One
successful student wrote an essay tracking how his credit card was stolen,
making each point of the credit card's journey a separate section on the essay
and analyzing what each transaction meant. Another's essay was a list of her
favorite books and focused on where each book was purchased.
"One of the big
questions our users have is whether they should take a risk with their essay,
writing about something that reveals very intimate details about themselves or
that takes an unconventional format," Shyu says. "What we're finding
is that successful essays are not ones that talk about an accomplishment or
regurgitate that student's résumé . The most compelling essays are those that
touch on surprising personal topics."
Of course, one caveat
here is that taking a risk only makes sense if the essay is well-executed. Shyu
says that the content and structure of the story must make a larger point about
the applicant, otherwise it does not serve a purpose. And it goes without
saying that the essay must be well-written, with careful attention paid to flow
and style.
Shyu says that there
are two major takeaways that can be taken from the company's data. The first is
that it is very valuable for applicants to tailor their essays for different
schools, rather than perfecting one essay and using it to apply to every single
school. The second is that these essays can offer insight into the culture of
the school. "The essays of admitted students are also a reflection of the
community at these institutions," Shyu says. "It can provide insight
into whether or not the school is a good fit for that student."
A final tip? If you
want to go to Harvard and write about your parents, make sure to address them
as "mother" and "father."
BY ELIZABETH
SEGRAN
http://www.fastcompany.com/3049289/most-creative-people/use-these-two-words-on-your-college-essay-to-get-into-harvard?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter&position=2&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=08032015
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