50 Yale Admission Success Stories: And the Essays That Made Them Happen

By Yale Daily News Staff

From the students at the Yale Daily News, a book that highlights the essays that got students into Yale University, helping high school seniors get into the school of their choice

The competition to get into a top-tier school becomes more and more fierce every year. Parents and students are searching for the best advice, and the final question they ask after joining clubs in high school and keeping the grades up is: How do I write a winning essay?

50 Yale Admission Success Stories and the Essays that Made Them Happen shows college applicants how to do exactly that, showcasing the Common App essays that got students into Yale, in addition to Yale-specific application essays and other supplemental aspects of the Yale application, like short statements and short answers.

But this book does more than just show students what kind of essays got college students through the door; it profiles each student who contributed to the collection and puts those essays into context. We meet Edgar Avina, a political science major from Houston who worked odd jobs to support his family, who immigrated from Mexico. Madeleine Bender, a New York City native, is a "jack of all trades" who writes for the Daily News, plays clarinet for a concert band, and majors in both Classics and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology.

These profiles set this book apart from other college essay books, reminding students that in order to write a strong essay, you must be yourself and understand how the university you're applying to will help you make your greatest dreams into a reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Mar 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781250248800

Yale Daily News Staff

The Yale Daily News is produced by undergraduate students at Yale University. It is based in New Haven, Connecticut.

Book preview

First-Years

Pascale Bradley

Hometown: New York City, NY

Year: First-Year

College: Berkeley

Major(s): English; French

Extracurriculars: Yale Political Union; Yale Francophone Association

PROFILE

Pascale Bradley had Yale on her radar long before she was old enough to apply. Her mom graduated from Yale in 1988, and Pascale knew that she was interested in attending a school with a high academic profile. She applied to eleven schools during the college application process, including Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and Georgetown, in addition to Yale.

When considering colleges, Pascale looked for schools that could meet both her academic and social expectations. She hoped to find a school with a robust anthropology program, but also a campus that had a diverse student body and a spirit of inclusivity.

I got the sense that at most other schools, social life was more divisive, she says. At Yale, there was a strong sense of an on-campus community.

Ultimately deciding that Yale checked all of her boxes, she applied for early admission. She was initially deferred, but received and accepted an offer from Yale in the spring.

During her high school career, Pascale was a dedicated three-season runner (cross country in the fall, indoor track in the winter, and outdoor track in the spring). She volunteered with several community service groups, one of which eventually inspired her Common App essay and planted the initial seed for her interest in anthropology.

Eager to continue her community service work at Yale, Pascale immediately joined a service group, First-Years in Service. Although she found the work to be starkly different from the kind she had participated in throughout high school, Pascale had a positive experience with the group. I expected to be doing more work that involved interacting with people, but I’ve spent more time learning the administrative side of service work, she explains. Although she initially thought that she would join a running club at Yale, she later realized that she wasn’t interested in the daily commitment of running in addition to her other activities and classes. Another surprise emerged in the form of her major: While Pascale entered Yale thinking she would most likely study either anthropology or Ethnicity, Race, & Migration, she got hooked on English after taking a class on Shakespeare’s comedies and romances and is now double majoring in English and French.

The social life at Yale, however, was what proved to be Pascale’s favorite part of the experience. She raves about her residential college and loves the friends and connections she’s made there. Her favorite memories of her first year are from the small courtyard outside her dorm, where fellow first-years would congregate to chat between and after classes.

I’ve made so many friends through Berkeley that I might not have met otherwise, Pascale affirms. The social life at Yale has exceeded my expectations.

Pascale’s essays include her Common App personal statement.

ESSAY 1 (COMMON APP): PERSONAL STATEMENT

I’m standing on a New York City playground on a particularly bright Monday morning in mid-July. The grin on Farrah’s face reminds me that it’s her birthday. Decked out from head to toe in Frozen-themed clothing, she runs over to me to show me her birthday presents. She opens her backpack and pulls out three Frozen dolls, still inside their packaging. Later, as the class is about to head to the pool, it dawns on Sebastian that he does not have his towel. I dig through a heap of clothing, swimsuits, and goggles until I find a white towel embroidered with Sebastian’s name in blue thread. It looks just like the towel several of my friends own. At lunch that day, Khodi, a precocious five-year-old, invites me to sit with her. I stare into her lunchbox. A note from her mother is squeezed between a star-shaped sandwich and a reusable container of strawberries. The red ink reads, Have a great day, Khodi! Love, Mommy.

