<p>You need a sob story about how pathetic your circumstances are and how you’ve overcome your difficulties.</p>
<p>But isn’t the essay not really about the actual topic, but what it says about you?</p>
<p>Alternatively, one could just take advantage of the great free advice and guidance offered by the CC community.</p>
<p>Sob stories usually end up cliche. And SgtDonut, if your essay was less about politics and more about something you learned in that experience, I think it could be a very intriguing topic.</p>
<p>Some colleges read tens of thousands of essays a year and have been doing admissions for more than a decade, anything that you find “risky” they likely find pompous or just boring. The majority of colleges where the essay matters have tons of applicants that are all perfectly fine applicants. The admissions officers are looking for one of two things: either a reason to reject you, or a reason to admit you. If you come off as boring or arrogant, then you are hurting your cause. If you give them a true, honest story about yourself, and make them feel like they know you and you give them a reason and details to vouch for you then you have done your job.</p>
<p><strong><em>Write an anecdote about something seemingly mundane but with clever underpinnings.</em></strong></p>
<p>I can’t stress this enough. You’ll get stellar essays that people will actually want to read.</p>
<p>Nobody wants to read an essay about how you trained really hard and scored the final touchdown. Nobody wants to hear about how the icy wind nipped at your limbs as you tried to scale a mountain. Nobody wants to hear a cliche story about how you volunteered your time to help build a house in Africa and how people-all-around-the-world-are-actually-the-same, etc. They’ve all been done to death, and they’re boring.</p>
<p>It’s much more interesting to read a story about, say, your pogo stick. Or maybe your failed lemonade business (during your junior year, no doubt). Or maybe a random night full of hilarious consequences involving you pursuing an unusual hobby. The subject itself should be as unique as you can make it – something only you could write.</p>
<p><strong><em>Show, don’t tell</em></strong></p>
<p>Don’t tell me about how nasty it was to be forced to eat the squirrel that you hunted. Describe the agonizing details instead so I’ll get the idea without you handing your opinion to me on a silver platter.</p>
<p><strong><em>Variegate your sentence lengths and don’t use big words to try to sound smart</em></strong></p>
<p>It sounds better and it’s easier on the reader’s brain. Short sentences can be profound. Powerful. However, if perchance you find yourself invoking long sentence structure too often or if you succumb to the impetus to leverage superfluous verbosity purely for the sake of artificially augmenting the external perception of your vernacular prowess… it’ll sound like you’re trying too hard. It’ll feel awkward and out of place.</p>
<p>Like Hemingway said, “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” Intelligent essays don’t rely on big words. Intelligent essays are written intelligently.</p>
<p><strong><em>Spell/grammar-check your essay</em></strong></p>
<p>Just do it. No mistakes.</p>
<p><strong><em>Get a bunch of people to read your essay</em></strong></p>
<p>If quite a few people are telling you that your essay sucks, then it sucks. Take criticisms seriously and honestly. However, do not allow anyone to actually write/edit your essay (unless it’s a grammar/spelling correction). Otherwise, you risk disrupting the flow-of-voice. It needs to be all you.</p>
<p>^good advice.</p>
<p>tagging this :)</p>
<p>Legendofmax offers excellent advice. Follow it closely.<br>
Other things that I would add:
- For the common app, don’t follow the prompts 1-5, just write what you want to write about, following legendofmax’s advice
- At the most basic level, the essay has to be entertaining. Entertaining doesn’t have to be funny necessarily, but it should make you stop and say, wow, I really want to meet this person.
