How to Write a Great College Essay

College Essays
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How to Write a Great College Essay

By Noitaraperp

This is a direct and concise guide to crafting your personal essay for college admissions. Over the years, I have developed a strong sense of what makes a great personal essay as opposed to merely a good one, and you need to be great to stand out. Let me assure you, however—this guide is not a formula. The most important thing is to let your genuine self rise out of the two-dimensional pages that you present.

Who am I? I am known on College Confidential as Noitaraperp; in high school, I wrote a strategy guide on the reading section of the SAT, which got 400,000 views on the SAT Preparation forum of CC. Students seemed to like my directness and no-BS approach to the material. While the personal essay is more complex than the SAT, I felt really compelled to write something to help students on it, since it seemed to me that students were often lost on various aspects of the personal essay. I love this community a lot, and helping students achieve their academic dreams is something that motivates me and makes me happy.

Let’s jump into it.

The Approach

I earlier mentioned your genuine self. Maslow, in his hierarchy of needs, talks about the need for self-actualization, which is a sort of filling out, a sort of coming into your own as an individual. This process of writing your personal essay should bring you some benefit outside of the college admissions process; perhaps you will have a better understanding of your own personality and character.

In this process, not only should you try to understand yourself better, but you should give some thought as to what these colleges are looking for. This is not to say, however, that you should necessarily tailor yourself to what these colleges want; rather, you should have a loose understanding of your audience. Remember not to mythologize admissions officers: these are imperfect (and potentially stressed) human beings pouring over (and sometimes skimming) your essay. However, you can speak to them through your writing, you can turn their hearts and minds, and you can breathe life into what can often be stale process. Reading a lot of the standard admissions essays consecutively you can come to see a lot of the BS (and I don’t mean Bachelor of Science) that comes out of the page, and many students relay their experiences in cheesy ways that they would never use in an actual conversation. You should speak to your readers in a fresh and honest way, and I’ll talk more about this later.

Let’s first look at what Yale says. A former Yale president stated that Yale’s strategy was, “A combination of looking for those who would make the most of the extraordinary resources assembled here, those with a zest to stretch the limits of their talents, and those with an outstanding public motivation—in other words, applicants with a concern for something larger than themselves.” At its core, the admissions office is crafting a class, one that they hope will fit together and that will be dynamic and extraordinary. They want people who have made the most out of the resources they had surrounding them in high school, because those people are more likely to take advantage of the resources available to them in college: academics, extracurriculars, and social life. You don’t have to take these high-minded quotes from administrators too literally, but keep them loosely in the back of your mind.

A few years back, the dean of Harvard Admissions said something quite telling in an interview with the campus show On Harvard Time. He said, “I think the easy way to explain it is that every year we’re going to admit about 2100 people, and there’ll be 200-300 people who will have some sort of distinguishing excellence (it might be music, it could be social service, it could be anything) at a national or international level…this person is unusual. But that’s 200-300 people. And then there are another 200-300 people who are very unusual academically…international, national contests, whatever. Most people therefore (you’ve done the addition, so we’re down to about 1500 spaces) are actually what we would call good all-rounders at a very high level. These are the people that the college guidebooks say never get in, but they have been a staple for years. You can’t really categorize them—they’re multitalented, they’re right across the board academically, extracurricularly, personally…the foundation for every case is actually character and personal qualities, we want to get people who will make people better.” Most students will not have extreme excellence in one thing, and there is no need (in fact, it’s dangerous) to force something that’s not there. It’s important to give them a rich sense of yourself and your character on a few levels, and this should be done in a skillful (not heavy-handed) way. The admissions officers want to be able to envision you contributing to your class and making your class better. You’ll want to show (rather than tell) the uniqueness and dynamism of your character—explicitly saying that you have so-and-so quality can look heavy-handed and self-promotional. There are many ways of doing it right, which I will expand upon later.

One final word about the general approach. You might tell people (or yourself) things like, “Oh, I’m applying to [insert reach school], but I probably won’t get in.” You should stop thinking like this, and make a mental shift toward thinking that you can indeed gain admission and that it’s yours for the taking. At the end of the day, everyone has a chance as long as their stats are within a reasonable range. A few students are effectively guaranteed admission through achievements/academics (unless they happen to be completely boring or unless they raise some serious red flags in their application). Some students are effectively denied admission due to very low test scores or very low GPAs (or both). Many however, rest in a sort of gray area, where they can either raise themselves out into the light or stay within the general grayness. How you frame your application, especially through the personal essay, is critically important, because it’s the only real window that the admissions officers have into your personality and character. The fact that you have complete control over such an important part of the application should be empowering to you, rather than daunting. It is indeed yours for the taking.

Let’s look more carefully at the personal essay.

