Jeanine focused her personal narrative on a simple, yet powerful moment. She told the story of her family eating at a friend's house to show the importance of context. She and her brother dug into the sweet potato unassumingly, while their dad watched his children eat a food he hadn’t touched since immigrating to the United States as a sweet potato farmer with nothing. Through a simple, personal, and captivating story, Jeanine was able to communicate her family values, what this opportunity means to her family, her background, her empathy and desire to understand other perspectives, and her ability to think deeply about personal histories/context among other things. This is a perfect example of using your essays for attention and communication. Admissions officers sift through thousands of applications, but storytelling can be a great way to captivate their attention and communicate to them what you stand for, what you’ve learned, and who you are. She also wrote about her niche STEM passions, defending genetic modification as a means of protecting agrarian life, and seeing the world as an experiment.

Harvard’s Mission Statement:

When applying, students often categorize their applications by reach or safety schools, but Jeanine notes this misconception can prevent you from finding your fit schools.

She warns that changing your application only to fit what you think a university is looking for will put you in a place that does match you and won’t be your best place to grow. Jeanine was intentional about attending a place where she would fit and grow. Jeanine stresses the importance of getting to interact with a student body to see if you’re in the right place. At Columbia, for instance, all the students she talked to on a campus visit knew exactly who they were and what they wanted to do in life. Likewise at Harvard, the students hadn’t decided what they wanted to be yet, and were open to becoming anything because they were driven by curiosity. Jeanine thinks, “We can’t expect a high school senior to understand all they want to do in life, that’s absurd. Even in college we should be allowed to explore who we want to become”. Since she identified with Harvard’s community of curious and still uncertain students, the distinction became a key driver in Jeanine’s final decision. This went hand-in-hand with the Harvard community’s intrinsic love for learning. “It could be about any one subject or a wide array, but everyone was curious–even to know what I was passionate about as much as what they were. They didn’t have enough time in a day to take the course load for all they wanted to know and understand. Being general ed helps that a lot, you have to be open-minded”

Jeanine is a specialist archetype with subtype Advocate. She poured herself into niche passions in biology and environmental science, participating in research about seed proliferation and disease to help local farmers, starting an environmental club to solve local traffic patterns, and wrote her essays about her family history of sweet potato farming through a biological and chemical lens, treating life as an experiment, and defending genetic modification to help agrarian struggles.

She manages to tie in personal history with her work and interest in hyper-specific fields, while also applying it in an altruistic and real-world setting. For Jeanine, the “why” of her passion, her family background, binds everything together. If you don’t know where to start on an essay, ask yourself about the “why” behind your passion because it will say so much about what makes you who you are.

Her work is intensely curious and specific: she treats life as an experiment and emphasizes niche biological solutions to real-world agricultural challenges. And Jeanine is textbook Advocate. Her narrative isn’t just about personal success—it’s rooted in service, social awareness, and real-world application. She ties her STEM work to family history, empathy, environmental solutions, and broader social contributions.

Jeanine reminds us that metrics like GPA and test scores don’t define whether our stories deserve to be told.

Jeanine emphasizes that fit matters more than admission, challenging the 'prestige chase' mindset.

Jeanine highlights that real growth happens when you’re in a place that aligns with your values, not just one that looks impressive.

For students still figuring out who they want to become, Jeanine underscores that some communities will support that journey—and some won’t.

Soren’s impact extended across science, service, and persistence in action: • Founded SAMI (South Asians for Marrow Initiative), leading donor registration drives that added over 1,000 new bone marrow donors nationally. • Started chapters in multiple states, empowering other students to host community events and scale impact at South Asian cultural sites. • Conducted bioengineering research on sharkskin-inspired wind turbine efficiency for the Washington State Science & Engineering Fair, winning 1st place and becoming a GENIUS Olympiad Finalist. • Interned at Fred Hutch Cancer Center’s Silberstein Lab, supporting research in blood cancer biology through cold outreach. • Worked as a research assistant at the University of Florida College of Medicine, validating microRNA degradation triggers under Dr. Mingyi Xie. Published academic work on improving CAR-T cell persistence. • Served as a varsity tennis player with a national ranking and received a $3,000 independent project grant to pursue extracurricular science work. From grassroots organizing to competitive research, Soren combined resourcefulness with reach—building impact one cold email, one idea, and one connection at a time.

When it comes to essay writing, Jeanine’s litmus test is simple: if you’re genuinely passionate, the words will come effortlessly.

Using your resume as a tool to distinguish yourself! Some accomplishments and parts of your personality can’t be captured in just your essays alone. For example, Jeanine founded an environmental club with the goal of improving local traffic patterns in her town. She decided to take advantage of the freedom a resume offered by being more descriptive, telling a brief story about this accomplishment in a sentence or two. “I didn’t dedicate a whole essay to it, but you can find ways to take something cut and dry like a resume and highlight things outside of organized sport and extracurriculars. Even if it’s a one-off project, job, interest, or activity it could be the thing that makes you stand out. I want a resume to capture my experience, who I am as a person, what I care about, and how I dedicate my time”. No matter how niche it feels, adding outside-the-box experience on a resume can give the extra depth needed to stand out to admissions. Consider things in your life important that you can tell a brief story about in a sentence or two to make your resume pop. Jeanine also notes that there are many male-centric fields that need female representation, like computer-science and other branches of STEM. If you’re passionate about these fields, don’t let the stereotypes intimidate you, colleges seek representation and it could be something that makes you a really appealing candidate if the passion is genuine.

Jeanine emphasizes that an essay topic can be completely mundane in subject matter, what matters is what it says about you, how you interact with it, and that you can’t stop writing about it. She had to go through a similar process coming up with a valedictorian speech for high school graduation. She chose to speak about a silly car game she would play with her brother as kids called “Paddidle”. In the game, you win by calling out “Paddidle” when you see a car with a single headlight. It doesn’t happen often, and it’s somewhat of a boring game, but the memory stuck out to her and represented how in life, the little unexpected things can be the most beautiful and strongly remembered when you’re intentional about them. The essay, like Jeanine’s speech, should say more about your outlook on life, who you are, what you care about, and how you think than it should say about any tangible subject.