Not surprisingly, the room was jammed. With top schools so competitive, many ambitious kids assume that if they write a zinger of an essay, it just might keep their application from getting fed into a paper shredder. So everyone—from kids, to parents, to counselors—is eager to know just what a winning essay looks like.
The speakers at the College Board session included administrators
at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Yale University in New
Haven, Connecticut, which keeps 20 staffers busy reading 50 essays a
day, six days a week during application season.
Here is what they had to say:
Avoid the thesaurus. Don’t write like a pedantic humanities professor
who is trying too hard to impress colleagues. Avoid ostentatious
words that you would normally never touch. One presenter at the
College Board session provided this real, over-the-top example of an
overstuffed essay:
Hi my name is Jim, and since brevity is the soul of wit I will
meekly attempt to convey to you a succinct summary of my
ephemeral existence. Allow me amnesty as I am often a bit
alliterative. Time is of the essence throughout humankind,
and with every word I write, the nearly endless ebb of extravagant
expressions flow like a rushing river, fleeing futilely
towards an irrelevant ocean. Dam!
Don’t write like that!
Skip the English paper. Too many high school English teachers
encourage their kids to write with as much creativity as a cardboard
box. They don’t do their kids any favors by insisting that they follow
stilted formulas. For instance, when students write the classic persuasive
essay, they are supposed to stuff the pros and cons on a subject,
whether it’s abortion or the Iraq war, in the very first paragraph. High
schoolers are often penalized if they deviate from that formula even if
they pen a far more compelling essay.
High school teachers often chastise kids who dare to use “first person”
in their papers. Colleges, however, are eager to experience an applicant’s
“voice” in an essay, which means writing in first person is
essential. The Yale speaker at the College Board gathering called essays
written in third person “scary.”
Be specific. Students tend to be too vague when writing essays.
A teenager might write, for instance, that his teacher is “nice.” Nice is
a nearly meaningless adjective. When journalists interview neighbors
about an apprehended serial killer, inevitably they say that he was a
“nice guy.” Substitute vague generalities for details, details, details.
Deliver a take-home message. You can write a serious essay, a
humorous one, a clever one. There is no right way, but you have to
make sure that your essay reflects back on you. The Yale speaker observed
that a lot of Ivy League wannabes write about Winston
Churchill without ever tying the essay back to themselves. If you write
about Darfur, what does that have to do with you? And simply writing
that you feel outraged or helpless won’t cut it.
Whether you are talking about cleaning a beach, babysitting, or
revealing that you’re gay, the essay must provide a strong sense of self.
Your personality must emerge. And it should reflect what kind of person
you are now. Not the person you might have been when your
house was damaged by a hurricane when you were 10-years-old or
when you got lost at Disneyland at the age of six.
At the College Board session, the experts shared examples of
amusing essays that were very entertaining—and would have
worked—if each of them had conveyed what kind of person the writer
was. One essay involved a guy whose last name was Weiner. As in hot
dog. The essay was clever, but it was missing that one key element.
The presenters voiced the same complaint about a creative essay
that started out with this grabber sentence:
I have ridden a pig.
Stay with me here. I mean this in the most literal sense possible.
I. Rode. A pig.
I was four. We were visiting my Mom’s family friends on their
farm. They had a hog that was roughly the size of a fridge, if
you knocked that fridge over and gave it a horrible stink.
Mom’s friend thought it would be just grand if I rode it awhile.
I was smallish, and the hog was huge-ish...surely this was a
no-brainer.
Stay away from the pack. I once heard an administrator at the
University of San Diego speak about the thousands of college essays
that he’d read over the years. What irritated him was the tendency of
high schoolers to embrace the same hackneyed subjects.
Every year, applicants deluge him with essays about volunteering
to build houses for poor families in Tijuana. Obviously, this is a
regional phenomenon. While many kids in Southern California help
with projects in Mexico, it’s unlikely that you’ll see kids from
Minnesota there. But every region of the country is going to have kids
writing essays about subjects that have been covered ad nauseam.
Here’s the administrator’s other pet peeve: Kids writing about
their sports teams. And he is hardly alone. Frankly, nobody is going to
care—except a college’s athletic coaches—if you’re on a nationally
ranked team or you kicked the winning soccer goal of the biggest game
of the century or you swatted more home runs than anybody in your
high school’s history.
Once again, what matters is composing an essay that speaks to who
you are.
Don’t be careless. Roughly 300 schools, almost all private, now
let students apply for college by filling out just one standardized form
that’s called the Common Application (www.commonapp.org). Obviously,
completing one application for multiple schools cuts down on
the hassle factor. Even better, a student can use one essay to satisfy the
writing requirement for all these schools.
The one-stop application process, however, can cause students to
make embarrassing mistakes. Admissions officers everywhere can tell
you about kids who express their deep desire to attend a competing
school in their essay. These applicants forgot to swap out the name of
one school for another before sending the application electronically.
Common application essay questions. These are the recent essay
topics posed by schools that rely on the Common Application:
• Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have
taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
• Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international
concern and its importance to you.
• Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you,
and describe that influence.
• Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative
work (as in art, music, science, and so on) that has had an influence
on you, and explain that influence.
• A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life
experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal
background, describe an experience that illustrates what
you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an
encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
• Topic of your choice.
Give yourself time. The summer leading up to your senior year
in high school is an excellent time to tackle application essays. Once
school starts, college deadlines will whiz by.
When an essay is finished, however, you shouldn’t necessarily relax
if you are relying on the Common Application. While it’s true that
you can pen one essay for all the schools that share the Common
Application, schools also often require answers to supplemental essay
questions. These additional questions might not require as much effort
as the main essay, but they can be time consuming. If you visit the
Common Application Web site, you’ll be able to determine which
schools require supplemental writing. Start working on your answers
well in advance of the deadlines.
If schools on your list don’t use the Common Application—and
most public institutions don’t—become familiar with their essay requirements,
if any, well in advance.
Proofread the essay. It’s okay to ask a parent, friend, or teacher
to review your essay. In fact, it’s important to let someone else check
it to make sure it doesn’t contain typos and grammatical errors. You
should resist, however, letting anyone change your essay so that your
own voice is lost.
Get inspired. No one—except perhaps a few English majors—is
going to be eager to start THE essay. Think of ways to make the
process easier. If you like Starbucks, buy a Venti Mocha before you get
started. If you love chewing Juicy Fruit gum, buy a fresh pack. And
while you’re at it, find a literary spark plug. Is there a writer or author
who you especially enjoy reading? If so read a page or two before you
begin or when you get stuck.
To get inspired, you may also want to look at compelling essays.
The New York Times Magazine, in a weekly feature called Lives, prints
a wonderful first-person essay every Sunday that you can find on its
last page. Another resource is the This I Believe essays posted on National
Public Radio’s Web site at www.npr.org. To find them, type
“This I believe” into the site’s search engine.
Action Plan
Don’t assume that your essay should be written like an English paper.
Avoid using a stilted approach and write from your heart.
Source: The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price