- Voice should ring thru loud and clear. If it sounds like an analytical high school essay, then you’ve probably done it incorrecly.</p>
<p>I personally read approx 50 essays in evaluating applicants for residency programs, and they all start basically sounding alike. Yes, everyong is an academic superstar, does charity work, wants to help others, had sick family members who influenced them, overcame some obstacle, were sports superstars in addition to grades, etc, etc. It’s all boring (think of everyone wearing a navy colored suit). Your own quirky view on some aspect of your run-of-the-mill life is what makes adcoms want to meet you.</p>
<p>Glad this is featured. Some great advice here.</p>
<p>Wanted to add a little more advice:</p>
<p><strong><em>Don’t take huge risks</em></strong></p>
<p>I’m sure you’ve all heard that urban legend about the guy applying to Harvard/Yale/some other top school, responding to the essay prompt “What is courage?” with the single-sentence essay: “This is,” and getting accepted. As far as I can tell, it’s all myth: [snopes.com:</a> One Word Exam Answer](<a href=“http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/oneword.asp]snopes.com:”>One Word Exam Answer | Snopes.com)</p>
<p>Of course, I’m sure people have tried it since those stories have gone into circulation.</p>
<p>Anyways, there <em>are</em> going to be cases where students take risks on their essays and get in, but such acceptances are rare. You have to consider that taking these kinds of risks only really work at less-selective schools that focus more on your academic stats in the first place. However, if you’ve already got the goods to warrant an acceptance, why even take the risk? At worst, it can signal to the admissions officers that you’re being lazy and not taking the application process seriously. At best, you’re taking a risk that gets you a result you didn’t need the risk for in the first place. Just write the essay instead of trying to game the system with gimmicks. You don’t need risks in order to stand out.</p>
<p><strong><em>Don’t write a sob story</em></strong></p>
<p>Sob stories put the reader in an uncomfortable position. The reader has to wonder if the story is simply meant to garner sympathy, or if it’s meant to genuinely reveal something about the applicant’s voice/personality.</p>
<p>Like YoHoYoHo said, the point of the essay is to make the reader enjoy the experience so much that they want to meet you. Sob stories make this goal very hard to pull off. </p>
<p>Sob stories, typically, are seductive options to the writer because it’s a chance to show a unique instance of overcoming strife and adversity (and believe me, I know the feeling – I lost my father to a car crash back in the day). However, the essay is not the best place to demonstrate this. It’s important to let the admissions officers know of huge setbacks, but it’s something best left to your guidance counselor/teachers/etc to mention in their recommendation letters. Put your essays to better use.</p>
<p><strong><em>Word limits, do they matter?</em></strong></p>
<p>In a word, yes. </p>
<p>It’s like that old quote, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Good writers know how to edit/cut/say more with less. Have you ever tried that experiment where you write a two-page paper and then try to cut it down to a one-page paper without losing any crucial content? The smaller essay is almost always superior. Furthermore, staying within the word limit shows that you can follow directions.</p>
<p>Will it hurt if you go over by a little bit? If it’s just a couple words, then probably not. If it’s entire paragraphs, then it’s much more likely. Either way, why take such a needless risk? Play it safe. Stay within the limits.</p>
<p><strong><em>Is it OK to write about something controversial like religion/gun control/some other hot-button topic?</em></strong></p>
<p>I’d advise against it. While it’s possible to write good essays about these things, you don’t want to take the risk. Admissions officers are human – not infallible pinnacles of objectivity. Besides, there are better things to write about for a college essay anyway, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Hi legendofmax,</p>
<p>I think what you have written is good advice in general. Most writers who are submitting college essays have been trained to write in standard forms and standard ways of thinking. Certainly the SAT writing portion is the place for standard prose and approaches so I would agree with everything you have said when it comes to this particular essay.</p>
<p>On the other hand, what you say about risks contradicts what I have written for US News and World Report (Sound Advice From the Expert-it’s all over google). I tell students to take a risk and I guess I need to justify why.</p>
<p>It is really a matter of statistics. Standard prose is just what it says it is. Standard. It is hard to stand out in a crowd if everyone is wearing the same thing. So too with words, images and prose, and details. If 30,000+ people apply for a school and they are all wearing jeans and t-shirts and maybe a piece of school centered apparel then it would be hard to pick the best one.</p>
<p>The best writing (what I would call creative non-fiction) dares to dress differently. The best essayists from Montaigne to David Foster Wallace, to the very recently departed Gore Vidal are remembered for their willingness to share the intimate, the brash, and the uncensored. They were unafraid to take on any topic and in ways none of us who have read them will forget. Vidal, since he just died, will be my example of choice. He, like all great writers, was a stylist. His novels and his fiction as a whole prepared him to take on the details necessary to punch huge holes in political discourse (see Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”, a set piece for the way people never say what they mean). He was a take no prisoners type of writer. He made people mad but there are more quotes than I have time for that support the thought that if you don’t make at least some people angry when you take on a sensitive topic then you have failed in your job as a writer. </p>
