10 Stellar Princeton University Essay Examples

What the Essay Did Well

This essay does a nice job of covering each aspect of the prompt. We learn why this student wants to study aerospace engineering, what steps they have taken to explore their interest in the subject, and how they will expand on their passion at Princeton. It’s important to make sure you touch on every part of the prompt, so going through each paragraph and finding where you address each question is a nice way to check when you are editing.

Another positive aspect of this essay is the open and conversational tone. It feels like the reader is having a casual discussion with this student about where their love for engineering came from and where they hope to go with it. Using phrases like “fast forward a few days,” “in fact,” and “awesome” grounds the essay by being more informal. Although you’ve been told in school informality is a bad thing, in college essays it allows you to be more open and comfortable with the admissions officers reading your work and makes you seem more like a person, and less like an application.

Finally, this student did a good job of picking something about Princeton’s engineering program that is unique. Many students reference opportunities at a school that are widely available at other colleges as well, for example an aerospace engineering club. However, this student was very clear about why they are so attracted to Princeton’s program: “Princeton is unique in that it offers a joint major in mechanical AND aerospace engineering, which is something I haven’t seen at any other school.” This tells us that finding a joint program is something very important to this student and that they are applying to Princeton for more than the name and recognition—they genuinely value the unique offerings this school has!

What Could Be Improved

One thing this essay could work on is showing, not telling. They tell the reader “aerospace engineering stole my heart,” that joining STEM clubs made them a “better engineer, but also a better person,” and that they have “felt a pull towards mechanical engineering and robotics,” just to name a few.

What we don’t know is what about aerospace engineering stole their heart; was there a particular topic, a movie they watched, or some new revelation they had from studying it? What we don’t know is how they became a better person by joining STEM clubs; did they engineer a useful tool that became implemented in their school or community? What we don’t know is what about mechanical engineering and robotics excites them; was there a specific experience that influenced them or do certain emotions overtake them when they construct a robot.

If the essay used more active language and relied more heavily on placing the reader in stories, rather than recounting their takeaways from 17 years of experience, we would have answers to those questions posed above. It can sometimes feel like you need to summarize your life experiences to make everything fit in a college essay, but we promise that if you take the time to focus on individual anecdotes and the impact they had on you, your reader will take away so much more than if you gave them a rushed summary.

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What the Essay Did Well

There are three important things that all students should do in their “Why This Major?” Essay: share how their academic interest developed, describe their reasoning and goals, and explain their school choice. While this student’s presentation needs improvement, they at least attempt to meet each of these requirements.

One good thing that this student does (that many students forget) is referencing the specific resources at Princeton — the class “Scientific Integrity in the Practice of Molecular Biology” and the resource of Princeternships. 

What Could Be Improved 

While this student attempts to satisfy the three requirements of a “Why This Major?” Essay, they have room to improve.

The first requirement is sharing how your academic interest developed. This student writes:

As I learned about the intricacies of cell biology and genetics I was enthralled. My love for understanding how the world and humans work from a scientific lens stem from my love for humanity. When I learned about CAS 9 CRISPR and the future of science I felt I had stumbled onto my passion. Furthermore, familiarizing myself with scientific ethicality, I knew this field was for me.

This would be more compelling if it was anchored by a story or anecdote. For example, they could begin with:

“You know how the Sorcerer’s Stone was awesome, but became super dangerous in the wrong hands?” I looked around and everyone was on the edge of their seats. “That’s CRISPR.”

I first learned about the revolutionary genome technology in my AP Biology class, and I must admit, I didn’t get it. Mrs. Gertry said it was powerful, but she didn’t say how. To make matters worse, when I stayed after class to ask how, she said “Honestly kid, I don’t fully get it myself. I just know the experts say that we are on a precipice of DNA advancement, and that’s exciting.”

