This article covers our successful college essay about travel; we helped our client write and revise this essay. It also helped them get into Vanderbilt and later Cornell.
But, before we get to our example essay, let’s cover some crucial details.
- Can I even write my college essay about travel? Or, will I look too privileged?
- What were our client’s stats?
Let’s start with the first point.
Yes. You can write your college essay about travel. Yes, it may look too privileged. But, that’s no reason to throw that essay topic out the window.
Every college essay topic has its pros and cons. In the case of travel, that’s the cost of having a stellar essay topic with lots of content to write about. You pay the price by having privilege hang over your head like a sword of Damocles.
Therefore, there is no perfect college essay topic.
While our example college essay about travel is strong, it still has the disadvantage of privilege. Friendship? Meaningful, but generic. Culture? Meaningful but, again, also generic. Academics? Relatable, but too close to what other students go through.
Every college essay has the risk of being misinterpreted in a negative way. That’s what the college admissions process is. It’s discerning. Thus, it needs to be looked at with careful eyes. Think of it as a feature and not a bug!
Okay, on to the second point.
Our client was accepted into both Vanderbilt and Cornell with the following stats.
- GPA Unweighted: 4.0.
- Major: Human and Organizational Development.
- Extracurriculars:
- Started their own small business.
- Online marketing and PPC ads strategy internship at a startup.
- Worked at a hardware store.
- Language courses and completion program abroad.
So, our client was applying with quite the stellar marks, and a decent set of extracurriculars. As you can see, you don’t need to be the president of every imaginable club. To get into competitive schools, it’s necessary to have strong marks, decent extracurriculars outside of academics, and a strong essay.
In this case, it was of course possible for admissions officers to misinterpret our client as privileged. That’s something we addressed together and combated in the essay. Let’s take a deeper look at it.
Table of Contents
Successful College Essay About Travel
“‘Now you’ll be less likely to get bitten by the scorpions.’”
Diego was my couchsurfing host. He lived in a small house in Nicaragua without running water or electricity; nonetheless, from what little he had, he generously offered his own extra set of blankets so I’d be lifted from the ground and out of reach from scorpions.
Outside his home, the half-restored houses, burned crops, and atomized topsoil as a result of the fallout of rioting years prior, made the streets look dystopian. It was Daniel Ortega: the president. His reforms shrinking social security coupled with the lethal police response silencing protests ignited the powder keg that would lead to civil unrest.
Even so, the maelstrom of protests and brutalizing police didn’t stop Diego from restoring his community. Now, with me by his side, we cleaned up the chaos by assisting the local farmers. We helped them harvest their fruits and sell them on the vending stands to get back on their feet.
We weren’t the only ones.
The old, the young, the women, the men; they bonded together and congregated into a collaborative effort to rebuild the community so dear to them.
I’ve witnessed such a deep sense of camaraderie in many communities across the world: the Saharan Berber nomads fighting to preserve their culture, the Ecuadorian community bonding to fight off robbers during riots, Syrian refugees coming together to integrate into Turkey, and the people of Columbia working together to ward off the cartels who destroyed their community.
As a student who took their entire college course load digitally while traveling, seeing that camaraderie between communities showed how much true connection I was missing with my classmates online. Now, I am seeking a college with the kind of tight-knit community I saw in my travels. I know I will find this at Vanderbilt, as its commitment to community will provide the bonding I yearned for as a digital nomad student.
Within Vanderbilt, I plan to work alongside other entrepreneurial students to expand my organization: Business Without Borders (BWB). It is a consulting group I created that collaborates with family-run small businesses around the world, like those I’ve had the privilege of engaging with on my travels. The goal of BWB is to provide our services to those most often overlooked to promote global equity, especially in developing countries.
However, I cannot do this alone.
Vanderbilt’s deeply-rooted culture in camaraderie is perfect for building a team of future visionaries who share a similar global vision. To find the right community that shares my passion, organizations like Vanderbilt Students Consulting for Nonprofit Organizations (SCNO) would be a strong platform to start with. Their pro bono market analysis and revenue models for organizations such as The Pencil Foundation and Book’em are exactly what would prepare me to fulfill BWB’s mission.
Entrepreneurial visions can not be fulfilled with community alone: in-depth academic knowledge and problem-solving skills are needed to have any hopes of scaling.
Everything from helping Nicaraguan farmers sell their goods to hustling outside stadiums selling $53,000 worth of water bottles solidified my love for entrepreneurial endeavors. However, the comprehensive academic rigor at Vanderbilt is exactly the depth of learning I will need to fill in the gaps of my business education.Thus, I would like to major in Human and Organizational Development with the Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness track. Its courses such as HODL 3274, Managing Organizational Change align with my goals of helping small businesses around the world.
