What do colleges look for in an essay?  

• Growth: Colleges want students who are self-aware and humble. When mistakes are made, they are not afraid to take ownership of those mistakes and learn from them.
• Intellectual Curiosity: Colleges are looking for people who will engage with challenging ideas and offer new perspectives, both in the classroom and outside of it.
• Engagement: Your essay is an opportunity to demonstrate what kind of community member you are and will continue to be on campus and in the world;
• Self-direction: Colleges want to see applicants who are emotionally and cognitively ready to make the transition from a passive learner to someone who can craft their own vision, plan for what they want to achieve and work toward achieving their goal on their own terms. 

What else makes for a perfect college essay?

• Answer the Prompt: For your essay to succeed, take the time to understand the question being asked;
• Make yourself the main character of your essay;
• Grab the reader’s attention with a compelling introduction;
• Keep the reader’s eyes glued to the screen by telling a good story from beginning to end;
• Be introspective and take chances: Go deep!
• Make sure the length of your essay is appropriate;

But first, why is the essay required?

Why do college admissions require an essay?

The truth is, essays aren’t important for all colleges. Even if the college uses the Common App, colleges may make the essay optional, or they may not give you space for an essay at all. Those colleges will be looking more seriously at other factors, such as your transcript and GPA. 

Essays help colleges create a more well-rounded class

However, many colleges ask for an essay because they are trying to create a diverse, interesting, intelligent college class full of students who are, well, diverse, interesting, and intelligent. Colleges want to understand what it is that you would be bringing to the campus community if you were accepted. They already know about your academic achievements, since they have your transcript, academic awards/honors, and test scores (if they are required and if you choose to submit them). They know the bare bones of your community involvement, since you have to tell them your extracurricular activities, and they have some idea of the role you play in the classroom and school community, thanks to your letters of recommendation. 

Essays allow colleges to learn more about you

But what’s missing from all of that is, well, you. Your voice, your values, your perspective. Your college essay is your opportunity to advertise to colleges, in your own words, what qualities, values, and perspectives you would be bringing with you to college. What niche will you fill in the campus community? What role will you play? 

Your Common App essay, or personal statement, is only 650 words, so you don’t have room to tell your whole life story or try to hit upon every possible attribute that you would bring to a college. As you look through this list of what college admissions look for in an essay, consider which of these points you would best be able to showcase or you feel most proud of in yourself.

The perfect college essay shows growth

Many people think that, since this is an application, it is important to only show their strengths and to hide any weaknesses they may have or mistakes they may have made. That is not a good strategy. College admissions look for essays that show that you are capable of reflection and growth. Colleges aren’t looking for people who are perfect, and they certainly aren’t looking for people who stubbornly think they are perfect.

Colleges are looking for students who can grapple with challenging new ideas. They are looking for people who are aware and humble when they make mistakes and are not afraid to take ownership of those mistakes and learn from them. If you are afraid to be vulnerable on the page, it will be quite difficult to show that awareness, humility, bravery, and growth. 

Intellectual Curiosity: Don’t be afraid to be critical!

College is school, after all. Colleges are looking for people who will engage with challenging ideas and offer new perspectives, both in the classroom and outside of it. One way to show that you have an analytical mind is by offering some sort of critique of society. Instead of just writing a story about how you ran for prom king, for example, try weaving that story together with a critique of the very notion of prom and prom royalty. 

Your essay will be even stronger if you can tie your story and critique back to some sort of book/article you’ve read, podcast you’ve heard, or show you’ve seen. Remember: the ultimate goal of education is to train your brain to think critically about the world around you. You can show that you have the potential to be a strong critical thinker by applying  your analytical skills to your own life, your own values, and your own experiences, in order to draw interesting (but perhaps imperfect—see point above) conclusions from those experiences.

Use your essay to show engagement with your community

Colleges want scholars, yes, but they are also trying to cultivate a thriving community. Every community needs people of different sorts who bring different skills, abilities, perspectives, and backgrounds to the party. Communities need contributors: people who will jump in to solve problems, to expand opportunity, and to generally be helpful citizens. Education is about training you to be a change-maker in the context of some sort of broader community.

Your essay is an opportunity to demonstrate what kind of community member and citizen you are and will continue to be on campus and in the world. If you are someone who genuinely values being engaged with your community, whether that community consists of your classmates, your neighbors, your teammates, or another sort of group all together, use your essay to explore that side of yourself.

