Updated May 22, 2025

How to Choose the Best Graded Paper to Submit to Princeton (and What Most Applicants Get Wrong)

Bonus Material: Download PrepMaven’s 50+ Real Supplemental Essays That Worked

As of this year, Princeton is now ranked #1 in US News list of Best Colleges, and its acceptance rate reflects that: just 5.7% of applicants were accepted last year, and we can expect that number to decrease this application cycle! 

One of the differences between who gets accepted and who doesn’t? The most competitive applicants use every part of their application to their advantage. 

In this post, we’ll cover what many people overlook: the “Graded Paper” submission that’s part of the Princeton App. We’ll explain what Princeton admissions officers want, and how you can use this section to eke out an advantage over other applicants. 

Why trust us? Not only was PrepMaven founded by two Princeton graduates with 20+ years of experience in test prep and essay coaching, but the majority of our tutors hail from Ivy League schools like Princeton. 

The guidance you’ll find in this post comes from a team with decades of experience, with thousands of application success stories to back that experience up. 

As a bonus (and a bit of a brag) check out the free resource below. Because so many of our tutors are Ivy League students or graduates, we’ve collected over 50 examples of their successful supplemental essays for schools like Princeton, Harvard, and Yale!

Jump to section:
What is the Princeton Graded Written Paper
 Deciding What Essay to Upload (5 Criteria)
 Things to Avoid
 Next steps

What is the Princeton Graded Written Paper?

The Princeton Graded Written Paper is a mandatory part of the application to Princeton. In short, students must upload an essay they’ve written for class with the teacher’s grade and comments included. 

Note that Princeton’s admissions office offers some important guidelines on the content and formatting of your submission. 

  1. This paper should be for an academic course. In other words, this shouldn’t be something you wrote in your free time and submitted somewhere. 
  2. The paper should preferably be for a humanities (think: English, history, social studies) course. Take this guideline loosely: this just can’t be creative writing, and it can’t be a scientific report or research paper. 
  3. Paper must include the instructor’s grade. 
  4. Paper should include the instructor’s comments. 

Some important technical considerations if uploading through the Common App:

  1. The Common App portal allows you to upload up to 3 individual files–which can be helpful if your instructor’s comments are on a separate page. 
  2. There’s a max file size of 2000kb. This can be a problem if you’ve scanned or taken a photo of a physical paper with comments on it, as these will usually be larger files. (Look into file compression, or into uploading the paper as multiple files!)

You don’t have to upload the paper through your Common App, however. 

Princeton also allows you to upload the graded written paper through your Princeton Applicant Portal (which you’ll create after submitting the Common App), by emailing them the paper, or even by mailing it via post. 

However, the deadline for the Graded Written Paper is the same as the deadline for your application: make sure they’ve received your paper before the deadline. 

Deciding What Essay to Upload (5 Criteria)

If you’re just uploading a paper here, how do you differentiate yourself from other Princeton applicants? Great question. 

As with every other part of your application, this is an opportunity to stand out. So, while many other applicants are simply picking a paper they got a high grade on, you can do better. 

  • Pick an essay that complements your application’s narrative. 

If you’re a strong applicant, your entire Princeton application will center on one key narrative that brings together your academic goals, your past experiences, and your passions. 

This narrative should always connect back to your intended major at Princeton!*

Use the graded written paper to upload an essay that speaks to your intended major, showing how you’ve already done interesting, meaningful work in the field. 

*If you’re planning to major in STEM, you might be wondering how to submit a graded written paper that meaningfully connects with your intended area of study. 

One great option is to think about whether any of the papers you’d written have some connection to STEM, even if indirect. 

If you’re interested in engineering, for example, an English or History paper about the impacts of new technologies would show admissions officers that you’re not only an engineer, but someone who thinks about the long-term implications of technology. 

If you haven’t written anything that links back to your studies, don’t worry. What’s most important is that you submit an essay that demonstrates the depth and quality of your thought. Check out our tips below to learn how to do that. 

  • The more advanced the class, the better. 

While not the most important thing, this does matter. Here’s our ranking, from best to worse, of the kind of class you should upload your paper from:

  1. Graded paper for an undergraduate-level class at a university that you took through dual-enrollment.
  2. Graded paper for a community college class you took through dual enrollment. 
  3. Final paper from an AP or IB level course.
  4. Papers from other courses

We strongly encourage you to pick from one of the top 3 at least. 

