Latest news with #Ivy-League
Forbes
3 days ago
- General
- Forbes
The Common App Is Open—Here's How To Craft An Ivy League-Worthy Essay
Student writing an essay getty The Common Application opened on August 1st, marking the official start of the 2025–26 admissions season. The Common App is the hub for students' applications—including their activities lists, letters of recommendation, and supplemental essays. One of the most consequential—and daunting—elements of the Common App is the personal statement. While a student's grades and test scores lay the foundation for their candidacy, what truly differentiates them is the story they tell about who they are on their application. This application narrative should be cohesively developed and presented throughout all of a student's application materials, and the personal statement offers a particularly crucial opportunity to convey that narrative in their own words. It therefore shapes and guides how admissions officers view other elements of their application. What are the Common App prompts? The Common App provides students with seven prompts to choose from as they write their essay. For the 2025–26 application cycle, students may select one of the following: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you? Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more? Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design Students who are intimidated by the challenge of selecting a topic or narrowing their ideas might find inspiration in the first six prompts, while the seventh prompt provides students with the open-ended opportunity to write about whatever they would like. This option ensures that students won't be pigeonholed in trying to answer any particular question and can allow their creativity to flourish. How can students make their personal essay stand out to Ivy League admissions officers? Daunted by the challenge of telling a compelling story in only 650 words, many students resort to cliches, write a half-baked essay, or outsource their writing to uninspired AI-generated prose. An Ivy-League worthy essay, on the other hand, requires forethought, strategy, and a clear understanding of the unique type of writing characteristic of a compelling personal statement. Here are three steps students should take to write an essay admissions officers won't forget: It is impossible to share your entire autobiography in 650 words—and you should not try. Admissions officers are not looking to read your entire life story. Instead, they want a snapshot of who you are—your values, core qualities, goals, personality, and unique voice—through an emblematic story or anecdote. Rather than telling a sweeping story or narrating years of your life, focusing on a particular moment, object, facet of your identity, or impactful experience will allow you to provide greater detail, a critical component of a standout essay. Narrowing in on a specific story that might seem mundane or unnoticeable to others can allow you to showcase your creativity and individual outlook. Keep in mind that admissions officers read thousands of essays every admissions cycle; differentiating your essay from others' will require you to articulate what specifically distinguishes you. Don't write that you're 'passionate about helping others.' Instead, illustrate for admissions officers the exact moment your passion began. Don't just claim you're 'curious about the world.' Draw your readers into a moment in which your curiosity led you to challenge yourself or change your mind. Don't write that you've 'overcome challenges.' Choose one defining hurdle you have overcome and articulate how it uniquely shaped you. While you don't have to respond directly to a Common App prompt in your response, answering a particular question may help you choose your essay topic if you find yourself struggling. With the ubiquity of AI language, students have to be all the more intentional about getting creative and avoiding cliche, ChatGPT terms and phrases. Even where students have not used AI, cliché language and other common AI constructions can lead admissions officers to doubt the authenticity of students' writing. While AI can be helpful in brainstorming, students should keep in mind that even the ideas an AI bot generates may be generic, overused, or shallow, and brainstorming should never end with AI. Instead of relying on artificial intelligence, students should embrace their creativity and strive to share their unique voice and perspective in their essays. If you're the class clown, don't be afraid to weave in your sense of humor. If you write poetry in your spare time, embrace rich, descriptive language (but don't whip out the thesaurus and select words you wouldn't normally use!). One of the best ways to determine whether your distinct voice is reflected in your essay is to enlist the editorial support of a friend or family member who knows you well. You might read the essay aloud to them or allow them to read it independently and then ask whether they would be able to identify you as the writer if they had read the essay blind. One of the most important qualities that admissions officers look for in the personal essay is self-awareness. Your essay should not cast you as the unproblematic hero of every story. Admissions officers know that you aren't perfect, nor do you know everything—instead, they want to see that you are aware of your own shortcomings, teachable and open-minded, and mature enough to identify your own blind spots and take action to learn and grow. As you choose a story and begin drafting, consider not only the skills you possess, but also the experiences that have caused you to rethink your perspectives, learn something new about yourself, identify a weakness, or overcome a struggle (whether internal or circumstantial). At the same time, keep in mind that your essay is a professional piece of writing. While some students fall into the trap of writing a hero narrative, others assume that they can garner sympathy from admissions officers by sharing tragic or highly personal stories. You should be honest and introspective, but avoid trauma dumping or overly intimate disclosures. In addition to the above, one of the most important steps students can take toward crafting an Ivy League-worthy personal statement is starting early . A great essay is not written on the first try. Developing a story, conveying your voice, and connecting your experiences to a deeper insight about who you will be on campus all require significant effort and will occur through the process of trial and error. The sooner a student starts refining their ideas, the more polished and compelling their essay will be.
