How to Craft an Ivy League Essay
As many of you know, Ivy League admission officers look at many factors to determine which students of the thousands of students to accept, including GPA, standardized test scores, extracurriculars, letters of recommendation, and the application essay. While it's best to do your best to earn a 4.0 GPA, a 1460+ score on the SATs, and develop an impressive portfolio for extracurriculars, it isn’t enough to show to schools your true self and core. The admissions essay is the window to your soul; a way to portray your most authentic self in the form of experiences, beliefs, and mindset. To make the admissions officer choose you, you need to either display self-growth, show deep, strong experiences that impacted you, or showcase strong core values or qualities that make you someone with strong, unique passions compared to others. Luckily, Kollegio is literally made to help you craft a compelling essay through our state-of-the-art AI system, and in this blog, I’ll take you step by step through the perfect Ivy League Essay.
How Do We Start Our Essay?
Many Ivy League essay prompts are meant to be a deep dive into the student's personality and interests. Some popular ones are as follows:
Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea.
What is an obstacle you faced and how did you overcome it?
Share an accomplishment that sparked interest in a certain subject.
What do these prompts have in common? Well, they’re opportunities for students to basically introduce themselves without actually having face-to-face conversations with the admission officers. While it might seem obvious to all of you at first, what else is the point of these essays in the first place, however, they want to also know your story, personality, character growth, struggles, how you overcame them, why you're strong enough or special enough to join them, and most importantly connecting it to your future goals in life. Maybe, you discovered a painting you loved from childhood and spent the next years of your life working diligently to get your painting the same praise, maybe you have an intense story of how a certain medical condition affected your family giving you the passion to dedicate your life to medical research, or working long hours at a job that taught you some of your most important values. These topics are just examples that would show someone's values, passions, depth of character, and connection to their future goals. Some students may find this difficult, but it's best to practice being intrinsic as much as you can and write reflections on your day. Now let us start with how to actually art off our essay.
How Do We Start Our Introduction
This essay is going to be a story for our admissions officers, something that needs to capture their interest quickly, as admission officers actually spend less than 10 minutes on your essay. This happens in the very first sentence or sentences of your essay. Here’s an example:
“Late nights would be spent caffeine-filled reading every single book of Jane Austen to the last detail, or of something even remotely close to Austen’s impeccable wit and characterization of women in early English classic literature, and early mornings writing in my third most worn out writing notebook, until the human instinct of slumber takes charge, chasing a perfection that I could never quite truly obtain”.
This example is personal and unique, shows a strong interest in something, and sets up a more engaging story ahead for admissions officers to take an interest in. Now let’s give a more common, bad introduction:
“I am very passionate about Jane Austen's books due to her wit and characterization of female characters and aim to become like her.”
This example tells admissions officers you like Jane Austen yet doesn’t show it through your language, tone, or actions that make admissions officers actually believe you are passionate about Jane Austen or literature in general. To think of a good hook, think about moments or things about yourself that would set you apart from others, or try to reword events in your life to showcase different things that you're passionate about or will set up the rest of the story like the good example above.
Pro tip: It’s best to read many accepted Ivy League essays to be familiar with the writing style, practice with real-life experience, and get feedback to improve and create a skill out of it.
Good news: Kollegio’s essay brainstormer and reviewer can help you craft compelling Ivy League essays that truly stand out to admissions officers.
The Body Paragraphs
The body paragraphs are basically where you treat the essay like a whole story. Sometimes, as stated before, treat it like you are an author writing a personal narrative about self-growth through triumph, conflict, or self-realization that connects to your future goals and also showcases strong character depth. Think about something that resonates with you deeply, a memory perhaps, an experience that changed the way you think, or something from your childhood that led to a series of events involving ambition, and triumph. There are actually different types you could do, such as writing about a timeline of events, or a key experience. But first, you need to choose what exactly you're meant to write about. What is something you reflect upon often? How did it affect your present? Did it impact you positively or negatively? If negative, how did you overcome it? How does it connect back to your reason for this major or school? Examples could be a movie leading your interest to a specific career path, a family tradition that is unlike others that you are proud of, a work experience that taught you something, or more. You have to dig deep into what actually impacted you or is an experience you can or already learned from this makes your essay more authentic and makes it easier for you to create a compelling story.
