How Jenny Got Into Cornell
and so many other top schools...
“My interest in astronomy began with watching Neil deGrasse Tyson explain the possibility of life beyond Earth. Years later, curiosity led me to calculate the odds that a randomly positioned alien could detect Earth’s transit across the Sun — about 0.46%. I worked it out one night in bed, guided not by a research program but by a question that couldn’t wait.”
Meet Jenny: a senior from Arizona, 4.0 GPA from a solid public school, 1550 SAT, National Merit Semifinalist, AP Scholar with Distinction.
Clearly, a smart cookie... but there’s THOUSANDS of smart cookies who apply every year.
She got into pretty much every top STEM school: Johns Hopkins, Georgia Tech, UMich, UT Austin (early) and Cornell among others, but it wasn’t her stats that got her in!
These days, stats are more like a filter rather than a deciding factor as to why a student is accepted vs. deferred/rejected.
Jenny’s true deciding factor? Her essays!
As you can see from that intro paragraph, her physics obsession is allllll over her “why major” essays — that’s where she sets her curiosity free! And that’s definitely a big part of why schools like JHU said yes. But what made her application memorable was the balance between her intellectual curiosity and her empathy — the same rigor she brings to a physics question, she brings to caring for another person.
For her Cornell community essay, Jenny gravitated towards a different topic: her family.
Specifically, teaching her grandmother, veeerrryy paaatientlyyy, how to text her relatives in Japanese.
“I pull my chair closer and show her how to tap, not press, her passcode. I wait, point, and guide her finger just enough to show the motion without taking control.”
Now, most students are told to veer away from the “cliche grandparent essays,” and we agree!
But that’s because the typical “relationship story” goes one direction — grandma teaches patience, resilience, etc. while the student stays passive, quietly absorbing a lesson someone older already learned.
Jenny flips this completely. She’s the one teaching. She’s the one channeling patience, the one showing up, week after week, correcting herself almost as often as she corrects her grandmother.
Finally, her essay is real. There’s no tidy resolution where Grandma suddenly “gets it” and everyone hugs. Some days grandma still forgets the same thing, but Jenny doesn’t judge. She just keeps showing up.
“I never test her memory or say that we’ve done this before. Instead, I focus on helping her with what she needs in that moment.”
And she shows us that ultimately, it was never about the task; it was about the time spent together.
[My grandmother] makes a point of including me when she sends messages to relatives in Japan. I ask about people or events she mentions, joining the conversation with my own memories or adding little details she might have forgotten. In these moments I feel like I am part of the stories as much as she is.
Jenny concludes with a simple but powerful line: “Connection is built deliberately. It happens when I slow down, pay attention, and sit close to her long after her phone is unlocked.”—an ending that lands because it’s earned by 300 words of proof first.
So, the #1 takeaway? If you’re strong in STEM, use your essays to show your human side. Being technical and being human aren’t two boxes to check separately, and Jenny proves it: the same instinct that makes her chase down a physics question — noticing detail, staying patient, not letting go until it’s right — is exactly what she brings to caring for someone else.
That’s what makes an essay feel personable without feeling performed. And it’s what keeps a “grandparent essay” from turning into a cliche.
What if you could predict and improve your chances before you apply?
(Spoiler: you can!)
After studying admissions rubrics from Harvard and Stanford, we built our own:
See where you stand → elevated.school/getstarted
Until next time,
Kevin and Vennela, ElevatEd School
P.S. We’ve helped over 1,500 students earn Top 20 acceptances since 2020. Know a high schooler who should see this? Forward them this email!