Japan Today
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Japan Today
U.S. State Department resumes processing Harvard student visas after judge's ruling
A student walks on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., May 23, 2025. REUTERS/Faith Ninivaggi/File Photo By Humeyra Pamuk The U.S. State Department directed all U.S. missions abroad and consular sections to resume processing Harvard University student and exchange visitor visas after a federal judge in Boston last week temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's ban on foreign students at the Ivy-League institution. In a diplomatic cable sent on June 6 and signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department cited parts of the judge's decision, saying the fresh directive was "in accordance with" the temporary restraining order. Under that order granted to Harvard late on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs blocked Trump's proclamation from taking effect pending further litigation of the matter. Trump had cited national security concerns as justification for barring international students from entering the United States to pursue studies at Harvard. The Trump administration has launched a multi-pronged attack on the nation's oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges. Harvard argues the administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to demands to control the school's governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the cable, the State Department added that all other guidance regarding student visas remained in effect, including enhanced social media vetting and the requirement to review the applicants' online presence. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
The Star
09-06-2025
- Politics
- The Star
US State Dept resumes processing Harvard student visas after judge's ruling
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. State Department directed all U.S. missions abroad and consular sections to resume processing Harvard University student and exchange visitor visas after a federal judge in Boston last week temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's ban on foreign students at the Ivy-League institution. In a diplomatic cable sent on June 6 and signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department cited parts of the judge's decision, saying the fresh directive was "in accordance with" the temporary restraining order. Under that order granted to Harvard late on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs blocked Trump's proclamation from taking effect pending further litigation of the matter. Trump had cited national security concerns as justification for barring international students from entering the United States to pursue studies at Harvard. The Trump administration has launched a multi-pronged attack on the nation's oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges. Harvard argues the administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to demands to control the school's governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the cable, the State Department added that all other guidance regarding student visas remained in effect, including enhanced social media vetting and the requirement to review the applicants' online presence. (Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, editing by Deepa Babington)
Straits Times
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
US State Dept resumes processing Harvard student visas after judge's ruling
A student walks on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., May 23, 2025. REUTERS/Faith Ninivaggi/File Photo WASHINGTON - The U.S. State Department directed all U.S. missions abroad and consular sections to resume processing Harvard University student and exchange visitor visas after a federal judge in Boston last week temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's ban on foreign students at the Ivy-League institution. In a diplomatic cable sent on June 6 and signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department cited parts of the judge's decision, saying the fresh directive was "in accordance with" the temporary restraining order. Under that order granted to Harvard late on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs blocked Trump's proclamation from taking effect pending further litigation of the matter. Trump had cited national security concerns as justification for barring international students from entering the United States to pursue studies at Harvard. The Trump administration has launched a multi-pronged attack on the nation's oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges. Harvard argues the administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to demands to control the school's governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the cable, the State Department added that all other guidance regarding student visas remained in effect, including enhanced social media vetting and the requirement to review the applicants' online presence. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
There's nothing elitist about college or university. We should reject that idea
