Writing the College Admission Essay

"Close to Home" by John McPherson

    It strikes terror into the hearts of all college applicants: the fearsome, intimidating admission essay. How can you possibly condense your dreams, passions, and personality into five scintillating and erudite double-spaced paragraphs?

    Well, let's start with the bad news: you won't. If you're a vibrant, multi-faceted human being and not a soulless SAT testing machine, you're not going to be able to squeeze every piece of interesting information about yourself into 500 words or fewer. The good news: those same 500 words can be a great teaser. The best college essays leave us (the admission committee) wanting a conversation with the author; we want to hear more about the goofy childhood dog, the robotic submarine designed and built for a competition, the struggles of learning to play the tuba.

    What you shouldn't do in your college essay: attempt to impress the admission committee with your amazing credentials. You don't need to tell us about all your extracurricular activities -- there's a separate section of the application just for that purpose. Ditto with the AP classes you've taken -- we'll see those on your transcript. And your teachers and counselors will write raving recommendations on your behalf, enumerating your many college-worthy personal qualities. We want to know about the student behind the application. What do you do for fun when you're not high-scoring the history test or organizing a food drive? What are your hopes and dreams, not just for college but for your life? How has your family shaped you? The most essential thing you can do is make your essay personal -- rather than explaining why curing cancer is important, tell us why it's important to you.

    The best essays keep their foci small. Rather than trying to cover an entire year of Physics class, for example, pick the single class period or even the single horrific calculus problem that encapsulates the course. How did you end up solving that terrifying problem? Did you phone a friend for help, research the topic on Wikipedia, test out different approaches until four a.m.? And what did you discover about yourself in the process? Remember to evaluate your experience, not just describe it: illustrate the scene for us, by all means, but don't forget to explain what you learned from the moment. (Admission counselors are big suckers for personal growth.)

    Finally, one caveat: proofreading is important. You know that. But perfection isn't. Your college essay doesn't need to be Pulitzer-worthy; it just needs to tell us something about you, as an individual, that we won't learn from another part of your application. The essay isn't the be-all end-all of your college admission future; all you need to do in 500 words is start the conversation.