Princeton Grad Aryan Bhasin Shares His Hacks For Finding the Perfect Essay Topic

Aryan Bhasin built his college application around an idea that was deeply personal: his fear of not having a singular identity. In his Common App essay, titled Multiple Personality Order (a playful twist on "disorder"), he introduced the metaphor of a Boggart—a faceless fear from the Harry Potter universe that only takes shape when confronted. For Aryan, that fear was living without a clear sense of self.

Rather than positioning himself as a sharply defined specialist, Aryan chose to lean into his multiplicity—someone who could fluidly shift between roles, passions, and ways of thinking. How did he arrive at this insight? Years of journaling.

Journaling became Aryan’s ultimate hack for discovering his essay topic. By the time applications rolled around, he had already written much of the raw material—he just needed to assemble it. His high school counselor played a critical role in refining the essay, brainstorming its title, and adding the right references. Aryan’s process was as collaborative as it was introspective. And he didn’t stop there. Aryan also unlocked the power of letter of recommendations (LORs)—an area most applicants overlook.

Aryan’s recommenders—his physics teacher, math teacher, and high school counselor—each knew him from different angles. Together, they painted a full picture of his leadership, academic depth, and personal growth.

Applying from India, Aryan faced a common but under-discussed obstacle: cultural distance.

Aryan recognized that domestic applicants often had the advantage of campus visits, local connections, and cultural familiarity.

So he compensated. He spent hours researching professors, reading about alumni, diving into funding opportunities and campus resources—grasping at every detail he could find to write essays that felt specific, even when he had never stepped foot on those campuses.

Aryan’s journey aligned beautifully with Princeton’s values: intellectual curiosity, breadth, and vibrancy outside the classroom.

Aryan’s Multiple Personality Order wasn’t just an essay—it was a blueprint for the kind of student Princeton embraces: someone who is curious, flexible, and engaged across many spheres of life. Aryan didn’t passively browse colleges—he sought ways to make them familiar. He understood that fit isn’t just about credentials—it’s about connection. He envisioned himself thriving in Princeton’s interdisciplinary environment, not as a niche specialist, but as a multidimensional contributor—someone who could lead, study, sing, travel, and grow all at once. This holistic engagement matched Princeton’s desire for well-rounded, intellectually hungry students.

Aryan’s self-awareness is disarming in its honesty. He doesn’t posture—he reflects.

This is a game-changing insight for younger students: your future essay is already living inside your present thoughts.

Aryan’s articulation of the international student challenge is powerful, and his solution—meticulous research and proactive outreach—is instructive for others navigating the same uncertainty.

💡 Journaling as Strategy – Aryan’s journaling wasn’t just a hobby—it was a long-term play that paid off during college applications. 💌 Power of Recommendation Letters – He didn’t just collect recommendations—he cultivated them with people who knew him deeply across contexts. 🌍 Navigating Cultural Distance – Aryan’s experience shows that international applicants can bridge the gap with curiosity, research, and creative self-expression.

Aryan leads with reflection. His writing is layered, thoughtful, and quietly profound. His metaphor of the Bogat reveals a student who isn’t afraid to explore fear, identity, and complexity. 🎭 Supporting Archetype: Genuine Article There’s no performance here. Aryan’s story feels honest, practical, and deeply personal. He didn’t manufacture an identity—he embraced his multi-faceted self. ✨ Bonus Archetype: Architect Aryan built his strategy intentionally—from journaling to assembling his recommenders. His application was carefully constructed, but never artificial.

A: I think one of things that helped me was letters of recommendation, probably something people don’t talk about getting really good LOR from people who really know you. personally it really helped me, I think I had LORs written by my physics and math teacher and high school counselor. these three people really knew the different environments in which I’d worked and academic work and leadership, they were all able to speak of different aspects of myself to paint a complete picture. Its one thing if you write about yourself and how good you are about XYZ, another completely different thing is someone else talking about you and how well you do the same things lends higher credibility. I had one big essay that was on Boggarts from Harry Potter where you dislike boxing is your biggest fear, and that entities like faceless until you open it and so for me, I was saying that my own Boggart was just being confused between what I was more academic or more of a leadership person. Because, on my common app, I had a lot of leadership stuff and I also had a lot of academic stuff. I was just feeling a bit face-less in a way, like my biggest fear was not having an identity. And my main essay was called multiple personality order, as opposed to multiple personality disorder, and the big idea was I have multiple personalities I can switch between different ones instead of just being like a sharp pointy singular person.

A: I used to really like writing as a kid and writing in general and I used to journal a lot about things in life as well. One of the recurring themes for me in High school was just not feeling like I have one single personality so I had a lot of text about this MPO multiple personality order thing that I wrote my final essay about. My high school counselor helped me a lot. He helped me come up with the name, he helped with a lot of references that I wrote about. External help and journaling really helped. I’d say if you’re in high school right now as a sophomore or Junior the best thing you could do that would help you in your future essays is just journaling a lot about day-to-day stuff. Overtime you’ll collect a lot of text that you can just piece through or look back to for inspiration and ideas when you’re ready.

A: Huge. So for context applied from India, I had never really been to these colleges I applied to. I also didn’t know much about US culture, so I was basically just blindfolded when I was applying to every college and just culturally I felt blindfolded. One of the biggest challenges was relating to the “why this college”essay. They expect you to give them something super specific to them, and it feels like that gives an unfair advantage to those who live in those states. Let’s say you’re applying to UChicago and you live in Chicago. Just feels like you’re at an advantage writing that essay as opposed to someone who’s never been to that college whatsoever. The biggest challenge then was writing about a specific college without ever having visited them or talked to anyone from there. The thing that was really helpful was a lot of online browsing, reading professors’ research, reading about alumni, funding, buildings, etc. but really I was grasping at references to make it seem like I understood when I really didn’t.

A: Maybe the biggest one is intellectual curiosity really values people who are just very curious about different things as a liberal arts college. If you’re extremely inclined towards engineering, I recommend MIT, but if you’re trying to get some breath of different disciplines than Princeton is a great place for that. Princeton also values having interests outside academia. We’re really big on acapella, we’re really big on rowing and all kinds of sports, we get some of the best in different disciplines like music and singing and sports and whatnot, but like also if you have a few different interests and you really want to explore all of them, princeton will be a great place for you.

A: Yeah, out of college I first did the traditional New York life. like New York for a year and a half and I lived there working at a startup. Decided that that’s not what I want in life, so I left New York, started travelling South America, and also working at the same time. and eventually I found my way into creating a company with a good friend of mine and both of us have been running this company about a year now and it’s been full year now. I mostly travel across different countries sometimes in India sometimes in Argentina, Brazil, Chile. and it’s a tech company so I guess I get to mix both the lifestyle I want in the interest I have. We build AI for WhatsApp. that’s the nutshell, we approach companies and tell them we’ll save them a bunch of time for you. how many humans have you hired to reply on WhatsApp and will use Gen AI instead.