How to Make Your College Essay Stand Out
According to FairTest, roughly two-thirds of U.S. universities are now test-optional or test-blind in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Across the country, school districts converted grading systems to pass/fail while students had extracurriculars and volunteer opportunities cancelled.
As a result, colleges will have to rely on only a handful of application components for admissions decisions. The dreaded college essay holds more weight than ever before.
Original essays are few and far between — in fact, most essays tend to cover the same, hackneyed topics. Sports victories, mission trips, and “good ol’ fashioned hard work” rarely make for compelling reads. So, how can you make your college essay stand out from the masses?
Show yourself; don’t sell yourself. You’re not a used car. Any sort of sales pitch is going to sound hollow to an admissions officer (and most humans). Allow your readers to draw conclusions about you based on the narrative you present.
Write about what you care about. Trying to write about what you think a college wants to see is an exercise in futility. Write about your interests. What do you have to say about the experience of living life as you? This is a personal essay—it shouldn’t sound like it was written by a monotonous, Siri-adjacent cyborg trying to impress some authoritarian entity. Admissions officers are real people, reviewing thousands of faceless admissions folders. The college essay is your opportunity to convince them that you’re more than a data set of grades, test scores, and activities.
Focus on the small things. The most common question we get is, “What should I write about if I’ve led a boring life?” The college essay isn’t a sad story competition, and you don’t want to pander to admissions offices by writing about the accomplishments they’ve already seen on your list of extracurriculars. Big Event stories usually lend themselves to cliché, and the college essay is about who you are rather than what you’ve done. Reflect on those small, evocative moments that amass to create that flesh sack known as “the self.” What is a talent you don’t possess? What words have you been mispronouncing for ages? Do you have any recurring dreams?
Use vivid, sensory language. Avoid vague words like “things” and “passionate,” as well as filler phrases like “in my opinion” or “I believe.” These words/phrases weaken your writing! Your essay has a strict word count, so take advantage of every character by deploying precise nouns and descriptive verbs. Why would you say, “I love the trees in Oregon,” when you could say, “The musky scent of freshly fallen pine needles and torn-apart bark lingers in the Portland air”?
Break the rules! Prescriptive grammar rules may have confined your creative spirit in English class, but no longer. Feel free to (effectively) utilize contractions, fragments, onomatopoeia, and artsy poetic forms. Use the lyrics of a song/poem to create “sections” in your essay. Tell your story backwards. Write your essay as a letter, or from the perspective of inanimate objects in your house. Experiment, and be curious about yourself in the writing process!
Freewrite. When beginning to draft your college essay, you have to turn off your inner critic. Don’t strive for perfection: in fact, do the opposite. First drafts are supposed to be messy, disorganized, and full of grammatical errors. (Pro-tip: when you’re stuck on a word or line, start describing sensory details. Color, touch, sound, and smell are what make an essay come to life.)
Writing the college essay is an arduous process, rife with moments of vulnerability and intense self-reflection. If you need help crafting your narrative, reach out. Our team of tutors would love to help you develop the story that gets you into your dream school.
