Student Accepted Into 5 Ivy League Schools After Penning Essay About Her Love of Costco
— -- One student credits her essay about her love of Costco for the reason she was accepted into five Ivy League universities, among others.
Brittany Stinson, 18, a high school senior at Concord High School in Wilmington, Delaware, was accepted into Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Yale and University of Pennsylvania.
The teen said she thinks what set her apart from other applicants was the essay in her college application that detailed her love of Costco.
The essay prompt that Stinson responded to asked students to share "a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it."
Stinson's essay began, "Managing to break free from my mother's grasp, I charged. With arms flailing and chubby legs fluttering beneath me, I was the ferocious two year old rampaging through Costco on a Saturday morning. My mother's eyes widened in horror as I jettisoned my churro; the cinnamonsugar rocket gracefully sliced its way through the air while I continued my spree."
"I was a conquistador, but rather than searching the land for El Dorado, I scoured aisles for free samples," it continued. "Before inevitably being whisked away into a shopping cart, I scaled a mountain of plush toys and surveyed the expanse that lay before me: the kingdom of Costco."
Stinson said she was inspired to write about the big-box store because she wanted her applications to be unique.
"The essay is really where it's important to show your personality and what gets you going," she told ABC News. "I knew that an essay about Costco would certainly be memorable -- whether the admissions' officer liked it or not."
Stinson was accepted into five Ivy League institutions, along with prestigious schools such as Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Boston University and New York University, which she said was her safety school.
It also didn't hurt that Stinson had a 4.0 GPA, took eight Advanced Placement classes, was the vice president of the Science Honors Society and the president of the National Honors Society at her school. The teen said she also volunteers at a local hospital and worked with a University of Delaware professor on a genetics research project.
Stinson told ABC News she'll decide which college she'll attend after doing campus tours later this month, but so far she really likes Yale, Stanford or Dartmouth.
For now, she has decided on a major: Neuroscience.