Since that day, my excitement has steadily developed. It develops as I read The Scientific American blog under the covers each night. It develops as I walk to the UCLA research lab on Friday afternoons. And it will continue to develop until one day I become the expert that Mrs. Gertry told me about. 

Relatedly, the current start to this essay — “The twang of the strings as the delicately strung horsehair bow grazes the steel strings, the enraptured sensation of my hand cramping as I write, and the feeling of connection as my hands dig deep into the damp earth as I nurture my plants” — is confusing, grammatically incorrect, and does not advance the student’s response to the question they are asked. This paragraph should be cut altogether.

The second requirement is describing your reasoning and goals. This student tells us that they want to “change the world with CRISPR.” Though this is more specific than simply changing the world, it is not specific enough. The student should outline more specific, tangible goals like:

• Advancing treatment techniques for neurodegenerative patients
• Improving early identification of viruses like COVID-19
• Creating CRISPR-modified foods that are better for the human body and the environment
• Developing an economically-viable procedure for biodiesel production

The third requirement is explaining your school choice. While this student references a few Princeton-specific resources, they also write “Princeton recognizes the importance of academics, and the humanities as do I” and “I can see myself appreciating the wonderful art around Princeton’s campus as I walk to my classes.” Every college is interested in academics and humanities and every college has art on campus. These superfluous comments take words away from topics that need more exploration.

Finally, this essay could use editing. Grammatical errors interrupt the flow and confuse the reader. For example, the first sentence we read is not actually a sentence, but rather a series of clauses, and there are multiple instances where the student is missing offsetting commas.

To avoid this issue, have friends, family, teachers, and peers read your essays before submitting them to your top schools. Spelling and grammar errors can make a student seem unmotivated, which is the last thing you want in college admissions.

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What the Essay Did Well

This essay starts on a euphoric high point, placing the student and reader in the midst of music all around them. The use of delicate diction like “soft melodies” and “feathery sounds” creates a sense of beauty and comfort, conveying this student’s attraction towards the piano without explicitly stating it. The student continues to use their mastery of language to make the essay come alive with phrase, “transform a monochrome score into a piece of art with color and dimension.”

Another positive aspect of this essay is how the student includes the effect playing piano has on them. Admissions officers aren’t just asking this question to get a longer summary of your extracurriculars than the 100 characters in your activities section; they want to see your personal reflection on the meaning this activity has to you. How have you grown? How has this shaped your personality? What is your emotional response to participating in this activity?

This essay touches upon those ideas to bring more depth and color to their essay. This lends to a nice structural separation of the two ideas. In the first paragraph, we see the physical aspect of playing the piano and understand the sounds of it. The essay shifts from physical to emotional description in the second paragraph by detailing the practice and discipline they have developed through their years of playing. Having this clear contrast makes it easier to focus on each idea on its own, so when the reader finishes the essay, we can appreciate the activity for both of its components.

What Could Be Improved

The second paragraph could use a more emotional backbone. The student tells us about how practicing piano taught them skills like discipline and how they enjoy sharing an “emotional experience with others” by playing. Other than that, the rest of the second paragraph doesn’t convey anything new about the student and their emotional relationship to the piano. A more impactful paragraph might look like this:

“Words get lost on my tongue but my music, the melodic crescendos of those black and white keys, fills the silence. When sitting on that stool, practicing and perfecting for hours on end, I replay the warm smiles, the tear-streaked cheeks, and the shaky breaths I coax from my audience, connecting us in a way no conversation ever has. Those images have instilled more discipline in me than a drill sergeant’s whistle. Repeating the same three bars, I see my mom’s face as she hears my rendition of Clair de la Lune. Stretching my fingers to reach an octave, I hear my friends’ clapping as I finish Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I can’t count the hours I’ve spent alone with my piano. All I know is it’s worth every second when I get to play for others.”

This paragraph reveals the same two central tenets but brings infinitely more emotional impact. One of the ways it is able to do this is by showing, not telling. If this student had shown what it looks like to connect with others and practice endlessly, the essay would have revealed much more about the student and been more engaging to read.