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Writing

These are the 5 prompts for the current iteration of the Common Application. This guide, however, is not just intended for the Common Application, since it also applies to the college-specific supplementary essays you must write (even the short ones). It is helpful regardless to look at some actual prompts for the sake of concreteness.

*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.

  1. The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
  2. Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
    1. 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.
  3. Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.*

You should read over each of these questions (or whichever questions you have for supplementary essays) and cross off the ones that are immediately not applicable to you. Don’t be too quick to cross something off if you might able to write on it. Sometimes, ideas will pop into your head out of the blue. Keep a notepad (or your mobile phone’s notepad) ready at all times so you can write down ideas once you have them.

If one topic really calls out to you, or you feel you can do a good job on a particular topic, don’t let it just simmer in your head. After some thought, or mediation, or a stroll in the park, start writing and don’t be a perfectionist about it! Even if no one topic really calls out to you, choose one and just start writing! People often try to edit simultaneously while they write (some might call it self-censoring), and that’s where the dreaded writer’s block comes from. Just jump into it and don’t look back. You can (and should) edit later, with many thoughtful change and drafts.

Speaking to someone close to you (or even an external adviser) about the things you could talk about is helpful for some people. Vocalizing and talking through your thoughts can be useful steps in forming ideas for writing. You also want to think about who you are at your core. Think about what things are most important to you. You are going to bare yourself, your soul, in your writing. That is not to say that it needs to be dramatic—rather it should be truthful and generous. It should not be flimsy—you should show (directly or indirectly) rich depth to your character.

I will now talk about three general principles that I think are really important to keep in mind as you are writing your personal essay.

1. Your readers are not stupid. Be genuine.

Students tend to fall into certain patterns of writing when encountering the generally unfamiliar form of the personal essay. A lot of the typical patterns that students rely upon are quickly sniffed out as BS by the admissions officers. The officers are actually the best at it, since they’ve seen literally everything, and a lot of that everything is bland. While there is no need to rely upon flashy gimmicks to distinguish yourself, it is important to be thoughtful and honest. It’s definitely not easy to write a good and honest essay that reflects you, and you must work hard at it. You should not view this process as being easy.

Don’t hit your reader over the head with an analogy that you’re trying to stretch, or with a laundry list of your classes and activities. Your grades, courses, and activities are already there on the application. Synthesis of the things you do is okay, but not in such a way that it becomes a laundry list or an overstretched unifying analogy. “Swimming has not only taught me better form and technique, but it has given me greater skills in student government, in my club leadership, and in computer science.” C’mon now. Analogies can be powerful but they should be done skillfully. Draw connections rather than stretching them. “My foray into the world of science fiction films improved both the imaginativeness of my painting and, strangely enough, my excitement for complex math/physics problems.” That makes sense and now your reader is interested in hearing more.

Be genuine. Readers can just tell when things feel truthful and generous. By truthful, I not only mean that your written experiences should be real, but they should have color and life to them when you recount them. By generous, I mean that the readers should not feel as though you are holding things back from them. Give.

If what you write is truly a genuine piece, it will bring something new to the table; it is something that only you could have written. Make something that is yours. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t show it to friends/family and even external advisers—they can give you feedback and guide you in finding your voice if you know them well or if they are really experienced in this sort of thing. However, don’t just try to please others when they give you advice, and be critical of any advice you get, as in life. In one of Aesop’s Fables, “The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey,” a man continually gives in to the criticisms and ridicule of different townspeople regarding how he should appropriately use his donkey. The donkey eventually ends up accidentally drowning as the man keeps trying to please the townspeople in various ways. An old man (why are the wise people always old men?) comes up to him and says, “That will teach you—please all and you will please none!” The more you try to please people (and you shouldn’t even be trying to please your admissions officer per se), the more your message will get diluted. You should definitely feel free to show your work to other people for feedback as long as you keep this important point in mind. Great essays are about having confidence and unity in the writing.

Although you’ve probably heard this tip a lot, one really important way you can sense if your writing is genuine is to read it aloud, and you should do this frequently. Like with semantic satiation (when you look at a word too much and it suddenly becomes meaningless to you), you can read your essay on paper too much and have it become meaningless. You might even want take a break from writing/editing to revisit your essay at a later time and read it aloud. If some phrasing doesn’t feel right to you, change it that so it does feel right to you.

One other crucial point. Just as in persuasive essays, you should be balanced and address counterarguments. That sounds sort of rigid, but I mean it in a more flexible manner—let me explain. Thinking too reductively will make you seem one-sided or worse, unintelligent. If you are talking about a difficult problem you had to solve, don’t just make the story a unidirectional march to victory. For example, throwing in a line that says something like, “There were honest moments when I doubted my ability to…” adds a level of nuance that makes you so much more interesting as a person. For your readers, unidirectional stories are likely to elicit severe eyerolls, whereas balanced stories elicit trust and appreciation.

