College Essays: "Stay True to Sharing a Piece of Yourself"

Dr. Katherine Rieder, a Michigan native, offers college essay writing advice from her professional experience as an admissions officer at Johns Hopkins University and time teaching undergraduate courses in art history and writing.  Katie is a talented colleague of many in the field of highly selective college admissions.  Her perspective is grounded by her Michigan upbringing and complemented by her BA in History of Art and History from Johns Hopkins University and PhD in History of American Civilization from Harvard University.  Both universities are summer pre-college partners with the Joyce Ivy Foundation.  Katie offers her thoughts and her advice.

The personal essay and the supplemental question required by many colleges and universities are often the portions of the college application that students dread most.  While students should be placing much of their focus on essay writing during the fall of their senior year – after all, much of the rest is a record of past accomplishments (academic performance, extracurricular activities, and recommendations) rather than the production of something new – the words “personal” and “essay” are the keys here.  This is the place for students to be themselves, to show admissions officers who they really are.  And keeping that as the ultimate goal should not only relieve some of the pressure students feel, but also lead to a successful essay!

How should a student select a Common Application essay question?

Selecting a question for the personal essay on the Common Application can be a daunting task.  The best piece of advice I can give is start early and don’t get bogged down on selecting the question as the quality of the finished essay is much more important than the question you choose.  If you draft an essay in response to a question that just doesn’t seem to be working, starting early enables you to move on.  Perhaps you’ll even find that your draft is better suited to another question with some slight tweaking; the questions are pretty general and intentionally lend themselves to this kind of personal interpretation.  Giving yourself ample time allows you to let your writing and your experiences guide you rather than one question over another.  Along these same lines, although the questions may make it seem as if you need to have volunteered in a third-world country or participated in ground-breaking cancer research in order to write a fantastic essay, that simply isn’t the case.   The best essays I’ve read focus on personal responses to topics that might be viewed as mundane; for example, one was about the experience of having curly hair.

What is significant to write about? Is there anything to avoid writing about?

Because the essay is “personal,” it’s up to you, the student, to decide what is significant to write about.  It’s not the scope of the experience described in the essay that makes it compelling, it’s how that experience reveals the unique perspective of the person writing it.  So if you think someone else could write something similar, start over.  That may sound harsh, but remember that the goal of the personal essay is to demonstrate a student’s individuality and voice.   As I mentioned above, this does not mean that you have to have an experience that no one else has ever had in order to write a successful essay.  It simply means that you should focus on how whatever you’re writing about – even if it’s your hair – relates to and reveals something unique about you.

Why do admissions officers spend time reviewing essays to learn about a student?

The personal essay is an admissions officer’s chance to meet you, which is why it’s so important!  It allows them to get to know you as a person through your own words, and when an essay is well-written and well-thought-out, it really does feel as though you know the person who wrote it.

The same goes for the supplemental question(s) required by many colleges and universities, but from a slightly different angle.  While the personal essay allows admission officers to see you, the supplement allows them to see you within the context of what’s important to their institution.  One of the biggest mistakes students make is that they become so wrapped up in the personal essay that they leave supplemental questions until the last minute.  Begin preparing these well in advance too, and remember that they should be personal while still showing that you’ve done your research.  For example, don’t list out every fact you can find online if a supplement asks you to explain your interest in a specific major or program.  Instead, describe how those facts relate to and further your personal goals! 

Ultimately, stay true to sharing a piece of yourself in your essays, and you can’t go wrong.  Good luck!