Cornell (Johnson)

Where is the free Veritas report for Johnson? I am unable to find it in your guide's link.

I’ve gotten a few pm requests for help with this essay So I thought I might share a little more of my personal thoughts if they might be of help to others. I’m by no means a professional writer, I had just as much of a hard time on this essay as anyone else, but I’m starting to realize just how lucky I was to have five incredible essay reviewers to help me along the process. Thought I should pass it on to everyone still going for R4 or next year.

The problem I first game across in this TOC essay is that I wanted my chapter headings to include all of my details from work (promotion received, money saved, project completed, etc.) my chapter titles were super long and loaded with details (mostly because I wanted to avoid being vague)

However in my first essay revision I was told that I missed the point completely.

This essay was for me to show creativity and be unique. The adcom already has my resume and a few other essays, they are not looking for another resume here, and they probably have hundreds of applicants who turned this table of contents into a second resume, so make sure it is different, don’t become one of those.

Also write it like a table of contents, avoid the outline format (III, A, 1, i, etc), having chapters 1-30 makes it clean, concise, and easy to read

I think this essay is a great place to talk about influential people who helped you in your life, and anything else you didn’t get to mention in your other essays and resume. My grandfather said to focus on who you are and what made you this person, talk about a life changing event from boy scouts or something, things that happened to you, people who taught you, something your parents did, and personal feelings, reflections on your own past, things you've learned, people you've helped.

Think about how a professional writer would see your life, they would try to turn every event into a compelling story that catches the reader’s attention. To make my story engaging I had to set aside a lot of my work details. I wanted to write chapter headings that would be memorable and pique the interest of my interviewer. I wanted to show up to interview and have him/her to say "hey tell me about that time you drove across 13 countries with only a tent to sleep in, that sounds crazy!".

I also think adcoms see plenty of essays that are simply brag sheets, I think it would be refreshing for an adcom to see something else, so really use this time to be unique. Your chapter headings can definitely still show leadership, ambition, decication etc. but write about who you are, not what you think the adcom wants you to be, they can see right through that.

finally, be yourself. :D


These are just my opinions on this essay in general, most of which came from feedback and critiques I received. I hope this advice helps someone get going in the right direction. This is definitely one of the toughest essays in my opinion, I had a good amount of writers bloc on this one.

Feel free to PM me with more questions, or if you want another set of eyes to read a draft, I’m happy to help wherever I can. I’ve definitely had a lot of help from others in the process, so hopefully I can pass it on.

Hello everybody!
I am really passionate about going to Jhonson....and it would help if some admitted students could share their profiles.....I will apply for 2014 intake ...so I have a good 16-18 months till application....I want to know I can build/polish my profile so as to be competitive....I guess this would be helpful to people applying this year too....