<p>It is exactly these kinds of students I want to teach-those unafraid of getting the ‘wrong’ answer; instead, in well-written prose, they speak clearly and well. They will teach the class for me. It is learning from the voices of students that is essential to any seminar in college and so it seems to me that rewarding strong voices who know how to write should be rewarded in the admission process. But the risk is a risk. Upsetting people is not always in one’s best interest if playing the game safely in life is the way to live. </p>
<p>On the other hand, those who I know who have great success in every form of endeavor who are the ones who say what the heck. Maybe not in those exact words, but they are willing to share a passion and a thought that is not intended to palliate or placate. That is rarely the way things change. Innovators, at Google or in the academy break rules. It is what the scientist Thomas Kuhn calls ‘paradigm shifts’. Creative non-fiction is the new new in writing and it is a paradigm shift that takes into account the discourse of social media, of jump cuts, of all the 3000 ads that hit us daily (this figure I get from the revolutionary magazine Adbusters–the coolest photos out there but a bit naive ideologically).</p>
<p>I look for game changers. But I also realize game changers are also outliers, and as Gladwell documents it takes 10,000 hours to get to the top, if you are lucky and good. But to get into the most selective of schools these days game changers are the ones who stand out.</p>
<p>Recently I have put forth a test on a college essay. It takes lots of risks. The people who loved it were writers and heads of creative writing departments with lots of books and at least one Pulitzer to their names. But lots hated it too. Most of them, including some very highly rated academics too, thought it did not follow standard procedures. </p>
<p>And that was true. So a risk dos mean a student may crash and burn. It depends on far more than the prose. Increasingly, I have discovered the people who evaluate essays are a very diverse bunch. Therefore, any advice that incorporates a template is misleading. There are some out there like me who want a linguistic revolution to change the way we think. And there are others who think, perhaps more wisely than me, that standard approaches are the best thing since sliced bread. The voices coming in are diverse too, some with strong feelings but not the adequate rhetorical tools to be persuasive. But for students who are already great writers then I would very much encourage them to put it all out there.</p>
<p>parkemuth: I am going from the following pdf:
<a href=“http://www.carrollk12.org/Assets/file/SCH/Counseling/Expert_Advice.pdf[/url]”>http://www.carrollk12.org/Assets/file/SCH/Counseling/Expert_Advice.pdf</a></p>
<p>Did you happen to see the other post I made on the previous page in this thread?
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14735699-post26.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14735699-post26.html</a>
I suspect we are largely in agreement (many points are echoed in the above pdf, in fact).</p>
<p>The kinds of risks you refer to (“I sat in the back of the police car,” etc) I agree with fully. I don’t think my advice contradicts yours, necessarily, since it all depends on how we assess the risk.</p>
<p>A short example: When responding to a short essay prompt (I think Penn’s?), which was “Who do you think is the most important person in history?”, I responded with a tongue-in-cheek essay about Otto Rohwedder, the inventor of the bread slicer (you always hear about how something is “the best thing since sliced bread” – thus the bread slicer must have been a pretty big deal!). Do I really think this? No. But it was an opportunity to show the admissions officers my sense of humor and how I thought. It wasn’t particularly “risky” but perhaps still a “risk” insofar as it didn’t answer the question seriously. The latter type of “risks” are not real risks, in my opinion. The example you cited in the above pdf as an example of a “risky essay” I wouldn’t necessarily define as risky just because it mentions breasts.</p>
<p>In my post above on this page, to be fair, I refer to “big risks” as being a generally bad idea. I gave an example (along with a link) illustrating what I mean by that. Almost every time I hear someone asking about “taking a big risk” on their essay, it usually involves some sort of awkward gimmick that doesn’t accomplish what the writer thinks it does. </p>
<p>It’s certainly effective to push the boundaries and break rules, but within good reason/taste. There is a time and place to make readers angry. I just don’t think the college essay is the best place for that. Some will love it, and others will despise it. To me, it’s frankly not worth the risk to be <em>too</em> bold. Just bold enough to stand out from the norm and make a strong, positive impression.</p>
<p>I have another anecdote to offer:</p>
<p>The advice I posted here is largely what I followed back in the day when I was applying to college… but unfortunately not for my ED round. When I was applying to Princeton ED, I had basically written what I would call an aggressively-heated story that was really a sob story in disguise (my parents were abusive/unsupportive while I was growing up, and I had just lost my father to a car crash). It’s what I would consider a “big risk” because it pushed all sorts of hyper-sensitive buttons.</p>
