Mindy Kaling '01 discovered her gift for writing plays at Dartmouth, where she majored in theater and performed with the improv comedy group The Dog Day Players. The high-achieving "comedy nerd" turned Hollywood star recently joined Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, for the 100th episode of the Admissions Beat podcast. Below is an excerpt from their conversation.
LEE COFFIN: Do you remember your college essay?
MINDY KALING: I don't. I think my parents were like, "Okay, don't write about anything kooky or strange. Just write about something normal and generic, and that'll be good." I think fighting my urge to write about things that are funny—that just felt like too much of a gamble in 1998 for me and my parents.
LEE: That's interesting, because you wrote about how comedy was addictive for you as a high school student. Doesn't sound like you let "funny" be part of your story when you applied.
MINDY: No. I don't think I did because I think, well, comedy is subjective. And I think that is scary as a kid. "Will a college admissions officer think this is funny?" Obviously I'm a lot more funny and successful at figuring that out now than I was at 17.
LEE: Storytelling is the heart of college admission, and I think people get distracted by all the stats that swirl around this conversation, whether it's a GPA or testing. They lose the thread that, in the most selective spaces, it's the story that moves you forward, and being authentic in that storytelling is the goal.
MINDY: The similarities between what your job is and when I'm casting a show are so similar. We had this show called Never Have I Ever, which is about an Indian American family in Southern California. I decided to do an open casting call, and we found this Canadian teenage girl named Maitreyi Ramakrishnan who was not in the Screen Actors Guild—she was a junior at her Toronto high school. She auditioned, and there was a freshness there. She really made me laugh. She didn't have training, but there was something very authentic about her. That was so much more appealing than a polished product given to us by somebody else.
LEE: You gave the commencement address at Dartmouth in 2018, and you said to the graduates, "Why not you? Ask, 'Why not me?'" Give a pep talk to high-achieving kids in high school who are looking at college admission and saying, "I'm doomed." Empower them to tackle this topic.
MINDY: Spend time figuring out what you want. When I write shows, the best kind of characters are the ones that are comedically obsessive with what they want. They don't have to be noble things. Just figure out what you actually want and then go for it. That's the one thing that nobody in the world can tell you. The most interesting version of yourself is someone who knows what they want.
The Mindy Kaling Theater Lab is set to open in the newly renovated Hopkins Center for the Arts during the Dartmouth Arts Weekend Celebration in October 2025.
Listen to the full Admissions Beat episode wherever you get your podcasts.
Photograph by Matt Doyle Photo via Getty Images
