@Publisher , A student can write about literally almost anything. If a student wants to write about their sibling, I see no problem with that, as long as the essay is focused on the writer. I think lookingforward is suggesting that some students submit essays that are too much about other people, and not enough about the applicant.
I’ll address this here, because it’s kind of an “elephant in the room.”
A LOT of students want to write about a very challenging topic (mental illness, death of a loved one, addiction, chronic illness, abuse, etc…).
I see this problem repeatedly: The majority of students do not have the skill to make the topic convey something positive about themselves. Instead, these essays come across as confessionals, or they focus on another person, or they are filled with negative emotions. The student will tack on a few sentences at the end about the lesson they learned and how they persevered in the face of adversity. But it’s too late at that point. The reader has seen 600 words that are sad or depressing or not about the student. That’s the impression the AO is left with.
For those reasons, I encourage students to not write about those things. Some do, because they feel strongly about it. However, my thought is that there is usually something better they can write about.
Apparently we have been exposed to a very different level of student.
In my opinion, students who lack the ability to “show” instead of simply “telling”, are not likely to be serious candidates for admission to the nation’s most selective colleges and universities.
P.S. This is one reason I prefer to receive first or second drafts of a student’s application essay as the raw essence of the writing is very telling of an individual’s intellect.
I said top tier. Intellectual curiosity is best “shown,” not just claimed. It would be evident throughout the app and supp, in various choices made.
It’s not all about intellect. My experience is with a most competitive. Most kids have trouble. Period. To keep your writing (all of it) relevant to what the college looks for, it helps to have some idea of the breadth of what that is.
@Publisher , I work with ALL levels of students. I live in a suburban area of a major metropolis. The high school students I work with come primarily from four local schools that all send plenty of kids to tippy top colleges every year. A lot of kids do aim high, but most kids don’t. Most students are actually pretty realistic with their college lists.
My point is that no matter how intellectual a kid is, it’s usually hard to write well about certain topics.
And btw, I’ve worked with intellectually gifted kids who aren’t great writers. Being a genius is no guarantee of good writing skills. I worked with amazingly bright kid who attends a college well known for engineering. Getting an essay out of him was like pulling teeth. He literally wrote one sentence and wanted to call that an essay. It wasn’t a good sentence, btw. Perhaps I could have encouraged him just to submit the one sentence, but he did very well for himself, so I guess it was a good idea to draw him out a little more.
I agree. I have read law school exams which were written poorly which received the top grade in a particular law school class. Law profs seek intellect & understanding, not polished writing skills.
Again, I dislike reading polished essays as the emphasis is usually on the wrong aspect of the exercise.
I get that, @Publisher . An overly polished essay can be a red flag anyway.
Essays should, at the very least, be free of basic errors. Any student can ask an English teacher or someone else to review their work, and they should. This is mainly because when an essay has poor punctuation and grammar, and/or lacks cohesion or flow, it’s really hard to read. Then the point the student is trying to make is lost.
Do top colleges admit a student with great intellect if they can’t string a sentence together or write in a cohesive fashion? (Not including hooked students.) I am thinking not, without the rest of the app being very compelling. Holistic admissions isn’t just based on intellect.
Would a really selective college throw out an app if one essay missed the mark? Maybe not, but again, I think it would depend on the rest of the app. I do think if a “Why Us?” essay misses the mark at a highly selective school, that’s a problem.
Most top colleges have some form of “what we look for.” And, other sources from that college that yield an idea. (Not every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has some opinion.) I do believe a student who feels “qualified” for a tippy top should be able to discern what a college wants to see.
It’s not fakery to dig deeper for understanding, rationally assess, properly match yourself and present your better side. You’re applying. Know what you’re applying to.
It’s true that NU and some others mention intellectual curiosity. But the spark is much more than that. The problem with anecdotes is they often play to exceptions. You know someone who did it this way and got an admit. Don’t bet on that.
I recently applied to a bunch of colleges (U Chicago, Colgate, Villanova, UF, etc). What would your response be to an essay that has received mixed responses from friends, family, and teachers - whose main criticism has been that the essay is not personal enough. How much is “personality” considered when it comes to a personal statement - is personality only shown through anecdotes about one’s life? Or can personality be shown through more abstract means?
@senioritis479 These essays really ARE about personality. The purpose of the supplemental essays is for the AO to get to know you. Several of the schools you listed are very selective, and the supplements will matter.
Read post #15 on this thread, and look also at the link I included. By and large, all supplemental essays are serving one purpose, which is to get to know you better. Remember, they know about all the stuff they have to offer. They want to see how you will fit in with their campus culture.
I’ll post this again:
“The topic is actually the student. The more specific a student can get, the easier the Why Us essay should be.” Or any other supplement.
You asked how much is personality considered. A lot.
You asked if it can be shown through anecdotes or abstractly. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. If your family and friends aren’t seeing enough of your personality in your supplements, I’d listen to them.
I’ll also post this again:
“Find SPECIFIC details about the school and relate them back to (you.)”
That’s how you can get more of your personality into your supplements. Do check out the link in post #15.
My daughter spent a lot of time on her essay. We had several people read it over the course of a few months. She agreed with some and disagreed with others. She wanted to make it personal because it’s about her journey of teaching herself Sign Language. She went with her gut because in the end I told her it has to be HER story. She loves Escape Rooms and equated learning Sign Language to finding clues in an Escape Room. She loved the final version and she hopes the admissions people will as well. I think you have to jump off the page (at least in the first couple lines) because these people will be reading a lot of these essays. Good luck to all.
@Lindagaf would you be willing to give me feedback on my essays for Stanford? I don’t have anyone experienced with top schools who can look at my essays and give me good feedback. If you are willing, I will go ahead and post the link.