<p>I had a 4.0 GPA and a 2390 SAT, was a first-gen white valedictorian from a public school, and even had a world record – but I was deferred then rejected. After pulling my emotions back in line, I wrote a much better essay about an entirely different subject (which was upbeat/witty/funny) for my 12+ RD schools and got into every single one (including 5 Ivies). </p>
<p>While I have not written for any school/news publication/etc or worked in admissions, I do think the advice I posted is sound, and it’s what I’ve offered many students over the past few years. It has seemed to work well in generating interesting stories that deviate sharply from the McEssay and allow the author’s voice to come through effectively.</p>
<p>Tell a good story and tell it from the heart. Know your audience. If, for example, you are applying to a faith-based university, be aware of its values and beliefs and weave those in. What not to do: be sarcastic or arrogant. The advice from everyone above is spot on. Now, go write. Don’t hand wring.</p>
<p>Thanks legendofmax!</p>
<p>-13’</p>
<p>Thanks so much legendofmax. I am sorry I did not read the whole thread. That’s what I get for swooping in and out. I think we do agree on some things but I do think there are differences in our details. Always important in my book.</p>
<p>But let me move on to your other important point. You talk about what I call the statue of liberty essay (give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses etc.) as being the place you lost your chance at Princeton. That may well be true and I am sorry for that. But it sounds as if your life has gone pretty well in any case and that too is important news.</p>
<p>I do think you need to be aware that what happens at Princeton is not what happens at some other places. What I mean by this is the States that have legally banned the use of race in admission are under tremendous pressure to still bring in a diverse class. One of the proxies for race (or low income) these schools use is the essay. They ask specifically (Berkeley, for example) for a statue of liberty essay. They want to know what a student has overcome. It is the place for a student to state something about racism or poverty or something that will give them a sense that this is the kind of student they want in order to improve the overall diversity of the class. There is pressure on them because they have nearly 50% Asian students and this is not what some would want to see as a representative student body.There were multiple dean jobs in the U Cal system open this summer and this pressure of accommodating mutually exclusive special interests is one of the reasons. It is an impossible task. I disagree with making it tougher for one group (Asians) but then I sit outside the State and it is easy to make judgements. In the interest of full disclosure I am actually involved in a non-profit effort that will address some of the issues that Asian Americans and Asian foreign nationals face in admission.</p>
<p>But bottom line, there are some places where it is of great importance, if you are a part of an underrepresented group (minority, low income etc.), to make sure the admission committee knows this. In Princeton’s case they probably did not view you as one who would add to the mix they wanted despite your exceptional academic performance as they were looking to fill the class with others they wanted more. </p>
<p>And I would have to be really honest here and say I know of some schools (I do not know about Princeton) who use the ability to pay for those students who do not fit the designated categories they really want even though they say they are need-blind. I know they say they are need blind but it is the real world and dollars are hard to come by. On the common ap the first page you see as a reader contains the question, are you applying for aid. Any cognitive scientist worth his salt will tell you this primes the reader, consciously or not, to approach the applicant differently.</p>
<p>Wow, more great advice from Legendofmax.</p>
<p>Parkemuth, actually pulling out all of your old creative non-fiction writing is a great place to start. This is how my D started writing her common app essay. Another great place to start is old or newer journaling. “Taking a risk” is such a generic term and should probably be eliminated, just like the word “nice” in one’s writing. </p>
<p>What is the good risk? I think it’s an emotional risk, where you look inside yourself, strip yourself down to your id, and reveal yourself in an essay, in a way that some actors or writers do. No, you do not need to be “emotional” or gushy, or even frankly or obviously revealing, but hmmm, what makes you tick? And in show, not tell, you don’t tell them what makes you tick, but relay it in description or anecdotes or memories. With good emotional risk, if you write about yourself as the topic, then what could the adcoms possibly disagree with or find fault with? </p>
<p>What is bad risk? Bad risk is taking a prop/opp position with your opinion on a topic, as in a debate. Bad risk is to try to uncover or write about epiphanies that you have discovered that no one else on this earth ever has figured out. Bad risk is thinking that you are so clever that you are going to approach the essay in a way that nobody ever has before.</p>