The biggest issue seen in body paragraphs is people telling what they learned or think instead of showing it.
Good Example: Ever since the faithful day in eighth grade, when I ran into my school library to see my favorite librarian reading something where the elegantly painted portrait of a woman stared at me from the cover, eyes telling me to come closer, curiosity peaked my mind, and a simple question “What book are you reading” changed shifted my world forever. I asked more and more about this charismatic book, and the librarian answered with passionate, glimmering eyes that only grew my curiosity more and more. However, she told me I was too young as the book was “Too hard for adults, so it would also probably be hard for me too”, how could my own mentor think that about me? I felt my excitement wear down, but the cover kept staring into my soul, so at my next local library I searched and found “Pride and Prejudice”. My mind felt like it was flying from 2800 foot freefall, I never had such a complex vocabulary before that my eyes bestowed. I spent hours and hours writing down every thought, and message so I wouldn't lose track of what I had read previously, yet I was so invigorated in this tale, my friends didn’t know why I was reading such an old book, but I could paint what I read every day, and envision something new out of it. I wanted more, so I used money from cash gifts and allowance over months, just to buy myself Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion, all to read over and over. One day, I realized I could understand what was being said without a notebook or pen in hand, after reading hundreds of hours of classic literature by authors from the 18th-20th century. The words slipped off my tongue like another language, I soon began to experiment with writing as well, hours and hours suffering aching hands, and sleep-deprived nights, I did it to become Austen, Plath, and Bronte. When I read the work of esteemed Professor Smith and Professor Doe, I felt a spark ignite for this school, so after months of research I made it my goal to go to this school no matter what for the strong literature program, and support from the faculty, emphasizing creativity for all.
Disclaimer: The example above was written by me in the character of a girl who worked long hours to be the best classic literature writer of her time, and faced struggles yet overcame them. There is actually more refining to do, such as writing in a more classic literature tone that is still conversational to emphasize her love of classic literature more, speak more on her struggles, and improve flow and clarity within this paragraph. But some good integral parts that colleges aim to see are vivid imagery and emotion, a strong personal voice that sounds conversational and like you're actually meeting the applicant, and strong conflict, and resolution that shows adaptivity, intellectual curiosity, and strong will with a unique personality through your personal voice. While this paragraph could use improving itself let’s see a bad example:
Bad example: I’ve been reading Jane Ausetn and other classic literature authors since eighth grade. It’s something I really like since I saw my favorite librarian read it, yet she didn't believe I could read it since it was also difficult for adults, which made me upset. I enjoyed reading her work, even though the vocabulary was extremely complex for me. I started to write stories based on literature similar to Austen’s work in hopes of being a great writer like her in this century. I decided to choose this school due to my interest in the professors
This example is purposely written to be very broad to show students who claim to be something, yet don't have an actual story to back up their claims and show their ambition. There aren't many storytelling techniques used to make this an interesting story to be eager to read more or be curious about. My first example used vivid imagery and language, such as “My mind felt like it was flying from 2800 foot freefall, I never had such complex vocabulary before” to showcase my true excitement of reading classic literature, while my bad example uses “I enjoyed reading her work, even though the vocabulary was extremely complex for me”, it could use more vivid language like the first example to strengthen my personal voice and show strong excitement and passion, which is what college applications officers are looking for. To improve on this skill, look at accepted Ivy League essays online and read as much as you can to imitate a style of vivid language and passion in writing. We all start from somewhere, as long as you keep practicing you’ll get better and better. Kollegio helps give you personalized feedback on your essays, without rewriting it for you, so you don’t get flagged for plagiarization.
How to Write a Conclusion
This is where your story goes back to its beginning, it’s where you could write a reflection on all that you've learned, struggled with, and achieved, and what you hope for the future. You could reflect on your past goals, what you hope to achieve in the future, and how the university or major will help make your vision come true in some way. Avoid trying to use common tropes such as “I can’t wait to attend XYZ University” or “This is my story”, as I said before, make it personal, and come from the heart with vivid imagery and language. Finally, end with something intriguing, and eye-catching like the hook from the introduction paragraph.
“Through these chapters, I saw lines of strength–building, and new paths to life from one curious question, the next chapters shall be branches of learning and success”.
This ending ties together reflection, growth, and anticipation for the future, leaving the reader intrigued and inspired.
By Jannatul Jami
