How to write the college admission essay

[I_teach_writing]

It's application season again. I spend hours coaching writers through application essays, and I thought I would pen a short piece to get you started. This is generic advice that will work best for essays for undergraduate college admissions. But to a limited extent it will help for law school, med school, grad school, etc.

The essay is probably not as important as you feel it is. Things like GPA, SATs & ACTs, and the courses you have taken in high school matter much more than the admission essay. But by the time you sit down to write the essay, it is the only thing you have control over, and that can make it feel important.

That being said, the essay is important, and not because it will get you into a school: A good essay won’t necessarily get you into a school, **but a poorly written essay will give them an excuse to keep you out.** Plan on spending a good deal of time with this piece of writing.

Warning: The admission essay is an ill-defined genre, and what works for some schools will not work for others. You should seek the advice of a number of people. And get as much feedback as you can from as many people as you can.




Here are some general guidelines about content and style:

1) Revise. Revise. Revise. Don’t be afraid to write the entire thing over three, four, or five times. I did. And it got me into one of the best English PhD programs in the country.

2) When in doubt, write with a professional tone. Humor is good. Too much humor makes you look like a clown. How do you check to see what “tone” you are writing in? When you have finished the essay, ask yourself the following question: if my essay were wearing clothes, what clothes would it be wearing? If you answer a business suit, or a shirt and tie, you’ve hit gin! If your essay is wearing clown shoes, consider revising.

3) Write concretely with nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs. Consider the following:

A) I am a hard worker and a responsible student. <-- bad

B) Each day after school, I left soccer practice to go and flip burgers to save for college. <--better


4) Don’t make any stupid generalizations about: 1) members of the opposite sex 2) minorities 3) poor people. In fact if you find yourself making a big generalization about society at all, delete it.

5) Almost any topic can be a good topic, as long as it is not frivolous and you take it seriously. Approach hot political topics at your own peril, and don’t write about the girlfriend or boyfriend who broke your heart.

6) It takes a long, long time for colleges to read over admissions essays. An admissions officer may have seen 50+ that day before they get to yours. You may consider making it skimmable and putting the important information in the first sentence of every paragraph.




Here are some pointers about the form of the essay:

1) Stick to the word limit. Enough said.

2) Your grammar and mechanics should be perfect. Pay an editor if you must. Have five or six people read over the final copy.

3) Use the right words, not necessarily the big words. Writing to make yourself “sound smart” usually makes you look stupid. Use good, clear, precise language.

4) When you are almost done, go through the essay and chop 1 of every 10 words. It won’t make a difference to the meaning of the piece, and it will make your essay easier to read.



Remember that even professional writers don't get it right the first time. Plan on drafting it six or seven times, which means you can't start the week before. Get started. Good Luck.



T

[joelav128]

thanks for this, very helpful

[Keyser.]

[ QUOTE ]
1) Revise. Revise. Revise. Don’t be afraid to write the entire thing over three, four, or five times. I did. And it got me into one of the best English PhD programs in the country.

[/ QUOTE ]

These are all great tips but I don't agree with this one 100%. Revisions are definitely a good thing, but revising the essay too much runs the risk of taking out the "voice" of your piece. Admissions essays should be professional, of course, but they also need to be personal, and your first draft is probably the one that expresses your voice the clearest. So revise and correct that first draft but don't overdo it or the essay becomes too mechanical.

do you agree, teach?

[I_teach_writing]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
1) Revise. Revise. Revise. Don’t be afraid to write the entire thing over three, four, or five times. I did. And it got me into one of the best English PhD programs in the country.

[/ QUOTE ]

These are all great tips but I don't agree with this one 100%. Revisions are definitely a good thing, but revising the essay too much runs the risk of taking out the "voice" of your piece. Admissions essays should be professional, of course, but they also need to be personal, and your first draft is probably the one that expresses your voice the clearest. So revise and correct that first draft but don't overdo it or the essay becomes too mechanical.

do you agree, teach?

[/ QUOTE ]


I'm glad you brought this up. As you note, there is often a difference between a personal and professional voice. As I was writing the original post, I was struggling with the distinction. I wanted to write in my 2p2 voice, which is me being a twentysomething dude, but I also wanted to maintain a sense of credibility so people thought I knew what I was talking about.

Writing with a sense of personal voice can be beneficial in an essay. You don't want to sound like everyone else, and you don't want it to sound sanitized. I guess you would have to find a balance between the personal and the professional. Writing in a personal voice is good, provided it is not the "voice" you use when you are out with your friends on Friday night.

I am not sure, however, that there is a necessary connection between the amount of time spent revising and how much one's "voice" comes through in a piece. Many professional writers, including poets, for whom voice is crucial, spend hours and hours revising. ***Rarely do professional writers think a first draft is good enough****. It is hard work to get thoughts from your head to words on the page, and few people get it right the first time.

[Keyser.]

Yeah, I agree with that. I guess I'm basically warning people not to "revise, revise, revise" in the wrong way. For example, don't use a thesaurus to change every word in your piece to try and make yourself sound smart (which you already brought up nicely). I think the perfect essay would be one that you worked very hard on by making lots of revisions, but one that still reads with a natural and effortless tone.

[pokerchap]

teach and everyone else, thanks for this.

[sfgiants]

Good tips, thank you.

[collegebasicscom]

I would like to add to your helpful posting on writing the college admission essay.

In guideline #2 you suggest a professional tone for the essay. Of course, a writer does not want to be colloquial or slangy, but the writer should also be human, showing some personality. The voice of the writer should come through and not be lost to the non-descript. I suggest to students I consult with to try to be conversational, but in a tone used for an adult friend and not for the locker-side chat with a peer.

In guideline # 3 you write about using nouns and verbs, especially action verbs! Very sound advice. Another way to think about it is to show, not tell. "I enjoy reading." (telling) becomes "My bedside table is piled high with eight novels that range from school reading like Tortilla Flat to the latest Stephen King, while my car always carries biographies for those stuck-in-traffic times, and my how-to-books lie spread about on the pool table in the cellar." (showing)

In guideline #6 you point out it is important to understand your audience. It's true, admissions readers are blurry-eyed with essays that so often sound alike. I suggest an opening that grabs. This is a departure from the thesis statement approach. From the opening line(s) of your essay try to place the reader in the middle of something happening or pose an intriguing question or start with a little coversation--anything that will make the reader sit up from a daze.

And, regarding revision, it might help to read your essay out loud. Reading aloud can let you hear awkward areas, help you find jumbled meanings, and even uncover spelling errors that your eye may well skip over.