<p>And the jeans-and-tshirts of which you speak, the uniform essays that applicants write about are nicely summarized in On Writing the College Application Essay by Harry Bauld, of which Legendofmax summarized 3 of the 12 or so hackneyed essays. Amazingly, many people think that they are being “risky” by writing a list instead of an essay. It’s amazingly overused. So it’s not “risk” that makes you unique. It’s your own experiences in your own voice that will set you apart in oxford-cloth-buttondown-and-tie-dyed-shorts.</p>
<p>parkemuth: Certainly, and I think you raise a good point about the essay being used as a proxy for things like race and and class. It’s an unfortunate truth that despite the existence of “need-blind” admissions, it isn’t as blind as we’d think. I can only speculate, but I suspect that my Princeton essay made it clear to the readers that I would likely be the kind of person who would need a lot of financial aid. </p>
<p>YoHoYoHo: I agree that “taking a risk” here is a problematic term. The way I see it, most essays are so cliche that deviating from the norm isn’t really a risk at all, but a necessary condition in order to stand out. I only consider an essay “risky,” really, when it’s so far from the norm that it comes across as eccentric, gimmicky, awkward, forced, absurd, conflicting, abrasive, confusing, or just plain ineffective/in poor taste overall. Peer feedback here is an effective tool for keeping your “risks” in check.</p>
<p>I would like to preface this message by expressing my appreciation for people in this thread who dedicate time and effort for the benefit of college applicants. I really really really admire your steadfast devotion to CC!!! </p>
<p>I am a rising senior applying to highly selective colleges (Cornell or UPenn ED), and I just wrote my college essay. The first essay I wrote was a typical sob story about someone who passed and his courageous story and how it affected me. I did not get good reviews from my relatives, so I nixed it. </p>
<p>I then decided to take what I believed was a risk - but it may not be by your standards according to your previous posts - and write an essay about sushi and how it connects to who I am. </p>
<p>I used a very tongue-and-cheek writing style with lots of cute humor. Sushi served as a metaphor for various aspects of my disposition. An example of a concluding sentence for a paragraph: “Like a Dragon roll with extra fish eggs and tempura flakes, I am rife with personality and pizzazz.” (supported w examples) In the end of the essay I bring in a bit more depth and talk about how I had to take on two jobs to pay for my own sushi and what it taught me…and how sushi brought about the work ethic/drive for success that I possess today. </p>
<p>My English teachers have given me A+ final grades throughout high school and I got a 5 on Literature, so I do consider writing to be my greatest strength. (Not trying to sound pompous just giving evidence that you can assume it was well-written). </p>
<p>My question is whether this essay topic is appropriate for a college admissions essay. It’s extremely different, but it does not follow the typical structure of a story with an illuminating incident blah blah blah. It’s flat out paragraph by paragraph comparing myself to raw fish in a very creative, funny way. The essay reveals my voice/who I am (I touch upon academic curiosity, social diversity, my varying personas depending on who I’m with…etc.) </p>
<p>Do you think this topic can work as an out-of-the-box, astounding piece of work, or is it inappropriate for a college essay topic? I’ve gotten mixed reviews on it. Please let me know what you think. </p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>I’m replying to your message fully understanding that I haven’t actually read your essay:</p>
<p>I think as long as the essay is a good portrayal of who you are as a person and leaves the reader wanting to know even more about you, you’ve done your job. There are many ways to get to the same general goal, so anything’s fair game as long as it works. </p>
<p>Now, that being said, the reason why anecdotes are good candidates for essay material is because they are derived from memories, and memories have the added bonus of containing sensual data that’s prime for doing a lot of showing (over telling). This gives some great insight into a person’s character.</p>
<p>While it’s a different medium and will have some differences from an essay format, consider a movie like Disney’s “Up.” There’s an entire sequence in there towards the beginning that does a ton of showing and no telling:
[Ellie</a> and Carl’s relationship](<a href=“Favorite Pixar's Up scene ever - Ellie and Carl's relationship through time, Sad scene - YouTube”>Favorite Pixar's Up scene ever - Ellie and Carl's relationship through time, Sad scene - YouTube)
Not a single line of dialogue, and yet it’s a super-short scene that accomplishes a lot.</p>
<p>Compare that to a hypothetical scene where the main character simply states, “I was very sad after losing my wife.” Showing vs. telling might as well be renamed Providing Self-Evident Proof vs. Oh Well Just Take My Word For It. Do we really need to be told that he’s sad? I think that the big lump-in-the-throat + misty eyes you will probably have after watching that scene makes the answer to that an obvious one.</p>
<p>Tying this back to your case, my only concern is that such an essay might do too much telling as opposed to showing. Of course, this isn’t a hard rule or anything and it’s perfectly possible to pull off (especially if it’s funny, like you say) – just make sure that certain things are self-evident and not merely asserted.</p>
<p>the most important thing that makes a good essay is a good respect of the gramatical struttures.I mean the gramatical rules.the writer has to be aware of the rules that must be respected.</p>