Part 3: Case Study of LIPS — Pop-Up Restaurant Passion Project

By Jeffrey Yu, Yale Class of 2023, Computer Science and East Asian Studies

This is part three of a three part series describing LIPS, keys to a successful passion project, which is critical to college admissions. You can find part one here and part two here.

The spring of my junior year in high school, thanks to my lovely AP English Language teacher, I had an opportunity to execute a 20% project of my own. We had one class period each week for the second half of the year (1 day a week) to work on whatever project we wanted. For my 20% project, I opened up a pop-up restaurant in the basement of my high school. As the creator of Out of the Bloom, I assembled a team of over 20 students and fed 3-course prix-fixe dinners to over 40 diners in the course of one night. I also raised over $1000 for a local food pantry using proceeds from the dinner and also raffle basket sales. This pop up restaurant was a big part of my application file, and while it wasn’t as important as my common app essays and writing, which I think was my biggest edge, it definitely did help distinguish me from other students, and demonstrate these soft skill qualities. It showed up in my application file review as well. You can find my pop up restaurant extracurricular essay here and the portfolio I created about it here.

While my modest project is by no means the end-all-be-all standard for a 20% project, and I think that it’s more than possible to do something with an even larger impact, I do think it really does demonstrate the LIPS acronym traits well.

L: Legitimacy

As I mentioned, I raised over $1000 for a local food pantry. I used a combination of donations and fundraising (GoFundMe) to get the project off the ground with initial costs, revenue from the meal and also from raffle tickets (baskets were made of projects donated from local businesses). So that sum not only demonstrated a social impact, but it also tangibly created hundreds of meals for people in my community. Secondly, a connection through my orchestra teacher actually worked for a local news station, and they had the entire camera crew come in and interview me, and put me on a segment that night. That was a super cool experience overall.

I: Interest

I was originally going to create a robotics app since I thought I wanted to promote a CS edge for my application, but knew in my heart I didn’t have the passion to sustain me through months. Eventually did restaurant after watching restaurant city and Gordon Ramsay, and I’m so glad I did. I LOVED the project. I loved going home each day and working on my dozens of pages of planner. It started off slow, maybe an hour a week, but once I really got into it and it got closer to the restaurant date, I started working on the project for 5,6 hours a day in crunch time. It sounds like it might be miserable, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was the opposite — I was finally working on a project I found personal meaning in that combined all my passions. It didn’t feel like work, and mostly importantly, it went beyond the grade of the class. It wasn’t about the grade anymore- it was about executing the project to the best of my ability. It was a purely intrinsically motivated affair [here], which is a beautiful state of flow to be in. I was doing things I loved to do — design restaurants, design menus, organize musician performances, create and decorate raffle baskets — it was a blast.

P: People

So many people helped me throughout the project through all walks of life and forms.

• Musicians — all my musical friends from orchestra and local band performed that night in trios and duets and sets; some kids who performed had even performed at state competitions and were really, really talented.
• Art — from my drawing classes, I commissioned an artist friend who had won a gold regional Scholastic key to create the logo of Out of the Bloom
• Interior design — my mom and dad went to a local plot of land and gathered moss and tree trunks by hand that we used for the central decorations on the tables. I also told my high school administrators about the project, and they actual had nice cloths and decorations that I never knew even existed which they let me borrow.
• Cooking — almost all of us had no experience, but I asked the cafeteria lady I saw every day for 4 years, and she helped hold down the fort that night and stayed with us through opening through closing. A very different type of food to be cooking, of course! I also got some friends who wanted to help to prep ingredients.
• Waiting — all of my buddies who had no related experience, I trained them to wait tables. My waiting team (and head of house, another friend I asked) allowed me to serve 40 diners and make sure everything went along smoothly.
• Raffle baskets — I got donations for raffle baskets from local businesses. I created a route, and headed out with a friend over a weekend to ask all of them in person. I hated asking, but I was blown away by how many were willing to chip in. I got $20 and $50 gift card for restaurants, even boxes and boxes of leftover merchandise from my local CVS! Sure, I got no’s, but I would have never even thought I would have gotten anything if I didn’t ask.
• Diners — friends, family, teachers, even the superintendent came that night to support the project, and I couldn’t have done it without them as well.

It was an invaluable experience leading a team. There’s no reason that you have to do everything by yourself — get people who are talented and ask them to help you! You’d be surprised how many say yes.

S: Social

Like I mentioned before, I raised $1000 for a local food pantry, and this was the main way I demonstrated social impact. But in my common app essay, I really reframed it more as a demonstration that high schoolers like me, who had absolutely no experience in cooking, could do something unimaginable. Indeed, my AP English Language teacher was skeptical I could do it, but a combination of hard work and help enabled us to achieve it. For me, the other true social impact was that there was a lot of beauty to be found in unexpected places, like a basement high school cafeteria.

U: Uniqueness

I knew a fair share of kids had the competency to build an app, and that I wouldn’t really be standing out too much here. I knew how to code, but it certainly wasn’t a strength of mine. I hadn’t done hackathons, or won coding competitions — in fact, I had only picked up my first language in 10th grade, very language. But what I did know I was good at was an eclectic mix of interests — music, drawing, leadership, design, organization, website design. In other words, a combo of soft and hard skills. And so, I took something I was NOT good at, cooking, but found ways to integrate all of my interests together through the mesh of a pop up restaurant.

Takeaways

Everyone’s path to creating a successful 20% project will be different, but the principles of LIPS(U) will be universal and helpful to any project in whatever form it takes place in. The reality is that there is no one true key project that will unlock your chances at getting into college with the upside down pyramid game- the only true answer is the one you find within, with your passions.