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What the Essay Did Well

Diversity doesn’t always have to be about culture or heritage; diversity exists all around us, even in comics. The genius of this essay lies in the way the student flipped the traditional diversity prompt on its head and instead discussed their diverse perspective on a topic they are passionate about. If you don’t have a cultural connection you are compelled to write about, this is a clever approach to a diversity prompt—if it is handled appropriately.

While this student has a non-traditional topic, they still present it in a way that pays respect to the key aspects of a diversity essay: depicting their perspective and recognizing the importance of diverse views. Just as someone who is writing about a culture that is possibly unfamiliar to the reader, the student describes what makes Marvel and DC unique and important to them and their friend. They also expand on how a lack of diversity in superhero consumption led to them feeling ignorant and now makes them appreciate the need for diversity in all aspects of their life.

This student is unapologetically themselves in this essay which is ultimately why this unorthodox topic is able to work. They committed to their passion for Marvel by sharing analytical takes on characters and demonstrating how the franchise was so important to their identity it momentarily threatened a friendship. The inclusion of humor through their personal voice—referring to the argument as a professional debate and telling us the friendship lived on—contributes to the essay feeling deeply personal.

Choosing a nonconventional topic for a diversity essay requires extra care and attention to ensure you are still addressing the core of the prompt, but if you accomplish it successfully, it makes for an incredibly memorable essay that could easily set you apart!

What Could Be Improved

While this is a great essay as is, the idea of diversity could have been addressed a little bit earlier in the piece to make it absolutely clear the student is writing about their diverse perspective. They position Marvel and DC as two behemoths in the superhero movie industry, but in the event their reader is unfamiliar with these two brands, there is little elaboration on the cultural impact each has on its fans. 

To this student, Marvel is more than just a movie franchise; it’s a crucial part of their identity, just as someone’s race or religion might be. In order for the reader to fully understand the weight of their perspective, there should be further elaboration, towards the beginning, on how important Marvel is to this student. Maybe they found parallels between a struggle they were going through and a character, maybe seeing Marvel movies was a bonding activity with their father, or perhaps the escapism brings them a peace they can’t find anywhere else. Letting the reader in on whatever the reason is would bring more weight to the story.

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What the Essay Did Well

Essays with lower word counts require students to be focused in their answers. This student does a great job of choosing a specific issue — education access — and sticking to it. While they reference the intersections of race/education and wealth/education (which are important!) they do not get sidetracked from their overall focus. 

They also provide evidence of their interest in education by mentioning their free tutoring initiative. This is important. Admissions officers read lots of essays where students claim interest in issues but do nothing to improve them. This student puts their money where their mouth is. 

What Could Be Improved 

The main issue with this essay is that the writing style and structure are not engaging or personal. 

For example, while you may not have space for a “hook” or introduction in a shorter response, your first sentences must draw the reader in. This student begins with stilted sentences that tell us nothing about them — neither their life experiences nor their personality. The first personal sentence that the student writes is “I am passionate about the importance of education,” which comes too late and is not written with personality.

Structurally, for a short Political/Global Issues Essay, we recommend that students focus on their personal connection to an issue rather than the issue itself. This student primarily discusses their issue — education access —, and when they do mention their own experiences, they fall into the unfortunate trap of telling instead of showing. 

To remedy this, the student should pick an anecdote that shows their personal connection to education, then use it as an avenue for communicating their values to admissions officers.

This student’s anecdote could be:

• Their experience with online learning during the pandemic
• How they started their free tutoring program
• A specific moment with a specific student while they were tutoring
• Forecasting a moment in the future when they are continuing to prioritize education access

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What the Essay Did Well

This essay engages a simple yet effective structure. Within 12 words, the prompt has been answered. How has the student shown vivid engagement? Through their internship in their state’s Division of Human Rights.

