Hometown: Baton Rouge, LA

Year: Senior

College: Trumbull 

Major: Mathematics

Extracurriculars: Yale Undergraduate Math Society; Smart Women’s Securities, Chief Investment Officer

Successful college personal statement 

Profile

Marianne Konikoff came to Yale from an all-girls Catholic high school of roughly eleven hundred students in her hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She spent her high school years participating in an array of extracurriculars, such as math team, debate, and science fairs—not to mention the astrophysics research she conducted at Louisiana State University throughout her last three years of high school.

Growing up, Marianne knew she wanted to leave Louisiana for college, and she fell in love with Yale when she toured the university the summer before her junior year of high school. Yale’s residential college system, she says, reminded her of the close-knit high school she attended, where she enjoyed spirit weeks and competitions between graduating class years. She also knew she would be challenged and supported academically in New Haven: Although Yale is a liberal arts college, Marianne saw that Yale also boasts the resources of a large research institution for students interested in STEM.

During the summer before her senior year, Marianne traveled back to New Haven to take part in EXPLO at Yale—a pre-college program that allows students to take courses and attend workshops on campus. Setting her sights on becoming a Bulldog, Marianne applied early action to the university and committed soon after being accepted in December 2013. Marianne looks back on her Yale years fondly. She certainly kept herself busy; she was the treasurer of the Yale Undergraduate Math Society, while running operations and registration for a high school math tournament held on Yale’s campus. She also worked as a peer tutor for introductory math courses. Outside of Yale, she served as the chief investment officer for Smart Women’s Securities, a nonprofit organization that teaches undergraduate women about personal and corporate finance.

During her college summers, Marianne spent her time studying at the London School of Economics and interning at Raymond James, an investment bank. After her junior year at Yale, Marianne interned at the consulting firm Altman Vilandrie in Boston, where she began working full-time in fall 2018.

Marianne’s essays include her Common App personal statement.

ESSAY 1 (COMMON APP):

Personal statement

Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?

I had my entire essay planned out. I was going to talk about the science fair, all of the unbelievably talented people I’ve met over the last four years, and how much I’ve grown from research and competition alike. I carefully listed every story, every point, every skill I wanted to include, remembering each fair and the friends, judges, conversations, and pizza parties that left their mark on me forever. Why shouldn’t I be able to write about the most important part of my life and show essentially who I am along the way? I methodically organized and meticulously crafted it just as I would any research paper or critical analysis, but when I picked it up the next day, I realized that a vital element was missing: me.

I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong; I had done everything according to plan. The ineffectiveness of my trusted formula was discouraging, for I wasn’t used to methodology failing me. Then I remembered what happened countless times before and will surely happen again: a crashing program, an erroneous code, a failure. Astrophysics and computer programming consumed the summer before my sophomore year as I began immersing myself in the world of science fairs and allowed myself to fully and completely fall in love with science. I will be eternally grateful to the professor who took a chance on an overly-enthusiastic fifteen year old girl who just wanted to learn something new. Although knowledge, friendship, networking, and passion for fields I never would have considered previously filled that summer and the years following, difficulties and disappointments made frequent appearances. Since it was my first time working in a truly collaborative research environment, my first experience with programming, and my first real job, I quickly learned the importance of perseverance and repeated trials. If a code didn’t work, I searched for an error. If I couldn’t find an error, I would try a difference approach. If neither option worked, then I finally began to accept that it was okay to ask for help, and often the simple act of talking about the issue with another person could help me solve the problem myself. As I spent more time in the science fair world, it became easier to acknowledge failure, look for a solution, and try again.

I stepped back from my essay and reassessed the situation. My original plan had a rather conspicuous flaw. A report of my time at fairs and symposia would not say anything about me; I needed a way to convey what they taught me and how they made me the inquisitive, open-minded conversationalist and scientist I have become. While discussing the present challenge with my mom, one common theme emerged from every thought: failure. After talking about it, I decided to take a different approach; instead of restricting what I’ve learned from science fair, I found a way to apply it to outside experiences. When I paused and honestly examined the little details of my life, I realized just how much science fair affects my decisions and the way in which I make them. It has permanently changed the way I interact with others, my ability to convey ideas clearly and effectively, and the ease with which I discuss everything from physics to pop culture with judges and peers alike, but most importantly, it taught me that failure is okay. It’s normal, and if I try again, think innovatively, and ask for assistance when necessary, it will work out, even if the results aren’t perfectly aligned with the original goal. Writing a six thousand word research paper flows naturally, so my initial inability to compose a six hundred word personal statement bothered me. Although I neglected to notice it at the time, one critical difference on which I so often rely separated the two: not everything can be calculated.

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.