The college application essay is many high school students’ first real effort at writing not about an academic subject, but about themselves.  Taking a close look at and discussing oneself analytically can be a challenging task for even the most adept high school writers, but fear not, college applicants (and their worried parents)!

Sometimes a university’s essay prompts can reveal as much about the school’s values as an applicant’s personal statement can divulge what the student will bring to the university. If you’ve ever wondered what you should share in your application essay, fear not; some schools break down their personal statement into a few short responses and give you instructions for each solicited paragraph. MIT, for example, not only tells you what they deem important—how they aspire to positively impact the world—they tell students exactly what MIT is hoping to hear from its applicants: ideals and dreams that match up to theirs. So let’s try hunting for the clues MIT is dropping, prompt by prompt.

If you were to ask an admissions officer if there are any truly “bad” topics to avoid on your college application, chances are you’ll be advised to steer clear from essays about:

• winning (or losing) the “big game,”
• that horrible breakup with your girlfriend or boyfriend,
• your eyes being opened after volunteering in a third-world country, and
• the tragic loss or grave illness of a close family member.

Back when I served as an admissions officer at Barnard, I probably would have agreed.

As a former college admissions officer who read over 3,000 essays every admissions cycle, I can’t stress enough that students should consider quality over quantity when drafting college essays. My colleagues have previously written blog posts encouraging students to draft essays in their everyday voice, and to avoid replacing normal words with cousins from the thesaurus. The bigger picture here is to tell your own story as clearly and concisely as you can. The same goes for the length of your personal statement—hone in on the specific message you want to convey and deliver it as succinctly as you can.

“Have you started your college essay yet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have no idea what I should write about.”

How Long Should the ApplyTexas Essay Be?

This question comes up a lot. Mainly because the application allows for up to 120 eighty-character lines of text. What’s that? You’re not up on your character count layout for a standard page? A typical single-spaced page of average size font is about 50 lines of text. ApplyTexas allows you to enter something more than twice that long; but, I beg of you, do not take them up on that!

Beginning in the fall of 2016, students applying to any institution within the UC system will be required to choose four “personal insight questions” from among eight options, responding to each of their chosen prompts in no more than 350 words. This new requirement gives students the opportunity to share more about themselves—1400 words compared to the 1000 previously allowed—and offers greater flexibility in what they choose to share with the admissions committee.

When news of a new Coalition application was introduced last fall, admissions counselors knew they would have to learn an entirely new application platform in order to help their students apply to college the following fall. As a college counselor, I was perhaps most interested in the way that the new application—and its essay requirements—might change the way my seniors were able to approach their work over the application season. Would students be able to engage in brainstorming in the same ways they had in the past? What sorts of essays would they need to produce? How much extra work would a new application require of them?

When I worked at Reed, my colleagues and I had a saying that we loved to share with applicants summing up the best personal statements: “Neither analytical nor creative, the personal essay is a combination of both that reveals who the student is.”

As stated by Fitzpatrick and Constantini, the personal essay can’t be entirely creative, but it also can’t rely on the DBQ-style that earns you a five on the AP US History exam, either. Further, the writer has to set aside the immense pressure they’re putting on themselves to write the “perfect” essay, which they imagine is going to win over the hearts and minds of their application reader. There’s truly no “one” thing that admissions officers are looking for; in fact, the more expected, formal, or trite a topic is, the likelier the essay is to fail.

By Abigail Anderson

Last week we began the discussion of Stanford’s 11-part supplement. We covered the seven questions requiring answers in the form of either a list or 50 words and how to answer the activities essay.

Stanford’s short essays will require a little more thought and reflection than what you might’ve put into the short responses, and that’s to be expected; a 250 word limit gives much more space to engage an idea. These essays are all about demonstrating what you’ll bring to the Stanford community as a roommate, as a thinker, and as a member at large. Do some reflection on your best attributes and assets as you work your way through your brainstorming, and be willing to open yourself up in your writing. You can take risks here, but they should be measured risks that present a more complete picture of your personality.