But they don’t stop there. They humanize their experience accepting the internship by describing the backlash they received from their family. They help us understand the nature of their work by describing the people they interact with. And they forecast what their civic engagement will look like at Princeton. This structure is pulled off beautifully. 

Additionally, the student’s moments of reflection do a great job of showing admissions officers their positive qualities:

• THEY ARE THOUGHTFUL — This is seen as they recognize the importance of cumulative effects over time in the sentence “When “insignificant” discrimination slips through the cracks, more severe violations ensue.”

• THEY ARE STRONG-WILLED — They do not let their family’s opinions shake their values and beliefs. They are invested in the cause of human rights, no matter the consequences in their personal life.

• THEY ARE MATURE — They acknowledge that positives and negatives can exist at the same time, a mature concept. This is specifically seen in the sentence “The same elements that slow the processing of cases safeguard moral consistency, allowing genuine complaints to be separated from frivolous ones.” 

• THEY ARE MOTIVATED — This student has taken on an intense job at a very young age. They are a hard worker, motivated, and willing to go above and beyond.

What Could Be Improved 

In a short essay, it is important to cut the fat. Every word should be intentional and any phrases that do not contribute to the essay should be cut. The main issue with this essay is that the student keeps a lot of fat.

For example, the sentence “Exercising my critical thinking while putting justice into action was fulfilling regardless of a complaint’s validity” can become “Exercising my critical thinking was fulfilling, regardless of a complaint’s validity.” The tighter version does not change the meaning of the sentence and helps the essay flow better.

The student also writes “when I compare human rights protections in the Middle East and the United States, I realize that upholding ethics through the law is necessary for many sectors.” The phrase “through the law” is fluff and the lack of precision about “many sectors” detracts from what the student is trying to say. 

Read each sentence you write individually and make sure it makes perfect sense. Make sure it is clear, tight, and does not require extensive mental acrobatics to understand. 

Secondly, while this student makes the wise decision to forecast their future, their forecasting should be more specific. They write “At Princeton, I’d extend my work in regional human rights to a global scale, building a safer future for vulnerable populations in the Arab world.”

Specific examples would make this forecasting more effective. This could look like:

At Princeton, I plan to continue my human rights work through PAJ organizations. As a vocal member of the Princeton Students for Immigration Empowerment, I will use my administrative skills and legal knowledge to help students acquire visas, housing, and support as quickly and easily as possible.

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What the Essay Did Well

One of the most important parts of writing a Political/Global Issues Essay, or a Civic Engagement Essay, is picking an issue close to your life. This student structures their essay around their family history, which helps the essay feel relatable.

The student humanizes themself by approaching their family history with vulnerability. They write about painful subjects — dreams being broken and hopes being let down — honestly, admitting that their parents were motivated by a desire for luxury and by corporate incentives. 

This student’s maturity also transfers to a larger scale. They have identified that capitalism rules the world at a very young age and are committed to working within the system with the ultimate goal of advancing service and philanthropy.

Though this may be a polarizing approach to capitalism, the student addresses it in a non-polarizing way. They position their desire to work in finance as motivated by the greater good. Lots of young people don’t have complex opinions on politics and the economy so, at the very least, this student showed that they have thought about the confines of capitalism and have an opinion.

What Could Be Improved 

A few changes could make this essay less confusing.

One simple but important change would be adding a paragraph break to separate the student’s discussion of their family history and their discussion of their life plans. This would help the essay flow better.

The break would occur before “Though it sounds like a disingenuous…” and would turn the preceding sentence — “Thus, growing up, I chose to pursue money” — into a transitional sentence, smoothly carrying us from the student’s childhood to their present life.

Second, as the student discusses their family history, they could more clearly communicate the facts of the story. For example, after reading the sentence “My lawyer mother’s dream of justice was disrupted by the corrupt legal system revolving around bribery,” we can’t tell if the writer’s mother was implicated in a scandal, if someone attempted to bribe her, or if she was disillusioned when she saw the success of a bribe. With tighter writing, we would have fewer questions.