It's no secret that the Trump administration is not a friend of the country's higher education system. During a speech he gave at the National Conservatism conference in October 2021, vice-president JD Vance pinpointed American universities as 'the enemy' while repeating a litany of increasingly familiar charges about their purported cultural elitism, radical-left ideological agenda, and incapacity to prepare students for the real needs of the labor market. More recently, Donald Trump has also endorsed plans to tax university endowments and abolish the Department of Education, which oversees both the federal Pell Grant system and most federally subsidized student loan programs, jointly accounting for about 40% of the country's higher education revenues. Amongst the stated grounds for this hostility, one of the most frequent – but also perplexing – claims is that colleges and universities are 'elite playgrounds'. This is of course one of the several ways in which the current Republican party has sought to rebrand itself as a champion of the interests and values of the working class, against the country's purportedly progressive establishment. Yet the appeal to anti-elitist sentiment in the attack against higher education remains perplexing, for a few reasons. To begin with, both Trump and Vance are themselves Ivy-League graduates otherwise deeply invested in preserving, rather than upending, the country's established social hierarchies. The 'diversity, equity and inclusion' programs specifically intended to broaden access to higher education institutions have, if anything, been the target of their most virulent attacks. It's also confusing – and somewhat circular – that most of these attacks have focused on Ivy League colleges and universities, which do primarily serve elites but are also responsible for a tiny fraction of the post-secondary education in the country at large. Their total undergraduate enrollment is currently at around 60,000, which is less than 0.5% of the overall undergraduate population in the United States. But there is a deeper reason why anti-elitism and hostility towards higher education are strange bedfellows. Higher education institutions have historically been among the most effective powerful engines of social mobility in the country. They are therefore natural antidotes against the consolidation of what the founding fathers referred to as 'artificial aristocracies founded on wealth and birth'. In advocating for the creation of a publicly funded university in the state of Virginia, for instance, Thomas Jefferson argued that 'those talents which nature hath sown liberally among the poor as the rich' would thereby be 'rendered by liberal education worthy to receive and able to guard the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens … without regard to wealth, birth, or other accidental conditions or circumstances'. The limits of Jefferson's actual disregard for factors of 'birth' in the target population he had in mind when advancing his vision for a publicly-funded higher education institution are evident in the fact the University of Virginia he contributed in creating initially only accepted white males, notwithstanding the fact the removal of the 'wealth' barrier was in itself a significant achievement. Yet the same fundamental faith in the capacity of higher education to break down social barriers also underpinned the subsequent expansion of the United States's higher education system to include various categories of individuals who had previously been excluded from it. Women's colleges began in the first half of the 19th century and played a decisive role in challenging the marginal position that women had historically occupied in American society, eventually leading to their inclusion in previously male-only colleges in the aftermath of the second world war. The same is true of historically Black colleges and universities for African Americans, and of the land-grant universities created between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries for multiple generations of immigrants of Catholic, Jewish and Asian descent. Contemporary empirical evidence confirms that US higher education institutions continue to function as powerful engines of social mobility: a recent study by the Pew Charitable Trusts showed that adult children born to parents in the bottom quintile of the income distribution are about four times as likely to reach the top quintile by attending college. To be sure, there is also evidence that complicates the long-established narrative. Low-income students still attend highly selective colleges at much lower rates than their peers from richer families, and their enrollment at the mid-ranking institutions that are most effective at propelling them into higher income brackets has actually been declining over the past two decades. But, if that is the case, the answer should be more, not less, investment in expanding access to higher education. The fact that the incoming administration is intent on gutting not only 'diversity, equity and inclusion' programs but also the federally funded Pell Grant and student loan programs shows that it doesn't really intend to contrast the persistent elements of 'elitism' in the country's higher education system. On the contrary, to the extent that college education has become one of the most powerful predictors of electoral support for the Democratic party, the goal is more likely to be a further entrenchment of the deep socioeconomic divisions that colleges and universities have historically served to undermine but the current Republican party thrives on. Seeing past this ruse requires separating legitimate concerns about elite power in the contemporary United States from the attack against the very institutions that are most likely to do something about it. Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti is executive director of the Moynihan Center and full professor of political science at the City College of New York.
