Admissions Officer Advice: Making Your Essays Shine

Webinar Transcription

2024-07-22 – Admissions Officer Advice: Making Your Essays Shine

Anesha: Hi, everyone, and welcome to tonight’s webinar. My name is Anesha Grant. I am a senior advisor at CollegeAdvisor, and I will be your moderator today. Tonight’s webinar is admissions officer advice on making your essays shine before we get started. Just to orient everyone with the webinar timing, our presenter will share some tips, resources and guidance, and then we will open up the floor to respond to your questions in a live Q and a.

On the sidebar, you can download our slides on the handouts tab, and you can start submitting your questions whenever you get ready in the Q and a tab. But 1st, let’s meet our presenter. Hi, how are you doing?

Aya: Hello? Hi, everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening. Depending on where you are in the world.

I am. I am Aya Waller-Bey. And I am the former admissions officer from Georgetown University who will be talking to you about the college admissions essays. So before we dive into that, I would love to introduce myself. So I’ve been working with CollegeAdvisor for maybe going on four years now. So I’ve got to support a lot of different types of students for a lot of different things.

different post secondary options. I am born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and that’s actually where I reside now. I went to Georgetown University for undergrad, where I studied sociology, then became an admissions officer there and did some of their multicultural recruitment. After my tenure in admissions, I went to England as a recipient of the Gates Cambridge scholarship and got my master’s in philosophy of education.

And during My time in England, I actually became a alumni reader for the Georgetown admissions office. So I got to interview students from all over Europe who are interested in attending Georgetown. And I am now finishing my PhD in sociology at the University of Michigan, where I actually studied the college admissions essay.

So I am super, super excited to be with you all this evening or this afternoon. And I look forward to answering your questions later on in the conversation.

Anesha: Thank you, I think it’ll be a great conversation before we let you get started just going to do a quick survey. So please let us know out there what grade level you are going to be in for the upcoming fall semester.

If you’re a parent or a teacher, feel free to go ahead and select other. We like to know that you are in the room. Um, I feel like I’ve asked you so many different types of essay questions. I’m trying to think of of a novel 1 to ask you in this in this process, but, um. I guess 1 question I’ll ask that may be probably an easy 1 is like, does the do the essays have a specific format that they’re supposed to follow?

Aya: Do the essays have a specific format that they’re supposed to follow? Yes. And no, and that’s actually perhaps we’ll talk a little bit more about it in the conversation. Yes, in the sense of they need to always answer the question. So that is the format answering the question. Um, but no, in a sense of, um, you know, how you begin the essay, uh, how you end the essay, there’s a lot of flexibility, um, that you, you know, that students have.

Now, students tend to follow a similar Kind of approach of like a opening, um, you know, a middle that kind of explains specific examples and then concluding with lessons learned. But there is some variability in that. Uh, so there are some similar patterns that we see in some ways that students can make their essays a little different, but we will be talking a little bit more about that in today’s conversation.

So thanks for the question.

Anesha: Of course. Yeah. Uh, thanks for answering that question while we let our poll go through. I’ll go ahead and close it. Uh, for the folks we have in the room, about 81 percent are in the 12th grade, so that makes sense that some 12th graders are ready to go. So I’m thinking about this essay.

14 percent are 11th graders and then 5%, 1 percent is a teacher or a parent. We welcome you. All right, I will stop talking and hand it over to you. I’ll be back a little bit later.

Aya: Fantastic. Again, so to really dive in and start our conversation, first and foremost, we have to establish what types of essays that students might encounter in the college application process.

So, first and foremost, and this is probably the essay you hear the most about is the college personal statement. The College Personal Statement is that one essay that you write, usually 650 words, that you submit to all of the schools on your list that is on the Common App, if you’re using the Common App, which is the most popular kind of college admissions submission platform.

Now, the College Personal Statement is the essay that you submit to the colleges that really showcase your student voice. writing skills. It really reveals depth and add context to the application. Um, in addition to your personal statement, there’s also supplemental essays or supplements as they’re often referred to.

And those are additional essays that invite students to write about a host of topics. Um, but they tend to be a little bit more school specific. So that’s often when you encounter your Why Michigan essay or why Brown essay, right? Again, unlike the personal statement supplements are required by only some colleges and universities and are used to highlight fit.

I do want to point out that a caveat is there are some universities that do not require essays at all. So, uh, just wanted to note that you could apply to some universities where they don’t have college admissions essays. But nevertheless, supplements tend to be slightly smaller in size as far as the word count.

So you might have a supplement essay that is 600 words, and you might have one that is one word, you know, describe the one, you know, the way you’re feeling right now, but one word that could be an essay. Prompt for a specific school. Okay. And then you also have a scholarship essay. Now, these are less common for specific school applications, but students might be invited to write an additional essay for merit based scholarship or grant.

You also will be applying to, or some students might be applying to scholarships that they will be drafting scholarship essays that really kind of explain why they meet the scholarship or why they will be. eligible for the scholarship or what they hope to do with the scholarship. So that is also a type of essay you might expect to write for your college application.

So in thinking about the significance of the essay, you know, it really allows you to add some personality and a unique touch to your application. Again, the essay is one of the few opportunities in the application that admissions officers get to hear directly from you. So when you kind of think about the essay there, or the application rather.

You have your high school transcript, which is a record of performance and achievement over a period of time, um, that is pretty set in stone by the time you apply. You have test scores that represent your performance on a test at a particular moment in time. Again, those scores are pretty much set when you apply, right?

