A Pathway to Yourself
How do you search for the setting for an essay that will allow you to be most fundamentally you? You must search your feelings. Yes, Anakin, this is just like Star Wars.
What you feel like is the most important story is the one you should tell. There are of course some rules—don’t ever talk about partying, romantic relationships, or mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety, or ADHD. For me, they’re out of bounds because they bring into question your ability to succeed at an elite institution. But everything else is fair game.
In the following example, you’re going to read an essay from a student who wrote about a birdfeeder he bought from Costco. This student achieved a near-perfect GPA, 1530 SAT, and won major robotics and software competitions. When we first began probing for a topic for him to write about, the only thing we could do was debate between this competition and that because his life was consumed by school and extracurriculars. The essay came out well, to tell you the truth, but it was just another essay about a kid struggling through preparation for a competition and then getting 3rd place on the big stage.
When his mom had come to me, she had said, “he really isn’t a writer.” So I thought this was all he had in him and we moved on.
During our subsequent sessions working on supplemental essays, however, he blossomed as a writer. I felt as though I could see him registering the power of anecdotes. He developed stories about equipping young students with coding knowledge and about how deeply he was moved by his mentor’s investment in him at his Black Data Processing Associates chapter, raising the ceiling of how moving an essay could be in his mind. He texted me at 11:00 one night: “I want to redo my essay.”
I think this student had recognized that while his first essay spoke to his accomplishments, it wasn’t very moving. “Personal” or “human” wouldn’t be the first descriptors for it. He must have sat back in his chair and thought, “What is something I feel stronger about?”
The following is his essay, which he has approved to be shared with you. For context, this student received acceptances for computer science to Carnegie Mellon (~5% acceptance rate) and Georgia Tech (<10%).
Sonder
Leaning my weight on the cold metal rod, I felt it sink into the damp earth of my backyard. I had always wanted a pet, but following my parents’ resistance, the closest I ever got was the cast-iron bird feeder I bought at Home Depot.
After filling and hanging it on the curved hook of the rod, I took a seat on my porch, ready for my desires for rich entertainment in the form of jays and cardinals to be met.
The evening crept into the night without a single visitor.
For the next few days, the vacancy of the feeder challenged me to think: maybe they had food sources elsewhere. Was it possible they thought it was a trap?
On the third day, however, overwhelmed with excitement, I saw a sparrow land on the feeder, survey the tube, and begin eating. With each day, I stayed a little longer, until taking my chair each evening became routine. The finch kept watch on a feeding cardinal, then slid into place when the coast was clear. A cardinal spent its entire evening going back and forth between the feeder and its nest.
I started thinking about the birds’ lives beyond the feeder. I wondered what they did the rest of the day: if they had kids or eggs to take care of, if they had partners, or if they were worried about predators.
Watching the birds nudged me from entertainment to empathy, and that shift began to shape my daily interactions. When buying groceries, I struck up a brief conversation with the cashier, asking about her day and joking about how busy the line was. In that moment, I realized I had been thinking of her role as the only part of her identity, when in reality, she had a full life beyond the store. The small exchange revealed that it was all too common of an impulse to go about our lives without taking others’ perspectives.
That night, thinking back to an interview with an artist named Brent Faiyaz, I remembered him defining what his band name “Sonder” meant. He defined it as “the realization that every person we encounter is living a life as full and complex as our own.” This feeling perfectly captured my thinking at that time. Sonder challenged the instinctive assumption that others had lives that could not relate to my own.
The more I put myself into other people’s shoes, the more I gained awareness about the ways in which people just like me were in need. I began searching for opportunities to bridge the gap. When tutoring, I thought about how my students might appreciate coding as much as I did long-term. When packing food at the shelter, I imagined how much it would mean for someone to deliver food to me if I were hungry.
When tasked with coding an agriculture app for the TSA competition last summer with the topic of sustainability, I realized that sonder could be my guide. I understood that many farmers might not have had access to user-friendly technology and could unintentionally waste resources. Sympathizing with farmers’ financial struggles and helping them manage their resources tackled both environmental and financial problems.
Sonder meant that I might not have known everything about a person, but I realized that the only thing that differed between my life and another’s was how our circumstances had been determined by chance. As the sun dipped below the tree line, the cardinal came to a halt, swooping to its home to carry bits of pine straw and twigs to fit them into its nest. Simultaneously, I finished up my homework for the day. What separated or bridged our realities was a matter of where I placed my mind.
So What’s the Right Topic?
The topic of your essay actually doesn’t matter. Think of it as a setting. The acting is what matters. The movie Interstellar takes place decades in the future on planets leagues away from Earth, yet we relate to the cruelty of time and the tension between love and personal ambition.
This is why it’s important to search your feelings.
This student wanted to write about his birdfeeder because he knew something was there. He didn’t know exactly what it was yet, but he had a thread. He knew he would be talking about perspective-taking. The discussion of sonder came into play only after he had been working for a time to develop the essay.
Admissions officers in articles written on behalf of their institutions often emphasize that how you talk about what you talk about is more important than what you write about. This isn’t a gimmick. It is insider information. The premise of the personal statement is: We want to know how your mind works. Think about it—if all they wanted to know was what you are capable of achieving and how well you’ve performed in school, they wouldn’t need a personal statement. They’ve already got that information! Grades, SAT scores, activities. This is your chance to talk about how you feel. There’s got to be something that moves you. Talk about that, and you will move your reader.
