More and more high school seniors are getting political on their college applications — and it’s paying off.
Applicants writing about volunteering for conservative organizations or even door-knocking for President Trump in their admissions essays are getting into top schools, according to college admissions advisor Christopher Rim.
“They’re like, ‘Listen, this is what I believe in, and I’m going to talk about it. And if the admissions officer fundamentally disagrees with me and rejects me, that’s fine, because this is who I am and that’s not the school for me,’” Rim, the founder and CEO of college consulting firm Command Education, told The Post.
Even though it might seem like a risky move, Rim says it’s working out for his advisees. Clients who leaned into controversial political issues in their essays gained early admission to Harvard, Penn, Stanford and Princeton for the 2025-2026 school year.
“These are students who took risks and were true to themselves, and that’s what got them the acceptances,” Rim said. “Their essays, I think, were just a breath of fresh air.”
Early decision admissions results were released last month, and regular admissions decisions are expected to come out in March. Rim says this year students are overwhelmingly more willing to get political on their applications than in years past.
“We’re seeing more and more students talking about political organizations that they volunteered for, and more students being vocal about volunteering for different partisan organizations,” he reported.
Before this application cycle, clients who had volunteered to help elect a Republican would often opt not to put it on their application. Or, if they volunteered for a conservative organization, they might not have named it on their list of extracurriculars.
“Now they’re naming them without issue, and they’re even asking for recommendations from politicians who in the past definitely would have been deemed ‘too controversial’ to get a recommendation from,” Rim explained. “And they’re getting into Harvard.”
Rim, whose firm is based in New York, says clients applying for September have written about joining young Republicans clubs, volunteering for free speech organizations like FIRE and door-knocking in support of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
“Up until this year, the attitude was more, ‘Why try to be controversial when I don’t need to be?’” Rim explained. “But now we see a lot of students speaking out and being vocal. I don’t know if it has to do with Trump winning the election, but they don’t feel as scared.”
For New York-based clients especially, Rim said, bravely going against the grain politically can be a point of differentiation on an application: “If almost all of your classmates are going to be talking about how they volunteer for a Democratic candidate or organization, and you’re the one student who is talking about the exact opposite, that’s interesting.”
One Harvard-bound client, who was the only student out of 18 at his private high school to get accepted by the university early this year, got in with an essay about the debate club teaching him why free speech is so important. Ironically, Harvard has consistently been ranked the worst school for free speech in the nation.
Another student wrote about her boarding school censoring a controversial political op-ed she wrote for the student newspaper, and her ensuing experience of becoming the center of controversy on campus. That essay got her an early acceptance letter from Stanford.
In the past, if a student decided to get political in an essay, they were overwhelmingly more likely to tack left, considering that elite schools are notoriously ultra-progressive. One student even went viral in 2017 after he got accepted to Stanford after writing “#BlackLivesMatter” 100 times on his application.
But now, Rim says, conservative students are also letting their hair down — and admissions officers are rewarding them for going against the grain.
“They’re really doubling down on their beliefs and being true to who they are, and ultimately that’s what colleges want. They want interesting students who will stand up for what they think is the right thing.”