You also have letters of recommendations from teachers and counselors and maybe a mentor. Uh, and those are written by other people. So when you think about your application, you have that essay and allows you to speak directly to the admissions office, right? It also provides you an opportunity to tell your story.

And you’ll you’re in your own words, because, as I mentioned, your voice is a part of the application, but you have so many other components that are speaking for you. So you get to really talk. You know, tell your story or pieces of your identity and background that may not be easily reflected in other parts of your application.

It also adds qualitative information to your application, right? Some of the other pieces I mentioned, you know, it can be a little quantitative, right? Numbers are hard data. So you get to kind of add and add some more color. And then again, it provides additional context about your background, your identity, your passions, your circumstances.

They might be able to see that you are really interested in the environment because of all of the clubs on your list that reflects interest in the environment, but you really get to talk about why and the motivations and what you hope that passion would translate into in the future. You can do that in an essay.

So those are some of the elements that, you know, highlight the significance of the college admissions essay. Now, what factors make for a great essay, right? And we often get this question where students are really grappling with, like, how to stand out. There’s tens and thousands of students applying to college every year.

Like, how do I get to, you know, make myself stand out in the application pool? Well, a great college essay, again, it is, you really focused and thoughtful, right? It presents information in a very clear way. It uses specific and concrete examples. Um, it also focuses on the present and near past. Every essay tells admissions officers about the student, their personal triumphs or challenges or leadership opportunities, um, and experiences outside the classroom.

It also demonstrates a good use of grammar, right? Which is, we take it for granted, but it’s incredibly important. Um, it also again answers the questions effectively. Um, and it effectively describes how the experience detail has led to personal growth, understanding, maturity, character, open mindedness, um, and it reflects the students voice.

Okay, so they should be Essays should be polished and free of major grammatical errors and typos, and they shouldn’t read, you know, so stringent and it’s like, oh, a professor wrote this, right? They should really reflect your voice, right? So a great essay is authentic to your lived experience. It talks about things that are aligned with who you are.

Um, it answers, answers the question, but it also shows moments of growth and, and, and lessons learned, or just shows how you’ve developed. over time. So in thinking about some of the common mistakes to avoid, um, there are quite a few. First, you know, writing essays that focus on other people. So this question comes up a lot.

Students say, well, the application asked me to write about or invited me to write about a person who motivates me, right? And say you want to study medicine because you had a parent or a grandparent who was a physician and just seeing how hard they work. seeing how much they care for their patients really inspire you to pursue a similar path.

So you mentioned that in your essay. Mentioning that in your essay is perfectly fine. However, if the entire essay is written about your grandparent, um, and it doesn’t really talk about you. Then it’s like, okay, this is a great essay about a grandparent, but the grandparent is not the applicant, right? So you really want to make sure the essay is focused on you.

Writing an essay, um, or writing an essay in resume form, um, your essay should tell a story or provide insights into your character. So it’s not just a list of accomplishments and activities. It’s not just like, and then I accomplished this. And then in third grade, I won this award in fifth grade. I It should be narrative driven, right?

So you want to tell stories, want to paint pictures. It shouldn’t be. A checkbox of all of your accomplishments, especially because there’s other parts of the application where you can list those things. You also want to avoid just mentioning experiences without describing them, you know, say, Hey, you know, I went to camp and it was transformative.

And then I went off to, you know, my family and I took a trip to China and that changed my life. And then we moved around before suddenly and X, you know, what about, you know, moving to, you know, Or visiting China was transformational. Or what about the, you know, really go into detail. Sometimes students just drop, again, a list of activities, a list of experiences, and it does not really show depth, and it doesn’t really add value, because it’s just rattlingly off, you know, a random list of experiences.

You also want to be just conscious of exaggeration and fabrication in your essays. You really, really want to strive to be honest, and I have to say strive, unfortunately, but, you know, be honest, be authentic to yourself. You do not have to misrepresent who you are to be admissible. And if you feel like a school won’t like the person you are, then perhaps that’s not a good school, like a good fit for you anyway.

Right? So you want to just be mindful of that. You know, what you share in your essays. And again, integrity is so important, not in just admissions, but in life generally. And, you know, universities do have honor codes that you sign and make a pledge to be honest and have integrity. So just be mindful of how you kind of tell your stories and just be careful about, you know, over exaggerating things.

You also have students who overly use, uh, a thesaurus, right? So, uh, sometimes students are so, uh, reliant on a thesaurus to show that they have a larger vocabulary or just to add diversity with the words that they use if they feel like they’re using the same words repeatedly. However, just be careful. You know, sometimes students use words that are less appropriate but it sounds nicer or fancier, but you just It’s okay to not, you know, again, write like you are getting a PhD in sociology, right?

Um, another common mistake is just very, very, very long, complex sentences. I have seen students write, you know, essays, and it’s hard to spot the periods. I’m like, okay, this is, you know, six hundred words, and I’ve seen three periods, right? So you also want to make sure that the reader can more easily kind of follow what you’re saying.

So you can, you know, have a diversity in the style of writing. Uh, just be mindful of those very, very long, complex sentences. I see that all the time. And then another thing, this is actually really important. Uh, and I think this is incredibly important as students, you know, want to talk about things they’ve endured or things they had to overcome and challenges that they had to navigate.

There are really beautiful ways where you can do that, that also doesn’t frame your story in a very negative way. So you really want to try to avoid focusing on negative experiences without showing how you’ve grown or learned. You know, don’t write an entire essay where you’re just talking about excuses.

