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College. Remember when you were in high school and you had to fill out admission essays to get into your school of choice? Well, apparently writing crazy stuff on those admission essays can actually work. Trust me, I am just as shocked as you are. Here are 12 stories from college students who admit how writing crazy stuff got them into their school of choice.
“This brother/sister pair who simply wrote down a list of relatives who had attended, and they wrote down their GPA/average too. They didn’t even answer the prompt we gave them, and at the end they wrote down something like “I hope I can attend this college too”. Their GPA wasn’t bad, it was actually pretty good, but we reject applications that have higher GPAs than them. I’m 99% sure they got accepted. I recognized their last names, their family donates a lot of money to the university.”
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“The University of Chicago lets applicants choose their own essay question, so my friend decided to write a thousand words debating the question “If a piece of toast always lands butter side down and a cat always lands on its feet, what would happen if you were to attach a piece of toast butter side up to a cat’s back?” He explained the theory of “cat/toast equilibrium” and went into detail explaining what he believed would happen. He got in.”
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“My sister went to Yale and this is a story about one of her friends. He was the son of a famous actor and so he could be a bit more cavalier about his essay than most. Yale’s essay prompt was “Why Yale?”. My sister’s friend simply wrote “Dear Yale, you’re great. There’s no need to fish for compliments”. When my sister’s friend met the Dean of his College during the first week of school, the Dean remarked “I really enjoyed your essay”. My sister’s friend was quite flabbergasted and simply turned around and walked away.”
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“I tried to coach my cousin through his college admissions process while he getting ready to apply. Well he is stuck for a while on one of those personal statement essays, basically explaining his story. I didn’t find out about what he ended up writing until after he submitted it. He thought it would be a good idea to talk about his short tenure dealing weed in Newark.”
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“My essay prompt was “What place are you happiest?” or something like that. I wrote about how my favorite place to be is my sisters (both away in college so it’s not weird) room, because of the superior air flow, not being in line with the rising/setting sun, and how the door is slightly too big for it’s frame, giving me a warning that someone is going to come into room, so if I’m dancing, I can stop. Adelphi gave me $75,000 over 4 years.”
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“I work at a very big state university and my personal favorite was one were a guy talked about how his brother got him addicted to pornography and that it affected his view on christianity and women. He then went on to say that he wanted to start a group for people struggling with masturbation.”
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“A friend of mine who attends an Ivy told me about a classmate of his who wrote her admissions essay on the color blue.
I’m not quite sure how they managed to write 500 words about a primary color, but it was apparently just out there enough to work.”
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“I know someone who told U of Michigan that the way they evaluate students is faulty and that GPAs/test scores are useless.
He got in.”
