Category: College Essay Writing

While most schools require some form of a main essay or personal statement, many American universities have additional, shorter essay prompts called supplements. These essays are yet another opportunity for you to demonstrate a different side of yourself to admissions counselors. While supplement prompts vary across every school, they usually fall into one of three categories: 

1) Tell us about an extracurricular activity or something you are proud of…

2) Describe why you are interested in attending XYZ college…

3) Seemingly obscure or off-the-wall questions (tell us about a personality quirk, or if you were given $10,000 to invest in or start a project you were passionate about, what would you start and why?)

Regardless of the question, this is a prime opportunity for you to show your personality, your understanding of a university, and how you would fit into the fabric of their community. If your response to a supplement question could work for multiple schools, it is probably too general and will not stand out, so be specific and tailor each supplement to the specific school. 

 

By An Li and Lynn Horowitz

When you apply to college, you will definitely be writing at least one essay, so we’ve thought about some pointers that can help you write a strong application essay. It is important to remember that while the essay you write is integral to your application, in holistic admissions, it is not the only thing that matters. However, writing a strong essay can set you apart from other applicants by telling a compelling story well. There are three main components to keep in mind when writing your essay: technique, topic and tone. 

This overview has to do with your main essay, like the Common Application essay or Coalition Application essay, meaning that almost every school you apply to would see it. However, you can use these tips on any essay that is required as part of your application to specific schools.

Key Questions:

Does the essay sound like you?

How did you make the reader feel?

What kind of community member will you be on campus?

What is Tone? 

While technique and topic are the foundations of your essay, tone is what makes the essay YOUR essay–it brings your voice to the writing and sets the mood. Think of it like this, if you are building a house, while technique and topic go more towards the foundation of the house, the tone is the outer appearance and interior design, such as the color of paint, material, room layout, and later on the furniture placed inside to distinguish your style and taste. This is where you get to personalize your essay and make it your own. Some key points to remember are:

• Identify what kind of tone you are going for.
• • • For example: funny, sad, happy, excited, sentimental, etc. 
• Be careful about expressing strong opinions on more controversial subjects such as politics, religion, and gender. 
• • • If you really do want to go down this route and have an important story tied to these, write in such a way that if the admissions officer reading your essay had the exact opposite views as you, they would still find what you said respectable and digestible. You do not want to leave the reader with a sour feeling from your essay.
    • It’s how you say it, not necessarily what you say that can make the reader doubt you or your character.
• End on a positive note with forward momentum. 
• • • If your essay is about a challenge you’ve overcome, you need to demonstrate how you’ve grown from the experience in a positive way.*
• When reading your essay, imagine you are a student from the school reading it.
• • As the student, would you want the type of person who wrote the essay to go to your school? 

Bad Example: One of the reasons why I am thrilled about going to the University of Chicago is because of the “life of the mind” motto. This means that instead of having to deal with frat bros wasting away their lives, I get to interact with intellectuals who actually care about Descartes.

• Why you should avoid this: The phrase “frat boys wasting away their lives” is derogatory and condescending towards a group of students that exist on campus. An admissions counselor reading this might wonder if the person writing this would be able to get along with other students or she would cause issues. Remember, the admissions counselor is considering how you as the applicant would add to the university to make it a more diverse and welcoming community. 

Better Example: One of the reasons why I am thrilled about going to the University of Chicago is because of the “life of the mind” motto. This means that I will be surrounded by students just as excited about learning as I am. Through the Core Curriculum, I look forward to interacting with students across all majors as we bring our diverse perspectives to class discussions.

• Why this is better: This emphasizes what the prospective student is excited about and qualities that make the school special to her without trashing other people. 

*A note about writing about any academic challenges in your essays: Both the Common App and Coalition App have a specific section that is designed to allow students to talk about academic challenges they have faced. This means that you can explain your academic journey there, rather than using your general essay to address any challenges that have come up during your time in high school. When submitting a piece of writing on those challenges, it is important not only to explain what happened and the context of those hiccups, but also to take ownership of what happened no matter what and state how you’ve changed and improved since those moments. 

We hope this overview has been helpful! The most important thing to remember is that the college essay is about you, and whatever you choose to write about, remember to stay genuine to who you are.

By An Li and Lynn Horowitz

When you apply to college, you will definitely be writing at least one essay, so we’ve thought about some pointers that can help you write a strong application essay. It is important to remember that while the essay you write is integral to your application, in holistic admissions, it is not the only thing that matters. However, writing a strong essay can set you apart from other applicants by telling a compelling story well. There are three main components to keep in mind when writing your essay: technique, topic and tone. 

This overview has to do with your main essay, like the Common Application essay or Coalition Application essay, meaning that almost every school you apply to would see it. However, you can use these tips on any essay that is required as part of your application to specific schools.

Key Questions: 

Who are you, where do you come from, and what do you value?

What defines or distinguishes you? 

What makes you different?

What is Topic?

Choosing a topic can sometimes feel like the most challenging part of writing your entire college application. After all, the general essay will go to every school you’re applying to! There are so many different parts of ourselves and parts of our personal narrative that we are eager to share, and choosing just one or a few connected parts can itself feel like a tricky task. It’s important to keep in mind one central question when choosing your topic: Can you find the “you”? 

