One-on-One College Admission and Essay Coaching
If you’re like most people, when you sit down to write your application essay, this is what’s going through your mind:
“What do I need to write to make this school admit me? If I just say something clever or deep enough, I might convince them to let me in.”
There are three reasons you’re thinking this way:
1. You’ve never written a personal essay before. You’ve written analytical essays, but no one has asked you to write a serious essay about yourself.
2. You’re stressed. Your parents and friends are telling you that this moment is going to determine the rest of your life, and you don’t want to mess up.
3. You know or you’ve heard of someone who got in to a fancy school with a clever essay — or you’ve read one of the countless books on “essays that worked.”
It’s this third factor that causes the most harm. Because you’re feeling unprepared and stressed, you think you should just write what schools “want to hear” and follow the “dos and don’ts of college essays.” This approach leads students to misrepresent themselves, embarrass themselves, and submit essays that they know have no connection to their lived experience — and that ultimately make readers cringe.
There’s another way to approach this. Write something real. Spend some time reflecting on your life, and then sit down and put your thoughts into language that’s clear and direct.
It’s Not A Test
The personal essay is utterly unlike every other aspect of the application process.
If you want to increase your GPA, you can work harder in your classes. If you want to raise your SAT or ACT, take a test prep course. If you want to improve your resume, participate in more extracurriculars. So, everyone naturally asks, how do you nail your application essays?
We believe the question itself is misguided. The personal essay isn’t something that can be hacked. If you treat it that way, your essay will inevitably bring your overall application down. Why? Because you’ll demonstrate to the admissions officer that you haven’t taken their questions seriously. You haven’t stopped and really thought about what you’ve learned in your life up to now.
If you look closely at the prompts on all the major applications, you’ll see that they’re refreshingly honest attempts to encourage you to write about yourself. They’re not a test. They’re a genuine opportunity to tell the admissions committee something they don’t already know after reading the rest of your application.
What To Do — and What Not To Do
There’s a whole range of mistakes you should avoid when writing your application essays. You shouldn’t lie. You shouldn’t beg. You shouldn’t boast. You shouldn’t wait until the last minute and submit something full of careless errors. This is all commonsense advice that anyone could give you.
But the striking thing is that once you get beyond these obvious points, there’s a single factor that distinguishes a good personal essay from a bad one. It all comes down to this: Does the applicant appear to be reflecting honestly about their personal experience, or are they lapsing into cliché and saying what they think they should be saying?
The vast majority of essays fall into the latter category. They’re guilty – in terms of content or style (or both) – of sounding generic and not demonstrating any kind of independent thought.
If you write an essay that’s generic in terms of content, it means you draw obvious conclusions from your experience. You say something predictable that the admissions committee has read a thousand times. Of course, it’s understandable that as a teenager, you feel a pressure to conform – but conformity won’t help you here.
If you write an essay that’s generic in terms of style, it means you use flowery language and predictable storytelling to describe your experience. Your writing sounds cutesy or sentimental, and you include irrelevant details because you think that’s what “good writing” entails. Again, students fall into this trap all the time.
How do you avoid coming across as generic in your personal essay? You have to think before you write. You have to stop and be patient; you have to be humble and accept your limits and shortcomings; you have to wonder what makes your experience different from other people’s; you have to be honest, even if it makes you uncomfortable (especially if it makes you uncomfortable).
If you spend time thinking before you write, you’ll eventually hit on an idea that feels so true to your experience that the writing itself becomes secondary. You’ll know you have something important to say, and this will give you the confidence to put your thoughts on the page without embellishment. You’ll end up writing something that no one else could have written, which is exactly what the admissions committee is hoping you’ll do.
So How Do We Help You Write a Real College Essay?
We pair you with a college essay coach who not only has the curiosity, patience, and understanding to sit with you and lead you through your ideas, but who can also help you become a more effective writer. Not many coaches can do this; usually people with strong interpersonal skills aren’t great writers, and people who can write aren’t the best at communication. That’s why we’re a small, self-selecting group who possess and value this particular combination of skills in providing college essay help one-on-one.
The early sessions involve intense questioning, gentle pushing, and interpersonal connecting. You and your college admissions coach will engage in a lot of back-and-forth well before you get anything down on paper. You’ll learn how to be more honest with yourself than you thought possible, and you’ll eventually latch on to a genuinely original idea.
Once you’ve spent time developing your personal narrative, your college essay coaching sessions will focus more on the mechanics of writing. You may notice that your coach becomes tougher or more critical at this point, but don’t worry; this often happens when you switch to the more tangible part of the process (and it’s a sign that the two of you have developed trust and rapport). On the other hand, if you have a lot of anxiety around writing, your coach will give you a set of exercises to help you become comfortable with the uncertainty that is a core component of written communication.
The application process is a lot more competitive than it used to be. More students than ever have impressive GPAs, high SATs, and dazzling resumes – so the essay has become the best opportunity you have to distinguish yourself. To succeed, you can’t just follow some college essay dos and don’ts. You need to do the slow, challenging work of thinking through your experience, working out what makes you unique, and communicating it honestly, clearly, and directly on the page.
The upside to all this is that you stand to learn a lot from the experience – much more than from other parts of the application – and you’ll find it intensely gratifying to submit something you’re proud of before moving on to the next stage of your life.
If all this resonates with you, please contact us to take advantage of our one-on-one college admissions and essay coaching. The college of your dreams awaits!