What college admissions look for in a perfect college essay is self-direction

There is certainly nothing wrong with showing up to school, work, practice, or a volunteer position and following the instructions given to you in order to achieve some sort of goal. People tell you want to do, and you do it. A teacher gives you an assignment, and you complete it to the best of your ability. You learn the rules, and you follow them.

However, as you shift from high school to college, your notion of success will (hopefully!) begin to shift as well. Instead of receiving some sort of external reward for faithfully following directions, you should begin to craft your own vision and plan for what you want to achieve and how you’ll know when you’ve been successful and work toward achieving it on your own terms. 

Colleges want to see applicants who are emotionally and cognitively ready to make this transition. One way you can demonstrate that readiness is by relating a story of an endeavor you undertook that was self-directed. It can be informal. Maybe you realized one day that you haven’t interacted with many people from other cultures so you set about looking for meaningful ways to do so. Maybe after reading Pride and Prejudice for class, you realized that Jane Austen novels offer a relevant critique of modern society, so you decided on your own that you were going to read every Jane Austen novel ever written.

Maybe you work as volunteer as a tutor and noticed that students weren’t doing their homework because they didn’t have internet access at home, so you created a campaign to get them hotspots. Whatever it may be, writing about some sort of self-motivated project can be a great way to show colleges that you are ready for a more mature educational experience.

What do colleges look for in an essay?  It’s the wrong question

Many students wonder what college admissions look for in an essay. The better question to ask is what do college admissions look for in an applicant.

• Colleges want students who will be successful on their campus both academically and socially.
• They want students who are intellectually curious and hungry to learn and who will bring a unique perspective to the institution,
• Colleges are looking for students who will care about their classmates and invest their time, energy, and emotions into making the campus community stronger.

If your college essay can show that you are that type of student, you are off to a very good start.

See our Guide for the Common App Essay for more tips on how to make your application stand out to admission officers.

Need help in brainstorming the perfect college essay?

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In addition to our one-on-one counseling, Great College Advice extends its support through one of the most active and resource-rich Facebook Groups for college-bound students and their families: College Admissions Experts. With over 100,000 members—students, parents, and experienced counselors—this vibrant forum offers peer support and expert advice like no other. 

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Here’s how the prompt is worded on the Common App: Discuss an accomplishment or event or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.  

The best Common App essays show how you have grown as a person over time and how you reflect on that personal growth. Great news: Common App essay prompt 5 makes it easy for you to do just that!  On its surface, this prompt seems to be asking about a specific moment in your life. But really, this prompt wants a before-and-after. Tell the college admissions officers about one way you’ve grown as a person, demonstrate that you are aware of that period of personal growth, and be able to reflect on it in a mature way. If you can do all that, you’re well on your way to writing a strong Common App personal essay! 

Briefly Explain Your Story 

At first glance, this prompt doesn’t seem to have a story at the heart of it. However, the focus is on a transition, which implies a description of “before” and “after” this event, accomplishment, or realization. So, you should retell the story briefly to help your reader understand the transition. But it must also be interesting for the reader. You don’t need to think of a story that is heroic or grandiose.  While an “accomplishment” might bring about personal growth, sometimes the most mundane events or off-handed conversations can lead us to reevaluate ourselves or the world around us.

Catalyst that Sparked Personal Growth and Understanding 

The story is not the heart of your essay–it is the pivot between how you thought or felt before the accomplishment, event, or realization, and how you thought or felt after it. You need to define the transitional moment so that your reader can visualize this change.   As we grow older, we find that in some situations we feel—or are treated—as children, while in other situations we feel more like adults. Sometimes this transition is subtle, as in how other adults begin to treat you with greater seriousness in restaurants and other public places. Sometimes, however, this transition can seem more abrupt, as in the day you get your driver’s license or register to vote for the first time. Religion often marks this transition (first communions, bar mitzvahs), as do particular cultures (Quinceanera, debutante balls). This prompt asks you to examine more closely your own transition from childhood to adulthood.    

Accomplishments or Events 

The transition to adulthood is marked by both accomplishments and events. An accomplishment is something that you achieved through hard work. An event, on the other hand, is a happening in which you may have been more passive but nonetheless marks a very important milestone in your life. Some of these accomplishments and events are formal (e.g., learning Hebrew and reciting the Torah before your congregation in a ceremony before your friends and family) or informal. College admissions officers do not care so much about the exact nature of these accomplishments or events. Rather they care about how you tell an interesting story about your transition to adulthood. 