Additionally, if we knew the details of the parents’ stories, the summarizing sentence “Due to the constant pressure of satisfying the basic needs and the appeal of luxuries, they failed” would be more effective. 

Lastly, because the connection between this student’s essay and civic engagement is looser than we’ve seen in other examples, it would benefit them to emphasize “civic engagement” at the end of the essay.

The student writes:

Whether it is improving financial literacy locally or addressing the wealth gap nationally, an understanding of money and its effects are necessary for meaningful changes to happen. Everyone seeks to solve world hunger, gender inequality, or climate change. Yet to each of these social problems exists an economic perspective that drives its entire operation to which I am committed to target. 

Instead, they could write:

While everyone seeks to solve world hunger, gender inequality, and climate change, most people fail to recognize that understanding money must come first. For civic engagement to be effective, it has to be financially informed. 

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What the Essay Did Well

This essay does a really nice job of providing an overview of this student’s personality and how it came to be. The reader sees clear growth in the student as they progress through the essay. They weren’t afraid to be vulnerable, sharing details about feeling exhausted and lonely, which helped build empathy for the journey of self-discovery and reflection they’ve been on. Understanding their past personality allows readers to understand how confronting that personality formed their new, positive outlook on life.

There was a noticeable shift in the tone from the first paragraph to the second that brought the vulnerability with it. The beginning reads as a funny anecdote where the stereotype of a moody teenager is established. What the reader doesn’t expect is the sharp turn towards discussing the emotional impact of being a moody teenager. The tone shift subverts the reader’s expectations by surprising them with deep, personal reflection that makes them read the rest of the essay with more empathy.

This essay really captures the student’s outlook on life in different stages of their development, which provides so much insight to the admissions officers reading it. They reveal so much about themselves by continuously focusing the essay on how their internal feelings dictated their external actions.

What Could Be Improved

One thing this essay could have done better was work the quote into the piece as a whole. The essay had a great story, but it was difficult to piece together how the story was connected to the quote until the student explicitly explained it in the last paragraph. It would’ve been helpful to keep the theme of the quote running through the entire essay so the reader could draw a connection. For example, using metaphors of sunshine and flowers throughout the piece would have called attention back to the quote and reminded the reader of why this quote is so important. 

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What the Essay Did Well

There are many positives to this essay. To begin with, launching into the essay with multi sensory imagery in the anecdote was really effective at drawing the reader in. The audiovisual context (laughter, street vendors) keeps the scene alive and fully immerses the reader, while the internal narration illustrates how this student looks at the world. The contrast between the imagery of the external scene and the internal thoughts and feelings fully immerses the reader in the essay and alludes to the overarching theme of things being more complicated than they seem on the outside.

Another good thing this essay did was provide a personal account of this student’s experiences with harassment. This established their authority to speak on the topic and underscores their essay with authenticity. They then “zoom out” to provide relevant background information that supplies additional context for readers who might not be that familiar with the extent of the issue at hand. By relating their personal stories to the large-scale issue at hand, they simultaneously develop a personal connection while demonstrating an understanding of a serious global issue.

What really could’ve made or broken this essay was the quote the student chose. Allowing you to choose any quote, this is an extremely open-ended prompt which gives students the opportunity to write about whatever they choose. This student did an excellent job of picking a quote that isn’t well-known or significant, but fit perfectly into the narrative they were trying to express in this essay. The approach the student likely took with this prompt is figuring out what experience they wanted to discuss and finding a quote that fit, rather than picking a quote first. This approach made for an essay that existed independently from the quote and didn’t rely on it as a crutch.

All together, the essay feels cohesive with every part relating back to the overarching theme of diving deeper than the surface level of things. The student’s vulnerability and personal reflection throughout the essay helps carry the theme through each paragraph. Even the conclusion does a great job of circling back to the anecdote at the beginning, bringing the societal problem the student addressed back down to the personal level to remind the reader the student’s personal stake in the issue.

