I need some feedback on an essay I’ve written (in advance, I am a junior). I wrote an essay first speaking about Tchaikovsky and mentioning why his sexuality (he was gay) needs to be acknowledged, and then I focus on a specific piece of music he wrote and talk about how I feel a personal connection to the piece. I made sure to talk about myself for at least half of the essay, but I still feel like it’s impersonal. Is this a good topic or should I throw it out?
OP, be careful about sending your essay to anybody on the internet.
Do you mean for an application essay, whose purpose is to prompt the admissions reader to say ‘oh, this is just the kind of person we want for our university’?
If for an application essay, is it for a college that you are certain to be accepted to (like an auto-admit based on stats) or that you likely to walk into as long as your essay is not terrible, or do you mean a highly selective college (acceptance rate of less than, say, 25% of applicants)?
If you mean a highly selective college, an essay that is half a school essay and half a personal essay is a high risk strategy when they have asked for a personal essay.
tl;dr- if it feels impersonal to you- and you know how much it means to you - how do you think it will feel to an admissions reader?!
With all due respect to the poster upthread…PLEASE do NOT send your essay to anyone without a proven posting history. If you click on the person’s name, you should see evidence of a spouse, kids, and/or a career. Otherwise you run a decent risk of having your work plagiarized.
Now, on to your essay. Personally, I would reconsider for a few reasons:
- Your topic certainly won’t be unique. The theme of sexuality is one that’s posted here over and over and over and over again. I can only imagine how many the adcoms see.
- A personal essay should be a sales job-- it should be chock full of reasons to say yes to your application. You appear to be a good writer, if you can tie all that into a single essay. But that's not enough. They need to know you as a person. Not Tchaikovsky and not your sexuality, but you. If you feel it's impersonal and you're the author, then I think that's evidence enough that it's not essay you want to submit.
My goal schools are highly selective. I’ve revised it a bit, but the general rundown of this essay is: I spend a paragraph talking about Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality and how it is regarded as unimportant by historians, I spend a shorter paragraph disagreeing with that claim and analyze his infamous love theme from Romeo and Juliet, then talk about how I feel that theme itself applies to my struggle of self-acceptance. It’s not that the essay is highly impersonal – I spend the majority of the essay talking about myself, and it is a fairly long essay for the common app. I tie everything together in the end.
I make my living as a writer. I don’t like that you bury the lede, to use a journalism phrase. The lede is you. If you can, try this: Lead with yourself, then segue into Tchaikovsky, then tie it all together and conclude with yourself. This may be hard to do well. But if you can pull it off, it will probably be an outstanding essay.
I still do not think it’s a good idea, since it doesn’t seem to deal with the main reason behind the essay-- to give them a reason to say yes to YOUR application.
You’re spending the first 2 paragraphs, of a very specific and limited word count, speaking of other people.
Quite frankly I dont think trying to use homosexuality and your struggle for self-acceptance as your hook s very original. It may sound appealing to jump on the bandwagon of let me in I am disenfranchised in XYZ way but its very different than the benefit of checking off a box that says I am native american or black or hispanic, but then talking about what makes you interesting. In my opinion it shouldn’t be your color or sexual identity that makes you interesting. Maybe Im wrong but it seems contrived
I think it is just a fairly common theme. My advice is always to not take the prompt too seriously. Figure out what is unique and interesting about you, and ideally draws them to you, and write about that. This feels like it reveals (which is fine), but I don’t see how it draws them to you and makes them say to themselves that they must have you on campus. And I also agree – whatever you write, don’t bury the lead.
The funny thing is, it could well be an interesting essay, reflective of a thoughtful, intellectually oriented person.
The difficulty for the OP is that 1) struggling with your sexuality is an essay that has been done and done and done, so s/he tries to offer an original take on that struggle (the Tchaikovsky angle) and runs into problem 2, which is that the essay is no longer really about the student, it is about how the student relates to Tchaikovsky, which speaks to the student, leading to problem 3: being too in love with your essay and losing touch with the reality that the function of the essay is for a job application (ie, applying for a place as a a student).
As an example of the way you approach things, or an example of what you are looking for from your university experience, or an example of how separate strands of your life come together (for example, music + social science- history / psychology / sociology/ whatever or Russian history + LGBT studies or whatever) that’s one thing- b/c (as others are saying) that makes you the focus, and links to what that has to do with you as a person going forward / at their university.
First and foremost, your essay REALLY needs to be about you. Keep other people out of it for the most part, unless they’re mentioned directly in relation to you. I made the mistake applying to colleges as a high school senior where my essay was too much about another person, not about me, even though I think that the essay did reveal a lot about me. It’s just not what they’re looking for.
Secondly, and I say this as an in-your-face lesbian, I think that the accepting one’s sexuality/oneself is too overdone. Even if you’re from a rural area. Even if you’re from a religious background. Even if your grandparents wouldn’t talk to you. And I don’t think it’s a good choice anyway because it doesn’t sell YOU. Yes, being gay is an important part of who you are–absolutely! However, this is about YOU. It needs to be more than “I’m gay and it’s been hard”. It needs to be shining brightly where the adcoms can read it and get a good sense of who you are, rest of your application be darned.
(*Yes, there may be some hyperbole there. The essay isn’t the be-all, end-all of applications. But you might as well try your best).