Realization  

Unlike an accomplishment or event, a realization can have no outward manifestation that others can see or experience. You may, instead, experience some sort of internal “Aha!” moment where your understanding changes. You see yourself—or others—in a completely new light. Perhaps you shared this realization with others, or perhaps it is one that is intensely private. But the change or transition is real, because it leads to a new and different understanding of yourself and the world around you. 

Reflect on How You Have Grown 

The real meat of your personal growth Common App essay is your reflection based on this brief anecdote from your life. By thinking deeply about what happened after this event, accomplishment, or realization, you can give your reader a sense of your increasing maturity and your priorities, values, and personality. High school is a time in life when we make great strides on the road from childhood to adulthood. This road is punctuated with various moments that lead us to reflect on how we are growing and changing.  The personal growth prompt invites you to identify one of these important moments and then discuss this growth and change.  College admissions officers want to understand the “real you” underneath all the academic and other data on your college application. This prompt is a great way to show them who you really are. 

Additional Resources for Common App Essay Prompt 5 

In this informative video, Great College Advice provides more details on how to tackle the personal growth essay prompt.  

Need More Help Writing Your Common App Essay? 

At Great College Advice, we offer a wide range of services designed to help students with every aspect of the college application process, including writing and revising your Common App essay. Our team of experienced counselors and writing coaches can provide personalized feedback, guidance, and support to help you craft an essay that is compelling, authentic, and effective. Contact us today for a free, no-obligation consultation! 

The post Common App Essay Prompt #5: Personal Growth first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Students are reluctant to write about negative experiences

Every year, after working with applicants on how they want to introduce themselves through the Common App personal essay, we take a look at the prompts, the framework for their self-reflection.

And every year, as much as I’m fond of the “challenge, setback, or failure” prompt, and have one or two students who could make good use of it,  I’ve only worked with one student who chose it. Year in and year out, they see “failure” and think, “nuh-uh, I’m not falling for that trap!”

All our lives, we are taught to smile, give a firm handshake, and put our best foot forward; conversely, we are told – especially in making a first impression in everything from an interview to a date to an application – never to accentuate or even mention negatives. That’s why there’s the cliche/joke of someone in a job interview who, when asked, “What’s your biggest weakness?,” replies, “I just work too darn hard” or “I care too much.” That is, their only negative is an extreme positive.

So, as much as I like the prompt, and the boldness it demands, I understand that college applicants feel like it’s a lose-lose. Either they point out something “bad” about themselves, or they seem like they’re being fake by flipping the question around to point out how awesome they are.

Who, in particular, might be wise to choose Common App prompt 2?

• A student who had a rough academic freshman or sophomore year for any number of legitimate reasons – illness, an unexpected switch to a new school, family turmoil … –  and has since steadily improved.
• A student who had an injury or illness that ended a career in a serious sport, dance, or other physical pursuit and found another great outlet for their skills, interests, and genius!
• A student who got in trouble somewhere along the line –  and for whom colleges will undoubtedly be informed of said trouble – who wants to address their misstep. (Warning: do NOT try this without consulting your school counselor!)

The Common App essay is the place where you show colleges something of who you are that they won’t see in your transcript or test scores – you introduce the actual human being that is you. It’s where you show them your skill as a thoughtful self-reflective writer; and where you show them your emotional intelligence, vulnerability, and path of growth into adulthood. What better way to do all that than to step up and address a challenge, setback, or, yes, FAILURE? Go ahead and write a draft of it. Even if you decide not to use it, it will still inform your essay.

Need Help with the Common App Essay? 

Need some help writing a great college essay for the Common App? Having difficulty finding a good Common App essay topic? Please contact us for a free consultation. The team at Great College Advice can help you brainstorm, structure, and edit an excellent piece of writing that will help you stand out in the admissions process. At Great College Advice, we provide personalized college consulting focused on helping make the process of preparing, selecting, and applying to college more successful, less stressful, and more fun.  

The post Don’t Be Afraid of (The Failure) Prompt #2 of the Common App Essay first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

How do you write the perfect college essay? This is a complicated question.

In this post, we will focus on your audience.

No matter what kind of writing you are doing, you must consider for whom you are writing it. Who’s your audience? This is a good question to ask even as you write your high school papers. If your answer is, “My teacher,” then you may not fare as well as you might if you imagined about writing a paper (about a Shakespearean play, for example, or the causes of the Civil War) for your mother.

