Well the kid who wrote about thinking about physics on the amusement park ride got into Caltech. I read his other essay too, which was about an ethical dilemma. That one showed other aspects of his personality. But they don’t just want to know you are a nice person, they want to know how you’ll add to the intellectual aspect of the school.
What websensation said above “The adcom should feel for you and root for you after reading your essays.” My D16 got into her waitlist school, and I’m guessing her essay had something to do with it. When we visited the campus after getting the call, she met with her AO, who told her “I’ve been rooting for you since I read your essay.”
I wrote a book about writing admissions essays that went into three editions (overdue for a new one). But to sum up whether or not an essay can be over-edited, I wrote:
I don’t think my kid is a great essayist, but the funny thing is his EC as a Human Interest feature story writer for his HS newspaper ended up really helping him be able to write several inter-related essays that captured who he was with nice hook lead sentences that immediately pulled in readers. He partly got involved in HS newspaper writing to improve his writing skills, and it ended up helping him write college essays. When the college application has several essays, you have to have each essay cover something different about you but with an overarching theme.
I mean if your other areas are outstanding, you probably will get in with decent essays, but if your other areas/stats are decent but NOT outstanding, you absolutely have to kill it with your essays. It’s like Olympic overall gymnastic competition: if you performed poorly on balance beam, you have to really kill it on the floor exercise to have any chance of winning a medal. Some people you like them immediately after you meet them and talk to them for an hour; some people you end not not being responding to even after you meet and talk to them for 10 hours. As long as humans read your essays, that’s how it is.
As an exercise, I read around 10 essays in a book which collected college essays and at the end of the book, they told us which colleges each applicant applied to and were accepted and/or denied. The essays which I thought were great, the writers got into almost all the top colleges they applied to, so I know the way I view the essays is similar to how the adcoms at top colleges view essays.
The other thing about essays is, by the time you are writing them it’s pretty much all you have left. Your freshman, sophomore and junior year grades and ECs are etched into stone. You may have one more shot at the SAT or ACT. Your teachers are writing your letters of recommendation based on what they’ve seen for the past 3 years. The essay and your senior year activities are the last places you have to make a difference in what it says on your application.
Google “ hacking the college essay 2017”… the essay describes how to write the essay only you could write
My kid is stuck on his Common App essay. When he writes a story, he’s great - sincere, touching, makes a reader want to know what happened next. But it feels every essay example we’ve seen ends with some thoughtful conclusion, philosophical musings or (and?) a positive-sounding catchphrase, and he wasn’t able to do anything like this without it sounding totally cliche. I told him he should skip the musings, just end the story in some memorable way and let it speak for itself, but this is even harder.
Listen to the one there most recently or with current students attending. Even on here, there is so much advice that is about students or experiences that occurred five years or a decade (or even longer!) ago. It is out of date advice and is likely irrelevant at most any school. Schools, applicants, criteria, scholarship criteria etc., have evolved for students in last five years and continue to do so every year. There are trends at every college that flow into the admissions office. Use the advice of someone that has current students or experience/involved with current students. They know best.
@bopper. Thank you so much!!! I’ll share this with D and her friends.
These are all great comments. I agree with @websentation that the real purpose is to convey genuine sense of who the student is. And of course, as others said, if the voice isn’t authentic then it isn’t powerful.
My D’s essay was, IMHO, really effective on both counts (and she got some great feedback on it). I give her props b/c when I flagged a couple phrases she used and suggested re-working, she pushed back and said, “That’s how old people write.” (Um, ouch, lol!) One phrase I recall was "I’m not bitter about . . . " which I thought was too informal or casual or negative sounding. But she stood her ground and kept it in – and I think she was right b/c there was no doubt that this insightful, well written essay was in fact the voice and thoughts of a 17 year old.
Essays that sound as though they come from fully-formed adults ring less than authentic.
My son was not a great writer when he did his essay last year but he wrote about something that was unique to him, personal and interesting that would let the adcom know more about him that was not reflected on the application. Sorta like a special seek /peek of who he really is that doesn’t come through with all the math peer tutoring and others stuff on the college application. This is a chance for the college to see the person behind the mask per se
We went through this last year. My son had top stats and an amazing vocabulary but kept the language of his essay simple - plain, everyday vocabulary that read easily. Depending on the type of schools you are applying to, the essay may not make that much of a difference. We did not apply to highly selective schools. He still had to write essays for the admission applications, university and/or departmental honors programs, departmental essays, scholarship essays, etc. We made sure there weren’t any grammar mistakes, but other than that, there wasn’t time to craft more memorable essays. Our goal was to make sure the essays didn’t stand out in a negative way. The colleges we applied to were more interested in GPA and test scores. He was accepted everywhere he applied.
I’m truly happy that I never had to write an essay to get into college. I still wouldn’t know what to write about to describe myself to someone else. I’ve been successful, raised good kids etc. Led a pretty great life (including wonderful college years). Lots of people can say the same.
Thankfully I never had to write some essay to prove my worth to someone who could care less. I hoped my grades and scores would be enough. I worked for them. The grades— not the people (most worked for me).
