A well-recognized key to the college admissions process is to stand out amongst other applicants. In senior Vivian Loeffert’s case, writing her college essay about her first tattoo, combined with her unique personality, granted her acceptance into Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Universities.

Loeffert’s first tattoo, her most meaningful one, was of the caterpillar from the children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. According to Loeffert, the caterpillar symbolizes her life in more ways than one. In her essay, Loeffert impressed college admissions officers with her out of the box metaphor. 

“I just talked about myself and my experiences. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is like, all the foods that he ate in the book are all the places I’ve been and the different stuff I’ve done,” she explained. “For one, there’s four strawberries, and I’ve been to four high schools, so I kind of tied that all together. I think it came out very well.”

Aside from her iconic caterpillar tattoo, Loeffert has four other tattoos with their own backstories.

“I have a shark for my whole history with swimming because I’ve been on multiple teams that are sharks,” said Loeffert. “I have a couple that are just matching with people, and then I have one that I just got because I thought it looked fun.”

Loeffert hopes to fill the empty space with even more symbolic tattoos in the future.

“I want to get my birthday because I share a birthday with my dad. I want to get a Saturn for my car,” said Loeffert. “I also just love random memories, so whatever inside joke I have with my college roommate is definitely getting tattooed.”

In addition to her unique college essay topic, Loeffert being her authentic self in her college interviews proved to be charming to admission officers. 

“For my whole college application process, I just prioritized being super honest. My Harvard interviewer wrote me this huge email after our interview about how he loved how honest I was and how funny I was,” explained Loeffert. “I didn’t want to focus on just showing off everything I’ve done.”

According to Loeffert, the best advice for students going through the college admissions process is to show off what makes you unique as a person.  

“I think the college admissions people are just happy to see kids being kids and being honest and real,” said Loeffert. “Everything really works out as long as you’re not trying to be someone else.”

Loeffert has ultimately committed to attending Princeton University in the fall of 2023 and plans to study chemical engineering.