Brody's Guide to the College Admissions Essay

Lessons to take away from this essay:

1. When writing about a passion, provide details about yourself and how you’ve been impacted.

Many people write about their love of reading. Such essays generally fail—not because reading is an inherently unsuitable topic, but because the applicants don’t reveal anything interesting about themselves or how their experiences have been unique.

To say that you love to curl up with a good book, and to see the characters come alive in your head, merely puts you in the group of tens of millions of Americans who enjoy fiction. To say something worthy of a college application—a forum designed to help you convey a sense of yourself to a competitive school—you need to go beyond the ordinary and pull something special from your own experiences. As this author put it, “we were two strangers at a party, discussing the weather while piling bite size nachos, cookies, and carrots onto our designer napkins.” For many people this type of insight just isn’t possible, and so they wisely choose another topic.

This author is also a writer, and she discusses details of her reading history that help us understand her relationship with the activity. She initially enjoyed reading Vonnegut as an easy and fun leisure activity. She later learned to appreciate authors with more complex writing styles, but also returned to Vonnegut and his “simple truths.” While we think the author could have included even more details, she definitely does a good job of showing (remember your writing teacher saying “show, don’t tell”?) how Vonnegut impacted her life and why she finds her relationship with his writing so important.

2. One of the most impressive things you can do in an admissions essay is show growth and development.

While colleges obviously want to admit smart and impressive kids, one of the most crucial qualities they seek in applicants is self-awareness and the ability to grow, improve, and learn from mistakes. Colleges often see themselves as laboratories that encourage and nurture developing minds, and as a result they’re far more interested in who you’ll become than what you’ve been in the past. That’s why, for example, so many schools will look positively at an upward grade trend, even when freshman and sophomore grades (and thus average GPA) are significantly lower.

Great college essays frequently demonstrate that the applicant has learned from life, and that he or she has an active mind that is seeking out new experiences and new ways to grow. A “standard” essay about reading might describe learning to read as a young child, and continuing with that interest through young adulthood. However, this applicant makes clear that she not only reads, but has considered the impact of that interest—and particularly of one author—on her reading, writing, and worldview. Vonnegut taught her that she could write meaningfully at a young age despite a limited command of vocabulary and literary maturity. She later learned to enjoy and adopt more sophisticated writing and storytelling techniques from other authors. She’s gleaned philosophical lessons from Vonnegut. Finally, after all of these experiences, she’s acknowledged that she is “forever learning” as a reader.

For colleges, finding that person who is “forever learning” and re-examining herself is of the utmost importance. By showing not just what you’ve done, but also how you’ve been affected by that experience and what you’ve learned from it, you can demonstrate yourself to be someone who will continue to grow and thrive in a college setting.

 

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