College Application Essay Examples Harvard

The site invites college students, who are identified and verified by their official school IDs, to upload their application materials.

The site invites college students, who are identified and verified by their official school IDs, to upload their application materials.

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"It can provide insight into whether or not the school is a good fit for that student." Lea Giotto is a student at the University of Michigan and a summer 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists.

Like Harvard, Princeton tends to admit students who write about overcoming adversity.

Essays that discuss a student’s experience with race, ethnicity or sexual orientation are well-received by Stanford, Yale and Brown.

Specifically, essays written by students who were later admitted to Harvard focused on overcoming challenging moments in life.

These essays frequently included words such as “cancer,” “difficult,” “hard” and “tough.” This finding proved to be almost the exact opposite of what admissions officers from Stanford were looking for.

“Stanford and Harvard, while both extremely prestigious universities, actually don’t have that much in common when it comes to the feel on campus, their under-lying values, etc,” Cohen, who is also the founder and CEO of college admissions counseling company Ivy Wise, said in an email interview.

“So it makes sense that they would be looking for different types of students, and therefore different kinds of essays.” While the data collected from students admitted to Harvard and Stanford is the most specific, Admit See also collected interesting information on other Ivy League schools.

“There are 745 colleges with at least 1 application file on Admit See.com, and 286 colleges with 10 application files on the site,” Fayal said.

For example, Admit See’s data indicates the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell favor essays about a student’s career goals.