I’m really struggling with my college essay. I’m a junior, but we started writing them in English as an assignment so our teachers could critique.
Obviously, I don’t think this is going to be my final essay but I find myself struggling with the same thing: how do I convey myself through writing?
I am an above adequate essay writer. I may be slow, but once I find my idea and structure, there’s no stopping me. This is good when I’m writing essays with a specific prompt and rubric, not for essays about myself.
I can’t find a way to balance storytelling, being informative, and showing enough positive aspects at myself all at the same time.
“I can’t find a way to balance storytelling, being informative, and showing enough positive aspects at myself all at the same time.”
College essay is a personal essay to show your humanity side(s) — it could be your vulnerability, curiosity, emotion, or an event/incident that affected you to make you become what you are. It is neither an instruction to a device (informative) nor an advertisement (sale pitch - put together enough positive aspects to convince the buyers). The purpose of the personal essay is to balance your other parts of the application where the numbers, awards, states, and list of activities that present you (cold facts), but you also want the people review your file see you as a person — warm, live, and soft. Think about your favorite movies; what make them great? Why you identify with the main character? Do the Superman, Rocky, and Spiderman always win the battle or being the strongest throughout the movie? Or do they fail and overcome and do something like every other human being would do, so you like them more? Anyway, its only 450 words to describe yourself, so concentrate on only one or two parts of yourself that you would like people to know and differ from any other applicants, and will make a strong impression to the admission officers. Yes, think about your essay as a movie. How would you write a movie about yourself.
For me, I like about Flashdance as an example. Yes, it has include love line, frustration, overcome, but the whole thing was all about dance, different forms, but very consistence. Some 30 years ago, but still gave me great impression.
I wrote mine not too long ago and remember the frustration of trying to come up with a situation that is at once meaningful, complementary, informative, and impactful. I brainstormed with my family a lot; they were familiar with my experiences (duh) and could see the value in events that passed over my head. When you find the right moment, it’ll be obvious to you! I personally think essays based on community service have the most potential, but it all depends on your creativity.
@cleon19 I remember when the thread posted by @intparent was active last fall. The most important thing I got out of it was this short ebook: http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/uploads/1/0/9/5/109505679/hack_the_college_essay_2017.pdf
It’s only about 30 pages of actual text. My son said it helped him find his voice. He reread it several times as he was writing his common app and scholarship essays. He also really liked On Writing Well by William Zinsser. His absolute favorite writing book.
Good luck, and keep plugging away. You’re doing great starting so early.
Please understand no one can or should promise to “tell you how to write the college essay that gets you
in.” Or, “into your first choice college.” (Dewes.) Your admit chances rest on multiple factors. And your essay absolutely doesn’t need to be so unique. There aren’t unlimited experiences and insights in this world. Plus, adcoms tend to be looking for the attributes they like for their colleges. How unique do you really think a tale of resilience and growth, eg, can be? And they are not English teachers who will grade you.
Think of a nice tale that shows a few assets you know your possible college targets want to see. It’s often easiest to find a turning point, when you faced something, pushed, and grew. Make it relatively recent. A tale from lower school doesn’t help them see you today.
Remember, the principle is “Show, not just tell.” Not just a statement that you’re now better, wiser, stronger, kinder, whatever. Rather, some example. Make it relevant to the readers, not just different, unique, colorful, etc. It’s not a writing contest. Imagine youre recounting to, eg, one of us. You wouldn’t overblow, repeat endless dialog, proseletize, etc.
Day one: print up the Common App prompts, one per page. Set the timer for 4 minutes per topic
Brainstorm any incident, any idea that’s remotely connected to the prompt, no matter how far a reach. Absolutely anything goes. Then go on to the next prompt.
Day two: Take a look at your work and write a phrase or two describing what you would write. Cross out the obviously unworkable.
Day three: add in some bullet points, describing how you would develop the essay. Cross out the obviously unworkable.
Rinse and repeat… each day, add more detail to the topics you have, and cross out the ones that have stopped being reasonable.
Your essay should be one that your mom, or your best friend, could pick out of a pile and identify as yours simply because it couldn’t belong to anyone else. It should not be a rehashing of your resume. Those “10 dollar” words you learned in 6th grade probably don’t have a place, since they tend not to be the way we speak.
Thank you so much to all of you!! I will make sure to take everything into consideration. Not sure how this works really but I think you’ll all see this lol <:-P