Writing a Great Admissions Essay: My Top Tips
When you apply to colleges, you send them a lot of information to give them a complete picture of you as a candidate for admission: your transcripts and grades, recommendations and lists of extracurricular activities, and even information about your family. And then there are the essays and short-answer questions, where you’re asked to get a little deeper and more personal. While they’re not the number-one most important things in your application package, they’re still critically important. They give you the chance to shed some light on who you are as a person, which can be crucial when schools are choosing from among a group of gifted students whose academic credentials are similarly strong.
In sum, essays matter! So, in this post, I’m sharing a few of my top tips for crafting great admissions essays. Looking for extra support and/or inspiration? Reach out to me!
1. Start early, and give yourself plenty of time to brainstorm.
This may seem obvious, but it’s worth repeating as we think about the writing process itself. Start writing anything that you can as early as possible—for example, your Common App essay, since prompts are released early in the calendar year. Try to build brainstorming and writing time into your schedule when you can; the summer before your senior year of high school is a great time to do this.
Also: Know and appreciate the fact that you’ll likely go through multiple drafts on the way to your final product. You might even change your mind about your topic—and that’s absolutely fine! A lot of the students I’ve worked with have ended up with different essays than they might have initially planned on because they gave themselves the time and flexibility to let their writing evolve. Let yourself do the same.
2. Write about the topics that feel right to you.
For a number of the essays and short answers that you write, including the Common App essay, you’ll have a choice of prompts or questions. How do you pick the “right” one? Well, there’s no right or wrong topic, or prompts that schools secretly most want to see you respond to when they give you a list of options. And it’s easiest, especially when you’re talking about yourself, to write about things that you care about. So let yourself have this advantage. As you look over each list of prompts or questions, see which ones you have the most to say about, and start brainstorming and writing from there.
3. Finally: Be open, honest, and authentic.
Don’t approach college essays like academic papers. Your essays are the “why” behind you as a candidate, and they tell the admissions committee things that your grades, test scores, and extracurriculars can’t. What motivates you to do what you do? What life events have shaped you and made you who you are? What do you want to do and why? All of these are examples of things you can discuss in an essay, and that will tell the story of you.
Since you’re telling your story, and not someone else’s like you might in a school paper, it’s crucial to be honest and authentic. Admissions officers are incredibly good at spotting people who aren’t being genuine—it’s a skill they’ve developed. (And they can tell when your mom or dad wrote it for you, too!) They want to get to know you through your writing. So don’t invent stories that you think make you look amazing, or say you care about things that don’t actually matter to you because you think that’s what an admissions officer wants to read. It isn’t! Instead, write about what you’re passionate about, what motivates you, and whatever other pieces of your story feel right to share. This sounds cliché, but write from the heart, and admissions officers will see it.
Good luck, and happy writing!
In search of some extra essay-writing support or inspiration? Get in touch with me!