The college essay/personal statement must be authentic, engaging, and convincing.
Admissions officers typically spend ~15 minutes or less on each application, and most have read thousands of generic, plug-and-play essays. In this increasingly competitive field, applications need to stand out like never before.
We know the ins and outs of college admissions and the process of crafting compelling creative non-fiction. Our 10-session Course supports students through every step to help their authentic voices shine through. Each course includes a session with a former Ivy League Director of Undergrad Admissions, highly personalized and iterative feedback, and a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
Our students learn a framework to analyze the elements of the most successful samples and apply these lessons to their own creative personal statements.
College Essay Tips:
1) Process trumps content One of the best college essays we've ever seen was about a t-shirt collection. It succeeded because our team coached the student to remain process-focused. How the essay is written matters so much more than what the essay is about.
2) What's the point? The essay needs an implicitly conveyed theme, a larger takeaway for the reader. Too many essays merely flex the applicant's accomplishments rather than conveying an evolving but enduring understanding that the applicant would bring to the college. Remember, the point of the essay isn't to convey perfection, the point is to articulate a reciprocal best fit while representing an authentic "I personality".
3) Untie the Bow! Reread the end of your essay. Are you hitting your reader over the head with a baseball bat, especially in the ending? This type of clobbering can occur when a writer tries to sum up the meaning of an experience too neatly, i.e. tying everything up in a neat bow that does not represent reality. Are you leaving room for the reader? Are you embracing complexity?
4) Eyeing the "I" - Ursula K. Le Guin may have coined the most succinct description of the character called I that’s constructed on the page: “I am an artist… and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.” The first sentence establishes the primary identity of the “I” and describes her reason for her self-examination; the second sentence declares that the “I” is unreliable and shows that the author is aware and open about her unreliability; and the third lets the reader know that her examination of her unreliability is a tool which allows her to better illustrate the truth of herself, her purpose, her story. It is the combination that helps the author earn her reader’s trust. Do the reflective portions of your essay reach for easy answers or do they raise questions and capture the difficulty of neat and tidy resolutions? Real reflection arises when you are trying to figure something out. If you are just relaying what you already figured out before the essay began, you are telling not reflecting.
5) Balancing act Examine the essay's balance of narration, description, telling, and reflection. Do you state things explicitly that could best be developed through other modes? Do you need to add more specific reflection to bring out your ideas or do they emerge from the other modes of writing?
6) Scene it! Scenes are the building block of a personal essay that aim to vividly bring readers directly into the writer’s experiences. Martha Alderson and Jordan Rosenfeld, authors of the book Writing Deep Scenes, encourage writers to think of a scene as “a self-contained mini-story with a rising energy that builds to an epiphany, a discovery, an admission, an understanding, or an experience,” and note that a “reader should feel as though every scene has a purpose” that advances the themes of the larger work.
They define a scene “by the presence of more real-time momentum than interior monologue [reflection] or expository explanation [telling]. Real-time momentum is a combination of action, dialogue, and character interaction with … surroundings and other characters. Scenes crackle with energy and rhythms that make readers feel as though they are right beside (or inside) the character as [the character] experiences any number of situations and scenarios.” Scenes “can end on a high note…or a low note,” but they should prepare the way for what follows in the essay.
7) Show, don't tell
Readers want to join the writer on a path of discovery and come to conclusions with the reader. You give the reader a window into your own life as well as a mirror that reflects theirs when you show instead of telling. If you say a character is “outraged” you’re telling! Where’s the proof? Demonstrate her outrage in action and dialogue. Don’t lecture us about your character’s wounded backstory; demonstrate her wounds through how she behaves, thinks, and speaks. Instead of using summary to rehash discoveries and epiphanies, keep them front and center—onstage—so that the reader experiences these moments with the character.