Why a Passion Project Might Not be What You Think it is...

It’s become a near-constant refrain among high school students: to get into the best colleges, you need to create something big. A nonprofit. A tech startup. A global initiative.

It seems pretty simple: if you launch a passion project that changes the world, admissions officers will take notice. After all, who doesn’t want a student who’s trying to cure cancer, or at least come up with the next big solution to climate change? But here’s the catch: for most students, this pressure to create something monumental—something that screams “impact”—ends up being more about checking boxes than nurturing genuine passion.

And admissions officers can tell.

“Passion Projects” Often Lack…Passion

The overwhelming push for students to launch impressive, world-changing passion projects has led to a culture of performative activism and entrepreneurship. What’s often overlooked in the process is that these grandiose ventures are not necessarily what colleges are looking for. In fact, many of these forced projects, crafted to fill perceived gaps in an application rather than stemming from real interest, are transparent in their inauthenticity.

Take Ella, a senior from Connecticut, who for months felt the weight of the expectation to come up with a “passion project” that would impress admissions officers. “I had this idea to start a nonprofit for women in STEM, but honestly, I didn’t care about it,” she says. “It felt like something that would look good on paper, but I wasn’t really passionate about STEM at all. I just thought it was what I was supposed to do.” As Ella admits, her efforts didn’t amount to much more than a hastily thrown-together website and a few social media posts. “I didn’t feel connected to it. It wasn’t coming from a real place of passion, and I knew that.” Unsurprisingly, her project didn’t make much of an impact, either within her community or with the colleges she applied to.

Ella’s story highlights a growing problem in the college admissions process: the idea that students need to “fix” something major, whether it’s social injustice, climate change, or health disparities, without a true connection to those issues. As the application cycle has grown more competitive, students have come to believe that passion projects need to be transformational. But this pressure has led to a wave of disingenuous efforts, initiatives that, though ambitious, feel more like a marketing campaign than actual passion.

College’s Perspective

The irony, of course, is that these projects, when created with an eye solely on college admissions, are far more likely to fall flat. Admissions officers are increasingly adept at spotting when a project isn’t genuine. According to William Fitzsimmons, the Dean of Admissions at Harvard University, “We are far more interested in the depth of a student’s commitment, not the scope of their project. If someone is only doing something because they think it will look good, it’s usually pretty clear. What we value most is sustained involvement, what shows real growth and passion.”

This emphasis on depth over breadth doesn’t mean that passion projects don’t work. Far from it. When a student genuinely cares about something, whether it’s a local issue, an art form, or even a hobby, they can make a tangible impact without trying to reinvent the wheel. Lucas, a student from Ohio, decided to focus his energies on a longstanding passion: mentoring middle school students interested in the arts. His project didn’t involve starting a new organization or raising millions of dollars, but it did require him to commit years of his time, skills, and energy to the kids he worked with. Lucas didn’t create something flashy, but his authenticity and sustained effort stood out.

“Instead of creating something just for the sake of my college application, I focused on something that I’d been doing for years, helping these kids get involved with art,” Lucas said. In the end, Lucas was accepted into Stanford and Brown, and his admissions essays focused on the relationships he built with his students, rather than the size of his project.

The key to a successful passion project is not how groundbreaking it is, but how deeply it reflects a student’s own genuine interests. College admissions officers are trained to spot authenticity, to see beyond the gloss of a well-executed project and look for the stories behind it. According to Richard Shaw, the former Dean of Admissions at Stanford, “We want to see students who have pursued something with genuine interest, who have shown growth, and who have impacted their community, no matter how small the scope.”

Concluding Notes

The takeaway, perhaps, is simple: passion projects can work, but only when they come from a place of real passion. College admissions is not about impressing a committee with something flashy; it’s about showing who you are and how you’ve engaged with the world around you. Students who genuinely invest time and energy into a cause, whether it’s a community service project, a personal hobby, or even an academic interest—are far more likely to catch the eye of admissions officers than those who simply try to tick the box of a “perfect project.”

In the end, the pressure to “cure cancer” or “save the world” is not just misguided, it’s unnecessary. What admissions officers truly value is the sincerity and depth behind a student’s passions, not the size or scope of their projects. And that’s the key to standing out in an increasingly crowded field of applicants.

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Best,

Joshua S.R.
Founder
75 Percent Chance