Why You Shouldn’t Write Your College Essay in One Night

It happens to everyone. You have an essay due in a month, and somehow you never quite get to it. A week slips by, then another, then another, and the next thing you know, you’re pulling an all-nighter. You’re up till 5am the next day making sure you reach the word count, and you get it in just on time. What a relief!

While this may be a decent idea for one of your classes in high school - and it may even work better than writing your essay in advance sometimes - it’s a terrible idea for the college essay. Here are the three main reasons why you shouldn’t write this all-important 650-word essay just before the deadline.

You need to stop and be patient to write a good college essay

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: the college essay is unlike any other essay you’ve written before. When you write a paper for one of your classes in high school, you’re discussing a book or a poem or a historical period; when you write your college essay, you’re discussing yourself. And it’s infinitely harder to come up with a compelling story about yourself than to write a standard high school essay.

Sure, when you’re writing a regular paper just before the deadline, the adrenaline kicks in, and you churn out something that works. You probably feel good to be up in the middle of the night, because you’re finally getting the work done, and you may even feel inspired because of the urgency of the situation. But it doesn’t work this way for the college essay. To write a quality essay about yourself, you need to stop, be patient, and reflect on some aspect of your life and your development.

You simply cannot do this at the last minute. If you try, you’ll inevitably write something riddled with clichés, and your application will suffer. There’s no getting around it: someone who writes their college essay in one night will perform worse than someone who writes it over the course of a couple of months.

You’d never complete any other part of the college application in one night

Could you imagine anyone telling you to study for the SAT or ACT the night before the test? Of course not! The standard advice is to do extensive preparation before the exam (test prep courses, individual tutoring, practice tests, etc.).

So why would anyone consider writing their college essay in one night? The reason is that the college essay is the single most underestimated part of the college application. People spend four years on their GPA and extracurriculars, many months on the SAT/ACT, and they leave their college essay to the last minute.

But the college essay is assigned a grade by admissions officers, and it’s frequently the tiebreaker that determines whether you get into a top college or not. If you write it just before the deadline, you’re essentially wasting all the effort you’ve put into the other parts of your application.

It’s okay to write your college essay in one night - as long as you do it well before the deadline

What happens if you’re the type of person who feels they can’t work on an essay except when the adrenaline is pumping? In that case, we have a suggestion: pull an all-nighter well before the deadline. Write your essay in one night (just as you would if it were due the next day), and then use your work as the basis for your self-exploration moving forward.

This approach has two advantages: first, you’ll avoid the situation we’ve discussed above, and second, you’ll be doing a useful brainstorming exercise. Your essay won’t be in good enough shape to submit, but it will force you to reflect about yourself - and you’ll find it easier to develop a regular routine around your college essay now that you’ve gotten started.

Finally, if you do suffer from intense procrastination around essay writing, and you’re worried this will impact your college application, our college essay coaches are experts at suggesting ways to break the habit, so feel free to get in touch!