You know, well, my teacher was too hard, but I always turned in, you know, I turned in my homework late, but that’s because the teacher never told us at the right time, but that’s because, you know, You know, I was always, I missed the bus and then, you know, you don’t want to write an entire essay where you are not taking any accountability, right?

And you also want to just be mindful of how you frame your narrative and your story. Of course, be honest. And yet, if you feel like the topic or the story is just going into a very negative place, perhaps you might want to pick a different story to tell or respond to a different type of essay prompt.

And then finally, You want to just avoid having ChatGPT or any other artificial tools just completely write your essays. I think these, um, AI and these resources increasingly can help students outline or brainstorm. Um, but an essay written by ChatGPT, um, first of all, it’s not you. It’s inauthentic. It’s a misrepresentation of your work.

You know, and thinking about codes of ethics and honors. It could be a red flag. And also again, as I mentioned earlier, there’s such few opportunities to talk from from, like, talk about yourself in your application directly from your own kind of words and experiences. So don’t give chat to all of your good stuff.

You can produce, you know, one 650 word essay. So really, you want to kind of use your own words and write your own essays and don’t over rely on. Artificial tools to do so.

Anesha: Thanks for that. I appreciate it. I really appreciated that third bullet point of avoiding kind of negativity and excuses. I feel like I’ve had to have some students pull back from over explaining a negative situation with the teacher before.

So I appreciate that context. We’re going to take another quick question. poll just to give Aya a break. Better catch a sip of water. So tell us where you are in the application process. If you’ve started, if you’re researching your schools, if you’re working on your essays, uh, we’d love to know, uh, how far you’ve made it into this progress process.

I also appreciated the note regarding thesauruses, thesauri, very, very much. It’s a great tool up until the college essay. I’m thinking that it gets overused or beat up in various ways. All right. I think we’re waiting for a couple more people to let us know where they are in the process. Then we’ll get back to our session.

It looks like the majority of folks are still in the process of researching schools. About half of folks are working on essays, so some of this feels apt. One person bravely stated that they have not started. That is also a fine place to be in. You still have time to get it together, especially if you are a senior.

If you’re a senior, you still have plenty of time. Uh, sooner rather than later, I would say, but it’s only fine if you’re not there yet. We’ll go ahead and close our poll. So, as I shared about half of the folks with us are working on their essays, the next group, we’re researching schools to still try to figure out where they’re going to apply and about 12 percent are almost in that place of getting ready to submit materials.

So, yeah, I’ll hand it back over to you and be back for our Q and a little bit later.

Aya: Awesome. Thank you so much. Um, okay, folks. So continuing on with our conversation. Um, this is a really great kind of area to hone into. So, students are often wondering how to write creatively about their experiences while still being clear and concise.

So, there are a lot of strategies to employ here. First, again, being authentic. So, writing in your natural voice. You do want to, like, keep in mind that, and I tell a lot of people this, that your college personal statement is not a diary entry. So, you want to be mindful of your audience. But also again, you don’t have to write like a robot, right?

You can ensure that there’s some authenticity and that you are engaging and, you know, and that that personality is coming through. So often students use examples online. So they try to mimic styles that just don’t really feel true to who they are. You also want to use metaphors. You can think about using metaphors and analogies if you’re trying to say like, how can I just add a little bit more creativity here?

You know, again, these can add depth to your writing without being too overly complex. Um, so just thinking about using analogies and metaphors, another way you can write creatively about yourself, uh, while still being clear and concise, which are really, really important, um, is just being personal. So. It’s great to have a creative narrative and make sure it’s centered around you.

As I gave the example earlier, those other essays that talk solely about other people and not the applicant, right? So making sure your essay is revealing things about your character and your values. And as I mentioned earlier, Adding variation in your sentence structure can also be a really great strategy to be creative.

So make sure, you know, again, all of your sentences shouldn’t be entire, you know, one sentence is one paragraph long. No, you want to kind of mix it up again. It actually makes reading, I’m sorry, writing more enjoyable for readers. So I’m thinking about editing your essays, right? So say, Hey, now you have a draft.

You’ve worked really hard on it. And if you’re like me, you get very attached to your writing. So what are some ways to edit it effectively? Well, one of the features that I use, and I recognize people have really kind of gone on to like Google documents and things, but I still use word. Uh, they have a, it’s a read aloud feature.

I often use it when I’ve been working all day on something and I just cannot stare at the screen. I will play the read aloud and it just allows the the document to read itself and I get to catch so many, um, words or errors or kind of proofreading errors that I just could not kind of pick up because my eyes just got tired of reading the same document.

So I often recommend that feature and it helps you to effectively proofread. Right? And we know proofreading is critical again. If you’re in high school, you know, and if you. Any professional person know we have to proofread. But it’s important because it’s easy sometimes when you’re editing to kind of miss things.

And I often use this really funny example. So say you write, I enjoy torturing animals. I have volunteered torturing animals at a local shelter since eighth grade and the experiences solidify my desire to become a veterinarian. Now, I am hoping that someone who aspires to be a veterinarian does not enjoy torturing animals.

That would be very. Diabolical. Um, but, um, what happens is the student, I’m almost certain did not mean torturing. They said training, right? And, you know, however, torturing is spelled correctly. So their eyes, because they know what they meant, their brain immediately kind of changes. The word to the correct word, so they miss it.

So that’s a really, uh, funny example, but we’ve all, I know I have been guilty of it as well. So just making sure you proofread. And one of the, a good strategy to, to make sure you can read your essays with a fresh pair of eyes is after you finish a draft, give yourself at least 24 hours before reviewing it again.

