Toor - Write Your Way In: Crafting an Unforgettable College Admissions Essay

When Daniels dad wrote to ask me to help his son with his college admissions essay, I wanted to say no. I had stopped doing that kind of work. Then I learned that Daniel, a first-generation Chinese American, attended the exam-entrance public boarding school where I had, years before, coached cross country for a season.

Heres a confession. I was a crappy coach. Even though Id run fifty or sixty marathons and even longer races, I had never been on a team, had never run cross country, and had no idea how meets were scored. I got the job because the school was desperate; I interviewed in the morning and met with the team that afternoon.

As it turned out, I adored coaching, but I didnt give a hoot if my team won or lost. I wanted the students to love running as much as I did. I had left my job as an admissions officer at Duke University and had published a book called Admissions Confidential: An Insiders Account of the Elite College Admissions Process. Though I no longer worked in admissions, I wanted to help my runners think about their college applications and to share with them what I thought they needed to know.

More than a dozen years later, when Daniels dad contacted me, I was trying to write a novel set in a school like the one where Id briefly worked. I told Daniels dad that while I no longer did college counseling, I had an idea for an exchange of services: I would help Daniel with his essays if hed read a draft of my novel and give me critical feedback. Daniel said sure.

Daniel was at the top of his class, had perfect SAT scores and 5s on his many AP tests, was Student Senate president, was captain of the Science Bowl, played trombone, and did immunology research in the department of surgery at Duke. I knew he would be a strong applicant.

And he had already done a lot of work. Daniel sent me drafts of polished essays. He wrote his Common App essay about taking walks with his grandfather when he was nine. His Yale short-answer supplement provided an account of how he had lobbied his school to serve healthier food in the cafeteria. Heres the email I sent after reading his drafts.

Daniel,

What I believe about writing is that we all pretty much know whats wrong with our own work. We convince ourselves what weve written is okay because its so hard to write well and we want to be done. Or we decide that maybe no one else will notice the problems.

Let me be clear: theres nothing wrong with these essays. If I were to rate them on a scale of 1 to 5 (as admissions officers do), theyd each get a 3. Theyre fine. Youve clearly worked very hard on these. But a different kind of work is required when you write in the first-person personal.

These essays are generic and clichexactly as you feared. The problems might be less the topic than your approach, which feels like youre trying to write what you think they want to read. The best essays are rarely about how students have succeeded or achieved. You have your teachers and your list of activities for that. Excellent essays show the reader how youve struggled, or describe mistakes youve made. They express what youre fired up about, how you think, and show the ways youve grownstuff thats small and close, rather than big, sweeping this is how great I am kinds of things. Your Yale supplement doesnt do much to let me know who you are as a person. I could get everything I need from the essay in one sentence: Im a leader. That message will come through in the other parts of your application.

The Common App essay, while admirably polished, falls fully into the dead grandparent clich (I wrote my own Yale application essay about my dead grandma, but it was a lot easier to get in back then). Im more interested in who you are nowyour intellectual interests, your passions, your family, your quirks, the things that make you who you areand not what happened when you were nine.

There are nearly 30,000 kids applying to Yale. Most of them are more than qualified to get in. They tend to look identical in terms of test scores, grades, courses taken, extracurricular activities. The admissions officers have to wade through piles of files. Think about what you can say that will interest an exhausted reader. How can you reveal yourself in ways that will make her want to argue to admit you instead of the 29,999 other applicants? A good essay will be conversational, rich in vivid and specific details, and could only be written by one personyou. In your unique voice. Im not getting that from these.

Its up to you to decide what you want to do. Im willing to work with you, but as I told your dad, I see my job as teaching kids how to write better, not just coming up with an essay for a college application.