I’m serious. If you write for your teacher, you are going to presume too much knowledge on the part of your reader. You’re going to forget to tell the story, neglect to connect the analytical dots and assume that your teacher (who already knows the causes of the Civil War) will fill in the blanks. But too many blanks make for a holey paper.

So, write it for your mom. She can understand your academic point (because she’s a smart woman and she loves you), but you may have to lead her through it more methodically, and you may have to explain things a bit more carefully. And a methodical, careful paper is going to be better than a holey one.

So for whom are you writing your college essays? Good question. The answer is “some anonymous reader of unknown age or life experience whose job it is to find some reason to say no to my college application.”  Are you starting to tense up? Actually, you don’t have to imagine your audience in such a negative light. But you do have to keep in mind some basic characteristics of your audience. These characteristics will help you write a more methodical, careful paper (and not a holey one).

Your reader is tired and easily bored

It’s the dead of winter and he is curled up in front of his space heater, drinking tea, trying to get through as many applications as he possibly can tonight before he starts all over again in the morning. Your essay is the 65^th he has read today, and very few have been memorable. He yearns to be entertained.

Also, he wants to see something fresh and interesting. He wants to appreciate a creative twist on the same-old essay prompts. He wants something that reads well…like a mystery novel, a juicy gossip column, or at least a well-crafted feature in the Chicago Tribune. So punch it up.

One of the best ways to do this is to pay close attention to the first and last lines of your perfect college essay. The first sentence or two, especially, is worthy of your careful consideration: give your reader some reason to sit up and take notice.

Your reader may scan your essay to see if it’s worth reading carefully 

Again, these essays all begin to sound the same after a while. So it’s natural to imagine your reader scanning it first to discern whether this is just one more formulaic piece about the happy poor people you served at the soup kitchen one evening, or about how you saved the big game by throwing the touchdown pass in the final seconds of the game. Therefore, you can help your reader do the scanning by using some of those excellent writing devices you began learning in primary school.

Clear structure:  introduction, body, conclusion. Strong paragraph form. Clear transitions. Chronological sign posts:  “First did this, then I did that, finally I did that other thing.” You learned these techniques years ago: now is the time to deploy them.

Your reader does not have any information about your life

So assume nothing. If you’re writing about skiing, pretend your reader is an oboe player. If you are waxing eloquent about physics, assume your reader prefers poetry. Avoid using abbreviations or acronyms that may be perfectly clear to you and your friends, but may have no meaning beyond your circle. To tell someone that you passed through the IC building to go the LRC in order to work on your EE is to use language no one except someone who follows you around day-to-day could understand. 

Similarly, don’t assume that if you are writing your essay about model trains that your reader understands the difference between an STD and an HO gauge. You have to assume that the reader of your perfect college essay is educated and happy to learn new about model trains but don’t start getting technical on him or you’ll lose him (and he’ll doze off there in front of that nice, warm space heater…).

Your reader really wants to like you

Most students imagine admissions officers as really scary people. But it’s not true. Admissions folks are an interesting breed. They generally love their jobs, and they enjoy learning about young people. They see themselves not as the evil gatekeepers who take delight in rejecting applicants with a villainous cackle as they scrawl a big “deny” across your file in frog bile. Rather, they want to share their community with interesting people, and they are genuinely hunting for someone interesting like you.

So think of your reader as someone who is supportive and kind to young people. Thinking about the person who will read your essay will help as you craft it. Don’t assume too much of him, positively or negatively. Just be compassionate and understanding. Know where he is coming from. This knowledge will help you structure your piece in a way that he will appreciate, and that will give him every reason to leap up out of his chair and cry, “Finally, someone who understands me!”

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The post The Perfect College Essay–Consider Your Audience first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Describe a time when you made a meaningful contribution to others in which the greater good was your focus. Discuss the challenges and rewards of making your contribution.

Meaningful Contribution to Others

So, the story you must tell in this essay is one in which you did something that made life better for someone else. You took action to give something to someone else. That something might be material or immaterial. It could be an actual object, or it could be more like a feeling. However, this contribution must be significant—to you or to the recipient or both. Your story here is a discrete anecdote in which you improved the life of someone else.

Greater Good Was Your Focus

Community service is now considered an essential element of preparation for college admission. College admissions officers love stories in which teens perform selfless acts. But one of the paradoxes of modern secondary school life is that many teens are motivated to do service only because of a perceived “requirement,” whether explicit or implied, to add this service to your resume. This prompt specifically wants you to tell a story in which your primary motivation was the “greater good.” Admissions officers would like to see this dedication to service for the sake of service—not as a check box to tick on the way to college.