I know sometimes when I’m, I’m, I’m running late on a deadline, I have to like send it to a friend. I’m like, Hey, I text my friends in our group chat. So I can someone please look at this document. It’s only 500 words. Please take a look at it. I can’t look at it again. Right? So give me yourself some some time to look at it from fresh eyes.

Another way to edit your essays effectively is really eliminate redundancies. I see this a lot where students are saying the same thing in every way. Just it’s almost like. You know, I don’t know if they still do this in like K 12, but when you have those essays, like you have to reach a certain amount of words or two pages or something.

So you begin to like save the same thing because you’re trying to take up as much space as possible. So you want to remove any repetitive, unnecessary words and sentences. You know, you want to be concise. Okay. You can still write colorfully. You also, in editing, you want to make sure you’re tightening up that intro and conclusion.

I feel like the intro and the conclusion is actually where I see the most fluff. And you may have heard that expression before. That’s where you see a lot of unnecessary kind of words. Because people are trying to grab their reader’s attention. So sometimes they’re adding too much fluff in there to be like, Oh, that will really get them.

So you really want to make sure your introduction and your conclusion are both concise. Um, and again, editing also means focusing on word choice. As we mentioned earlier, we know students sometimes love that thesaurus, uh, but sometimes, you know, using words that are not appropriate can confuse the reader.

So you want to be precise. Um, you can also, if you’re over that word limit, cause you’re like, I just could not stop writing. Changing, you know, editing some words. Sometimes you’re using three words where you can actually use one word, uh, you know, replacing weak, uh, verbs. And adjectives with stronger, more descriptive ones, um, can be a really great, uh, way to edit your essay.

And as I mentioned, have a teacher or a teacher, a counselor, or someone you trust to review the statement. You know, they can give additional feedback or fresh pairs of eyes. They can make those edits that you might not pick up, and they can really support with the editing of the essay. So one thing, um, That students often want to know are what essays that have stood out to me And I I do think it’s important to know that just because an essay resonated with me or stood out to me My colleagues who are admissions officers might have different tastes.

They all come with different We all come with different backgrounds lived experiences Exposures, etc. So some things that resonate with one admissions officer might not with the you know with another one But broadly speaking, I feel like essays where students talk about ambition You Or they reflect on their ambition and growth are always really beautiful essays that highlight students tenacity and also I love to talk about, um, you know, essays that paint colorful photos of the human experience.

I have to think about my, my students who, you know, write about the jobs that they have and, you know. Some people say, Oh, it’s just a job. Everyone has a job. But, you know, the stories that our students tell where they say, you know, I worked the drive through at Starbucks or Jimmy John’s, and there was this guy named Fred I saw every Tuesday at 6 30 a.

m. before school. And he always ordered the same thing. And one day he didn’t order the same thing. And I knew something was wrong, but I was used to seeing him order this. And we talked and he told me. His dog, you know, passed away over the weekend and, you know, all of these types of, you know, really beautiful experiences and just, you know, students are able to kind of talk about what they’ve learned from other people, learned about themselves.

I really enjoy, um, those types of essays. So they tend to stand out. I also had a student, um, one of the few, she was a standup comedian. So she talked about her like time being on stage and what she learned, um, and some of the jokes and just people like shocked because she was actually very quiet. When you met her, you will be surprised.

She was a stand, you know, a comedian. Um, so that was an essay that really stood out to me because it was just something I didn’t really encounter a lot. So those are just some examples. So as we think about just some final kind of tips and things for you all to consider, it’s really important to a, you know, show don’t tell this is a very common moniker.

You probably hear it quite a bit, you know, students sometimes just again, drop experiences without really kind of going into detail about them. So again, instead of saying, I learned a lot volunteering at the Cleveland animal shelter, You know, you can try while feeding the sick puppies with the other shelter volunteers.

I learned the importance of teamwork and compassion. So, um, there’s just ways to be a little bit more kind of specific and descriptive and really tell what you learn, talk about what you did versus just like, You know, you know, instead of just kind of saying like this happens, what happened exactly? What did you learn from that?

Etcetera. So this just provides a little bit more depth. Um, you also want to share lessons learned, you know, talk about how experiences informed your future and who you are, the type of student you’ll be at in college. And I don’t mean you don’t have to end every essay or personal statement with Because of these experiences I want to study biology and be this to do this career thing in 20 years You don’t have to say that but you also want to say, you know through my experiences working in Jimmy John You know, I learned these things or just to be able to Illustrate what you learned how you learned it and just how that informs the person you are I can’t you know emphasize this enough.

You really just want to proofread, right? so you want to Use the features that you have. I know students now increasingly use Grammarly. I have a Grammarly plug in, um, you know, to catch typos and small things. I, again, always encourage, encourage the Microsoft Read Aloud feature, um, to help improve reading.

Also sharing documents with people on my left that I trust. In your case, teachers, counselors, maybe parents. Um, have them take a look at your documents, uh, which means you cannot procrastinate or wait to the last minute, folks. If you’re applying early and that deadline is November 1st, please do not wait to Halloween.

So try to, you know, scramble to write those documents. You need to give yourself time. You want to give yourself, I always say at least two weeks, but I know how high school can be at least one full week of finishing the essay so you can proofread and edit it and have someone else look at it before you press submit.

And then you also, again, want to tell your story. In your own words and on your own terms. So you really want to write about your own experiences and just be very intentional about, um, being authentic to who you are when you’re writing your essay.

Anesha: Okay, thank you so much for that presentation. We’re going to shift over into the. Q and a portion of the webinar. Um, so we hope you found the information helpful. Just as a reminder, you can download the slides under the handouts tab. We’re going to move into the live Q and a, the way that it will work.

