Champion - Yale - College essays that worked
Hometown: Ann Arbor, MI
Year: First-Year
College: Morse
Major: Anthropology
Extracurriculars: Native American Cultural Center; FOCUS on New Haven
College essays that worked
Profile
“It was a little overwhelming to try to capture the entirety of my four years in one essay,” Meghanlata Gupta says. Like many students, during her high school years, Meghanlata was extremely active within both her school and the local community. She graduated from Pioneer High School, a public school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she was a part of the student council and National Honor Society and served as a leader in the middle-to-high school transition program. She was also a TEDxYouth@AnnArbor speaker and onstage host, as well as a figure-skating coach for skaters with special needs. It was this last experience that inspired her Common App essay.
Meghanlata explains that, when writing, she was intent on capturing a small moment of her life that would tell a bigger story about her character. She chose to explain the challenge of coaching a nonverbal skater because it forced her to learn more about herself and to grow. She started writing in August and shared the first draft of her Common App essay with family and friends in September. “I wanted the people closest to me to read it and think, ‘This is you,’” she explains.
Now a sophomore, Meghanlata says she is glad she spent so much time and effort on her admissions essays. She “absolutely loves” Yale and its residential college system. She is pursuing a major in anthropology, with a possible double major in History of Science, Medicine & Public Health. At Yale, she is involved with the Native American Cultural Center, which she describes as “fabulous” and says has given her a great community and support network. She also works with FOCUS on New Haven—a first-year orientation program, in which she participated last year—and is a member of the Title IX advisory board.
But Meghanlata notes that she could have never predicted her academic and extracurricular pursuits in college as a senior in high school. She entered Yale interested in behavioral economics, but soon found that she was more enthusiastic about her Yellowstone and Global Change class in the environmental studies department. Having fostered a strong relationship with the class’s professor, Susan Clark, Meghanlata became Clark’s research assistant and is now authoring journal articles on wild bison and the impact the animal has on Native American culture.
“If you had told me I’d be studying wild bison last year, I would have thought you were insane,” she says, laughing.
Meghanlata’s essays include her Common App personal statement.
ESSAY 1 (COMMON APP):
Personal Statement
“Has Patricia improved this year?” The woman next to me was impatient, a mix of curiosity and concern apparent on her face. Bundled up in the unmistakable parkas and leg warmers of figure skating coaches, we stood together on the ice. Like every Saturday morning, the rink was bustling with a frenzy of activity: skaters pulled their ponytails tighter, stretched at the side of the ice, and warmed up to practice various jumps and spins. I focused on Patricia. Gliding along the boards, she followed the pattern of her routine that I had created months earlier. With a twirl in the center of the ice, she struck her final pose: feet together, head thrown back, and arms outstretched as if to capture the stars.
I was initially apprehensive about coaching Patricia, a young woman with Down syndrome who competes on the Ann Arbor Special Olympics Figure Skating Team. Her disability has rendered her nonverbal, so she cannot understand spoken language or voice her own thoughts. In contrast, I love to talk. To say that I’m loquacious is a massive understatement; in fact, my family jokes that I could probably have a conversation with a rock. At first, my inability to talk with Patricia left me feeling robbed of tools essential to her improvement. In my mind, a successful relationship between a coach and an athlete hinged on a plethora of communication—communication that, for me, revolved around speech.
In the beginning, things did not go as well as I had hoped. During our first weeks together, Patricia and I often ended lessons at an impasse. As I became desperate to teach in the only way I knew how to, she grew increasingly frustrated with her limited understanding of my instruction. Time after time, I stepped off the ice feeling heavy from the weight of my failed attempts. Over time, as I watched Patricia enthusiastically interact with her family and other skaters on the team, I realized that the problem did not lie in what I communicated, but, rather, in the way I communicated with her. So, I decided to stop talking. I explored the various forms of nonverbal communication: body language, facial expression, and even eye contact. I replaced verbal praise with a smile and a hug. Instead of using a serious voice, I adopted a rigid stance. Even teaching choreography, an aspect of figure skating that requires intense verbal instruction, could be manipulated for better accessibility. I spent hours drawing shapes and other patterns on colored construction paper to help Patricia visualize her routine.
And it was in silence that Patricia flourished. She started skating with more ease, confident in her body and the movements she made. Because I was able to convey instructions in ways Patricia could understand and respond to, her disability was no longer a barrier to her success as a figure skater. When I watched her stand on the highest level of the podium at Traverse City’s Special Olympics, I did not see a woman with Down syndrome. I saw a champion.
Before I worked with Patricia, my voice was an irreplaceable part of my life as a coach. Now, I view silence as not a gap to be filled, but as a force powerful enough to overcome challenges that sound cannot. As leaders, we are often set in our ways. We have methods that prove to work time and time again. Until they don’t. To become better, to transcend the chains that bind us to certain idiosyncrasies, we must constantly refuse to settle for the familiar. For although it was talking that made me a good coach, it was when I stopped talking that I became a great coach.
As Patricia skated toward me, I told her how proud I was through a beaming smile. Turning to face the coach beside me, I said: “Patricia has improved.”
I have too.
From 50 Yale Admission Success Stories: And the Essay That Made Them Happen, edited by the Yale Daily News Staff. Copyright © 2020 by the authors
and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group.