Of all the things that can help a student get accepted into the college of his or her choice, few things can do the trick like a good story about passion and hard work.
And so it was with the applicant to George Mason University who—when it came time to write his college admission essay—decided to write about the time and effort he spent during his high school years to restore a 1970s’ El Camino that he had been given in the eighth grade.
“He talked about how he worked at a job to make money so he could buy parts for his car, and this relationship he built with this Vietnam veteran down the street who had been a mechanic in Vietnam,” recalled Nathan Lockett, Associate Director of K-12 Partnerships in the Office of Admissions at George Mason University.
The story was powerful, Lockett said, because “it showed how hard this kid was willing to work at something.”
“That interest, even though completely unrelated to anything you think about when you think about applying to college, was better than anything I had ever read,” Lockett said of the student, who aspired to get into GMU’s engineering program.
“And I accepted him to college,” Lockett said. “He got accepted because that just seemed amazing to me that that kid could be dedicated for that amount of time.”
Lockett, who makes admission decisions for applicants to GMU from the Washington, D.C. area, shared the anecdote the other day with a group of high school seniors during a presentation at a back-to-school event for a college access program called Capital Partners for Education.