Just a month later, I’m sitting in a tiny kitchen across the country. Jamin inhales three helpings of chicken with steamed vegetables even though he’s only two years old and should not have such a large appetite. The teachers exchange worried glances, and I suspect that he did not eat breakfast that morning or dinner the night before. Suzette spills sauce on her sweater, and I grab a napkin to blot the stain. The sauce does not look out of place on her shirt, which she has worn for the past three days. In the afternoon, I play with a two-year-old named Yari. No matter how many books I read to her or how many words I ask her to repeat, she still hasn’t learned to speak.

In July, I volunteered at Summer Steps, a program that prepares low-income, mostly minority, New York City preschoolers for kindergarten. The children receive scholarships for kindergarten at independent schools. The teachers, the other volunteers, and I helped the children with their reading and writing skills. In August, I volunteered at Storyteller Children’s Center in Santa Barbara, California. The center provides daycare and enrichment to homeless families making less than $10,000 a year. For three weeks, I played with the toddlers so their parents could work or look for work. It occurred to me that while the families at both Summer Steps and Storyteller were considered low-income, the children were living extraordinarily different lives.

When Farrah, Sebastian, and Khodi were juxtaposed with Jamin, Suzette, and Yari, I realized that poverty was more intricate than I had imagined. These faces taught me about the nuances of the term low-income. There has always been an anthropologist in me, and the children at Summer Steps and Storyteller made me want to use my passion for anthropology as a means of advocacy. When I observed Jamin’s appetite, I realized how much work there is left to do.

Ko Lyn Cheang

Hometown: Singapore

Year: First-Year

College: Grace Hopper

Major(s): Philosophy

Extracurriculars: Yale Debate Association;

Yale Daily News staff writer

PROFILE

Ko Lyn Cheang hails from Singapore, but she knew early on that there was more to her future than settling down in her home country. In Singapore, Ko Lyn explains, college education is largely defined by majors, and career opportunities lean heavily toward law and medicine. Going to a Singaporean university would have been the practical thing to do, she acknowledges. But I wanted to chase after my dreams.

Ko Lyn, who is a philosophy major, says she sees college not as a preprofessional training ground but as a place where she can ask bigger questions about humanity. Her interest in philosophy truly bloomed only after she arrived at Yale, and Ko Lyn hasn’t looked back since, having already declared her major as a rising sophomore.

On weekends, Ko Lyn sometimes travels to other states for debate tournaments with her fellow Yale Debate Association members. During the week, however, she is content to curl up in the library with her readings. Indeed, she wholeheartedly admits that many of her favorite spots on campus are in libraries; she rhapsodizes about the Slavic Reading Room and the circulation-desk hold shelves in Sterling Memorial Library.

The moment you enter Sterling, the light comes washing down on you through the mosaic, almost like an intimate, spiritual experience, Ko Lyn says. It makes you think that the essays you write here are part of a greater project in the pursuit of knowledge.

Ko Lyn also writes for the Yale Daily News, an experience that allows her to venture outside the restraints of typical student life. She describes journalism as providing her with a window into others’ lives; for instance, one of Ko Lyn’s favorite stories allowed her to interview a former Japanese geisha who is now a language instructor at Yale.

Indeed, since she arrived at Yale, Ko Lyn has been especially impressed and surprised by the general campus attitude toward sharing stories—both people’s receptiveness to others’ stories and their willingness to share their own. She has found her peers at Yale to be curious and open-minded listeners, quick to appreciate the many facets that comprise a person’s life.

Ko Lyn says this tendency toward empathy stands in stark contrast to her experience in Singapore, where, she reflects, people are understood less by the experiences that have shaped them than by their social status or economic power. She believes that cursory, one-dimensional measures like these are appealing because they are simple—but they are also less revealing.

Ko Lyn sees how this disparity comes to bear on the college process, too. She wishes that she could tell her high school self to focus on the storytelling aspect of the college application, especially where the essay is concerned. She urges students to use this space as an opportunity for some deep soul-searching and real self-reflection. You have to distill yourself into a 500-word piece that captures the essence of who you are, she says. It’s daunting but rewarding in the end.

Ko Lyn’s essays include her Common App personal statement and two of her Yale supplemental