Sara Mastered Grit and Curiosity to Earn Admission into MIT

For Sara Wilson, swinging on a flying trapeze wasn’t just a hobby—it was a metaphor for her mindset. While most applicants shy away from discussing failure, Sara leaned into it—literally. In one of her MIT essays, she described the sting of the safety net not as defeat, but as a satisfying invitation to try again. Sara didn’t follow a perfectly polished path to college. Instead, she carved out a space defined by experimentation, risk-taking, and resilience. She was drawn to MIT because it was “a place where people make things happen,” and her path—though nonlinear—was grounded in a relentless drive to understand and improve the world around her.