Writing Successful College Essays

Admissions officers from Yale University and Kenyon College spoke about what they look for in successful college essays during the annual College Board Conference last weekend.

“We’re looking for a match between the student and the college as much as anything when we read essays,” said Beverly Morse, Kenyon’s Associate Dean of Admissions. “Students need to use their own voice in order to let us find that match. We don’t expect Pulitzer Prize winning essays or essays that sound like they’ve been written by adults. Perfection is not necessary, but having your own voice come through is. It’s called a personal statement because we want it to be personal.”

Jeremiah Quinlan, Yale’s Director of Outreach and Recruitment, agreed. “I’m interested in this person as a 17-year-old. The best essays are not the ones with perfect punctuation or that cool Ayn Rand quote that they think makes them sound like an intellectual, but ones that are honest and real because that’s how we get a sense of who the student is.”

“Yale receives over 21,000 applications. Of those, 14 or 15 thousand have high grades and high tests scores,” noted Quinlan. “We know most of our applicants can do the work. However, great test scores and a terrific GPA only put you in the pool. What separates you out is personality, and one of the major ways we find out about your personality is through your essays. Unfortunately, many times the student’s personality gets edited out, especially if they have too many people read and comment on their essays.”

Students don’t have much time to stand out with Yale admissions readers. According to Quinlan, Yale admissions readers can read 50 or more essays a day, six days a week, during the admissions season. However, Quinlan was careful to note that Yale admissions officers “always start with the transcript. If the student isn’t a fit academically, we won’t spend much time on the essay.”

Quinlan suggested that students ask themselves three questions before sending off their essays. “First, ask ‘who am I?’ The essay has to be about you, and convey your personality. In order to do that you have to have a sense of yourself. They should also remenber that we don’t want to read about who you were or what you did back in eighth grade. We want to find out who you are now.”

The second question? “Does this essay resonate with the rest of my application? Students should ask themselves what their activities will say about them, what their recommendations will say about them, even what their high school grades and course choices will say about them, and then make sure that the essay resonates with everything we’ll read elsewhere in their application. This doesn’t mean that they should only tell us things we already know, but rather, they should make sure that the essay doesn’t make us wonder just who their teachers were talking about in their recommendations.”

As an example, Quinlan used an essay about a student’s first voting experience, relating it to the political situation in Dafur. “I would expect that that student’s teacher recommendations would talk about her concern for others, her leadership skills, or her passion for politics, and that her extracurriculars might highlight similar things. If the teachers don’t mention any of these things, and her only extracurricular is some minor club, the essay wouldn’t resonate with the rest of her application.”

A second example was a humorous and off-beat essay about the student’s family. “We’d expect the recommendations to talk about the student’s great sense of humor, or how much other students enjoy his presence in class, how he’s an out of the box thinker with excellent writing and speaking skills. If we didn’t pick up on any of that in the recommendations or elsewhere in the application, the essay wouldn’t have that same resonance.”

Finally, Quinlan suggested that students ask themselves if the essay is reflective. “We’re looking for evidence of growth and resolution, a sense of how they’ve come to be who they are, or why they believe what they do.”

Morse suggested that students start with some pre-writing exercises before they begin to write the actual essay. “Write down six or seven adjectives you would use to describe yourself. Then write down something that you’ve done in the last six months or so that has made you proud or surprised yourself. Merge these ideas and just start writing. Don’t edit too much at the beginning. Just let your ideas flow.”

Morse highlighted some pet peeves of admissions readers. The number one peeve? What Morse called the “overblown” essay. “Don’t use big words just because you think they’ll impress us. If you don’t normally write or speak that way, we won’t learn who you really are.”

Quinlan picked up a similar theme. “We get a lot of essays about music and drama because kids and parents think, ‘It’sYale, they like music and drama there.’ Well, if you love debate, telling us about music and drama misses the chance to tell us about what really matters to you.”

Both admissions officers stressed that students should be cautious about getting input from others, especially, in some cases from parents. “Parents want to protect their children. They want to hold their hands and make sure that the child doesn’t fail,” said Morse. As a result, parents can often try to “fix” essays, destroying the student’s true voice in the process. “Sometimes, when I’m reading essays, I wonder who the real writers are because they don’t sound like a 17-year old wrote them.”

Is there a “wrong” essay topic? “There really isn’t,” said Quinlan, with a caveat. “As long as the essay shows growth and resolution.”

Morse, however, noted that some topics are better than others. “Students should remember we’re looking at both the academic and social fit. If an essay makes us think that a student is just going to hole up in the library and not be a part of the Kenyon community, we’re going to think he isn’t a match.”