Why did we build this?

Getting into top tier colleges has never been harder. Harvard accepted 3.41% of applicants in 2023. MIT admitted 4.8%. Stanford's number is too low to publish. The odds are stacked against you even more so if you're not an athlete, legacy, on the dean's interest list, or children of faculty and staff or your family isn't in the top 0.1 percent.

Stellar SAT scores won't save you either. Since making standardized tests optional (or dropping them entirely), admissions offices are placing more weight on grades, extracurriculars, and — you guessed it — essays. That's fine for those who can afford high-priced admissions consultants, but $15-20k is prohibitively expensive for families in the lower and middle income classes. This leaves them to navigate the application process on their own or lean on high school college counselors with student-to-counselor ratios of 500:1.

We believe college students can help.

We built EssayThatGotMeInto because we too went through the admissions process not that long ago and understand how overwhelming it is. We also understand what works and what doesn't. By having students accepted into highly selective schools share their essays — and offer to mentor students currently applying — we hope to make affordable college admissions advice accessible to everyone and close the college-access gap. We can't guarantee Harvard, but maybe we can give you a fighting chance.