You can go ahead and submit your questions under the under the Q and a tab. I will read through the question submitted so that I will have a chance to answer. And then also paste it into the public chat so that you can see it. If you’re having any challenges with submitting questions, just know that you are.

You may have to log out and log back in. Um, and make sure you’re logging in through the link you received in your email and not through our webinar landing page. Um, all right, so we’re going to get into the questions. My first question for you, I think it’s interesting. Um, this person asked, how do you know you are overusing a thesaurus?

Aya: I would ask someone. Well, I mean, so. If you feel like you are reaching for the thesaurus after every sentence, you might be overusing it. Um, if the essay feels convoluted, the words feel chunky, you can’t pronounce the words that you’re using, you might have overused it. I will ask a teacher, a parent, a counselor, and say, Does this sound like me or does this sound like me pretending to?

Sound differently or more educated. Um, so that’s that’s how you know, um, again, there’s no hard fast rule If you use it 10 times, therefore no Just know if you’re reaching for it a lot or you find yourself googling examples of different words and things It’s starting to feel convoluted. Um, it might be time to just put it down.

And also, again, ask people you trust. Ask your English teacher or literature teacher and say, hey, how does this, how does this sound?

Anesha: I think also, I think that’s where the reading aloud tool comes. I think one, having the computer read it aloud to you, but you also reading it aloud, I think students find that they are saying words they don’t say normally and they trip up more.

around the source words as well. Um, someone asked, should I be worried about getting started early on writing the essays? And there were a few other questions just about timing with the wind is the best time to start. How long do you think it will take?

Aya: Yeah, I always encourage students to start the summer before their senior year, really just starting that personal statement.

So you can go on right now. Um, you can google common app. Personal statement prompts and they all will pop up for you. They have remained unchanged for the past several years. Um, and you can just start the essay. Um, I think it’s really good to try to have some type of draft by the start of this semester, because I think there’s something about the pressure of.

Every other person in your senior class trying to get ready, trying to get acclimated to your senior schedule, trying to get ready for practice for the volleyball team, trying to catch up on that, trying to study for SAT. So if you can take advantage of some of the time you have during the summer just to start that personal statement, brainstorming, outlining, I think that’s a great way to do it.

You also want to be mindful of what schools you’re applying to and when those deadlines are. So for our students who are applying early action or early decision and those deadlines are November, November 1st, you want to make sure, you know, you, you have some drafts in September if you can, because it just allows you to give, um, to edit essays and also start to write supplements.

If your essays, if your school’s lists require supplements, you also want to leave your time. For those, because those tend to take a little bit more work because you have to research the schools a little bit more, you have to have more school specific responses, so you want to leave yourself time for that, especially if you are aiming for those early action or early decision November 1st deadlines.

Also, if you’re applying to schools that are, have rolling admissions, and rolling admissions means that they read essays, they read, And, uh, award kind of decisions as applications come in. You know, I have students who start, you know, you can start applying September to those schools. So if they require an essay, you wanna start early.

So look at your college list, look at the deadlines. Are you applying early? Are you applying a school that’s rolling? Admissions? Are you applying regular decisions? So things are tend to be due at the end of December or in January if you are fitting in those categories. That is how you discern when is the appropriate timeline.

But I do not think it hurts to start, you know, in, uh, the round, like now, right? August is literally next week. I don’t think it hurts to start now. I would encourage it. And I know some students are at schools that in their junior year, they might practice an essay or something for the app or for the college application in their English class or something.

So some students are kind of having a little head start, but I think this is a good time to start. And if you haven’t, I think you’re okay. You will be fine.

Anesha: Uh, we have another, I guess, formatting question. So, this person might have missed it at the top. So, um, they just asked, How should the college essay be formatted?

Um, and I guess they’re leaning towards, I guess, like, paragraph structure or things like that.

Aya: Well, I mean, because of the way we are trained in, like, high school, uh, here in the States, Students tend to have a very similar kind of structure where you get intro paragraph, body paragraphs, conclusion paragraphs.

Um, structure, again, you want to make sure you’re first and foremost, you’re answering the question. Um, students like to start with an introduction that introduces, you know, paints a scene or, you know, Tell like where we’re headed. So some students are a little bit more explicit, you know, my love for sociology comes because I took a class in my 10th grade year and whatever.

And therefore I really learned the importance of this. I saw this occur in my life in these particular ways. And then you have some students who like start with a quote, um, or a short poem, or a saying that they heard growing up. And then they use the essay to kind of talk about how that saying, you know, resonates with them, or where does it reflect in their lives.

So, um, Students can be, you can be pretty creative, you know, paragraph format is, I think, it’s preferable, preferable. I know some students would try to write poems and those types of things, but because of the way even the Common App, like, software is when universities are kind of reviewing, formatting can get a little janky, so I just encourage you to just stick to the paragraph, like, format.

Uh, as opposed to some of the other kind of poems, stanzas type of things, it’s sometimes it’s just very hard for the software to kind of pick that up. Um, so yeah, you want an introduction paragraph, you want to kind of go into depth in the body of the paragraph, and then you want to conclude with kind of tying it back in.

To the intro, tying it into the lessons learned or opportunities for growth. There are also samples online of, you know, quality essays, and I will always encourage students to check with teachers and college counselors at their high schools who can provide exemplars and examples that could support them as they’re thinking through how to best kind of format and structure their own essay.

Anesha: Um, our next question is what if you are not the best writer, but you have an amazing story to tell? How do you suggest we get started?

