Decoding College Admissions: Lessons from Zach Yadegari's Experience
The college admissions process is often viewed as a high-stakes game, with students striving to present themselves as the most qualified candidates. However, a recent incident involving Zach Yadegari, a highly accomplished high school student, has sparked a national conversation about the true purpose of the college essay and the values that elite institutions prioritize.
The Case of Zach Yadegari
Zach Yadegari's story is one that has resonated with many students and parents across the country. Despite boasting a 4.0 GPA, a 34 on the ACT, and a successful tech startup reportedly generating millions in revenue, Yadegari was rejected from nearly every top-tier university he applied to, including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Yale.
In response to these rejections, Yadegari shared his admissions essay online, igniting a debate about whether the college admissions system is truly meritocratic. He expressed his desire to use his experience "for good" and to advocate for changes in the system.
The Essay Under Scrutiny
As a college counselor, I immediately sensed that there must have been something wrong with his essay. As it turned out, I was correct. The essay was notable not only for how much it focused on Yadegari’s extensive accomplishments but also for its complete lack of self-awareness. Instead of focusing on a deeply personal aspect of his teenage years, Yadegari presented a supercilious overview of his achievements:
"By age 7, I was coding. By 10, I was giving lessons for $30/hour. By 12, I published my first app on the App Store. And by 16, I had a six-figure exit. YouTube was my personal tutor, teaching me everything from programming to filing my LLC’s."
Read also: The Rise of Zach Ertz
Commenters were quick to disparage Yadegari’s writing, sparking a national conversation about the purpose of the college essay and the absurdity of an exercise that asks students to “disguise [their accomplishments] as modesty,” as Rob Henderson wrote on his Substack. Analyzing Yadegari’s essay, Henderson claimed that Yadegari’s college applications flopped because he did not speak the language of “the elites,” where “overt pride in your accomplishments is frowned upon.” Other commenters on X praised the essay and criticized college admissions officers for seeking personal statements that demonstrate “unearned confidence rooted in being ‘oppressed.’”
While Yadegari's accomplishments were undoubtedly impressive, his essay failed to convey his personality, values, or emotional depth. It read more like a resume than a personal statement, leaving admissions officers with a list of achievements but little understanding of who he was as a person.
The Purpose of the College Essay
The college essay is a unique opportunity for students to showcase their individuality and demonstrate their readiness for higher-level thinking. It's a chance to tell admissions officers something unique about themselves beyond their high school resumes.
The Common App essay prompts guide students to reflect on idiosyncratic elements of their lives, asking pointed questions about identity, talents, and interests rather than about awards or accomplishments. We would do well to take these prompts at face value.
In a sea of rigged activities, grade inflation, and near-perfect SAT scores, the college essay is the only component of the college application process that cannot be gamed or bought. It’s true that students can resort to AI tools or hire a college counselor to help them polish their essays, but no amount of heavy edits can bring out a student’s authentic voice - and no counselor or ChatGPT model will ever be able to identify the facets of the student’s experience that have led them to become the individual they are today.
Read also: Beyond the Music: Zach Bryan's Education
Authenticity and Introspection
Top admissions advisors agree that strong essays share four core traits:
- Authenticity: A natural first-person voice that reflects real personality.
- Self-Reflection: Insights gained from challenges, not just lists of activities.
- Emotional Connection: Specific, honest storytelling that resonates with readers.
- Original Perspective: A fresh way of thinking or unique life experience.
The goal? Make admissions officers remember you, like you, and want you on their campus.
Some of my most talented students have taken time to reflect on the mundane - such as a student who gained admission to Cornell by writing about her pet turtle - or tap into the fantastical, such as a student who ended up at Penn after telling admissions officers about her desire to become a Disney princess. These students, of course, also boast stellar accomplishments and strong academic credentials, but what helped them secure admission was the imagination, creativity, and authenticity displayed in their essays.
Beyond the Resume: The Qualities Colleges Seek
Elite colleges aren't solely interested in academic achievements and extracurricular activities. They are seeking students who possess a range of qualities, including:
- Emotional intelligence: The ability to understand and manage one's own emotions, as well as recognize and respond to the emotions of others.
- Personal values: A strong sense of ethics, integrity, and social responsibility.
- Storytelling ability: The capacity to communicate effectively and engage an audience through compelling narratives.
- Reflection and insight: The ability to analyze one's experiences, learn from them, and gain a deeper understanding of oneself and the world.
Colleges are looking for candidates who seem thirsty for education and will likely graduate.
Read also: Explore Zach Edey's dominant performance
The Pitfalls to Avoid
Students should be wary of common pitfalls that can undermine their college essays:
- Bragging: Focusing excessively on accomplishments without demonstrating humility or self-awareness.
- Lack of introspection: Failing to reflect on personal growth, challenges, and lessons learned.
- Generic writing: Using clichés, platitudes, or overly formal language that doesn't reveal the student's unique voice.
- Inauthenticity: Attempting to portray oneself as someone one is not, or exaggerating experiences to impress admissions officers.
- Writing a "sob story": While overcoming adversity is a valuable topic, avoid melodramatic or exploitative narratives.
The University of Austin's Experiment
In response to the perceived flaws in the traditional admissions process, the University of Austin is launching an experiment with a new and more streamlined approach. Students with scores below this threshold will be ranked by their scores and invited to submit up to three sentences listing three achievements.
This model is less like arranging a marriage and more like selection for the Special Forces. The university seeks self-starters with an appetite for risk, students who are allergic to bureaucracy and not always willing to spend their high-school years carefully crafting a CV. They like the idea that what really matters is their general intelligence (“g”) and their willingness to do serious work.
The Bigger Picture: A Critique of the College Essay
Yascha Mounk has argued that the college essay is a deeply unfair way to select students for top colleges, one that is much more biased against the poor than standardized tests. The college essay wrongly encourages students to cast themselves as victims, to exaggerate the adversity they’ve faced, and to turn genuinely upsetting experiences into the focal point of their self-understanding.
There are many tangible, “objective” reasons to oppose making personal statements a key part of the admissions process. Perhaps the most obvious is that they have always been the easiest part of the system to game. While rich parents can hire SAT tutors they can’t sit the standardized test in the stead of their offspring; they can, however, easily write the admissions essay for their kid or hire a “college consultant” who “works with” the applicant to “improve” that essay.
Even if rich parents don’t cheat in those ways, their class position gives rich kids a huge advantage in the exercise. As the responses to Zach’s essay show, writing a good admissions essay is to a large extent an exercise in demonstrating one’s good taste-and the ability to do so has always depended on being fluent in the unspoken norms of an elite community.
The fundamental problem with it isn’t that it arbitrarily excludes some highly talented individuals like Zach from positions of power and privilege; it’s that it drains the souls of teenagers and encourages a deeply pernicious brand of fakery and breeds widespread mistrust in social elites.
Working at a number of colleges over my career has taught me the ideal students are independent thinkers craving challenge and willing to be bold. But the admissions process rewards privilege and punishes authenticity. Courage is punished. Admissions essays, above all, have become an exercise in disingenuous posturing.
tags: #zach #yadegari #college #essay #tips
