Last Updated on June 11, 2025 by Noel Kim
Ask any parent or student what matters most in college admissions, and you’ll hear a familiar list: test scores, grades, leadership roles, volunteer hours. The standard extracurricular checklist. As a longtime educator who’s taught thousands of students across middle and high school—from Chicago to Taipei—I’ve seen how real growth happens not through checklists, but through curiosity, creativity, and challenge. It’s often the student who stays after class to ask a thoughtful question, or who quietly builds something on their own time, who ends up having the most compelling story to tell. I’m relatively new to the admissions world, but not new to the deeper work of helping students find their voice, build confidence, and stretch beyond the classroom. And passion projects? They’re one of the best vehicles I’ve seen for doing all of that at once.
More than just another bullet point, a passion project becomes a narrative anchor. It showcases a student’s interests and values, and it reveals their initiative, resilience, and unique voice in a way that club titles and award tallies often can’t. Let’s explore why that is, what the research says, and how students (and their families) can start thinking about these projects not just as résumé boosters, but as identity builders.
What Admissions Officers Are Really Looking For
College admissions teams don’t want perfect applicants. They want memorable ones.
Don’t take my word for it. According to a recent MIT admissions blog, “We’re not looking for the ‘best’ students—we’re looking for the most interesting ones. People who pursue their interests in creative ways, not just those who collect leadership titles.”
UPenn admissions’ website tells a similar story. “Depth is better than breadth. We’d rather see one or two things done well than 10 superficial involvements.”
Suffice to say, colleges today (especially elite ones) are looking for students who demonstrate depth, not just breadth. Students who have asked themselves big questions and followed the answers through uncertainty and iteration. That’s what a well-executed passion project reveals: not just what you care about, but how you work through challenge, ambiguity, and self-doubt.
In fact, research on narrative coherence in college essays shows that the strongest personal statements tend to follow a clear internal logic: the student presents a challenge or interest, shows personal growth, and reflects authentically on what they’ve learned (Baer, 2019).
According to a 2022 Inside Higher Ed survey, 58% of admissions officers said that a compelling personal essay had tipped the scales in favor of an applicant who was otherwise on the bubble.
Colleges like Harvard and Stanford publicly state on their websites that they look for “intellectual vitality,” “authentic voice,” and “initiative”—all traits often revealed through passion projects.
Former Yale admissions officer Mimi Doe told Forbes in 2023: “When we see a student who has built something meaningful on their own, it tells us far more than a list of clubs.”
Passion projects naturally create this kind of through line on a student’s application because they come from the student’s own initiative, not a scripted curriculum.
While there’s no single formula for admissions success, students who develop passion projects often submit stronger personal essays, demonstrate key traits like initiative and resilience, and leave a more memorable impression on admissions officers. These narrative advantages consistently show up in the profiles of students admitted to top-choice colleges.
Did you know? In 2023, Stanford received over 56,000 applications for fewer than 2,100 spots. Columbia’s acceptance rate dipped to 3.9 percent, and Harvard’s hovered around 3.6 percent. What stood out in successful applicants wasn’t always their GPA. It was often the strength of their personal story and the clarity of their narrative arc.
Dinner Table Prompt:
Parents: Can you think of a time in your own life when doing something deeply meaningful changed your direction?
Students: What’s one topic or activity you’d pursue even if no one gave you credit for it?
The Psychology of Passion and Flow
So why do these projects resonate so deeply?
The answer lies in psychology, and specifically in the science of intrinsic motivation. According to Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory, people are most motivated when they feel three things: autonomy, competence, and purpose. Passion projects, when designed well, offer all three.
When students choose their own direction, stretch their skills, and connect their work to something meaningful, they’re more likely to stay engaged and to grow from the process.
This is where the concept of flow, introduced by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, comes in. Flow happens when someone is so immersed in an activity that they lose track of time. It’s not always easy, but it’s deeply satisfying.
I experience flow when I’m writing, when I’m designing graphics in Canva, and when I’m on my yoga mat—especially in those moments when everything clicks and I feel fully present, fully challenged, and fully myself. Flow isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being absorbed.
One of my students, a quiet junior with a love of visual storytelling, told me he hadn’t felt “smart” in school until he stayed up all night editing his first animated video for a YouTube channel he built from scratch. “I wasn’t doing it for extra credit,” he said. “I was just doing it because I had to see how it ended.”
That state doesn’t just support mental well-being. It helps students see themselves as creators, not just participants. And that’s where real narrative-building begins.
Growth, Not Just Grit
Students are often afraid to try something big because it might not work. But as psychologist Carol Dweck has shown, students who believe their abilities can be developed through effort, rather than being fixed, are more likely to take intellectual risks, recover from setbacks, and keep going when things get tough (Dweck, 2006). Passion projects build this growth mindset almost by design.
Why? Because they rarely go perfectly. They involve iteration, feedback, and flexibility. They require resilience and reward students with a deeper belief in their own capacity to grow.
