There are lots of iconic traces within the 2001 movie “Legally Blonde,” however the true stand-out is Reese Witherspoon’s character Elle Woods’ response when her ex-boyfriend reacts with shock that she obtained into Harvard—”What? Prefer it’s laborious?”
That is a joke, in fact, however one girl on TikTok has confirmed that there is a little bit of fact in each joke, even those about it being simple to get into Harvard. As a result of as she reveals in her movies, she type of stumbled into attending what is usually known as essentially the most prestigious college on the planet.
A girl utilized to Harvard ‘for enjoyable’ and obtained accepted.
TikToker @harvardhoneyyy, who payments herself as “The Actual Elle Woods,” tells her TikTok followers to “simply apply! You by no means know what can occur.” If that sounds absurd to you, you are actually not alone—it is Harvard, in any case—however in her case, it turned out to be true.
The girl utilized moments earlier than the deadline after she had already been accepted to her top-choice faculties.
Not like most individuals making use of to high schools, not to mention elite Ivy League establishments, Kelsey Hoskin’s faculty future was already executed and dusted. As she revealed in on-screen textual content, she had already completed all her “actual purposes” to the colleges she really deliberate to attend and will get into after graduating highschool in 2017.
However on a lark, Hoskin determined to throw her hat within the Harvard ring anyway, saying she utilized “for enjoyable the night time it was due,” getting in just below the wire. And as she revealed in her TikTok to her shock—and certainly to the consternation of each child presently receiving rejections from their universities of alternative amid as we speak’s cut-throat admissions necessities—she was accepted.
“I’m delighted to report that the Admissions Committee has requested me to tell you that you may be admitted to the Harvard School Class of 2021,” reads a screenshot of her acceptance letter.
And lest you assume it is a rip-off and he or she was admitted to a neighborhood faculty in, say, Harvard, Illinois—as a number of commenters suspected—Harvard School is what Harvard College calls their undergraduate program. It’s certainly the Harvard everyone knows and love—or like to hate, relying on whether or not or not you had been accepted!
The girl revealed her profitable essay she says gained her a spot at Harvard.
So how did “The Actual Elle Woods” pull off her Elle Woods-inspired stunt? She says all of it got here right down to her faculty utility essay.
Since graduating from Harvard in 2021, Hoskin has began a enterprise consulting others on tips on how to get into Harvard, and often shares her favourite traces from the very best faculty utility essays she’s seen. One of many essays she shared was a specific favourite—her personal.
School utility essays, she says, all come right down to the primary line, and he or she says this one, particularly, had an ideal opening. “Music is unifying,” the essay begins. “It’s the crisp brilliance of sound because the bow leaves the strings of a violin—irrespective of who’s holding it.”
Should you’re not notably impressed by that opening line, you are not the one one. Even Hoskin herself admits it is not “essentially the most good first sentence ever.” However, she says, “it did the job.”
The Harvard grad says the important thing to an excellent faculty utility essay is grabbing consideration whereas revealing one thing spectacular.
The TikToker says the explanation her essay labored regardless of not having “essentially the most good first sentence ever,” is that it “begins with a reasonably attention-grabbing, over-arching blanket assertion about one thing that I realized whereas doing a extremely spectacular, initiative-taking expertise.”
Hoskin’s essay goes on to explain how she turned the “head violin instructor of a volunteer non-profit arts academy after I was solely 15.” After describing the expertise intimately, she then defined the way it “gave me the boldness to go on and do X, Y and Z” and went on to write down about “different cool, distinctive and spectacular issues that I had executed,” which she refers to as “golden nuggets.”
She directs candidates to “strategically” place their “golden nuggets” all through their essays and recommends following the identical formulation for scholarship essays as nicely.
You might need seen that that is fairly customary, boilerplate recommendation for writing a university utility essay. And her fellow TikTokers positively seen.
Some on TikTok had been skeptical of the lady’s Harvard story given how tough it’s to get into faculty as we speak.
“Everybody who says this has excellent stats,” one girl commented, together with an eye-roll emoji. “Okay however what had been your stats tho,” one other consumer requested. Hoskin insisted that, whereas vital, stats like GPA and standardized take a look at scores usually are not the be-all, end-all to stepping into the Ivy League. However so many individuals reacted skeptically that she made a video revealing her stats. And positive sufficient…
Her GPA, SAT scores, and AP class efficiency had been all top-tier. However actually jumped out at individuals was her class rank—#2 out of a 72-person class. This led many to imagine she comes from “cash cash” and had gone to one of many many small, non-public, ultra-exclusive excessive faculties that function “feeder faculties” to the Ivy Leagues.
Tellingly, whereas Hoskin insisted that she “was the primary particular person in my faculty (and city) to ever go to Harvard,” she by no means kept away from answering particular questions on her background and the highschool she went to.
Even when every little thing did go as she says, others identified that since she was admitted again in 2017, her recommendation is now not related in 2023’s admissions surroundings, which has been confirmed to be extra aggressive—traditionally so, within the case of some elite faculties. “Admissions six years in the past is means completely different than it’s [right now]” one consumer wrote.
Whether or not Hoskin’s recommendation is correct or not, there have actually been a great deal of college students with stellar {qualifications} getting rejected by elite faculties left and proper this yr. So if all else fails, there’s at all times the precise Elle Woods’ busty, candy-colored video-format faculty utility essay. It is price a attempt!
John Sundholm is a information and leisure author who covers popular culture, social justice and human curiosity subjects.
