I’m a fan of Costsco but wouldn’t have thought to see it somehow contribute to a student’s admission to Ivys!
It could also serve as an inspiration to those that feel they “have nothing special to write about”.
It would be interesting to see her stats and background. But yes it shows you can use anything as a taking off point to show intellectual curiosity which is what she did.
Did everyone else think that essay was so great? Yeah, curious about her stats.
Reading that essay convinced me that adcoms at elite schools do not know what they are doing.
Thanks for posting this. I’m also a fan of Costco – both as a consumer and as a business model – but was wondering what she would write about. It seems like it would make a pretty good essay.
Even though it’s overwritten, this essay strikes me as a clever idea. A good way to hook the reader. It took some chutzpah to use this essay.
It’s very important to understand that for the essay, a mundane topic that is treated with originality is better than something that sounds impressive but could have been written by another overachiever.
Cotsco is not the point 
I agree it’s a bit overwritten, but it seems pretty clever to me too, parts of it really made me smile: “I contemplated the philosophical: If there exists a thirty-three ounce jar of Nutella, do we really have free will?”
Measured against what I’m sure can be a numbing sameness of self-serious essays, I imagine this one was a breath of fresh air for adcoms.
I love that line about the Nutella. And yes, Costco is not the point at all. My S wrote a great essay about a somewhat common but dated household object.
It’s overwritten but God, you know how bored adcoms must be by the standard essays. It differentiated her. Which is the point (duh).
The essay is not perfect and it could use a good editor. That’s not the point. She took an ordinary event in one’s life and managed to show how it reflects her approach to education. I thought it was way better than the usual essays the adcoms probably have to read by the hundreds, if not thousands.
I smiled at that essay because that overwritten style was how I used to write in high school. Perhaps that’s the point - it’s clear she didn’t get a parent or an adult to help polish it.
Hopefully, there were other things in the application that must have helped too.
I think the adcoms look at the essays in context with the rest of the application. I personally don’t think that essay’s writing style would fly for an upper middle class kid from my competitive school district in NJ. But who knows.
about 10 years ago, UChicago had a question about a big tub of mustard – the type that you find in Costco. Interestingly, at the time, many on cc panned UofC for its essay prompt.
Well, yeah: “Brazilian immigrant who became an American citizen only a few years ago…”
Most kids essays are over edited and it shows. That is partly why this essay works - it’s not.
I never saw my kid’s essay but found it later when going through college app stuff to throw out. I am glad he never showed it to me because I would have urged him to change it and I would have likely, at the least, took editing pencil to it. When I told him I found it he said he wrote it in 15 minutes. He was accepted at all nine schools where he applied.
@bluebayou : I think the Brazilian immigrant was the mom, not the kid
What I would like to know is how stuff like this makes it into the media. No way in h e double hockey sticks would I sign off on such an article about my kid. Are they crazy? Have they no idea of how this kind of stuff can come back to haunt you?
I liked the essay a lot. Thought it did a great job of showing vs telling and showing who she is through metaphor. Original, eclectic and not boring
I hope there was a $50m check to make up for the poor writing.
I teach freshman writing at a third-tier college, and have TAed many lit courses at an elite. If you think this essay is below the standards of even the typical elite school student, you have a warped perception of undergraduate writers.
Yes, I would have “jettisoned” some of the vocab-list words and drawn a big red line through “controversiality.” I’m also not 17. The essay is playful, original, thoughtful, and shows a sophisticated facility with language. I also read some of the “overwriting” as self-aware; I’m pretty sure “I consider finitudes and infinitudes,” in the context of a description of eating a hot-dog, is at least partially tongue in cheek.
I don’t know what the kid’s other stats were, but this essay would have been a big plus in my book.
I don’t think this was the main essay for Stanford - it requires 3 or 4, and this year one of the supporting ones was on intellectual curiosity. If the goal was to underline a point that even the most mundane things can trigger your curiosity, then this essay did its job perfectly. I also agree that it stood out from all the other essays in both its originality and lack of polish. The other stats might not have been perfect, but enough to suggest she can handle the work at Stanford. Good for her!