I don’t think the purpose of the essay is to prove how wonderful or special you are. Lots of special people out there. It can’t be a game of one upmanship.
The “REAL” purpose of the essay (to me) is to show you can write and convey a message.
It’s actually a writing test.
It demonstrates you know how to communicate with your peers or another target audience.
It can be accomplished through facts, anecdotes, humor or many other avenues. It’s not about “showing off” a big vocabulary or having the most unique story.
It’s about having a central “message” that you get across to others in 500 words or less.
So, I would pick a “message” I wanted to convey, decide on my “target audience” and go from there.
Focus on the message first. Who is the audience? Conclusion.
And then proof-read the heck out of it. (Make it flawless).
It’s an opportunity to tell your story and be memorable. Depending on the school, it will have great or less than great value.
When attending a scholarship “get to know you” function that included kids and parents, a committee member saw my son’s name tag and immediately said. “So your the kid who…” They had read hundreds of these, and his was memorable (didn’t get the scholarship but did get in to several highly selective schools and I think his essay was a clear differentiator . It was very personal -meaning about him and his life - and very humorous).
These are truly wonderful discussion, I learnt a lot. Thank you.
Advice from an old-timer:
- Encourage your young adult to write essays over the summer. It takes a certain mindset to be vulnerable and to get into the flow of writing, and it’s much easier to do when APs and ECs aren’t hanging over their heads. How many 17 yos want to spill their innermost dreams, hopes and experiences to total strangers? Expect writer’s block and some agony, but they need space to process the emotions and then write.
Our experience was that an essay written in June might be completely rewritten in August, but after spending some time away from it, my son then knew where he REALLY wanted it to go and reworked it without angst. (And this S is a VERY angsty writer.) Letting the essay “bake” was very helpful. Same kid wrote an essay while we were camping about cooking beef bourgignon in the woods. Took him twenty minutes, wrote it by hand in the firelight, never changed a word – and it showed who he is, what he thinks about, what’s important to him – so perfectly.
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We spent a lot of time in later HS reminiscing about things we had done as a family and various experiences they’ve had, mainly because the family nest would be changing as they left for college. It had the unintentional side effect of helping them string together themes and experiences that they could pull into essays.
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Let each essay disclose something different. Don’t try to cram everything into One Essay to Rule Them All. Think of the combined effect of all the essays as a collage that creates a portrait.
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One of my sons had an English teacher review the main college essay (She used to work in admissions at the flagship). She hated his essay. He didn’t want to write the five paragraph formulaic essay she recommended. So he didn’t.
The OP wrote: “I appreciate both of their opinions, but I’m now wondering if too many changes will take away from D’s own voice.” BINGO. No teachers reviewed the essay drafts. I edited my kids’ college essays for style but I did all I could to preserve their own voice even if a couple of times the phrasing was a bit odd. The essays were informative and authentic. They conveyed information about the applicant that no reader would find in a transcript or in a letter from a teacher. They worked.
This is the one opportunity you have to make all those stats and lists of activities human. While it is writing, it’s not necessarily a writing sample. Ime, many excellent students struggle with this because they are polished essayists, and @CountingDown’s advice is excellent. – it’ll probably take several stabs at this to figure out what feels right. But it needs to have your voice, not simply be an exposition about something that matters to you. What you did is important, but what it meant to you is more so.
My son’s school made each student come back in September with 3 different essays. The one he submitted was none of those, but I think the process was helpful. Based on notes and comments ar admitted student events, I suspect his essay was what pushed his application from the “okay” pile to the "accept one.
There was nothing in the essay that referenced anything else you’d have known about him from the app, but it truly completed the picture of him as a person.
In my mind, this is really valuable real estate on your app. It’s your chance to be a person to the addons. (So no, how you learned that failure is okay from the B+ on a chem test isn’t going to set you apart!)
While @CountingDown is correct that it’s probably beneficial for a kid to at least start drafts in the summer, our family is made up of procrastinators. In addition, the personal essay is unlike any kind of writing they have ever done before. So if they just spend the summer reading sample essays and thinking about possible subjects they will already be ahead of the game. My kids got their main essays done in time for early action deadlines. My younger son hit upon a good formula for the “Why ___ College” essay which made them less stressful. But I thought I would tear my hair out when he told me he was going to wait until after Christmas to write his final Tufts optional essay because they had the latest deadline and he wanted to enjoy writing it. It worked for him - he got in.
Mathmom, S2 was still finishing essays in late December – we have procrastinators, too! He also had his IB Extended Essay going on then, too. It helped that three schools on his list had 11/1 deadlines, so at least the major essays were done by then. It was the short answers and RD school-specific essays that dragged on…but to me, those are just as important. It’s easy to be a little too flip and rush through them. He did enjoy writing the Tufts essays, though!
I always thought that S1 blew a particular school because of the ethical dilemma question.
It’s important to recognize that the college essays aren’t strictly expository. They are personal essays, so taking a little creative license (if your S/D is inclined that way) is OK if they want to go there.