In this installment of Alexandra Bacchus’s latest column, she tackles the challenge of crafting a well-written college essay.
The college essay. For many, those three words have the ability to strike fear and dread in an applicant’s very core.
Maybe it’s the provocative prompts we’re given or the weight they hold in showing an admissions officer who we really are, but the task of putting our fingers to the keyboard and our thoughts into words is a lot more challenging than it may appear. The hardest part is always the first word.
Having talked to many of my past teachers in an attempt to seek help and confirm that I was headed in the right direction, I’ve determined the three most valuable pieces of advice: maintain a genuine voice, speak directly to the prompt, and capture how the event you’ve chosen affected the person you are.
Write about something you think matters. For so long I tried my hardest to find the “perfect topic” that would win an admissions officer over, until I realized that the perfect topic does not exist. I made the horribly common mistake of trying too hard.
According to John Blaber, my junior year English teacher, essays on quirky topics can really work when written the right way. Though essays shouldn’t be offbeat for the sake of being offbeat, it’s beneficial to write about yourself in the most authentic way.
It shouldn’t matter if someone were to write about training to be a member of the circus or the death of a family member, because the best essays will explore the connection and impact the event had on the writer. If the commitment to training for the circus can say something about your character and the person you’ve become, it’s better to write about that topic regardless of how unusual it may seem.
It’s also important to seek feedback on what you’ve written to see how your words sound through someone else’s ears, but a line has to be drawn between “review” and “editing.” Parents are often eager to help with essay-writing, if only to offer better phrasing or a different word choice, but after too many hands have touched one essay, it can read as a mixture of voices under one writer’s name.
Admissions officers can pick up the subtleties of a writer’s style and distinguish between writer and editor. It’s both obvious and disingenuous to pass off writing that is supposed to be all about you, written by you, when another’s influence has seeped into your words.
When I started writing my essays, I was often tempted to ask for a little more help than I really needed. Ultimately though, it felt much more satisfying to show my dad an essay that was all my own and have him like it without any additional help.
I used to resent the entire process–thinking that if it isn’t enough for colleges to judge us based on the grades we’ve earned and the standardized tests we’ve had to endure, asking us to find the essence of ourselves and put it down on paper is just plain mean. Now I’ve finally come to embrace the challenge, to love the process of learning more about myself through what I choose to write about.
Fitting a life story into 500 words is difficult, but the real challenge is not finding what to say, it’s finding how to say it. The most insignificant story, if told the right way, can come out as a convincing and meaningful essay. It comes down to just one thing, writing about the person you know better than anyone else: yourself.
