US universities read applications “holistically”, which means that grades and test scores are considered alongside everything else the student submits. That everything else has a structure: an activities list, a set of essays, sometimes an optional upload. This guide explains what the most-applied-to universities say they look for in those places, drawing on their own admissions pages, and then shows how a Signature Project meets each expectation. It does not claim that a project is required by any of them, because none requires one.
MIT lists what it looks for under seven headings including initiative, risk-taking, hands-on creativity and the ability to prioritise balance. It says: “We don’t expect applicants to do a million things. Choose quality over quantity”, and: “You shouldn’t just enjoy thinking about problems, you should be excited about doing something to help solve them”.
Stanford says: “An exceptional depth of experience in one or two activities may demonstrate your passion more than minimal participation in five or six clubs”, and describes looking for how applicants have expanded their perspective and sought new opportunities.
Yale is direct that “academic strength is our first consideration”, then adds: “it is the qualitative elements of an application that make a prospective student stand out”, and that how a student has engaged with the opportunities at their school gives the committee an expectation of how they would engage at Yale.
Three universities, one message: depth, making, initiative.
Every university on the Common Application sees the same list: up to ten activities, each with a 150-character description. Universities also see an Additional Information section of 300 words. The list is where most applicants show breadth. The universities above say they would rather see depth, and depth in 150 characters means evidence: numbers, names, changes. “Founded coding club” is a title. “Built vocabulary app; 5 classmates used it 3 wks; scores +18%; dropped a feature nobody used” is a project.
A number of universities invite a project in their own prompts. Caltech: “Tell us about something you created, tested, repaired, modeled, coded, built, or redesigned. What problem were you trying to solve and what did the process reveal to you?”, and separately a question about a STEM problem or project that has held the student’s attention over time. Tufts (engineering) asks about a project the student helped build, design, create or iterate in the past two years. Penn’s Management and Technology programme asks the student to describe something they created, designed, improved or built. The University of California asks how the student expresses their creative side and how they have furthered an interest inside and outside the classroom. Cornell, Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon ask, in different words, what excites the student or what led them to their field. A finished project is the most concrete answer available to any of these.
A smaller group accepts the project as an optional upload. MIT: a maker portfolio and a research supplement, both described as optional. Caltech: engineering, coding, maker and science-fair portfolios and research papers. Columbia: a maker portfolio of up to four items and a one-to-two-page research abstract. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins and Harvey Mudd: research abstracts or academic work. Carnegie Mellon: a short video about a project, for engineering and computer science. Emory and Olin: a portfolio by link or PDF.
Others accept nothing beyond the standard form: Penn, Duke, Northwestern, NYU, Virginia, Michigan, Georgia Tech, USC and Vanderbilt among them. Princeton requires a graded paper marked by a teacher, which independent project work does not satisfy. Yale’s advice applies to all of them: most successful applicants submit only the required materials, so an upload should show something the form cannot.
Against depth: twelve weeks on one thing, through six checkpoints, with a recorded result. That is the “exceptional depth of experience in one or two activities” Stanford describes.
Against making: the student builds a first version, tests it with real people, and changes it. That is MIT’s “doing something to help solve” a problem.
Against initiative: the student chose the project, with the Project Finder’s help, and ran it themselves with a mentor for guidance only. The mentor does not do the work.
Against the activities list and Additional Information: the project produces exactly the evidence those spaces need: numbers, users, changes, a result.
Against the essays: a completed project is a direct answer to Caltech’s prompt and material for every “what excites you” question.
Against the optional uploads: the student finishes with a portfolio and a recorded presentation, in a form that can be cut to a one-page abstract or expanded to four maker items where a university accepts them.
A Signature Project does not raise a grade point average or a test score, and no university has said it will change a decision. It gives a student something real, their own and finished to show at the moment the application asks for it.
Grade 10 (or the equivalent): run a first project. Learn what it takes to finish and test something. Keep the ledger, the feedback and the photographs.
Grade 11: run the project that will lead the application, tied to the intended field. Finish it by the end of the school year so the summer can go on the one-page write-up and the essays.
Grade 12, autumn: activities list, Additional Information and essays drawn from the write-up; optional uploads prepared only for universities that accept them and only where they add something.
Early-decision and early-action deadlines fall in November of grade 12; a project that finishes after that cannot be used for them.
No. It is invited by many, in essays and optional uploads, and every Common App university has space for it. The word “required” does not apply.
The universities that ask most directly about making are engineering schools. But depth and initiative are the criteria everywhere; a venture, a campaign or a piece of research counts as much as a device.
As one entry with evidence in the 150 characters, and with the fuller story in Additional Information or an essay. Not as three entries for the same project.
A review in which grades and test scores are considered alongside the activities list, the essays, recommendations and any optional materials, rather than a decision made on numbers alone. Most selective US colleges describe their process this way.
No. Yale says academic strength is its first consideration, and the others agree. Activities and essays are what distinguish applicants whose academic records are similar, which at selective colleges is most of them.
Not sure what to build? The CURIOO Project Finder asks a student ten questions and suggests three projects sized for twelve weeks: one practical, one ambitious, one for a cause they care about.
Parents: the Signature Project guide is a five-page PDF you can forward, at curioo.com/signature.
Sources. Quoted from UCAS and each university’s current admissions pages. CURIOO is not affiliated with or endorsed by any university named. Requirements change each year; check the university’s own pages before applying.