Aya: Well, first I will write the story. I will literally start on a blank Google doc or Microsoft word and just write the story out regardless of like typos or editing or any, I would just get those thoughts that’s in your head on the page because you don’t want to lose that.

And then also, you know, think about what the prompts are. So go to the prompt. Uh, there’s your essay or there’s a story you want to tell it. Does it respond directly to any of the crops? If it doesn’t, there’s luckily a choose your own adventure. Um, and then I would encourage, uh, almost a reverse outline, which I actually was working with the student.

So you want to try to create some structure, right? Um, sometimes students don’t think they’re a good writer because of like cohesion is the flow of the narrative. Um, Or they think their vocabulary doesn’t reflect what a good writer is. So I also think there’s a lot of retooling about what a good writer looks like or writes like and etc.

But I would encourage a reverse outline where you say, okay, this, this part of the story, I’m, I’m trying to say this, this part of the story, I’m trying to say this, this part of the story is actually the thesis, this part of the stories is actually the lessons learned. So I think reverse outlining could be a really great way if you feel like you have the idea.

First or for students who are like, I’m just drawing a blank. I encourage students. So again Start with looking at the prompt and then begin to like jot down anything that comes to mind and bullet points. Don’t worry about complete synthesis. If there’s a, if the prompt says, how, is there a scientific discovery or something you can’t stop thinking about, whatever pops into your mind, you’re like, hmm.

Popcorn seeds pop in the microwave, but don’t pop outside. I don’t know. Just just write it down Get those thoughts from your head on the page Because I think sometimes it’s a lot of overthinking that happens And I think just really having some really fun brainstorming sessions is a great way and then finally use the people around you I think It is a personal statement.

It should be personal to you. But again, we have teachers, we have counselors. In some instances, people are parents. There are people around you, uh, in your orbit who want to support you. Um, we have CollegeAdvisor here. So there are people who want to support you. So you can often ask people in your life to say, Hey, I’m struggling with this.

Can you brainstorm with me? Or I think this is pretty rough. Can you take a look at it for

Anesha: me? I think I’ve had a lot of students who get nervous about just writing anything because. They think that what they write is the final draft, and I think they’re not used to the iterative process of writing. So get some thoughts down on the page, and it’ll grow.

It doesn’t have to be a complete, imperfect essay at the start. Contrary to that question, or I guess on the flip side of that, someone also asked if an essay is over the limit, what should we do? Do you have tips on how to cut, um, cut down on essays that might be too long?

Aya: Yeah, I and I talked a little bit about this in the editing portion of the conversation where I mentioned some tips Yes, I I tell I tend to tell students especially earlier in the essay writing process to write more Because I feel like it’s easier to cut than to just create so So it’s good to be over in a sense of like, okay, you were very generative But now you want to think about, um, um, again, redundancies.

So if it’s, if things are repetitive, you can cut sentences and words out. If things are not directly answering the question and you feel like it might be just like filler, it doesn’t really add value. You can cut, um, if you’re using words that, you know, you’re using expressions and words that might, you know, kind of say in addition to, you might just use additionally, you know, there are just ways to creatively kind of remove wordiness.

Sometimes students have too many examples, which you might say, wow, I just gave you all these examples. But there is, you know, you really want to think about quality of experiences versus quantity. So you don’t have to write, and again, this is where that traditional high school essay model, where it’s like intro paragraph, three supporting paragraphs, or main paragraphs, and then it’s that conclusion.

You do not need to have an example, three examples in your personal statement. You can actually have one example that you really go into detail about how it changed your life or an experience. So sometimes students have way too many examples. So maybe you have too many examples. So again, cutting out redundancies or things that are repetitive, changing words, you know, instead of saying, in addition to, you know, changing it to additionally, sometimes there’s one word that could, you know, You know, help.

Sometimes there’s statements that don’t add value that are a little fluffy that you can often omit. And then also, sometimes you can eliminate an example. If you already have solid examples, you don’t need to have 3, 4, examples in one essay. So those are some of the ways. You should meet the word count. Uh, I mean, what I mean is you should not go over the word count.

If it’s the essay, 650 words and you write 600, that’s fine. But if it’s 150 words If the, if the question is, say, is write 150 words and you’re 165, it will cut off your, you know, your writing. So you also want to make sure you are looking at word and character account So the admissions officers are not missing out on what you’re writing because the software, the program would just cut off the X word.

Anesha: Yeah, I love those tips. I would add looking at adverbs, really, absolutely, very. People like to throw in and you can cut those words out and they can help you chop down and then also the word that. I think we overuse that. And then also, um, complex verb structures would be able to will be able to I think those also, um.

Cloud up a lot of students writing and end up being words you can cut. Um, all right. So before we get on to our questions, I’m just going to do a quick PSA. So CollegeAdvisors team of over 300 former admissions officers and admissions experts are ready to help you and your family navigate the college admissions process through one on one advising sessions.

We’ve already helped over 8, 000 clients in the college admissions journey, and our 2021 through 2023 data showed that CollegeAdvisor students are two to four times more likely to get into institutions like Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Harvard. You can increase your odds and take the next steps in your college admissions journey by signing up for a free 45 to 60 minute strategy session with an admission specialist on our team by using the QR code that is on the screen.

Screen during that meeting, you’ll have a preliminary assessment of your academic profile, along with some initial recommendations and leave with more knowledge about our premium packages as well as support on building your college list, editing your essays and much more. All right, our next question. Is, um, going to get more into, I guess, more specific topics of people thinking about what they could or should write.

