Costco essay gets girl into 5 Ivy League schools

WILMINGTON, DE -- There are legions of fans who are legitimately obsessed with club stores - the free samples, the oversized everything, the thrill of buying in bulk.

But there's one teen in Delaware whose lifelong obsession with Costco not only shaped her life, but may have helped her get into not one, but five Ivy League schools.

Brittany Stinson's college essay contained quirky ponderings such as, "Is cultured yogurt any more well-mannered than its uncultured counterpart?" And, "If there exists a 33 ounce jar of Nutella, do we really have free will?"

Good question!

Stinson, a senior at Concord High School, has received acceptance letters to some of the nation's top schools - including Yale, Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, and Cornell.

And besides her 4.9 GPA (yes, that's a thing) and other accomplishments, some speculate that her clever ode to Costco, and how it sculpted her enquiring young mind, is what pushed her past the pack.

Stinson explains, "What I was afraid about was being cliché, and I wanted to take it out of the box. There would be people with similar GPAs and I needed something to differentiate myself."

Well, it seems it worked!

Brittany says she plans to study neuroscience and is leaning towards Yale or Stanford.