Case Study • Duke
How Asher Traded a Class-Election Essay for Jazz
His first draft was about one win. His coach told him to get weird. What came back was an essay about rhythm that showed an admissions officer four sides of who he is.
As seen in
What selective colleges actually look for
CEG's team analyzed more than 200 college websites: strategic plans, mission statements, admissions pages, and supplemental prompts. Five qualities showed up again and again. We call them the admission nutrients.
Intellectual curiosity
The questions you can't stop asking. It shows up in your transcript, your activities list, and most powerfully in your essays: the things you choose to write about and the connections you make between ideas.
Service to others
How you've worked to make things better for the people around you: your team, your school, your community. The activities list is the main place this shows up, and essays can reinforce it.
Leadership or initiative
Being a catalyst (starting things) and being proactive (improving things that exist). You don't need a formal title. You need evidence that you moved something forward.
Collaboration
The one students most often forget. Colleges are building a community and want to know you work well alongside people different from you. Lots of colleges are seeking bridge builders.
Consistent engagement
Something you've shown up for, again and again, over time. Depth over volume. Often covered by the activities list, but essays can show the why behind the what.
Asher's essay demonstrates at least three of these, leadership, intellectual and linguistic curiosity, and collaboration, all shown, none named.
A legitimate win that made for a narrow essay
Asher came in with a draft about winning a class election. A real achievement (he’d transferred to a new school and successfully campaigned), but the essay was narrow. One event. One outcome.
“Take some risks, get a little weird. If you can get to values and impacts and insights, any topic can work.”Calvin, Asher’s coach
Asher agreed to try. They landed on jazz, specifically the idea that everything in his life has an underlying rhythm. Jazz became a framework for showing how he thinks, builds, leads, and connects.
Four jazz elements, four sides of Asher
The essay opens in a car on a family road trip: dad confiscating phones, mom's podcast, his sister poking him in the ribs. Asher closes his eyes, and the scene shifts to a jazz club he imagined. A bossa nova track starts. Then:
That line is doing a lot. It moves from the framework (jazz) to the real subject (Asher's life) in one sentence. Calvin calls this the zoom-in / zoom-out move: framework, then real thing, then back to framework. From there the essay shows four facets of Asher through four jazz elements.
His confidence and initiative map onto Asher running for class president at a new school. He won, but his anxiety didn't disappear. So he started just talking to people, and learned that leadership means combining individuals' strengths toward a shared goal.
Scat singers make meaning from patterns of sound. Asher thinks about this when studying Hindi or Spanish: how does one set of sounds let him talk with his grandparents while another creates a barrier? A curious mind making a surprising connection.
Asher founded his district's first middle-school Model UN club. He frames it as building a baseline for younger students to branch out from. His influence fades into the background as they become soloists.
The essay ends where it began (bookending). His sister pokes him. He plugs in his headphones, hits shuffle, and settles back as Trombone Shorty plays in his head: "this time, however, I wasn't imagining."
Asher's first draft was about an impressive achievement. His final essay was about jazz. The achievement (class president) stayed in the essay, but as one jazz element among four, not the centerpiece. That shift changed everything.
Asher’s full personal statement
“Alright, phones up here. Appreciate the scenery.” My dad snaked his hand towards the back of the car to collect our devices. After my dad’s impromptu math quiz, my mom’s beloved boring horror podcast, and constant poking from my sister, I finally had some time to myself. I reclined my seat, closed my eyes, and found myself in a familiar room, the jazz club where I caught my first show. Floor-to-ceiling wooden paneling enclosed intimate fire-lit seating that surrounded a stage. The sounds of the family minivan faded as I imagined the performance of a lifetime.
A Brazilian samba-esque beat fills the air. The band is starting off strong with a Bossa Nova track. Even as vocals and lead instruments begin layering over each other, the iconic underlying rhythm is ever-present, pushing the musicians along. The music I enjoy is powered by rhythm, as is the rest of my life. The rhythm of spinning wheels on robots I build with my teammates. The rhythmic bangs of a hammer as I woodwork products like my mom’s vegetable garden beds, or my longboard. The unpredictable rhythm of oil and spices crackling and popping as I cook adventurous international dishes for my family. No matter where I look (or listen), all it takes is some focus to identify an underlying rhythm powering what I do.
The sounds of Brazil fade. I whip around to see the fireplace’s flickering light bouncing off a trombone, my favorite modern musician, New Orleans-inspired funk jazz pioneer Trombone Shorty. His initiative and confidence are traits I adopted when I ran for Class President after transferring to a new school. Wanting to get involved in my new community, I built up the confidence to campaign, expecting my worries and anxiety would disappear after the election results were announced. I won the election, but my doubts persisted. How could I effectively represent and lead such a large group of people, most of whom I did not know? I started off simple: just talking to people. That grew into discovering beautiful nuances and diversity in my peers’ interests and talents, and culminated in my leadership style of utilizing and combining individuals’ strengths to reach an overall goal, similar to Shorty’s big-band pieces where a multitude of instruments all play specific underlying roles while coming together to create a beautiful overall sound.
