I am under the impression that the adcom seems to have a sweet spot for misery stories from international applicants. During my college essay brainstorming I read many essays written by past years' international applicants who were accepted to top-tier institutions. It wasn't hard to detect a pattern - a successful one, nonetheless - with those essays: exotic tales about war, conflict, poverty,... Some were sad, some were meh, but, having grown up in a country with a tumultuous past and present, I found them all a little exploitative, a little naive, and very lacking. There wasn't any level of depth that made me stop and ponder, nothing that couldn't be found in the local newspaper. Just witnessed social injustice in your neighborhood and thought really hard about it? Congratulations, you are the 40 millionth of my country to do so.

There is nothing wrong to write about your country; your experience is an invaluable asset to the colleges where you're headed. But I believe that if an applicant chooses to do it he might as well do it painstakingly. Novel thoughts. Intellectual reflections. Well-explored passion. Not another recycled pavement story.

Typical neplease

neplease hahahahaha good necro man

Anyways, it's really quite true that the essays considered "amazing" among the international ones tend to be these super-dramatic and traumatic experiences of war, hardships, etc. I honestly think they are kinda overrated. Besides, a great fiction writer can write this kind of essay with enough knowledge of the local situations (I doubt Harvard would really check if the applicant's relative is dead).

Still, I'm not against applicants who get accepted with these essays PLUS great stats. They still deserved it.

I loved this essay.