Five tips for College Essays this admissions season

It’s that time of year again, when high schoolers engage in the mad rush to answer the buffet spread of questions about them from the various universities they’re applying to. Some of us are more adept at talking about ourselves than others (you know who you are), but even then, it’s challenging to come up with something suitable and original that we hope admissions readers will appreciate.

As you navigate the maze of ideas you have (or stare hopefully at a blank screen or page), here are some tips to get you going.

1. Write, then re-write

   We all get writer’s block. And staring at a blank canvas can be intimidating. But once you’ve done your brainstorming, the best approach is to just plunge into it and start writing. Something. Anything.

   It tends to be that once you get going, momentum carries you forward and your mind finds a rhythm and more relevant anecdotes and ways of expressing your ideas. More than likely, you’ll work your way to a clearer topic as you write.

   First drafts can be underwhelming but that’s ok. There’s time to revisit with fresh eyes a day or two after (you are writing this more than a few days before submission deadlines, right?)

   Here’s another possible way to get unstuck: Sometimes we can say our stories out loud a little more easily than typing them from a cold start. Try voice to text. It might just get you over the hump.

2. Show but don’t tell

   A common piece of writing advice, especially for narratives, is “show but don’t tell”. This isn’t an invitation to be too abstract. But rather a chance for you to review whether there’s too much of “I did… then I felt… and I said…” going on in your essays.

   Similar to the first point on writing and rewriting, it’s likely your first take will be more literal and “tell” oriented, which is perfectly fine. Get that first or second draft out, then revisit it to think about striking the right balance between “telling” outright, and illustrating things in a more subtle “show” way later.

3. Write the truthful “narrative” of you

   It’s not the only way to write a memorable essay but a good number of compelling ones do seem to be written in the form of literary journalism. Put differently, it’s like writing a narrative (but a truthful one) with you as the hero of your own journey. As that line from David Copperfield goes,

   “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

   There have already been supplemental essays asking you to write a certain page of your future autobiography anyway, so this is your invitation to make use of that form.

   On the topic of narratives, we might draw some inspiration from them in terms of structuring our essays differently. We particularly like these two articles on plot archetypes and narrative forms beyond the hero’s journey.

4. What does the totality of your essays say about you?

   It won’t be possible for you to convey everything about yourself in one essay alone, so don’t stress about it. Your Common App essay should give admissions committees a good enough sense about you, but for all colleges with supplemental essays, you get to present an entire portfolio of yourself.

   You don’t need to be the very model of a modern Major General, though thinking about some of the areas that song covers might not be a bad idea.

   For each school you’re applying to, ask yourself if the combination of your grades and activity record, teacher recommendations, and submitted essays tell the whole story. If any key ingredient is missing, find a suitable essay in which to include it.

5. How to get to originality

   Ahh originality. That “whole be yourself, because everyone else is taken” vibe (which we fully concur with). Sometimes, living within ourselves 24/7 (as we must) makes it difficult to take a step back and say what’s special about us when we’re put on the spot.

   Here are some possible angles to explore:

   • Think about interactions with people around you. Have there been misunderstandings? Those aren’t pleasant, but they’re also signs of differing, original opinions and interpretations. What kinds of assumptions do we labor under? Are there stories to tell there?

   • Has someone in your life told you something you did was special but you always took it for granted? Right then, can we explore this further?

   • Consider the whole “I play this role in this group” but I’m also this other role in another group / my family / my circle of friends / my community.

   The tricky thing about presenting ourselves in college essays is it’s not always what the crowd thinks or what is “traditionally valued” that matters. See if you can find any common threads running through the things you care about, and how talking about these might shed some light on you.

If you’re struggling with writer’s block or a way to organize the many “stories of you”, hopefully the above tips will give you some inspiration. Now get out there and tell your story!