A Misconception: Achievement vs. Personality

What Is the Essay's Purpose

To write a good essay, you have to understand the essay's purpose within the context of the application. The main goal of the non-essay part of the application is to show your achievement. Information about your classes, grades, SAT scores, SAT Subject Test scores, and AP scores tell admission counselors your academic ability. Information about extracurricular activities, work experience tell admission counselors your outside-the-classroom ability. All this information focuses on your academic and extracurricular achievements.

Then you have the essay. Knowing that the rest of your application summarizes your achievements, do you think the essay's main function is to rehash your achievements? No. The essay's main function is to reveal your personality. The essay is like a microscope slide. I think in fifth grade, our science "experiment" was to look at an onion under a microscope. But we didn't put the whole onion under the microscope, just a slice on the slide. And before we covered the slide, we added some food coloring to bring out the details. When you're writing an essay to reveal your personality, the first step is to take a slice of your life - not an activity (like soccer), but a slice of time moment from an activity (like doing sprints by yourself at 6:00 am on a Saturday to train for soccer). The second step is to color the narrative with your take on why your slice of time moment matters to you - to shade the meaning of your details.

As you execute this two-step plan to reveal your personality, will you talk about achievement? Sure, but achievement is not the main point. That's for the rest of the application. When you only write about achievement, you just tell the reader that you're talented and work hard - but so are most of the other applicants. If you won award X or race Y, lots of other people probably did, too. That's why essays that focus on achievement might not distinguish you.

To identify the details that set you apart, consider focusing on the process leading to your achievement instead of the achievement itself. What motivated you? Why? Did you ever doubt what you were doing? Did you realize along the way that something else was more important than achievement? Did you fail? How did this process make you the person you are now? What was the turning point in your attitude? If you can find a slice of time moment and stain it with your own commentary, you can transform a generic achievement essay into a genuine personality essay.

But when you're thinking about topics, don't limit yourself to achievements. Any slice of time moment that matters to you can become a memorable essay. The test for a good essay is not whether it convinces the reader you're accomplished, but whether it makes the reader like you. And before a reader can like you, she has to see you as an individual instead of as a stereotype! When you write about personal details by focusing on a slice of time moment, you increase the chances of revealing your individuality. If you remember your essay goal is to prove personality - not achievement - you'll be much happier with your final product.

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

Student Question #12: Should I Avoid Overlap between Essays?

Student Question

"Should I avoid overlap between essays? My essays contain different information, but they both seem to highlight my passion for the same academic interest. Is that bad?"

My Response

Yes, you should avoid overlap between essays. When you're writing a sentence, you don't write 30 words when you can make the same point with 15 words. When you're writing an essay, you don't include 5 examples about how soccer made you a better person when you can make the same point with just 1 example. And when you're writing an application, you don't write 2 essays about the same part of your personality - like an academic passion - when you can communicate the same message with just 1 essay. Each word, example, and essay should reveal something new about you.

If you insist on writing two essays about the same topic, make sure each highlights a different part of who you are. For example, suppose your academic interest is biology. The first essay might focus on intellectual vitality - how you developed your interest, how you explored your interest, why biology fascinates you. The second essay might focus on teamwork - how you worked with other people in a lab, what surprised you about working with other people, how the experience changed your approach to working with people.

Remember, many of the "Is this a good topic?" type of questions miss the point. There is no golden ticket topic that will get you in automatically. As a wiser person wrote, "There is nothing new under the sun." Admission committees have seen every topic you can imagine. With rare exception, how you treat your topic matters more than what topic you choose. The topic is means to an end: revealing your personality.

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

Student Question #11: Does Everything Have to Be Explicitly Stated?

Student Question

"Does everything have to be explicitly stated? Is it bad to imply sometimes?"

My Response

To answer this question, let's look at how Ira Glass from This American Life divides a story into two parts: anecdote and reflection. Anecdote is the stuff that happened, and reflection is why you think that stuff matters. Whether you're describing anecdote or reflection, you want to be explicit. That is, you want to be detailed. For the anecdote, that means appealing to the five senses when describing the events. For the reflection, that means making sure you answer the "So what?" question so that the reader knows why he should care. So yes, be explicit.

The problem is that explicit is not always interesting. Think about the essays you write for English class. You start with a thesis statement, which is some argument about what something means. Then you follow up with evidence that supports your thesis. It's explicit, maybe scholarly, but not suspenseful. We all know the formula: thesis, then evidence.

In the application essay, your anecdote - the stuff that happened - is your evidence, and your reflection - why that stuff matters - is your thesis. If you write the application essay the way you write a normal English class essay, you will start with the reflection and follow with the anecdote. Thesis, then evidence.

But a reflection-anecdote structure kills all the suspense. If you open with your reflection ("Activity X taught me Ability Y"), then we all know you'll spend the rest of the essay sharing some examples that support your reflection. If your reflection is "Soccer taught me patience," then the rest of your essay will be some experiences you had playing soccer. Do I need to read the rest? I certainly don't want to.

To make the reader want to read more, you need to invert the reflection-anecdote structure. Instead of writing the reflection first, write the anecdote first. That way, you imply your main point because the reader has to wonder, at least for a few sentences, "Why does this matter?" Then you resolve the suspense by stating your reflection. For example, you might open with a scene from your soccer experiences and then, after letting the reader see what's happened, start to explain why it matters to you.

So, to answer the question, be explicit in describing both anecdote and reflection. But to maximize suspense, forget about your normal thesis-evidence structure. Forget about making everything clear in the beginning. Instead, turn the normal English essay upside-down by writing an anecdote-reflection structure. Start with the stuff that happened, and then explain what it means. That's how you write an essay that's detailed but suspenseful.

