This teen’s comic essay about Costco got her into five Ivy League schools

A 17-YEAR-OLD girl has scooped offers from five top universities thanks to a tongue-in-cheek essay about discount retailer Costco.

NO NEED to be an all-American athlete, lead in the high school musical who’s able to recite Chaucer in perfect Middle English to get into an Ivy League school — just head to Costco!

A Delaware teen got into five Ivies — Yale, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth and Cornell — after penning an essay about her admiration for America’s largest member-only wholesale club.

Brittany Stinson’s 655-word ode to Costco was a response to a Common Application admissions essay question that asked applicants to share something that was so important that their lives would feel “incomplete without it”.

“I had always gone to Costco growing up — it was a constant part of my childhood,” the 17-year-old told NBC News. “I looked forward to trips on the weekends and I had always treated it as Disneyland of sorts. I was always curious about the place.

“The same attitude carried over to everything I tried in life.”

Ms Stinson opened the essay, which she released in full to Business Insider, with her earliest memories of going grocery shopping with her mother.

Brittany Stinson.

“Overcome with wonder, I wanted to touch and taste, to stick my head into industrialised freezes, to explore every crevice,” she wrote. “I was a conquistador, but rather than searching the land for El Dorado, I scoured aisles for free samples.”

As she got older, she began thinking more metaphysically about the weekly trips.

“I contemplated the philosophical: If there exists a 33 ounce jar of Nutella, do we really have free will?” she asked.

Ms Stinson said she often found herself lost in thought about the bulk sizes Costco offered its customers — crediting the nationwide chain with kickstarting her “unfettered curiosity” in life.

“Perusing the aisles gave me time to ponder. Who needs three pounds of sour cream? Was cultured yoghurt any more well-mannered than its uncultured counterpart?”

The variety of options on the shelves also enhanced her exploratory skills.

“Just as I sampled buffalo chicken dip or chocolate truffles, I probed the realms of history, dance and biology, all in pursuit of the ideal cart — one overflowing with theoretical situations and notions both silly and serious,” she wrote.

“With cart in hand, I do what scares me; I absorb the warehouse that is the world,” she continued. “Whether it be through attempting aerial yoga, learning how to chart blackbody radiation using astronomical software, or dancing in front of hundreds of people, I am compelled to try any activity that interests me in the slightest.”

The straight-A student from Wilmington found out last week that she got into the Ivies — along with a sixth top tier school, Stanford — that have acceptance rates ranging from Stanford’s 4.69 per cent to Cornell’s 13.96 per cent.

“Incredibly difficult decisions soon to come,” she wrote on her Facebook page last Thursday.

This article originally appeared on New York Post and was reproduced with permission.

Originally published as This teen’s comic essay about Costco got her into five Ivy League schools