What Colleges Want in an Essay

The common app will be open for submissions in just a few weeks. Many students’ goal is to be relatively done with applications on August 1st when it opens. This allows students to have a (fairly) stress free senior year without worrying about applications on top of classes, sports, and work. To aid with this, the common app publishes their essay topics well in advance so that students can take advantage of the summer months and knock out the bulk of their essays. Here are the seven prompts for this year:

    1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
    2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
    3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
    4. Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma – anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
    5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
    6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
    7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Students often see these prompts and agonize how to pick one. This approach is entirely backwards! Instead of picking the prompt first, notice how incredibly broad they are! Figure out what you want to talk about and then find a prompt that fits it! In order to find what you would like to write about ask yourself some questions:

  1. What experiences have I had that are unique?
  2. What makes me different from my peers?
  3. When was a time that I worked hard to overcome a challenge?
  4. How would I describe myself in just a few words.

You should not be asking “what do colleges want to see?” This attitude of pandering to the colleges is bad for a number of reasons:

First, it will drive you crazy trying to figure what colleges want, which will result in poor or generic writing. Every sentence and word will sound like a humble brag as you try to spin a story that you think they will find amazing. While you want to show yourself in a good light, remember that no one is perfect! Pick something to write about that you’re confident in and that will shine through.

Second, every college is looking for something slightly different every year. One year at one school your experience as an oboe player in the national youth symphony may make you a top candidate. At another school or another year, they may have 5 wonderful oboe players on campus already. What colleges are “looking for” is often different year to year and campus to campus as colleges try to create a diverse student body. Every admissions department is different and puts emphasis on different things in their selection process.

Third, this may be the most important one. If you pretend to be someone you aren’t to get into a college there is a good chance the real you won’t be happy when you get there. Remember, colleges want to get you know you to see if you would be a good fit, not just academically, but personally. Think about it as a relationship: if you lie about who you are to the person you’re dating is your relationship going to be in good shape when you finally have to be yourself? This essay and your application are kind of like a first date- it’s not a good idea to air all your dirty laundry, but if you don’t act like yourself, there is a good chance you won’t be happy in the relationship down the road.

 

Put all of this together and the best advice a student can hear is this: be yourself. In your essay, try to be true to who you are. Ask your parents and friends what they think the best thing about you is. Do some self-reflection. You can’t control what the colleges want, what they think, or who they choose. You can control the portrait you paint of yourself. Make it a good one- put yourself in a flattering light, get the right angle, tell the right story, but leave the puppy filter and the photoshop for another day.

What Colleges Want: Essays

Yep, it’s that time of year! Requests for essay help are flooding in! As students sit down to write their college essay their primary question is generally “what do colleges want” or maybe “what can I say to make colleges want me”. This mindset is one of the biggest mistakes that students make as they carefully craft their essays.  Students should keep in mind that the essay is really just the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae of their application (shout out to At the Core for this awesome metaphor).  In other words, a lot of other things- GPA, test scores, class rigor- are more important. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t work hard on your essay, but rather I’m pointing out that the schools you’re applying to already know exactly how academically gifted you are; don’t try to blow them away by sounding like a college professor!

In addition to thesaurus writing, many essays show up on my desk looking like the student wrote them with a crown on their heads. Students try to sound like they are enlightened, like their life experiences have made them better than every other candidate. Scores of essays talk about experiences that made students want to help humanity, tons of essays discuss the student’s experiences with people less fortunate, boat loads of essays loft the student up to make it seem like they are the best thing since sliced break. Maybe they are. However, when a reader has read 500 essays just like that it starts to get old. Not every one of those people can possibly be as amazing as they say. So one essay about volunteering at a soup kitchen blends into the next about working with low income children blends into another about a mission trip to a third world country. It all sounds the same eventually and it all sounds disingenuous.

By now you’re probably despairing that the experience you wanted to write your essay about won’t work. Here is the trick though. You can write about anything- anything at all. If that trip to a poverty stricken country really changed your life then write about it, but stop thinking about what colleges want to hear and start thinking instead about what you want to say. This is the one chance that you have to show colleges something that isn’t on your application somewhere else.  If you don’t have a life changing experience that’s okay! Students can write about small things that show who they are. One essay I read was about a young man who grew strawberries in his locker. It didn’t change the world; in fact, all it did was give him a few strawberries. But it allowed him to show who he was: a creative young man, willing to put in some work in order to try something new for little reward.  Who wouldn’t want that kind of person around?

We’re all amazing people. There are very few students around who  don’t want to help the world. Focus instead on what makes you unique, on what you’ll bring to the college, on something that shows who you are. Stop trying to be more than yourself. Just do you; it’s enough