This SECRET Rubric Got Our Students Into Every Ivy League School

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQTj3ZJAl1c

After reading not dozens but HUNDREDS of Common App essays over the past few years, my co-founder Jeffrey Yu, another Yale student Tina Huang, and I developed this rubric so folks like yourselves could get into your dream school. 

This tool is meant to help with all college essays—I'm talking the Common App essay, supplementals, the UC Personal Insight Questions, longer essays for Georgetown and MIT, and short responses for USC, Stanford—you name it. 

Everything.

Introduction

I'm Kevin Zhen, Yale 2020 grad and one of the co-founders of the ElevatEd School. Last season was particularly sensational for us since we managed to help students from all kinds of backgrounds — first-gen, low-income students, middle-class Americans, boarding school kids – get into every single Ivy League college. Today, we’re going to be talking about how exactly you should be using this rubric – depending on your personal background.

The VSPICE Rubric

To ensure your essay doesn’t taste or feel bland, we created a rubric with the following six criteria.We decided to use this acronym, VSPICE, to add some flavor to your story: 

• V is for Vulnerability

• S is for Selflessness

• P is for Perseverance

• I is for Initiative

• C is for Curiosity

• E is for Expression

  
  

Vulnerability

Some criteria are self-explanatory, but others need more clarification. For instance, we all know what selflessness and perseverance look like, but what exactly do expression and vulnerability mean? How do we write about that? Here’s how.

If you take a look at levels 3 and 4 for vulnerability on our rubric:

• 3: Vulnerability shown at least once in a powerful manner. The reader can effectively feel the author's intention and emotion at each stage of their experience.

• 4: The applicant discusses their vulnerability in an elegant, inspiring way, generating insights into their experience about how they plan to shape the future.

  
  

One of the simplest, most effective ways to showcase vulnerability is to talk about your failures—that’s right, your setbacks, not your successes. 

Why? Well not only does this humanize you and prevent you from over-bragging, but people are also much more naturally drawn to stories about overcoming setbacks. And guess what? This is also a phenomenal way to incorporate perseverance!

Selflessness and Perseverance

Be careful to avoid cliché topics like overcoming sports injuries or musical performance rejections. Stories about overcoming academic challenges or obstacles are typically much better, in my opinion. Narratives about entrepreneurship and product development, particularly if you're building something that benefits the community, are also brilliant ways to tie in selflessness and expression!

In general, don’t be too vulnerable. Aim for a six out of ten on the vulnerability scale. I’d recommend avoiding controversial topics like battling your own mental health or domestic violence abuse; however, if you’ve started a campaign or initiative to help others struggling with these issues, that would be a magnificent essay topic!

 Most students tend to opt for writing a personal vulnerable story in their Common App. For first-generation student immigrants, this is the perfect opportunity to discuss your own family struggles and personal background, but more importantly, make sure the bulk of the story is about how you overcame these issues (not the issues themselves).

Remember, admissions officers are not interested in hearing about your problems; they are interested in hearing about your solutions.

Initiative

For initiative, the rubric says:

• 3: Essay successfully communicates the author’s initiative in an honest, compelling manner; has successfully made us root for them.

• 4: Essay captures initiative while being inspiring and personal. The reader can see the author’s initiative and leadership, also uplifting others.

  
  

Another way of viewing initiative is to consider proactivity: think of a time when you decided to make a change in your community. This can be a tangible physical change, like designing and building drone kits to help get kids in your district interested in engineering, or an intangible social change, like launching a social media campaign against anti-gun laws after a school shooting.

It’s common to combine initiative with selflessness, although there are also really cool cases where you can talk about blending personal initiative and curiosity, i.e. watching every single Wes Anderson movie or reading every Toni Morrison book.

Curiosity

If you come from a more privileged background without a crazy story to tell, focus on curiosity. Tell stories about when you plunged down an academic rabbit hole and learned a ton about an intellectual topic that made you lose track of time! 

For instance, if you love literature, maybe you spent an entire summer reading novels featuring magical realism. If you love astrophysics and photography, maybe you drove out in the middle of the night and photographed constellations for an entire summer. Bonus points if you can relate this to your intended major!

Expression

For expression, the rubric says:

• 3: Essay effectively describes the student’s creativity in a personal and original way, including the thought process and inspiration behind their choices.

• 4: Essay contains novel solutions to problems in the applicant’s life, as well as creative insights into the experience, and communicates this in a refreshing, original manner.

Expression is about showcasing ingenuity or creativity, not just in how you serve your community or in the passion projects you build, but also in how you structure and write your essay. 

You’ve probably heard of famous college essays like the “letter S” essay or the “crime scene” essay. If you haven’t, don’t fret. These essays carry a certain amount of risk, but when executed well, the reward is very high.

If you can make the content complement the form– chef’s kiss. 

Imagine if that crime scene report essay also talked about the student’s intellectual interest in criminal psychology!

Final Note

This rubric was developed to make sure you hit all of these notes across all of your essays. So if you demonstrate vulnerability, selflessness, and perseverance in your Common App, make sure to cover initiative, curiosity, and expression in your supplements. Don’t only showcase selflessness without curiosity or creativity without initiative. Balance is key! That’s the whole reason we made this rubric—to make sure you have all of your bases covered.

Thanks for reading! If this article helped you with your essays at all, we’re proud to say we’ve done our job.

We’re constantly rooting for you!

Kevin Zhen