Ask a parent (but ask them to be objective if they can, and ask them to be honest.)
Ask a teacher.
Ask an acknowledged good writing student at your school.
Ask a sibling if you know they have decent writing skills. Or an aunt, uncle, parent or even neighbor.
Ask a co worker or boss, if you think they have decent writing skills.
Ask a librarian.
Ask a religious leader at your place of worship.
Apparently there are a couple of websites that offer free help, but I can’t vouch for that. If you want to spend money, there are lots of options. Try googling.
Avoid asking your friends. Maybe one friend is okay, but asking a bunch of friends to read an essay isn’t a great idea. They may not be honest with you because they don’t want to hurt your feelings.
This brings up a good point. While it’s a good idea to have another pair of eyes look at your essay, try not to have too many people review it. I think two max is a good number. Beyond that, it might be a case of too many cooks in the kitchen.
In your experience, is it common for students from India and from Southeast Asia to frame their essays in a discussion about “delicious food” ? (Ironically, I find this practice to be distasteful and usually ineffective.)
If I may, I would like to offer a tip about college application essay writing.
@Publisher , please, offer any tips. More insight and other viewpoints are always useful.
I don’t know if food is a super common theme I’ve noticed with those students particularly. However, food in general appears in some form in a ton of essays. Whether kids mention s’mores from camp, or grandma’s meatballs, or baking bread, food certainly can inspire a lot of strong feelings for many kids. One student I worked with wrote a fun essay about imagined dishes he/she would create for a cooking show.
I would say that with most of my students whose families came here as immigrants, a very common way of framing an essay will have something to do with a notable aspect of their culture. Scents and odors appear more regularly than food.
Among my students who are not aiming for a lot of tippy top colleges, there are a couple of pretty common topics. For kids aiming really high, there’s a lot more variety in what they write about. I don’t discourage kids from writing about most topics, with a few exceptions, as previously mentioned.
This brings up a useful tip that I give my students: An effective essay can include sensory elements. If a reader can see, hear, smell, touch or taste what they are reading, it might keep the reader engaged and interested.
Again, it’s not an ordinary essay. Hs teachers like to see you stretch with observations and revelations. So to say, "get in touch with yourself.’ But this is an app for a college admit.
Make it relevant. Just being “you” isn’t enough if it’s not the more specific sort of “you” they want in the class. Ok? We’re talking about target traits. (Or, at least, I am.)
Writing about one’s family culture is fine, if it still shows those traits they seek. Fine to write about grandma’s cooking, if it rounds out to more. Family ties/grounding, friendships/sharing, resilience, etc, could work. But just as a “Hey, this kid likes to cook?” Or likes grandma’s cooking? That’s not what gets you into college. It’s not about random memories, needs a point.
When writing a college application essay, be sure to understand the message that the writing delivers to the reader. This is different than the theme of the essay.
As an example, I recall a student who posted on this website–College Confidential. Her credentials qualified her for the most elite schools in the country including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. She was from an under represented state. Outstanding everything including numbers and ECs. Her college application essay was of publishable quality and brought tears to the eyes of her family members and relatives who read it. Her college application essay depicted a convincing and moving description of her home state and nearby family. Almost a perfectly written essay.
The problem with the essay was not lack of a well developed and coherent theme, it was the message that the writing conveyed to the reader. Essentially the beautiful, work-of-art essay delivered the message that the student never wanted to leave utopia and her happy extended family. The essay failed to reveal any sense of intellectual curiosity whatsoever in the applicant, and it failed to reveal a willingness to grow. The result was that the applicant did not get admitted to any of a dozen or so elite eastern colleges and universities, and she received admissions only to regional schools with acceptance rates of 70% or higher (which also have high first year attrition rates).
@lookingforward yes, there needs to be a point to an essay. Some kids are better at getting that point across than others.
These are general tips for all applicants, not just kids applying to elite colleges. The kid who wrote about creating imagined meals with dreams of a cooking show was primarily conveying their sense of curiosity, adventure, and ambition.
When the AO reads the essay, they will learn not just that a student loves grandma’s meatballs, but that Grandma makes the meatballs with herbs the student grew in the community garden the student helped create. There’s much more to the essay than just liking meatballs.
Many students hate the essay they wrote at the end of Junior year. I’ve seen essays that are mundane (most of them) and a few that are profound.
Here’s a common example of a mundane essay: Joey writes about his volunteer work with fostering dogs. Though the essay is reasonably well-written, it reads like a “how to” on caring for foster dogs. The final paragraph says something like “My work with foster dogs has taught me ____ and ____.” This is boring and SHOWS nothing about the writer
It’s my job to help Joey understand the point of the essay. Those qualities Joey tacks on to the end of the essay will instead be SHOWN in the body of the essay. Joey’s essay ends up showing those qualities, the ones he want an AO to know.
If Joey had been applying to Harvard (he wasn’t), I might have encouraged him to scrap this topic. Joey, IMO, doesn’t have the “target traits” lookingforward mentions for a school like that.
I think this is where I’d like to clarify my thoughts that a student who’s got IT won’t need to manufacture it. The majority of kids are not aiming for tippy tops. A kid who is applying to Penn State doesn’t necessarily need to show target traits in the same way the kid applying to Harvard does. Kids who are aiming high NEED to show those target traits. They either have those traits, or they don’t,. And if they try to manufacture them, they often aren’t successful. I think most AO’s at a tippy top can see that.
Other than “intellectual curiosity” and a “willingness to grow”, what are some target traits sought by the most selective schools in the country?
And how would an applicant know that those traits are being sought by any particular elite, most selective school?
P.S. Not asking about athletic ability, URM status, first generation to attend college, low income status as they tend to be qualities sought by almost all elite schools.