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2. Avoid tired clichés. Make your writing grow.

The thing about clichés and tropes is that they once held meaning (and still do to some extent), but the more they were used, the more meaningless they became, and readers will skim over them and discredit the power of your sentences. Some serious personal essay clichés include: “From a young age I have always been interested in” or “for as long as I can remember I have been fascinated with.” There are actually a lot of clichés possible. They are crutches for writing. They often tell rather than show, a pitfall which I’ll expand on in the next tip. If you’re not very good at spotting these, you can ask someone else to look for these in your writing and point them out to you. At the same time, worrying too much about what is a cliché or what is not a cliché might make you avoidant and cautious in your writing. You should throw yourself into your writing with full-hearted aplomb. Just keep the potential traps loosely in the corner of your eye; as always, it’s a balance.

Some writers, such as Harry Bauld, have talked about the standard clichés seen in personal essays. For example, Bauld mentions “the trip” as an archetypal cliché in which students write about a special trip they took, perhaps to a foreign country, and describe how that trip was so transformational for them, broadening their horizons and giving them a new perspective. This can indeed be a tired cliché if it is not handled with some nuance. As mentioned, don’t overstretch the transformational narrative, and don’t make it a unidirectional march to enlightenment. It’s tired and unrealistic. Show some struggle, show some doubt, show some awkwardness (if these things were present). You want to wake them up with a fresh and real perspective!

This advice is important not just for the personal essay, but for writing in life in general. You should view this process of the personal essay as not just a present obstacle, but as an important educational process. Good writing is hugely valued in many life paths that you will take, so putting in the time to learn about good writing, to reflect on your writing, and to be mindful of your writing will be very important for you in the long run.

3. The age-old maxim: show, don’t tell. And show vividly.

Okay, so I just violated my own rule and used a cliché with “show, don’t tell”, but it’s a powerful directive that I’m asking you to consider carefully. Don’t tell people what you are like or what an experience was like—the overreliance on passive adjectives and nouns rather than active verbs and actions is a dangerous hole to fall into. Rather than opening with, “I have a strong passion for engineering,” a much stronger option would be opening with, “I remember my mom laughing at me when I was 7 because rather than drive my shiny, new RC car, I had deconstructed it into its fifty or so components. For years, I continued to tinker with any new toys (and later, electronics) that I could get my hands on.” Something vivid and active like that is much more powerful, and you are showing the readers your passion for engineering without explicitly telling them. If you were telling them, you’d be hitting them over the head a bit.

Students tell all the time, and it kills them. You want to be crisp. You want to be direct. No fat. Avoid writing too much setup for something you should be jumping straight into anyway. The worst thing as a reader is having to wade through a sea of muck in the hopes of finding that perfect lotus blossom. The reader might mentally give up halfway, or the reader might be so tired from wading through muck by a certain point that he or she totally overlooks the lotus blossom.

Think of concrete, vivid examples to illustrate the things about yourself that you want to illustrate, and flesh them out with details. These examples/experiences are fully unique to you, while passions that are merely stated are a dime a dozen. Describe these examples in rich and new ways, not relying upon tropes or clichés to convey meaning. At the same time, you should not go crazy with strange phrasing or gimmicks—it’s a balance! I trust you will find your own balance, your own zen, within this process.

Final note

This piece should come from you. Spend some time with yourself. Reflect on what you can genuine offer as an individual. Also however, feel free to reach out to others for feedback. It might seem paradoxical that someone can guide you to your genuine self, but others can sometimes see you better than you can see yourself. You might also want to talk to someone who can advise you in a manner that best speaks to your strengths and interests, and I do provide high-quality review and guidance on the college essay (and other aspects of the college admissions process). You can PM me if you’re interested. If you want the well-formatted and up-to-date PDF version of the guide, you can also PM me. If you have any questions about this guide, I can totally answer them on this thread. Hopefully this essay guide was useful to you!

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Created a CC account just to say thank you - this was really helpful and I’m going to save this page.

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Nice job. I’ve already referred it to someone who’s looking for help with the essay.

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This is so helpful. Thanks so much!

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Thank you! I needed this so much!

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Thank you for the wonderful guide. It is pretty concise and relevant. I am reading a book and this guide seems like a precise summary of all the tips. Thanks for helping the community!

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I’m glad some of you found this helpful! I was also thinking about posting some sample essays to this thread in the coming weeks and critiquing them, so you guys can see some concrete applications of these writing philosophies.

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Yes please. That would be great.

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This was sooo helpful! thank you so much for this post!

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Yes please do post sample essays!! That would be a huge help

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great advice! I’d love to see some sample essays and reviews of those essays.

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So if people want to send me essay drafts and they are okay with publishing them on CC, I can use those as examples.