High-Impact Ivy League Passion Project Examples

The Ivy League is a prestigious group of schools with a great history and often appears on the college list for many high school seniors. If you’re hoping to get into an Ivy League school, however, competition is very high, and admission rates tend to be on the lower side. This means that there’s often extra effort that’s required to help make your application stand out and that’s definitely something that you can control. We believe that passion projects are a great way to show Ivy League schools your talent and potential, and also serve as great ways to develop your own skill set and set you up for success no matter where you go to school. In this article, we’ll cover why passion projects matter for Ivy League admissions and share some examples of Ivy League passion projects.

Why Passion Projects Matter for Ivy League Hopefuls

As we discussed in our article “The Ivy League: How to get in (Legally),” college administrators and admissions officers like to see themes in a student’s resume. They like seeing that a student has taken a deep dive into a subject and put in time to develop skills in that area. It shows that the student has curiosity, discipline, focus, and ambition—all necessary for success in college and beyond. Think about it: when you consider Ivy League college students who’ve been successful and really made the most of their opportunities, you find that all these students have found some sort of passion or even multiple that they’re really excited about and spend a lot of time on. As a high school student, if you can identify your interests and demonstrate that you’re willing to do the same even before you get to college, that’s very impressive.

Passion projects can even help your application beyond just showcasing it on your resume. You can talk about it in detail when writing your personal essay and supplemental essays. And if the Ivy League school you’re applying to has alumni interviews, you can openly speak about your passion project with your interviewer. For more on Ivy League alumni check out our articles on how to ace the Princeton interview and how to ace the UPenn interview.

Beyond just the benefits of helping your Ivy League applications, a passion project allows you to discover what excites you and what doesn’t and teaches you how to learn about new fields and industries. It can also teach you the value of mentorship and how to work well with mentors. These are advantages that you can take with you in your life far beyond just college.

Ivy League Passion Project Examples from Polygence Alumni

Star Formation Project

As a junior in high school, Polygence alumni Arul worked with his mentor Imad P to determine the rates at which stars are forming in a group of nearby galaxies. Arul used publicly available data about the wavelengths emitted by local galaxies and wrote Python code to calculate each galaxy’s flux (the brightness or intensity of its light). He concentrated on two types of light wavelengths that are good indicators of star formation activity: the H-alpha recombination band and the far ultraviolet (FUV) band. For more on the full details of Arul’s project, check out our student spotlight blog article on Arul’s star formation exploration.

Arul used his project to help get accepted into Princeton University by connecting his own research with similar ongoing research by Princeton professors in his “Why Princeton?” essay. He wrote about his Polygence experience and how he’d also like to contribute to the Princeton undergraduate research journal. This is a great example of how you can reference passion projects in your supplemental essays. 

When we asked Arul how his Polygence project shaped his freshman year at Princeton, Arul told us that there were “lots of transferable technical skills that I got to apply to my freshman year physics coursework.” His experience on his star formation project even influenced his decision to major in physics. He will continue his space research with a similar physics internship with Professor Susanne Staggs, this time focusing on dark energy and dark matter.

Environmental and Biology Research Project

Polygence alumni Yardena Rubin is a current student at Columbia University studying sustainable development and ethics. Yardena has always been interested in environmental science, and she started out her Polygence passion project by doing some preliminary research into invasive animal species in South Florida with the help of her mentor Malia, an expert in invasive species. Yardena found that green iguanas that are native to South America are creating tons of environmental and economic damage in South Florida. Yardena wrote a research paper to share her findings and make a call to action to combat the effects of the green iguanas. She was also able to get her research paper published in the Journal of Research High School. You can read more about the full project story in this student spotlight article.

For Yardena, the passion project was perfect timing because she completed her research leading up to her senior year of high school. She was able to feature her research on her college application to Columbia and mentioned that the research project “was a really great tool to show I could step up and take leadership within my own community.” Beyond just helping with the college admissions process, Yardena’s project also helped her learn how to write a research paper and also how to properly use citations in her paper, both of which come in handy for college-level courses. 