Uh, someone asked, is it a good idea to note my career goals in my personal statement?

Aya: Sure, it can be, uh, if it’s relevant to the, uh, essay prompt or the question. And then if it ties, you know, nicely into, Kind of your response then by all means. I mean some questions might ask, you know Why do you want to study psychology, you know?

And if you want to include you want to study psychology because you want to be a child psychologist or a school psychologist Then by all means, you know, there’s a beautiful natural connection there So yeah some questions invite you to talk about it and some responses just it just aligns with like your why or your motivation or your passion and Or it might come out because you want to go to a particular school because you’re known to, you know, those students tend to go into politics or like, I went to Georgia.

It’s in the nation’s capital. We attract a lot of students who are interested in law and politics. So you might, in your essay about why you want to go to the school, you might also say it’s because I have these professional aspirations and your school is, you know, there’s a lot of students who are also interested in that.

So my answer to that question is sure. It is often appropriate to talk about. Your goals and professional aspirations, and

Anesha: you don’t need to shoehorn it in there. If that’s not what the essay is about. Yeah, someone asked, would you discourage using quotes in the personal statement?

Aya: Discouraged? No. Um, but there isn’t such thing as too many quotes.

And, and, um, yeah. You just want to use where appropriate. You also want to just be very mindful of dialogue. That can get a bit confusing. The reader may not know who’s talking and who’s saying what and the intonations. It’s just, you know, it’s not a script, right? This is not a script, so you also just want to be mindful of that.

But I cannot say emphatically, absolutely not, don’t use quotes. I think sometimes they can be great. And sometimes it can be cliche as well. So it just, it really just depends on the, on the essay, but I’ve seen them use beautifully.

Anesha: Um, someone asked how to know,

sorry. Someone said, how do you know to fit in, but also Sorry, I’m struggling with the wording of this question. I guess they want to talk about their future and how the college or major as well as diversity. I might come back to that question. Let me think about that question a little bit more. I have to record it.

Aya: Can I frame the question and answer it?

Anesha: Sure.

Aya: Yeah. So, um, so this, this student is asking essentially, how do you incorporate some, a lot of diverse things in the essay? For an example, how do you talk about your future goals? How do you talk about like why you want to go to the college? How do you talk about you want you add diversity to the college all in one essay?

And I would say essentially You do not have to do all of those things in one essay. So one thing to remember is the essay, particularly the personal statement, is one component of an entire application. So you might talk about, um, your background identity. So your cultural, your ethnic, your ethnic, your racial diversity, your identities, you might talk about that in your college personal statement.

Or you might talk about it in an essay that asks you, How would you add diversity to our campus? And you might talk about your cultural experiences, your background experiences, some clubs and organizations that you’re part of in high school that you might want to do. I was meeting with a student today and she was talking about her love for K pop and how she wanted to join a K pop group and etc.

So you might talk about that in a supplement essay. You’re also your activities list or extracurricular activities will also talk about, um, showcase, you know, experiences you have, it might align with future goals. If you notice a lot of medical oriented clubs, you might, it might, you know, the natural assumption might be you want to be a doctor or physician.

So you do not have to write about every single thing in one essay. You want to answer the question. So if a question asks about your future goals, as we talked about in the previous question, by all means, write about why you want to be a doctor or why you want to be a school psychologist or why you want to be about, why do you want to be a lawyer?

Use the essay to do that. Um, you do not have to throw all of, you know, you don’t have to answer all, every question that you’ve ever thought of. in your personal statement. It is just one essay and it’s just one part of a broader application.

Anesha: Thank you for clarifying the question. I was, my brain was not wrapping around it.

Um, uh, someone asked again to the specific of topics they wanted to share their parents childhood experiences, talk about their relationship with their grandparents and explain how it all instilled specific qualities and skills for them. Similar, I guess, to the topic before, is that too much? Is that, um, what, what might be some of the challenges, I guess, in an essay like that?

Aya: Yeah, it’s hard to say without like reading the essay, like what is too much and what is not enough. I will say this. I mean an essay that talks about your parents experiences and then your grandparents sounds like an essay that might be skewed too heavily in the talking too much about other people. So, you know, I’ve had, um, I’ve worked with students who are second generation Americans and they talk about their parents immigration stories and how their parents made sacrifices for them.

And therefore they take education very seriously. They want to be engineered, et cetera. I think there, you can, of course you want to frame, you want to provide context. So that’s important, but you do not want to write, you know, you don’t want three fourths of the essay to be about your parents and your grandparents, even if they’re, you know, critical to your own kind of self discovery.

So I think for framing purposes, by all means, talk about your parents and your grandparents. its connection to you, but you just want to make sure that 75 percent of the essay isn’t about someone else. And we only learned this much about you because when they, you know, admissions officers might walk away saying, wow, I really want to admit the grandparents, but you were the student who applied.

So just want to be mindful of the balance.

Anesha: I guess that makes me wonder about context. It seems like the student wants to set a lot of context before they jump into a story. How much, how important do you feel like that background context is to, to telling? any story effectively.

Aya: I think some framing and context can be helpful to set the stage.

However, um, you know, three sentences is fine. You know, you don’t want the first three paragraphs to be setting the stage, right? By the time you set the stage, the audience is ready to go, right? So you really want to invite the reader in, And you can use that to set, set the stage or add context. But you re you know, just a few sentences.

You don’t want to spend so much time setting up the story that you never get to the, so what the essay you should, a reader should walk away saying, okay, this is the, so what, this is why we should care. So your parents life and your grandparents life that, okay. You tell us that. So what, why should we care?