• Don’t need to impress.
• • • It’s no secret that all across the world, people not only experience similar things or go through the same events, so it might not be worthwhile to try to look into your past, looking for the most unique thing that you think you’ve done. For example, many people might try to write about how they adapted to remote learning in the face of COVID-19, and while that story might be important, you need to be able to tell more about yourself than just the circumstances. When trying to find the “you,” rather than thinking about any event you have experienced or a moment in time, instead try to look for a moment in which you feel as though you responded in a way that has since shaped how you see the world and your community, or even has colored the way others treat you. 

• Essential not special.
• • • Another way to look at choosing a topic is asking the question “is this topic essential to who I am?” rather than “does this topic make me special?” When trying to differentiate yourself from others, you don’t need to necessarily look at differences that nobody else can share, because oftentimes, it might be very hard to talk about those differences in a way that reflects what kind of a person you are. When choosing your topic, the things that are essential to you are probably the things that hold the most weight in your life––even if they at first seem mundane. The college application essay can allow you to pull back the layers on that mundane thing.

• Being genuine.
• • • Above all, no matter what topic you choose to write about, it is important to remember that the best topic might be the one you are able to write the most genuinely and from the heart about, rather than something that you feel you don’t fully understand. If, for example, you are choosing between writing about two different service opportunities you participated in, you might choose to write about the service that has connected you to your community that you’ve been a part of for several years, rather than try to write about your work at a larger non-profit organization you only worked at for a few weeks, even if you think that the latter seems more prestigious––the reader will connect to your story if you can talk about something you know deeply and intimately about. 

• Threading your life together or choosing one moment.
• • • Another difficulty you might encounter is trying to thread your entire life story together. Often, this can be very difficult to write a strong college essay about because you won’t be able to go deeply enough into each moment in time, and thus, the reader won’t be able to know more about who you are. Without good writing techniques, the larger narrative falls apart. It can be helpful, instead, to choose what might seem like a micro-level story in your life that you can talk deeply about and then make a statement about who you are. 

• Writing about sensitive topics.
• • One of the hardest parts of choosing a topic is deciding how much information you want to include. Above all, the choice of what to write is up to you, but you can’t forget that ultimately, the reader will be the one deciding whether or not to admit you, and you want to provide an essay that speaks to who you are, but at the same time does not make the reader feel uncomfortable. However, it is impossible to know where that line falls. What might make one reader uncomfortable wouldn’t make another feel the same way. No matter what, try to think about writing this essay for a stranger, and consider what you would feel comfortable telling that stranger about different things you have experienced, rather than writing the essay for your friend who already knows so much about you. Sensitive topics can be fundamental to who we are, so we shouldn’t be scared to tell others about ourselves, but at the same time, we have to be careful about how we tell our own stories.

By An Li and Lynn Horowitz

When you apply to college, you will definitely be writing at least one essay, so we’ve thought about some pointers that can help you write a strong application essay. It is important to remember that while the essay you write is integral to your application, in holistic admissions, it is not the only thing that matters. However, writing a strong essay can set you apart from other applicants by telling a compelling story well. There are three main components to keep in mind when writing your essay: technique, topic and tone. 

This overview has to do with your main essay, like the Common Application essay or Coalition Application essay, meaning that almost every school you apply to would see it. However, you can use these tips on any essay that is required as part of your application to specific schools.

Key Questions: 

Are you ready to write at the college level?

Have you answered the essay prompt question?

Can you work within the constraints of a word or page limit? 

What is Technique?

Technique is what is most obvious on the page to your essay reader. It includes your spelling, word choice, and even following the guidelines posted for the essay––if a college asks for no more than 250 words and you write 1,000, right away admissions officers can see that you not only didn’t follow the guidelines, but that you might not be able to tell your story in a concise way. In many ways, the college application essay is a writing sample and it allows you to tell something about yourself, but also your preparedness for college.

• First steps towards good technique.
• • • Throughout high school, you may have been writing your essays using the 5 paragraph format. At its basic level, the 5 paragraph essay is a way to outline your thoughts so that it is easier for the reader to understand. Even a 1 page essay needs an outline and structure! And although you might not be writing to argue a point you are trying to make, a narrative story needs a beginning, middle and end. 
• Make sure your ideas are understandable.
• • • Another important aspect of technique is making sure that you are able to write something about yourself that is understandable. This means distilling many different parts of yourself to even just 700 words! It can feel daunting to attempt to do that, but one way to make sure that your story is coherent is by not choosing too many things to say about yourself and having your essay go in too many directions. In other words, follow the prompt!
• Follow the prompt.
• • • One way to make sure that your essay is not going in too many directions is by making sure that you are answering what the prompt asked. All application questions provide prompts––both the Common App and Coalition App’s main essay has several prompts to choose from, and specific colleges might ask for several other shorter essays that answer other prompts––so you will always have a starting point. When thinking about your writing, make sure that your story ultimately can reflect some type of answer to the prompt.
• Edit!
• • Perhaps the most important part of technique is making sure that you edit your essay. This means not only being careful of misplaced commas and typos, but also choosing the right words and making sure you don’t have run-on sentences. It can be very obvious to readers if you end up picking up a thesaurus and changing every other word to any random synonym, as well as simplifying copying and pasting a different essay for another college and forgetting to change the name of the college! In addition, it always helps to have a friend, mentor, parent, or teacher look over your writing––a second set of eyes will always be able to see the mistakes before you do!