If you’re interested in learning more about environmental impact, read our blog article to learn How Polygence Is Helping Students Tackle Climate Change. 

Other Ivy League Passion Project Ideas

Artistic Creativity

Have you always been interested in painting, sketching, or other visual arts? Consider creating a portfolio of work to show your creativity and artistic talent. Your portfolio can all follow one theme or you can create individual pieces with different topics. Check out our article on Fine Art Passion Project Ideas for more inspiration. 

Launch a Small Business

Curious about entrepreneurship? Many Ivy League schools have programs to help support student entrepreneurs and schools like UPenn, Yale University, Harvard University, and Cornell are well-known for their programs in business management. There’s a lot you can learn from launching your own business from the ground up. You’ll gain experience with user research, product design, and marketing. Regardless of whether the business is successful or not, launching a business can show your ability to take initiative, something that Ivy League schools and all colleges around the country love to see. By launching a startup, you can also mention in supplemental essays how you’d love to use the school’s resources for entrepreneurship to either continue your current business or launch a new one! For more insights, you might want to check out Top Online Business Courses for High School Students. 

Medical Volunteering or Research

Participating in medical research or volunteer work can show your commitment to making an impact in your community and learning more about science. See if you can find local opportunities to volunteer at a hospital or intern at a research lab to learn more about the field of medicine. If you’d like to learn more about research opportunities, check out our blog on Top 10 Medical Summer Research Opportunities.

Writing Essays or Short Stories

We all know that college applications require a lot of essay writing, but what if, for your own passion project, you worked on an essay or story of your own about a topic you find interesting? What if you wrote a short fiction story to demonstrate your creativity? There are a ton of possibilities for writing projects, and they can include mediums like poetry. You’ll also have the opportunity to submit your works to various essay competitions and poetry contests, some of which are hosted by Ivy League schools like Princeton University. Writing is an essential skill for successful college students and demonstrating your writing ability beyond just the required admissions essays can be very impressive to Ivy League schools.

Coding Projects

Computer science is one of the most common majors for Ivy League students, especially at Brown, Cornell, and Harvard. Code can be used to produce all sorts of projects, from creating useful websites to transformative apps and algorithms. Doing a coding project can give you valuable technical practice with coding languages while also giving you the opportunity to make an impact. For example, Polygence alum Joseph worked with his computer science mentor Nathan to build a Duolingo-esque learning app that will instruct other students on the fundamentals of the Java programming language. A coding project is especially recommended for students who intend to major in computer science at an Ivy League school since it shows motivation and curiosity about the field.

Characteristics of Great Ivy League Passion Projects

They Go Beyond the Surface Level

Great passion projects don’t just stop at the surface level of their topic, they explore topics in-depth. For example, if we consider Yardena’s project about invasive species, she could have very easily just done a comprehensive summary about invasive species and why they’re generally bad for the environment and economy. However, Yardena chose to specifically focus on green iguanas, their impact, and how policy can change the situation. When students go more in-depth on their topic, it gives the project more credibility because it shows that you thought about the topic at a deeper level and did more thorough research. Research projects and college assignments are rarely surface-level, so think of a high school passion project as great practice to do the same.

They’re Topics That The Student is Excited About

A huge part of a great Ivy League Passion Project is that the chosen topic is something the student actually cares about. It may seem obvious, but sometimes it’s easy to give into the pressure of researching something that you think others may find cool or impressive, but you don’t personally find interesting. In these situations, everything becomes more difficult. You’re not going to have the motivation to do extra research and analysis, to sharpen up your research paper, or ask your mentor to clarify concepts that you don’t fully understand. But if you’re working on a topic that excites you—whether it's connected to your academic interest or a meaningful project you want to pursue—you’ll be willing to put in the extra work to create an awesome research project. Your passion for the topic will come through in your work, and that will be truly impressive to admissions officers.

Related Ivy League Content

Interested in immersing yourself at an Ivy League school before applying? Read our article on Ivy League Summer Programs for High School Students, where you can take courses and work on projects on an Ivy League campus! 

If you want to explore more passion project ideas, check out our blog piece on Passion Project Ideas for High School Students.