I’ve watched students go from doubting whether they have anything “special” to say to presenting their projects with pride and insight. It’s never overnight, but it’s always powerful. One former student launched a digital zine exploring Asian-American identity and food, starting with scanned recipes from her grandmother. By the end of the year, she had hundreds of subscribers and a voice she didn’t know she had.
From Passion Project to Personal Statement: Why Storytelling Matters
Students often ask, “What counts as a passion project?” But the more useful question is: What story does this project help you tell about yourself?
Narrative psychologist Dan McAdams describes narrative identity as the internalized story we tell about who we are and who we’re becoming. Passion projects, especially those that unfold over time, help students build that story in a real, embodied way.
They allow students to say: Here’s something I built. Here’s what I struggled with. Here’s how I grew. And here’s what I care about now.
That kind of story not only makes an application more compelling. It makes it more coherent, which research suggests is a strong predictor of long-term resilience, purpose, and even academic success (McAdams & McLean, 2013).
Psychologist Jerome Bruner once said, “We become the authors of our lives.” Passion projects help students practice that authorship and, in doing so, find their voice.
What Passion Projects Look Like in Real Life
You don’t need to be a prodigy or social media influencer to start a meaningful passion project. But here are a few real-world examples to spark inspiration:
- Gitanjali Rao, TIME’s Kid of the Year, created apps to detect lead in water and prevent cyberbullying.
- Mikaila Ulmer turned her family’s lemonade recipe into a mission-driven business that supports bee conservation.
- Kenneth Shinozuka built a wearable sensor to help track Alzheimer’s patients after watching his grandfather wander.
- Zaila Avant-garde won the Scripps Spelling Bee while holding multiple Guinness records in basketball.
- Sammie Vance created “Buddy Benches” from recycled bottle caps to reduce school loneliness.
And then there are the students I’ve worked with:
- A first-generation student who started a blog that became a platform for others navigating college access.
- A popcorn-loving teen who built a business that now supports local families and once mailed me a thank-you bag of her product. It didn’t last a day in my house.
What these students have in common isn’t just creativity. It’s connection—to others, to themselves, and to a sense of purpose that helped them grow into their narrative.
Why It Works: What the Research Says on Passion Projects
Studies on project-based learning show that students develop stronger academic habits, greater independence, and higher retention when they are trusted to lead their own learning (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2008).
Additionally, a 2020 report by the National Society for the Gifted and Talented found that students who pursue independent work outside of school are more likely to show advanced problem-solving, leadership, and self-motivation
According to NACAC’s 2023 “State of College Admission” report, more than 80 percent of admissions officers cite the essay and student background as “considerably important.” At many selective schools, these factors now matter more than test scores. A coherent narrative rooted in self-directed work can be the difference-maker.
These projects don’t just prepare students for college. They prepare them to tell their story with clarity, depth, and authenticity.
Getting Started: A Simple Framework for Passion Projects
Here’s a short roadmap to help students turn an idea into something meaningful:
- Start with a question.
What issue, topic, or community do you genuinely care about? - Choose your medium.
Will you write, code, design, organize, research, record, or build? - Keep it real.
Begin with something achievable. You can expand later. - Reflect as you go.
What surprised you? What failed? What did you learn? - Share the impact.
Who did it help? What changed for you?
Projects don’t need to be flashy. They need to be honest, sustained, and personally meaningful. That’s what makes them powerful both for growth and for admissions.
When I was pregnant with my son, I wrote two children’s books—not because I thought they’d be bestsellers, but because they helped me process that season of life. Your project doesn’t have to impress everyone. It just has to reflect you.
How InGenius Prep Helps Students Build These Narratives
At InGenius, we don’t hand students a checklist. We help them ask better questions.
Our mentors, many of whom are former admissions officers, guide students in designing long-term projects and building the narrative infrastructure that makes their applications more than a list of achievements.
Whether it’s launching a podcast, starting a tutoring initiative, or writing a book of poetry, we support students from idea generation to storytelling so they don’t just do the work. They own it.
We also offer:
- Leadership & Innovation Lab – A global cohort solving real-world problems.
- Research Mentorships – One-on-one faculty guidance in neuroscience, economics, international relations, and more.
These aren’t vanity projects. They are meaningful experiences that help students discover who they are and what kind of impact they want to make.
From Application to Lifelong Arc
Your college application isn’t the end of your story. It’s the beginning of your arc.
Passion projects aren’t just strategic. They are formative. They give students a way to explore, reflect, and discover who they are while they’re still becoming.
Often, the most powerful discoveries come not through introspection alone, but through working on something bigger than yourself—serving a community, solving a real problem, or advocating for others. In doing so, students gain not only purpose but a clearer sense of how they show up in the world.
Reflection Question:
What kind of story are you telling, and what would it take to make it truly yours?
Curious what kind of passion project might help your child stand out and grow?
Book a free consultation with one of our Enrollment Counselors. We’ll help your student identify their strengths, shape their story, and begin the kind of project that makes a difference on paper and in life.
