A short and cantankerous guide to writing college essays

IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THAT COMPLICATED. I'm not yelling, you're yelling

Here we are on the cusp of August, the sun setting earlier and earlier, the back-to-school displays at Target getting bigger and bigger. This is the time of year when rising seniors applying to college and parents of rising seniors applying to college begin to fret about college essays. Everything else has been done—activities, grades, letters of recommendation, fancy summer internships, jobs at summer camps, jobs at Chipotle—and now, after three years of objectively measurable outcomes, students have to write essays that capture their particular brand and highlight why they’re unique and amazing (as opposed to all the other garbage applicants).

If you need additional evidence that the prospect of writing college essays provokes stress hives at worst and ambivalence at best, consider my extensive research into today’s topic (which I conducted by typing “how do students and parents feel about college essays” into Google):

I mean, what teenager wouldn’t love to struggle with finding the right balance between personal insight and oversharing? Or to learn precision and clarity in the process of working towards THE TRUTH through multiple revisions? While well-meaning parents and relatives send them helpful links to college essays from students who were admitted into All the Ivies? Doesn’t that sound like fun?

No. No, it does not sound like fun at all. Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

I’m not yelling, you’re yelling.

Okay, fine, yes, I have strong opinions about college essays. I read thousands of them as a Stanford admissions officer and then I helped develop and revise approximately 30,240 of them during the 18 years I worked as an independent college counselor. (Seriously, I did the math: I worked with 20+ students a year; most of those students applied to 10-15 colleges. Each of them had to write somewhere around 5-10 application essays. A typical essay takes about 5-7 drafts to complete. If my math is correct, that’s a lot of essays.)

The truth is that in spite of everything you read on the internet, writing college essays does not have to be complicated. I’m not saying that because I read tens of thousands of college essays or because I wrote a memoir structured as a series of my own responses to college application essay prompts or because I’m addicted to reading creative nonfiction in all its permutations. I’m saying it because the static about what college essays are supposed to do and how they’re supposed to do it is so deafening that it’s almost impossible to hear the signal, which is why most teenagers have about as much enthusiasm for writing college essays as they might for getting a bad case of food poisoning. In actuality, what college essays are and what they’re supposed to do is relatively straightforward, so I’ve compiled a very partial list of my opinions, grievances, and suggestions for young people preparing to write college essays and for parents as well as for parents and guardians of young people preparing to write college essays:

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

What college essays are:

College essays belong to a literary genre called creative nonfiction—as distinct from drama, fiction, or poetry, but occasionally incorporating elements of one, or two, or all three. It’s an umbrella term for literary works written in the first person; some examples include memoir, personal essay, and long-form narrative reporting (for instance, the articles you might feel guilty about not finishing in The New Yorker, like this amazing piece by Elif Batuman which I actually did read all the way to the end and highly recommend).

What college essays should do:

• Communicate something about the student that cannot be gleaned from their transcript, standardized test scores, or activity list. That does not mean the transcript, standardized test scores, or activities are off limits; it just means that instead of writing about being an excellent student or the MVP on the lacrosse team, a student might write about taking two weeks to figure out how to efficiently wrap a burrito at Chipotle or what they learned from pretending to have read Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure for an in-class essay in AP English and getting called out for it (me. That second one was me).

• Tell a story—with the student as protagonist—that shows change. What has the protagonist learned over the course of the unfolding action? What do they believe (or no longer believe) at the end, and how does that differ from the beginning?

• Show (rather than tell). This is ancient advice from every writing instructor everywhere always, and there’s a reason: it’s true and it works. Telling: “I am a creative person.” Showing: “At the end of the day, I have vermillion paint under my fingernails and glitter on my forehead and a self-portrait that captures all the selves I’ve ever been.”

What college essays should not do:

• Make generalizations (people, individuals, society). If ever there was an occasion to be narcissistic and self-centered (in a good way!) writing a college essay is it. Focus on what you know to be true (yourself and how you show up in the world).

