I’ve been helping a young friend with his application essay. I guided him away from general story-telling and encouraged him to write more specifically about what he did and thought. I’ve corrected grammatical mistakes and sharpened up his use of “not only . . . but also” and a few other stylistic things. I pointed out cliches and suggested he find his own ways to express those ideas. But I haven’t changed his words or his ideas. He has phrased some things rather awkwardly, but has also come up with some striking ways of expressing his ideas. I think it really sounds like his voice. He’s happy with the essay and he’s thrilled that it’s DONE! If I were editing this for publication, I’d do a lot more to it. But I’m not.
My question here is this: What are admissions folks expecting to read? I think it will be obvious that this was written by an 18yo guy. Isn’t that the point? I think it’s a great window into his ideals and work ethic. But should I do more? Fix the awkwardness? Thanks.
His mother told me she mentioned to some of his classmates’ mothers that I was helping him and how many drafts he’d done already. Several of them told her that they’d just gone ahead and written the essays themselves! His mother asked me if she should be doing that!
Sounds like you did the right thing. The other only thing you might do is point out the awkward phrases and ask if he finds them ‘clunky.’ If he says he’s happy with it as it stands, then it’s done.
H and I are both writers and were both taught that the best way to spot mistakes or see “flow” problems is to read a piece out loud, and that’s what D is doing with her essays. Writing is her strong suit so she’s not need much help, but sometimes she will read an essay to me or her dad and catch something she wants to change on the fly. It’s always better after that. She has her dad read through one last time for spelling or punctuation errors.
Her voice is clearly that of a high school kid, and it paints a picture of who she is a bit more than the applications alone possibly can. The essays I’ve enjoyed the most are the ones with an assigned topic, because I don’t always know her thoughts on certain things and it’s interesting to learn about them.
Btw, someone on another board said that UC essays are really to ferret out race to get around the prohibition on using race in admissions and that content and writing style mean nothing. This seems very cynical and inaccurate, but we’re not in CA so I’m not familiar with the process there. I know that UW has steadily lost minority students since a similar law was passed a decade or so ago. Are essays really a way around legalities in CA?
I agree that you are doing the right thing. My two kids got that same type of help (grammatical pointers) but the essays they submitted were exactly what they wanted to write.
I’ve helped a couple of kids with essays. My method is to go through a draft with them very closely, talking about what they really want to convey, both broadly and step by step. I encourage them to concentrate, read closely, and write more vividly.
I might say, “What do you mean by that phrase?” “Well this is how it reads to me…” I don’t put words in their mouths, I ask them questions that enable them to come up with more meaningful words of their own.
I have been really struggling with helping my kid preserve his voice. He has a dense way of writing and tends to use unusual vocabulary. Sometimes it feels like he wrote the thing with a thesaurus open, but he didn’t! He talks the same way! At first I was encouraging concision and clarity, but then it didn’t really sound like him. Ultimately, I decided to focus him on length and not vocabulary since most of these essays have a hard word count.
Ultimately I think every writer needs an editor, and a good editor helps emphasize what is best about the writer.
You changed one of the most basic things in an essay: topic. You “guided him away from general story-telling and encouraged him to write more specifically about what he did and thought”. I have no way of knowing if this was an improvement or not but I think that such tampering can sometimes ruin an authentic essay. Everything else you do is minor compared to that.
I have helped a lot of students online and in person and the most frequent advice I give is 1) don’t overwrite :many use big words incorrectly, especially foreign students, and 2) don’t overwrite: the goal of being unique causes a lot of hyperbole, as in “I hope to cure cancer,” and 3) don’t overwrite: write as if the admissions person or a friend is having a conversation with you; efforts to be “creative” can really backfire though there are of course exceptions when a kid can really write. (See Strunk and White)
I work as an educational consultant and I love stories in my students’ essays. I think colleges do, too. Stories help paint a picture of the student. Having said that, stories certainly ought to convey what students do and think. OP, I think you did a good job.
or to write in the active voice. That is my main edit: stop using passive voice, and combine and reduce your thoughts to distill them to their essance wo all the flowery language, repition, etc.
Oh, he still told the story he wanted to tell! But, at first, it was all about what everyone else did and he used the passive voice throughout. Thank you for all of the replies.
