The Key to Writing an Original College Essay

Here’s a true story: back when I was an undergraduate in Australia, I was having trouble writing essays for my literature classes. For one of my early essays, I wrote about Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and I did what everyone else did: I read the poem itself, along with a few critical essays about the poem. I put my thoughts together in a paper, and I was rewarded for my efforts with a grade of 65/100.

(By the way, this isn’t as bad as it sounds. A 65 is considered a “Credit” in Australia, which corresponds to a B in the US.)

After this happened a few times, I was determined to try something new. So, when I had to write a paper on Romeo and Juliet, I didn’t read any critical essays; I just read the play. But boy did I read it! I spent hour after hour thinking deeply about the plot and the characters, and the paper that resulted was full of my own observations.

When I received a grade of 95/100, I thought someone had made a mistake. You just don’t get a 95 in Australia (an 85 is the equivalent of an A+). But then I did the same with my next paper on Great Expectations, and I got a 97/100. It wasn’t a mistake; something had clicked for me.

Believe it or not, this experience eventually formed the basis for my approach to mentoring college application essays.

The whole point of the college essay is to make your application stand out from the rest

It’s very difficult to stand out in a college application. Of course, it’s extremely important to have good grades, a high SAT/ACT score, and an impressive list of extracurriculars - but lots of students submit impressive applications that meet all of these criteria. The college essay is the only part of the application that gives you the chance to distinguish yourself from everyone else.

The conventional advice is that you should read sample essays that got students into schools like Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. But this is the single most damaging thing you can do. If you read other people’s essays, it will prevent you from discovering your own authentic story. The way I see it, it’s the equivalent of reading a critical essay on Romeo and Juliet, when you should just be reading Romeo and Juliet. What happens when you do this? You defer to what the critic says, and you stop having your own original thoughts about the play.

Similarly, if you read “essays that worked,” you’ll be tempted to copy what other people say, rather than come up with your own ideas.

To write a unique college essay, you need to do an in-depth study of yourself

Of course, there’s a difference between writing an analytical essay on Shakespeare and writing a college application essay. In the first case, the subject is Shakespeare; in the second case, the subject is you. But the differences end here. If you want to write a compelling, original college essay, you need to think long and hard about yourself, just as I thought long and hard about Romeo and Juliet when I was in college.

This is no easy task. It’s challenging and frustrating to reflect on your own past experiences when you’ve never done anything like this before. But if you’re patient with yourself, and if you put in the work, you will eventually come up with an idea for a college essay that no one else could have written.

If you read sample essays, on the other hand, your story will sound like everyone else’s, and you’ll most likely be rewarded with a B.