One of the most common and often least effective topics for this essay is the service you rendered as part of a school trip, mission trip, or international experience organized by others to make it easy for you to do community service. In order for these experiences to work well, you must demonstrate your own motivations. Why was this organized trip the best way for you to improve the lives of others, and how can you prove that the “greater good” was the impetus for your participation in this experience?

Challenges and Rewards

Not every attempt to improve the lives of others actually works out as intended. Sometimes the contributor encounters stumbling blocks. Sometimes they even fail miserably. This prompt invites you to evaluate your actions, and to reflect upon how well you actually were able to serve the “greater good.” Keep in mind that sometimes we gain the most through our mistakes. And, so there is no harm (and sometimes great benefit) in assessing your actions honestly and forthrightly. But if your contributions clearly and unequivocally improved the lives of others, by all means, take credit for your successes.

Mark Montgomery
Educational consultant and admissions expert

The post Coalition App essays: The "meaningful contribution" prompt first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Components of Coalition Essay

The Story

Generally, we see these essays, or “personal statements,” as having two primary components. First is the story. You have to tell your reader a story in which you are the main character. Always remember that you must be at the center of whatever you write, since the goal is for the essay to provide a multi-dimensional picture of who you are beyond the basic information that is captured on the rest of the application. Each of the prompts requires that you relay a short narrative that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Your Reflection

The second component is your reflection or analysis of your story. What does the story mean? How should we, your readers, interpret your story? Share the lessons you derived from your story, and help your reader to understand how this small event shows your values, your priorities, and your plans for the future.

As you read through these prompts and our description of how to address them. Think about those stories, those events, those anecdotes, those snippets of your own personal history that relate to the prompt. And as you remind yourself of these stories, begin to analyze what these stories say about you as a human being.

It may seem daunting at first, but remember that each of us has a unique story to tell. In fact, each of us has hundreds, even thousands of stories that make up our lives—even when we are young. So, don’t hesitate to share. In fact, some of our experiences that seem, at first, to be relatively insignificant can actually carry great weight and can help illustrate who we are, what we care about, and where we’re headed.

You and your counselor will spend much more time brainstorming and discussing possible ideas and responses to these prompts, but we wanted to get you off to a running start. If you have some ideas, be sure to jot them down and share them with your counselor when the time comes to dig into the crafting of your personal essay.

Over the next few days, we’ll post some great college advice about each of the prompts. Make sure you check in daily so you can get a head start on your essays!

Mark Montgomery
Educational consultant and admissions expert

The post Coalition Application Essays: What are they? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Here’s the prompt, along with a reflection on the keywords and phrases that are vital to answering the prompt well.

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Incomplete Without It

Generally, you want to use your essay to bring something new to your application—something that is not already evident in the other elements (transcript, recommendations, honors, activities, and the like). The focus of the background prompt essay, then, should be something that is meaningful to you but that is not obvious. The pivot of the essay should be something that reveals something personal or unusual about you that helps the reader put you in a new perspective, or that brings to light a hidden truth about you that will give context to the rest of your application

Background

In the background prompt your background includes the context in which you live: your parentage, your community, your collective experiences.

Identity

This is how you define yourself—the labels you might use to describe who you are as a person. Again, this identity may not be readily visible, but sharing it with your reader will provide context to your application and help her understand the “real you.”

Interest

Here you might share an interest that does not appear on your list of activities or in your honors. It might be something that none of your teachers—or even your best friends—might not know about you. For example, perhaps you are hooked on zombie movies and have watched hundreds of them. Maybe you have an interest in antique automobiles or have a collection of coins or painted elephants. Absolutely anything that attracts your time and attention could be the focus of your essay.

Talent

This is similar to interest, but it usually entails developing some sort of expertise or ability. Perhaps you have taught yourself origami or how to knit—and you make things for your family and friends. Perhaps you do woodworking or calligraphy and have used this talent in some sort of interesting way. Here again, the interest would likely be invisible on your application unless you brought it up here.

Story

Note that the last word of the prompt requests that you share a story. So even in identifying the background, identity, interest, or talent that helps your reader to understand the “real you,” your essay will be considerably strengthened if you are able to relay an anecdote or short vignette that illustrates this key attribute about yourself.


Educational consultant and admissions expert

The post Great College Essays — How to Address the "Background" Prompt first appeared on College Admission Counseling.