@elk1819 Wow, that’s pretty interesting! I can tell by the topics that your essays must be very good. 
My essays are pretty much my only way of standing out in a highly competitive demographic group. I really hope that Princeton sees a bigger picture of me through my essays; the Dean has frequently said that the essays offer the admissions officers “a window into the [applicant’s] world,” so I hope that they place a lot of weight on the essays. Anything can happen though.
My Common App essay was a bit personal; I talked about my difficulties talking at a young age and how, as time went by, I discovered my inner voice through music, art, and writing. The overarching message in this essay was that, through discovering myself, I learned that my ability to speak was not in any way altered by my inability to talk. It was honestly heartfelt and I really liked it.
For the Princeton Supplement, I chose the prompt about the influential person and wrote about the impact my grandfather had on me. In this essay, I focused on how my grandfather fostered my identity and how, through the lessons that he taught me, I realized that he and I were essentially the same person despite the fact that we were from completely different generations. I had this weird structure where I started with an experience I had with my grandfather at a young age and, as the essay progressed, I slowly combined our two selves together until the very end, where I used the same experience at the beginning to finish the essay (although through the perspective of a much older me). I honestly don’t know how to explain it — I was feeling super inspirational the day I wrote this essay in July, and I wrote something that I knew I would never be able to write again. I don’t want to brag about my writing skills, but even as a pretty decent writer, this creation is something that I really treasure; every time I re-read it, I find something new and profound in it that I never noticed before. Hopefully, the officers that read my essay find the same connections that I find; maybe the reason I’m noticing all this stuff is because I am the author, but who knows? I’ll probably reuse this essay for many of my other RD schools, and I’m going to admit it: if I do end up getting in, it will probably be because of this essay (and perhaps my Common App essay). I guess we’ll see.
My engineering essay was probably the weakest of the three, probably because I redid it the week before I sent in my application. In this essay, I used a personal experience to explain my love for economics, and how Princeton’s ORFE program would perfectly blend my interests in math, science, technology, and finance together into something that I would enjoy doing. Compared to the other two, it wasn’t the very best; hopefully, the adcoms will see past it though. I really hope that this weaker essay doesn’t hurt my application in any way since it was optional anyway, but in the secrecy of the admissions office, who can be sure of anything anyway?
