“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
“Call me Ishmael.”
You’ll likely recognize these as the famous opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities, Pride and Prejudice, and Moby Dick, respectively. They represent classic and unforgettable tales spun by some of history’s greatest masters of language. While you may not have the next Dickens, Austen, or Melville lurking among your students, college application essays offer students a chance to show off their writing chops and leave an impact on a specific set of readers—admission officials. As a college counselor, you can foster the penning of brilliant essays by understanding their purpose, what they should include, and what makes them stand out. Here’s how!
Why college application essays matter
Say an admission official is reviewing the applications of two seemingly equally qualified applicants. Their grades, GPAs, and class rank are nearly identical. When numbers aren’t enough, a well-written essay often determines who is accepted and who isn’t. Outstanding essays can also shed a favorable light on students with otherwise average credentials, breathing life into an otherwise one-dimensional application.
The importance of a gripping and memorable narrative cannot be underestimated. Essays allow students to elaborate on things like extracurricular activities, leadership roles, and personal experiences that will showcase how they’ll be both academically successful and positive additions to the student body. They can also help admission officials gauge an applicant’s overall level of maturity, intellect, and preparedness for college life.
Related: 15 Helpful Tips to Make Your Admission Essays Shine
What makes a compelling essay
While high school and college counselors must understand the significance of essays to help their students craft them, Keith Berman, a certified education planner and President and Founder of Options for College, recommends going one step further. “Know how to write and be willing to write an essay of your own just to show students it is possible,” says Berman. “Know your grammar and understand narrative [voice].” The types of essay questions your students will encounter vary by school, but the primary tenets of successful essays and the modus operandi for writing them are relatively constant.
The heart of an application essay
First and foremost, students must be themselves. Devising elaborate falsified accounts of some harrowing, life-changing experience probably won’t hold up because it will read as disingenuous. “Some of the best essays I have read have been by students who have really revealed themselves,” says Catherine Marrs, a certified college counselor at Marrs College Admission Advisors. “They give the reader real insight into their heart, such as a student’s love and admiration for a sibling with a serious physical disability, or students who reveal their own vulnerability and can laugh at themselves.” Counselors who have gotten to know their students should be able to read their essays and spot insincerity, affectations, and blatant works of fiction.
Likewise, students should write in their own voice and avoid employing a contrived vocabulary or an unnatural style. Students should write clearly, coherently, and intelligently in a way that reflects their natural writing ability at its best. If the writing is forced, it will fail. Consider asking your students for writing samples before they begin to get a better sense of how their personalities normally come across on paper. From here, you can better help them shape their new essays based on your insight. “A college counselor is a guide, not a writer of the student’s essay,” says Sandra Bramwell, Director of Versan Educational Services. “We inspire stories within them to come out and read for the essence of their souls, their characters.” So what are some of the specific ways in which counselors can help students hone their essays to perfection without taking over them entirely?
Related: How to Find Your Strengths for College Application Essays
The mechanics of an essay
This list is by no means exhaustive, but with a little diligence, ingenuity, and your help, even the most writing-averse student can conduct a symphony of words that will wow the admission committee. Here are a few tips to help you guide students to their best work.
- From beginning to end: A strong introduction and conclusion are vital to any essay. Student essays should have engaging introductions. Admission officials are pressed for time, so getting to the point and seizing interest straightaway is a must. On the other end, conclusions should bring an essay to a logical and emphatic ending. The final paragraph should not summarize but instead stress what makes them attractive candidates for admission. It’s an opportunity to leave one last impression, so it needs to be a good one.
- Stay on track: Students also need to be reminded to pay attention to the essay prompt itself. It may seem obvious, but students need to answer the question and stay on topic. It can be easy to go off on a tangent and never return to the subject at hand. Even if a student doesn’t like the question, it still must be answered directly. The essay should be so clear in its intent that anyone reading it could infer the question without knowing it.
- Clean it up: Essays should be an impeccable demonstration of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. A missing period or misplaced comma could end up speaking louder than the words themselves. Vocabulary should also be neither overextended nor elementary. A student may not describe an influential mentor as “garrulous,” but perhaps he was “verbose” as opposed to “chatty.” Let students know that these small but critical details will benefit them greatly.
Playing the role of guide and editor
In addition to guiding students during their early drafts, counselors should play an informed and objective role as editors of student application essays. College counselors may also have a more in-depth understanding of the college admission machine and what gets a student plucked from a conveyor belt of applicants. Over time, they understand which essays get students accepted and which essays don’t work, so they know what attributes to watch for. Marrs sums it up by offering these tips for counselors:
- Work with students to help them select the prompt that best gives them a platform to share more about who they really are and understand what the colleges are looking for in an essay response.
- Help students brainstorm ideas and keywords. Encourage them to try an unconventional writing style if it works for them, like writing a comical essay if they have an affinity for humor.
- Give students very pointed feedback when you edit their work, such as “I got easily distracted while reading, you need to hook your reader,” or, “I got lost during the first paragraph; you need to be more clear in your wording here.”
Tempting as it may be, no one reviewing a student’s application essay—including you—should write, rewrite, or over-edit any portion of it. It’s doing a disservice to the student, who should have the opportunity to improve their writing through the process. Every student will meet college-level writing differently. Bramwell echoes that last piece of advice. “The student’s voice is real and that is why it’s always refreshing to read essays after 16 years of counseling because I don’t know what I’ll get!” she says. “I try to stay trendy with my students and read a lot to inform me of what appeals to them at this stage in their lives.”
Related: College Application Proofreading Tips From an Editor–in–Chief
Helping students create a piece of writing they can be proud of and feel confident in is an important part of college admission. By gently coaxing from them the best of their own ideas in their own words, you’ll help them showcase their true self to admission committees. They need honest and insightful feedback that will help them shape those ideas into something extraordinary.
This is just the start of all the content we have on helping students master writing. Provide them with more resources from Our Best Advice for Writing Your College Application Essays.