What Could Be Improved

One potential criticism of this essay could stem from the ratio of background to active work. The author spends a lot of time setting up their personal connection and the global context of the issue; however, their essay could stand to gain from more content centered on their actual actions towards fighting harassment against women. They could discuss another small-scale discussion or project they led or elaborate more on their current inclusion. Dedicating two paragraphs to this rather than one gives admissions officers a better idea of their leadership skills and active role in fighting harassment.

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What the Essay Did Well

This essay has a strong opening that does an excellent job of setting the scene for the perspective shift this student is about to have. There is clearly a sense of the student’s indifference to attending through explaining the match was their parents’ idea, their focus on the freezing cold weather, and explaining how their mind drifted to think about anything but the match. Establishing how removed they were in the moment is a nice segway to their feeling of insignificance. Because we know how they weren’t able to appreciate a moment everyone around them hyped up and cherished, we better understand how they came to the conclusion they are insignificant. 

Even once the student delves into philosophical questions about our purpose—a topic that it is easy to lose your readers on—we stay engaged because of their continued use of rhetorical questions. Especially when discussing more abstract topics in your essay, asking questions is a great tactic to help the reader see things from your perspective and break complex ideas down into more manageable chunks.

This essay concludes by telling us a lot about the student and their passions. The repetition of the phrase “I’m a…” creates a sense of continuity throughout their multiple identities and builds momentum for what’s to come. Not only do they reveal they are an engineer, a dancer, a singer, a programmer, and a social entrepreneur, but they also explain their reasoning and purpose for pursuing each of these passions. Sharing all of this student’s facets is a nice way to demonstrate to admissions officers that although they have a unique perspective on success, they are still an engaged and active member of their community.

What Could Be Improved

There are a few ways this essay could be tightened up. The first would be to better incorporate the anecdote of the US Open throughout the rest of the essay. While there is nice set-up, the student basically abandons their story after they shift to talking about insignificance. Yes, the prompt asks for an experience that changed how you approached the world, but that experience should have more of an impact on you than just the location of your life-altering perspective shift. It would have been nice to see them grapple with how they differ from the US Open crowd who idolizes significance or even simply utilizing tennis metaphors to keep the theme going.

Another thing this essay needs to work on is being less vague. Take this sentence for example: “Shouldn’t success be just knowing that I created something, something that helped someone or something somewhere, something that advanced the face of knowledge or innovation, regardless of whether I gained actual ‘credit’ for it?” That is wordy and reveals nothing about the student. They use a word containing “some” six times in a singular sentence—lazy writing! Although this is a particularly vague sentence, much of the essay focuses on the abstract idea of embracing insignificance without relating it personally to the student. Bringing in more concrete ideas and tangible thoughts or actions this student has to demonstrate their insignificance would leave a much stronger impression on the reader.

It’s also important to make sure your quote fits in perfectly with your essay. Since it’s the first thing your reader will see, it creates an immediate impression going into the story, but if it doesn’t obviously tie into your essay it will be forgotten by the time your reader finishes. This essay unfortunately lost the quote by the end because it wasn’t clearly connected to the essay. It possibly would have been better had they picked a quote about being insignificant, or even about staring up into the night sky and feeling alone, seeing as that was the moment that their perspective changed. Your quote doesn’t need to be moving and inspirational, it just needs to effortlessly align with your essay.

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Where to Get Your Princeton Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your Princeton essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool, where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Other Princeton Essay Resources

• Princeton Essay Guide
• How to Answer Princeton’s “More About You” Questions
• How to Write the Princeton Civic Engagement Essay
• How to Write the Princeton Diversity Essay
• 4 Example Hooks for Princeton’s Meaningful Activity Essay
• How to Write the Meaningful Activity Essay for Princeton