How to Get into Duke: A Student’s Advice on College Essays

We recently interviewed a former student, David B., on his experience working on the Common App and supplemental essays. David was accepted to study at Duke University in Fall 2024, so we thought you might be interested in his responses.

Before we started meeting, I remember you were having trouble with your Common App main essay. Could you give a sense of what was going on? 

Writing my Common App essay, I started out lost. I had no clear vision of what to write about, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have known how to style it. It felt strange because I’d always been good at English in school, but going into the Common App essay, it felt like school had prepared me to write everything but a personal essay. The few drafts I was able to cobble together all felt directionless, and so my Mom and I did some research and found you. 

How did our meetings change the way you were approaching the essay?

At the start, our meetings benefitted me the most in conceptualizing and organizing my ideas. In our brainstorming exercises, you prodded me to come up with and talk through my ideas so that I could conceptualize my essay before I even started writing about it. It showed me the value of the process of brainstorming, and for the essays where I could come up with a strong concept, the writing part felt easy. Then as I wrote, you taught me how to condense my ideas to prevent rambling, and then how to put them together so that they flowed into one another. 

The Common App was by far the most grueling essay, but these same skills made approaching my other supplementals feel much more doable.  Even for the ones where I was drawing a blank, often our talks helped get me back on track. Then, when we checked over the essays you’d help me fix what didn’t work and make the essay seamless.  

A lot of people think it’s difficult to write a Common App essay unless you’ve had a major challenge or setback. But you wrote a really engaging essay that wasn’t about a setback at all. How did you do it? Feel free to discuss the content of your essay.

I think that having that very specific challenge or setback only makes the process easier at first. This is because having that distinctive event only gives the person something to write about, and they still have to put in the work to make the essay unique. But, for those without that specific experience, I think you should spend your time reflecting on your most valuable experiences and trying to tie them together. I wrote my Common App essay about my realization that by avoiding boredom and discomfort, I was preventing my growth, and how embracing the two emotions helped me avoid procrastination, break out of my shell, and get the courage to continue to seek out new and uncomfortable things. All of the things that realization helped me accomplish are very different, but by uniting them under a common theme, I was able to tell a story. Most kids looking for essay tutoring are likely high achievers and have a lot of experience to draw from. So, if you can figure out how to tie those experiences together, you’ll be set. 

You obviously put in great applications, because you’re now committed to Duke. Do you have any specific advice for people writing their Common App or supplemental essays?

I don’t know everything about this process, but here are three things I think you should avoid. First, don’t turn your essays into lists of things you’ve accomplished. Admissions officers will be able to see these things in your activities sheet on the Common Application, so when writing supplemental essays, focus only on what’s relevant to the question and your answer. Second, when it comes to writing style, strike a balance between your voice and formal style. People will tell you to let your voice shine through, but you shouldn’t write exactly how you speak. It will come across as crude. On the other hand, don’t write in cookie-cutter formal English, unless you want your essay to sound like it was written by chat GPT. I think instead write well, but try to throw your own personal flair into it. Lastly, answer the question. This one sounds simple, but it helped me a lot. Oftentimes, when my essay was feeling directionless, I’d ask myself “Does it answer the question?” and I’d realize I’d gone off into a tangent. Or, when I’d get writer's block, I’d think back to the question, and try to answer it with my next sentence, and it’d put me back on track. 

Beyond getting into Duke, what did you learn from the college essay process?

I think that the essay process, while grueling, taught me a lot. First, I learned how to write a personal essay, which is a skill that continues to follow you to graduate school and job applications. Second, it taught me how to present myself, especially in interviews and in conversations with bosses and administrators. This is because knowing how to create these essays about yourself and your experiences lets you turn your achievements into stories when talking to others, rather than just rattling off a list of successes and qualifications. Lastly, the process helped me reflect and make sense of my experiences. Being forced to think back showed me how much I’d grown since the start of high school, which ultimately made me more sure of myself and grateful for the lessons I’d learned and times I’d had along the way.