  • More recent is better!

While you can technically upload any paper from your time in high school, a paper from junior year is almost always the best choice. 

Sometimes, you may have a strong reason to pick a paper from sophomore year. But you should pretty much never pick a paper from freshman year. Doing so would send a bad signal. 

  • The quality of your instructor’s comments is crucial.

The Princeton admissions office won’t read your whole paper in depth (sorry!). But there’s a fair chance they’ll read your instructor’s comments, especially if they’re in the margins of your paper. 

In the best cases, the instructor’s comments won’t just be positive: they’ll be effusive about you, your talent, and your contributions to the course. 

This pays off double if the class is very advanced! For example, can you imagine how it looks if you submit a paper you wrote for a course at a local university, and one of the professor’s comments is that it’s the best paper in the course? 

  • A high grade (this one is self-explanatory). 

Ultimately, you should remember that this paper is only one part of your application. 

And it’s a small part when compared to the importance of your personal statement and supplemental essays. 

For a strong chance in today’s hyper-competitive college application landscape, you need to work with the best college essay coaches.

Our tutors don’t just have elite educational backgrounds and training from our co-founder: they’ve also successfully gone through the college application process recently!

In fact, you can see just how strong their essays are: below, we’ve got 50+ real supplemental essays written by our tutors for their applications to Ivy+ schools. Each of these essays helped a student earn admission to a school like Princeton, Harvard, or Yale!

Things to Avoid

Some of these are obvious, but we want to be thorough here. Here’s what not to do:

  • Being too creative. 

We’re fans of risk taking and experimentation in your college applications broadly, but not here. Trying to be cute or clever here–by uploading a jokey paper, or by otherwise disregarding the guidelines–will only raise eyebrows in admissions. 

  • Forgetting a professional file name. 

Always remember that the file name itself is visible: make sure it looks clean and professional. 

  • Uploading documents that are illegible

There’s no rule against uploading a scan of a handwritten essay you wrote in class! However, make sure that your handwriting is so clear that anyone can read it. Otherwise, pick a typed essay. 

  • Editing the essay to improve it

It can be hard to resist the temptation to edit the already-graded essay to make it look even better for Princeton: change a word here, fix a sentence there. 

But don’t do it! First, you may be surprised what can be visible from a file’s history. Unless you’re a tech whiz, there’s a risk that admissions officers will be able to see your post-grade edits. 

But, more to the point, it’s a waste of time. Admissions officers aren’t going to pore over every word of your essay: they’re going to scan it and look at the comments. Devoting time to editing a paper that you already got a grade on is a huge mistake. 

Instead, that time would be far better spent working on your Princeton supplemental essays! 

Take a look below for over 50 examples of real supplemental essays for Ivy-caliber schools. The collection includes many essays that got students accepted into Princeton!

Next Steps

If you’re applying to Princeton, the place to start is our comprehensive guide to the Princeton application for the 2024-2025 cycle, which you can find here. That guide doesn’t just cover what Princeton’s application requires of you: it uses the latest statistics and insights from our own Princeton undergraduate tutors to walk you through exactly what you’ll need to do to have a shot at Princeton.

Once you’re ready to apply, we suggest getting expert help. Whether you’re a brilliant writer or just an okay one, you’ll benefit tremendously from the advice of someone who’s already successfully navigated the college application process. 

Our college essay coaches aren’t just writing experts who can make your essay shine: they’re trained to know exactly what schools like Princeton expect to see. 

Check out the free sample essays below, and, when you’re ready to start writing, contact us to get paired with a college essay expert. 

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Mike

Mike Kleynman is an expert test prep tutor (SAT/ACT/LSAT) and college essay consultant, with over a decade of experience and industry-leading results.

With average final scores of 34+ on the ACT and 1500+ on the SAT, nearly all of Mike’s test prep students score in the top percentiles. They also routinely earn admission to the most selective universities: just last year, Mike had students accepted to Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, UC Berkeley, USC, and Carnegie Mellon. The average final LSAT score of his students is over 172, and his law school application coaching students have been accepted to Harvard, Yale, and Columbia Law.

Mike holds a PhD in English from Duke University.

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