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

5 Tips for Supplemental Essays

Writing the Supplemental Essays

Schools are conflicted. On the one hand, they flood your inbox with marketing flotsam about how superior they are. On the other hand, they ask you to answer prompts that ask you why you like them, as if they need reassurance. These schools are vulnerable, you see. Poor things. They need to know that you adore them. It's the same dynamic in any relationship; that's why my wife makes me lunch and I buy her roses (OK, not as often as she deserves, I admit). This post will give you some tips to help you tackle the supplemental essays.

Tip #1: Understand the Admission Officers' Secret.

Here's the secret: many admission officers read the supplemental "Why do you like my school?" essays first, even before reading through your Common App essays. In my visits to Pitzer, LMU, and USC, admission officers admitted to doing this, and I can't believe they're the only ones. They're like any little kid at his own birthday party, the one who doesn't have time to worry about getting pictures taken, reading some useless card, or even eating chocolate cake - the one who's thinking, "Let me open my presents! Let me get to the good part!" Admission officers want to get to the good part, too. They read first the essay that you write last: the supplemental essay. So don't think you can slack off just because it's a supplemental essay.

Tip #2: Prioritize Your Supplemental Essays.

Few of us assemble essays the way a robot assembles cars, each one at the same pace with the same quality. Most of us write essays the way we run - sprinting, running, jogging, shuffling, walking. Then stopping. Your energy is limited, so you have to plan out in advance the order you'll write the essays.

If you have a dream school, do that supplemental essay first. You don't want to wonder later whether you could have tried harder. Next on the list should be target schools: schools where your SAT scores are in the 25th-75th percentile range. When you're on the cusp, your essay has a bigger role in your admission than when you're a shoe-in or a long-shot. To get the most impact for your essay investment, you have to prioritize your supplmental essays by putting dream schools and target schools first in line.

Tip #3: Learn the School's Mission.

If you look at enough websites, read enough forums, and visit enough campuses, the schools start to blur together. That's natural. But remember, to the person reading your essay, her school has no substitute. She takes the school's "mission statement" or "core values" seriously. To her, they're more than hollow jargon.

To impress this reader, prove you understand why her school's values make that school special. Look at the school's website, and then call your admission rep. (Yes, the one assigned to your high school; if you don't know who this is, call the admissions office.) Ask how the school advances those core values in academic and social settings. Note any special programs the admission rep mentions, and then do more research. If you don't understand how the school implements its jargony values, you'll have a harder time convincing the reader the school's a good fit for you.

I'm not talking about any super-complicated research. At the USC info session, for example, the rep mentioned "large research university" several times and then noted the Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF - even their acronyms are totally southern California). If you're applying to USC, might you want to consider what type of research you would want to do there? Might you want to look at the SURF application for more clues about what USC values? Yes, you might.

Tip #4: Find Your Academic Niche.

If you can't find even a single academic area of interest on the school's website, then I don't know, maybe re-think this whole college idea. Dude, you need to show at least a little curiosity. Most schools want to see how you'll fit in with their academic environment. By the way, that means more than just saying something like, "I can like totally see myself at University of Ivy studying Icons in Feminist Microeconomics with Professor Moonbeam." Congratulations. You can read a course catalog or a professor bio. That's the 10-minute effort most students give this question, and it's not enough to set you apart. In case you were wondering.

What about actually reading a paper that professor wrote? What about emailing that professor to request a copy of a paper? What about emailing that professor an informed question? If you're visiting the campus, what about asking the admission rep if you can sit in on that professor's class or visit office hours? If you're not willing to make that effort to find your academic niche at a school, then I'm not sure why you're applying. You'd be better off applying to 8 schools you've researched well than to 15 schools you can't tell apart.

Tip #5: Build a Bridge between Your Interests and the School's Opportunities, between Your Experience and the School's Values.

After you've done your research, you know your academic interests. Now you need to connect them to the school's opportunities. How will you take advantage of the school's opportunities to expore your academic interests? That's one bridge you can build.

You also know your past experiences. Now you need to connect them to the school's values. How will you advance the school's values? That's another bridge you can build.

Whether you focus on academics, values, or both will depend on the prompt. Whatever the case, you want to create the impression that attending the school is a natural next step for you. You're trying to leave the reader thinking, "Of course he would fit in here."

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

Student Question #10: Are All Metaphor Essays Bad?

Student Question

"Are all metaphor essays bad?"

My Response

First, a quick review. A metaphor is just an assertion that one thing is like another thing. In the college essay context, the usual approach is to try to argue that the student is like some object. For example, a roller coaster could be a metaphor for the student's life.

To answer the question, no, not all metaphor essays are bad. But all random metaphor essays are bad. A random metaphor is one that compares you to something outside your every-day experience. If you compare your life to a roller coaster even though you've never ridden one, roller coasters are not your best metaphorical option. I sense the attraction of random metaphors is the belief that if we could just find the right, clever metaphor, we'd win over the reader. But there's no such thing as a magic metaphor (or topic) that will, simply by appearing in your essay, stab the admission officer with wonder: "Oh my gosh! This applicant's a spork - multi-functional!" A random metaphor seems out of place, like an unattended elephant ambling down a city street.

For a metaphor to work, it has to be authentic, not random. But finding authentic metaphors is easy. Pluck them from the scenes - the particular moments - you'll be describing in your essay. If I'm writing about writing (my curse, apparently), then maybe the staple remover on my desk is a metaphor for my outlook on editing; I disassemble words and reassemble them in a better order. Or the aluminum Dr. Pepper can is a metaphor for my ideas: recycled. So long as you draw the metaphor out of your scene instead of imposing the it onto your essay, your metaphor will be authentic.

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.