Suddenly, a spotlight illuminates scat-singer Ella Fitzgerald, center stage. She begins making seemingly random, yet melodic sounds that blend in my head, creating music. Whenever I study Hindi or Spanish, I think of scat, and am intrigued by how our minds process simple sounds to derive meaning from them. Learning multiple languages has given me a deeper appreciation for the world when traveling with my family, but also sparked my curiosity. How does one set of sounds which I make allow me to communicate with my grandparents, while another imposes a barrier between us? Music’s universality and language’s ability to connect people drive me to continue exploring both.
A bari saxophonist jumps into a mean bassline, hitting low, growling notes. Using that foundation, other musicians play and climb over the bassline’s stable platform. When I founded my school district’s first middle school-level Model United Nations club, I wanted to help young students build vital presentational and collaboration skills, a strong bassline on which they could branch out and explore topics which they had individual interest in. My “bassline” faded into the background as they turned into soloists using their own skills to shine, but the foundation I set for them had a lasting influence on their unique styles and ideas.
I was brought back to the minivan as my sister poked me again. We could have our phones back. I plugged in my headphones and hit shuffle on my jazz playlist. I settled back into my seat as Trombone Shorty flowed through my head. This time, however, I wasn’t imagining.
Calvin on what makes Asher's essay work
Structural and sentence-level analysis. Student excerpts are in the highlighted boxes; the read follows each.
The opening: family road trip
The essay opens not in a jazz club but in a minivan filled with small moments that build a little world: dad confiscating phones, mom's podcast, a sister poking at him. Calvin's read: it's endearing, and he finds himself starting to like the student right away. The scene delivers personality, then launches with a small, pleasant surprise, a shift to an imagined jazz club the reader doesn't realize is imagined until later.
The pivot sentence
After establishing the jazz club, Asher writes the line that carries the most structural weight in the essay: the sentence that takes us from the framework to the rest of his life.
This is the hinge. Everything before it is setup; everything after it is demonstration. The reader now understands the contract: each jazz element that follows will map onto something true about Asher.
Trombone Shorty and leadership
The first jazz element maps Trombone Shorty's confidence and initiative onto Asher running for class president at a new school. It's the zoom-in / zoom-out move in clear action: name the element, zoom out to the real thing (leadership), zoom back in to show where it played out, then close the frame.
The essay says winning didn't resolve his anxiety, then shows what he did about it. The section closes by tying back to jazz: his leadership style is "similar to Shorty's Big Band pieces where a multitude of instruments all play specific underlying roles while coming together to create a beautiful overall sound." The button lands.
Ella Fitzgerald, scat, and linguistic curiosity
Calvin singles out the scat paragraph as the essay's most important non-impressive moment: no award, no outcome, just a genuinely curious mind finding an unexpected connection. It shows a bright, curious, thoughtful student, not because he won anything, but because he's questioning and finding connections. It's the kind of mind that does well in a challenging academic environment.
The question about the grandparents is the best sentence in the section. It's a genuine question that reveals what kind of thinker Asher is. No other student will arrive at that sentence from that premise. Essays can succeed through uncommon connections rather than headline accomplishments.
Bass saxophone baseline and Model UN
Asher frames founding his district's first middle-school Model UN club as building a baseline: giving younger students skills they could branch out from, until they eventually outplayed him.
The metaphor does double work: it shows the accomplishment and shows what kind of leader Asher is, one who builds infrastructure and then steps back. Plenty of students write about Model UN. No other Model UN paragraph would frame it this exact way. That's the specificity test.
The ending
Calvin has a mild critique (he might have wanted more punch) but accepts the quieter close: after everything the essay delivers, a laid-back ending is defensible. The essay ends where it began, back in the minivan, headphones in, Trombone Shorty playing, but this time not imagined.
The jazz club at the start was in his head. By the end, the music is real, implying the essay's argument: these values, this curiosity, this leadership are things playing now in Asher's life.
Calvin Pickett
A former English teacher with degrees from Vassar and Columbia's Teachers College, Calvin has guided hundreds of students through the admissions process and helped them write essays that earned spots at some of the most selective colleges in the country. He's a reader and writer at heart who helps students use structure to tell their own story.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do colleges look for beyond grades?
Selective colleges consistently look for five qualities, CEG calls them admission nutrients: intellectual curiosity, service to others, leadership or initiative, collaboration, and consistent engagement. These show up primarily in essays, the activities list, and recommendation letters. There are also factors like institutional priorities that are beyond any student’s control.
What is the montage essay structure?
A montage essay uses a framework (for example, five pairs of shoes that connect to five different moments) to connect different sides of who a student is. Rather than telling one story chronologically, the student zooms in on different facets of themselves through the framework, then zooms back out. Each section introduces a value and grounds it in real examples.
What are "soft examples" in a college essay?
Soft examples are details that don’t appear on a student’s activities list or resume: intimate moments, everyday habits, private interests that reveal personality and character. Unlike resume items, soft examples make an essay feel personal and impossible to replicate.
How many drafts does a good college essay take?
Frequently 10 or more. There’s no magic number, but good essays rarely arrive in one or two drafts. The revision process is where most of the real insight emerges.
What makes a college application "successful"?
A successful application is one where the student can look at their finished work and feel it genuinely represents who they are: not just a curated resume, but a real person with real values and real voice. Outcomes matter, and students who are proud of their work before the acceptance letters arrive tend to have a healthier relationship with the process.