Getting Personal: Expressing Yourself in Your College Admissions Essay

Following my last post, I was asked if I have any suggestions for students working on the Common Application. My answer is so long that I am breaking up my response into two posts. In my next blog, I will provide suggestions about the general application itself.

Although a mom wrote to me, I direct my response to students.   

Early decision applicants have either already written and submitted their applications or are working on their final touches. Other college-bound seniors, however, are (or should be) working on their application essays. I get many questions about the essay, ranging from do they count (yes!) to what should students write (see below) to do I write essays for students (NO!).  

The biggest challenge in writing an application essay is communicating who you are to the admissions committee. This may be your only opportunity to speak for yourself in your application — the rest of the application includes demographic information, test scores and other people speaking on your behalf. Do not squander this precious opportunity to communicate who you are. You have only 500 words. Use them carefully.  

Having read well nearly a thousand college application essays, I have a pretty good sense of what makes one essay stronger than another. Some people think the topic has to be profound, but the truth is, you can write about your grandmother or your pet — just as thousands of other students have done quite poorly — and write an incredibly successful essay. It really isn’t about the broad topic as much as it is about what you do with the topic.  

Many people write about their grandparents, parents or teachers when choosing to respond to the "Discuss someone who has had a large influence on you and describe the influence" question. As a reader of these essays, I often learn far more about the applicants’ wonderful grandparents, parents and teachers than I do about the applicant. Therein lies the problem. The reader should be learning more about the applicant than about who the applicant mentions as being influential. This requires careful thought and reflection on the writer’s part.

The prompt which asks you to "Discuss a concern (local, national, personal, etc.) of importance to you" often results in rewritten school papers. Avoid doing so at all costs (even if you earned an A+++)! It is easy for admissions counselors to recognize these, and in addition to you losing out on the opportunity to finally speak for yourself in your application, you communicate that you didn’t take the application process seriously enough to devote the time necessary to writing an essay. Instead, think about what is important to you and why. Maybe you are passionate about pets being neutered or fair housing practices. 

Less important than the actual topic is your reasons for caring about it and how you communicate them. Keep in mind that if you are writing about a “sensitive” topic (e.g., abortion, legalization of drugs, U.S. military presence in other countries, etc.) you want to be sure to not alienate your reader. You needn’t avoid such topics, but you should take great care to offer a reasoned argument that demonstrates you are well informed and listen to opposing positions.  Important, too, is to communicate why the topic is especially meaningful to you.

One option asks you to "Evaluate a significant experience, a risk you’ve taken, or an ethical dilemma you’ve faced." What is significant to one person may not be significant to another. What is risky to one differs from another. Don’t fret too much about this. As long as you demonstrate why you consider your topic significant or risky, you needn’t worry about readers agreeing with you on its significance/risk.

Admissions counselors are not expecting you to have experienced major traumas to draw upon. If you have had major traumas (e.g., death of a parent, serious illness, homelessness, etc.), don’t feel you need to write about it (but do, if you wish). The most successful essays I’ve read that address this topic provide a brief overview and then spend considerable space unpacking what was learned. With respect to sensitive topics, pay more attention to what morals you share.

For instance, I once had a student write about having been drinking and driving. Sure, she was underage to be drinking, and it was illegal to be driving while drunk. Many people recommended she not write about this. But she wrote an impassioned essay that demonstrated having learned quite a bit about the risks she had been taking with her own life and others. Had she been applying to a highly conservative school (e.g., Brigham Young, West Point), I would have advised her against such an essay, but she wrote a wonderful essay that communicated important things about her and her ability to learn from mistakes. Although her essay can’t take full credit for this, she was accepted to every school she applied. So don’t feel you need to avoid controversy. Just be sure you handle controversy with care.  

The prompt which asks you to "Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work which has influenced you" may also cause you to think you can recycle a course paper. For the reasons mentioned above, don’t do it. I had a student write about a band she listened to with her father and how, after his death, she had a hard time listening to it because of the intense connection she made between the music and her relationship with her father. Another student wrote about starting a band and drawing upon some folks for musical inspiration. 

Both students used creative works, but neither offered a critical analysis of a band or a genre, and both communicated what was important to them. If you aren’t a music lover or a voracious reader or a sculptor or a robotics engineer at heart, or a (fill in whatever makes sense), you may want to avoid this prompt because you may tend to lean towards a more academic response. If, though, you can select an example or two from your life to help address this prompt with a more personal (dare I say passionate?) response, then by all means, go for it. 

The "How will you bring diversity to campus?" question is often avoided by white, heterosexual, middle-class (especially) male students because they believe they have nothing to contribute. If they limit their understanding of diversity to race, sexuality, socio-economic status, and gender, then maybe they don’t have very much to contribute. But they needn’t limit their definition of diversity to that. 

Maybe your parents are married (or divorced), whereas most of your friends’ parents aren’t, and you’ve learned something from this. Or maybe you volunteer in a nursing home and have a richer understanding of aging because of your “diverse” experience with a very different age group than yours. Or maybe you’ve been present when a someone made a racial or sexist joke and you learned from the experience because you spoke up (or because you didn’t). Or maybe you are applying to a school in a small town in Iowa that doesn't attractk many students from the Northeast. 

The bottom line is that you don’t need to think about diversity through a narrow lens, and I am sure that, if you want to answer this question, then you can generate something important upon which to focus. If you do fall into a “diversity” category, you may avoid the topic because you don’t wish to use it as your one identifying marker. Hopefully, my response provides you with broader options to answering this question.

If none of these prompts speak to you and you have something else you want to write about, select the "Topic of your choice" option. Be careful, though, because you can’t assume that since you generated the topic, that the essay will be focused. To help you stay focused, write a prompt that provides you with direction. If you don’t like any of the topics but don’t know what you want to write about, just start writing. After a few paragraphs, you’ll probably find a theme in what you are writing. Then return to the prompts to discover which prompt you are most closely addressing or write your own prompt and continue writing.

Remember, you want to communicate who you are to the admissions committee— embrace this opportunity. You might just learn as much about yourself as they do.  

In my next blog, I’ll discuss the need to revise, revise, and revise, but this should get you started and help keep you focused for now.  Happy writing!