Successful Vanderbilt Common App Essay About Travel
If taking my college Zoom classes across 18 countries and 123 cities taught me anything, it’s that the most meaningful experiences abroad are made by joining the inconspicuous communities to help and work alongside them. Although I am an entrepreneur, I am also a student. To succeed at both, I will need the worldly curriculum and collaborative companionship at Vanderbilt to spearhead a worldwide initiative greater than myself.“
What Made This Essay Strong?
There are a few things that made this a strong essay. Writing your college essay about travel isn’t easy, especially when you’re trying to demonstrate your personal qualities without seeming too spoiled or privileged.
Nonetheless, this example college essay on travel uses four tricks to help admissions officers look past their privilege.
Diverting Privilege.
Our client had the choice to have breakfast in Paris and go shopping in Rome. They could have enjoyed the scenery in Hawaii. However, they willfully chose not to and decided to challenge themselves with their travel.
Travel doesn’t always have to be fun. It doesn’t have to be hell either. In this essay, our client showed that they would divert from their privilege by entering a place they knew would help them grow and mature.
This travel experience isn’t here with the intention of going on vacation or enjoying freshly shucked oysters with martinis. Instead, it was a time for our clients to grow and develop on a personal level to hone their character.
When you’re writing your college essay about travel, even if it were for vacation, think about how it helped you hone your character and temperament. Did it help change you in a positive way? Chances are it did, even if you aren’t aware of it. Use these changes to form your essay to focus on development and personal growth, and not the luxurious vacation aspect of it.
This brings us to the next point: humility.
Being Humble.
Being humble in your college essays is crucial. It doesn’t matter what kind of essay topic you’re using.
Humility demonstrates that you have the one critical trait that is vital to a student: the ability to let go of ego and grow over time. By showing you’re humble to the admissions office, you show that you can still learn and are not arrogant enough to simply keep a closed mind. You’re still a growing individual, and have much to learn.
That’s exactly why you would belong in an elite institution: you’ll exhaust the resources as much as possible to reach your maximum potential.
In this essay, our client maintains humility by not interjecting his hands into anyone’s business. Instead of trying to be a “White Savior” or attempting to change things forcefully, he is open to learning from others and understanding the culture around him. This is a place where he is a guest in other countries, and he, therefore, behaves like a guest.
When looking at your own college essay about travel, think about how you may have demonstrated humility. Perhaps you were privileged enough to afford anything you wanted. But, instead of flaunting wealth, you took the time to learn and understand the culture and therefore get along well with the local community. Or, maybe you strayed away from the family for a few days to go on your own personal spiritual exploration journey outside of tourism, consumerism, and instant gratification.
Even a midnight contemplative stroll in Paris alone and away from your friends and family who are out partying or giving in to hedonism. Even if you’re wealthy enough to afford a trip to such a place, you can mention some of the meaningful experiences you had outside of extravagance.
Showing That You’re Still Learning.
The point of going to college is to learn. This sounds like a rather obvious observation. However, college essays that brag and go on and on about how much they already know may take away from the learning experience.
It’s crucial to demonstrate to admissions officers, especially when writing about a college essay topic that may be misinterpreted as privileged, that you are someone who is still open to learning.
In this college essay example about travel, we helped our client show through their experiences that they weren’t there to create some fantastic change in the world yet. They were still there to learn and assimilate with the culture.
When you’re writing your own college essay on travel, it’s crucial that you show how you’re still someone who has an open mindset. You’re not going to treat the college essay section as an opportunity to be superior to others or show your grandiose sense of achievement. The extracurricular section can show your strengths.
Nonetheless, you can still demonstrate moral virtue when you’re writing your college essay about travel. In addition, it doesn’t have to seem privileged.
Demonstrating Moral Virtue.
If you’re writing your college essay about travel, it’s useful to show some of the ways your moral virtue shines through your actions. This can be hard, though. It’s common for students to do voluntourism to have some kind of boost in their applications. However, this is superficial.
Admissions officers are looking for ways to sift through who actually has strong character and heart. It’s common for students to just pepper their extracurriculars and essays with things about how they made the next big step toward saving the world or making the world a kinder place. This needs to be proven, though, in the essays.
In this example essay, we show that the student can take steps on an individual level to help the communities he sees are struggling.
“Even so, the maelstrom of protests and brutalizing police didn’t stop Diego from restoring his community. Now, with me by his side, we cleaned up the chaos by assisting the local farmers. We helped them harvest their fruits and sell them on the vending stands to get back on their feet.“
This is useful because it shows that our application is not proposing some grandiose plan that would help save people. More often than not, these are simply not helpful. But, a student learning to be humble by taking small steps to help others can mean infinitely more.
If you’re still struggling with writing your college essay about travel, you may want to consider speaking with us. Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with our college admissions experts, and we can help you shape your essay to the strongest version of itself.