• Dwell on information that is captured elsewhere in the application (awards and honors especially).

• Sell/market/package yourself (often, this is the result of well-intentioned nudges or “just a few little edits” from well-meaning parents who really, really want you to include your awards or honors in the essay). Believe me when I say that the shift from adolescent writing to not-adolescent writing is blindingly obvious to anyone who reads college admissions essays for a living. Also, no one will think you’re a loser if you admit that you made a mistake and grew from it. They’ll think you’re a human person with insight.)

Why students approach writing college essays with fear and resentment:

• Compared to the disproportionate amount of time devoted to teaching students how to write a five-paragraph analytical essay, most high schools don’t teach students about personal essays apart from a week or two devoted to drafting a personal statement during junior year (and that’s a best-case scenario). Not to throw shade on the five-paragraph essay, but I don’t know anyone, including English majors, who graduate from high school saying, “Wow, am I glad I spent months if not years learning how to write a five-paragraph essay! This skillset will sure come in handy when I’m an adult!” Learning to write about yourself insightfully, on the other hand? Such a helpful skillset for cover letters, LinkedIn posts, dating sites (yes, really), communicating with your colleagues at work, and writing actual letters to your older relatives who may remember you fondly when updating their will. (The good news is that this is a skillset you can acquire with practice. See below!)

• Most teenagers think that nothing interesting has ever happened to them.

• Most teenagers don’t think they can write well.

• Most teenagers are paralyzed by the long list of profoundly unhelpful advice circulating on the internet about what to do and not to do in your college essays: don’t write about sports, don’t write about your grandmother, don’t write about being Indian/Asian/Jewish/Muslim/Christian/Sikh, don’t write about divorce, don’t write about hardship, don’t write about politics, make sure you have a hook at the beginning that immediately engages your reader, be funny, be serious, be vulnerable but not too vulnerable.

I find this last one particularly infuriating because you actually can write about ALL those things as long as you’re writing about what they mean to you and how they’ve shaped you. Also, you don’t need a hook, or at the very least you should get it out of your head that your very first draft has to start with an immediately engaging hook.

What rising seniors can do:

• Don’t read books with titles like College Essays that Worked. You will become disoriented, dispirited, and bitterly envious. Same with TikTok videos by people who are like, “Guys! I wrote about THIS THING and I got into Harvard!”

• Read or listen to actual creative nonfiction by people not applying to college—for instance, The Moth Radio Hour, Modern Love columns, or This I Believe. If you’d like a long (like, really, really long) list of suggestions of memoirs and personal essays, let me know in the comments!

• Set aside 15 minutes of uninterrupted time a day and spend that time writing or revising. Fifteen minutes is not a big ask, but if you make a point of touching your writing every day, you will be astonished by how much progress you make.

What parents of rising seniors can do:

• Leave your rising senior alone. Do NOT offer to help. Do NOT give advice unless they specifically come to you looking for advice, and even then, keep the advice short and specific. Do NOT ask your rising senior how their essays are going. I meant it: they are hearing enough about college essays from just about everyone else.

• Keep them fed and make sure they get enough sleep.

• Try to do fun things as a family that have nothing to do with college applications.

• Write your own college essays (more about that in next week’s Substack).

Updates:

A reminder that the Golden Ticket Zoom meeting is this Sunday, August 4 at 9 am PST. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll receive a Zoom link toward the end of the week.

On Sunday, Sept. 22, I’ll be a speaker at the Moms Connect conference in Palo Alto. The conference brings together college admissions experts, adolescent mental health professionals, and students from a wide variety of educational backgrounds; it’s a fantastic opportunity for moms of high school students to build community and find informed guidance. Early bird registration ends Aug. 15 and space is limited; if you’re interested, you can register here.

As always, thank you for being here, and please feel free to hit me up for additional resources for reading materials!