The College Essay: A List of Lies and Half-Truths

The college essay is arguably the most important piece of your application. It allows you to contextualize yourself, to fill in the gaps between semesters on a sterile transcript. It’s also the slipperiest: writing is subjective, and there is no “right” way to tell your story. For many, the importance and uncertainty of the college essay transform it into an object of fear. 

There is no shortage of blog posts, workshops, and well-meaning people that all claim to have “The Answer” to the college essay. We want to nail it down—make it calculable, controllable—because that makes it feel less scary. The problem, of course, is that no one can know “The Answer” to your college essay without knowing your story; that’s a path you have to walk. The best you can hope for from others are general observations, personal experiences, and lessons learned. If you go looking for hard-and-fast rules—if you treat the essay like a minefield of potential faux pas or a formula you have to fill—you’ll cheat yourself out of your story, and you’ll miss the chance to show colleges who you are.

So, commit to yourself and the discovery of your truth. Ignore any sweeping generalizations or rigid rules that you hear. To help you, I’ve compiled seven pieces of common “wisdom” that I want you to question. In each case, I want you to question the misleading rule and focus more on the intent behind it. While the rules may be flashy distractors, the intent is always the same: to help you lean into your story of personal growth.

“Never write about other people”
I hear this all the time, and this is definitely not true. If it were, the Common App wouldn’t include prompt 4 (“Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way”). 

The reason people caution you against writing about others is because they don't want you to write only about others. At the end of the day, it is your personality, value system, and character that you’re trying to showcase—not someone else’s. If you dedicate all 650 words to an important person in your life, then you’re not leaving enough for yourself, and colleges can’t get to know you. But if you discuss someone who had an impact on you and springboard that into a discussion of gratitude, a questioning of previously held ideas, or an exploration of how you have changed in response to this person, then you have an essay that evidences your values and character.

“You have to have a catchy hook”
This one is true-ish. You definitely don’t want to bore your reader to death with stale openers like, “I was born on a chilly February evening in 2006” or, “The purpose of this essay is to establish my natural affinity for team sports.” Please do not do that. 

However… A myopic pursuit of “The One Hook” can be just as bad. The opening line is important, but it’s not the actual meat of your essay; if you worship at the altar of “The One Hook,” you end up distracting yourself from the actual substance of your story. More often than not, overemphasizing the first line makes it feel contrived, disingenuous, or more bluntly: cheesy. 

I suggest an alternative practice with my students. Just write the story! You don’t have to stress about how you start it; you only have to be honest. The hook will emerge from that. More often than not, a line will pop out part-way through that makes for an awesome opener, and it never feels forced.

“Write about a hardship you’ve overcome”
Everyone has hardship, and it takes different forms. Whether it’s difficulty with school or the death of a relative, your hardships are real. With this one, though, it’s all about the approach. If you go hunting for the most impressive tragedy in your life for your college essay, it will read like a soap opera designed to make the reader pity you. Trying to write a sob story is dishonest and manipulative, and your reader can 100% feel that. If that person is deciding whether or not to let you into their school, I almost guarantee you they won’t (I mean, would you?).

Instead, reflect on one of the biggest ways that you’ve grown as a person. Be honest. Be vulnerable. Be real. Connect that to a specific life moment that prompted that personal growth. If you do, you’ll find that somewhere underneath all of that lies a challenge, because there is always something you have to overcome on the path to self improvement. But since you’re being authentic and reflecting on how you have matured rather than how the world is against you, it will play much, much better with your audience.

“Never write about a hardship you’ve overcome”
Okay, so, also no. Forcing the tragedy angle is a form of dishonesty, but pretending hard things have never happened is just as bad. My advice here is the same as above: focus on the moments in life that have demanded the most growth from you. Hardship will be a natural part of that story, and if you are comfortable talking about it, don’t be afraid of it. Ultimately, if you tell your truth and focus on the lessons that you took from the experience, your audience will see the challenge as a motivator—not the main character.

“Show, don’t tell”
This one is half true. “Show, don’t tell” is a classic mantra to help students write vivid scenes, and you should practice this! “Showing” looks like using the five senses instead of narrating something from a distance. Consider the following versions of the same idea:

Sentence 1: “Every morning, I hiked up my backpack and sprinted to the corner of Mayfair and Thompson, arriving in gasps just as the bus pulled up to the curb.”

Sentence 2: “Every morning, I barely made it on time to catch the bus.”

Sentence 1 is more memorable, and that matters. But remember that you can’t show everything; some things should just be told. For instance, if you’re writing about an internship in Chicago and you “show” every single detail, then you’ll consume all 650 of your words just describing the airport and the plane ride. The trick is to identify the most important events to your story—the moments worth focusing on—and zoom in on those.

“Use the fanciest words in the thesaurus”
No. Just no. Word variety is great, of course; you don’t want your writing to sound one-dimensional. But when you decide to go Googling synonyms, pick a word that you know. Don’t just go with the thing that has the most syllables to sound smart, because it always makes you sound the opposite. If you don’t use “sesquipedalian” when you talk, it sounds juvenile to use it when you write. (Fun fact: “sesquipedalian” means long-winded or characterized by the use of long words. So…. don’t be that.) 

“List every one of your greatest accomplishments”
Are you selling something? No? Then don’t give your audience an exhaustive list of amazing features. At best, it sounds like a 90s QVC segment. At worst, it sounds desperate. (If you don’t know what QVC is, let’s turn this into a learning moment.)

The fact is that colleges don’t want to hear what you’ve done; your resume and activities list already show that. They’re far more interested in who you are, and that can only be expressed in the essay. So instead of listing your six soccer trophies, three hundred volunteer hours, class presidency, and that time you got the lead in the school play, pick one thing and talk about how it changed you.

Talking about an achievement is okay if it’s part of your story of growth. Maybe winning class president was what urged you to become a more inclusive classmate and a better listener. Or maybe you tried out for a play on a whim and it led to you discovering a new passion, boosting your self confidence and ultimately earning you a lead role. In these examples, the achievement is just a detail in a larger story about you learning to be a better person. So you don’t have to ignore your accomplishments, but they shouldn’t be the focus—your character should.

Takeaways
If there is one true lesson that unites all of this pieces of advice, it is this: be honest. Always. Trying to write a "good" essay is a trap; the second you sacrifice what is real for what you think "sounds good," it ceases to be good at all. It's a bit of a paradox, but it's true. The secret to a good essay is a true story—one that talks about a moment of personal growth and that isn't afraid to be a little ugly, to be a little raw.