That is where you should be inserting yourself to kind of talk about, make the connections for us. So again, some contexts, I actually like to kind of be like, okay, but when I say a little bit, I’m saying three sentences. I’m not saying the first, you know, three paragraphs of the essay should be set in the stage.

Anesha: Yeah. I feel like that’s when you can do the most telling you just say what the situation is and show later. Um, someone asked, uh, do the essay questions change every year? Yeah.

Aya: Um, so the personal statement, essay questions on the common app, they’ve really remained unchanged for the past several years. Um, comment, I’m sorry, supplementals or supplement essays that are school specific may change from year to year.

Um, we’ve seen some changes in the past two years from school specific essays. So those might change and you can always visit the university’s website to confirm what those essay questions are.

Anesha: Uh, I, I’ve heard that the questions are not likely to change in the next couple of years as they did a big change in response to the Harvard, um, diversity lawsuit.

So I think they’re probably locked in at least through the class of 2027. Um, the next question, someone asked, what are the differences between the essays that get into top schools versus less competitive schools?

Aya: I don’t know. Yeah, the essays are one part of a very, um, kind of robust application process.

Um, so it’s really, I will, I can, I’ll say this confidently. Um, in most cases, in the majority, overwhelmingly majority of cases, it is not the essay that is getting students in or not in schools. Um, there are a host of reasons universities make decisions. From grades to test scores to institutional priorities.

diversity concerns, athletics, legacy, you name it. Impacted majors, which means majors that are incredibly competitive because they are really hot. Often it’s nursing as an impacted major. Often computer science is an impacted major. So the essays are just one part of a very robust application. So I, I, I don’t, I don’t have data to say essays that are written like this are more likely to get you into these particular schools.

There’s way too many factors that contributes to an admissions decision for me to say. So,

Anesha: yeah, I mean, the personal saying, it goes to every school competitive or not. Um, so, um, someone asked, is it okay to write about an extracurricular activity that impacted you even if it does not connect to what you want to study?

Absolutely.

Aya: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you can write a personal statement about juggling and you want to, and you want to be a veterinarian, even though, I mean, as someone who writes, I can make the connection between juggling and being a veterinarian personally, but absolutely not. You could talk about your love for reading.

And then you can, your goal is to be a mechanical engineer, you know, so you can, that personal statement can clearly be about anything. It could be about your love for rocks and you want to be, a political scientist. So it is your personal statement does not have to connect with professional and career aspirations or your academic major at all.

Anesha: So the person who was asking about writing about their parents and grandparents said our our framework was wrong. They said that they were speaking about stories and experiences of culture or human qualities that they grew up with and that are, I guess, intrinsic to their. Personality or experience.

Does that change, I guess, anything that you would, any advice that you would give? if they’re focusing more on qualities or things learned over time?

Aya: Not necessarily. That, no, that doesn’t really change my, uh, what I said earlier. I think the point that I was making, and I think it’s relevant even if you say, I’m not writing about them, I’m talking, I’m writing about lessons learned or qualities.

I’ve seen, I’ve seen essays like that. Um, my point still stands that you just want to make sure that you, uh, we are learning about you and not so much about your family that we want to admit them. Um, so no, I’ve seen Successful essays and successful meaning. I think they were well written and compelling essays for students.

Um, talk about the lessons they learned from their grandmother, um, or their mother or their father and how that has instilled certain values in them, um, and how they use that to, you know, their heart working because they saw their dad get up every morning at 4 a. m., kiss them on the forehead and go off to work.

So I’ve seen essays like that that were really compelling and well done. So, um, yeah, there’s still no, again, there’s no exact science. It’s like. You could only say 33 percent of essays about this person, 25 percent is about you, and this percentage about lessons learned. There’s no exact, uh, science to it.

Um, so yeah, so that, that, that’s my response to that question.

Anesha: No, yeah, I love that, those examples, because I do, I think to your point about like three sentences, I still think you can convey some of that history and those qualities, principles, et cetera, values, um, In a short intro or a short topper, um, someone asked,

um, oh, sorry. Uh, how do I avoid writing about a similar topic, um, in my personal statement, in my supplemental essays? I wanna, I, they’re trying to avoid being repetitive.

Aya: That’s a great question, because I know quite a few students struggle with that. They pick a personal statement topic where they get to talk about, like, say they’re interested in stem and then they participated in a lot of STEM clubs, so they feel like their, their, um, other essays are talking about it.

I always say kind of look at your activities list. Um, so your activities list. When you describe your activities, I believe you only get Anesha, correct me if I’m wrong, 150 characters or words?

Anesha: Words characters. Yeah, characters.

Aya: Talk about your activities. For a lot of students, especially those who have sustained engagement and leadership, that is not enough time.

So, I will often say, think about those activities where you wish you had more time, or sorry, more space to talk about them, and those could be options to write about. Um, I would say use that person’s statement to write about the thing that It’s gets you most excited. Um, and, and, and for the thing, you want all the schools on your list to read.

That’s another thing because you might apply to five schools. Only one might have supplements. So for sport, for the four other schools, you actually might be submitting one essay, that personal statement. So what is the S what is the topic? What is the story you want to tell that you want all the schools on your list to learn or know about, or to hear, or to read?

That is what you use to write for the person statement. And then those supplements, um, look at those supplements before you start writing. This is a good strategy. So if you have multiple schools and they all have different supplements, create one google doc and put all the supplement topics or prompts on that document.

So you can say, okay, These two schools asked about diversity. These two schools asked about my interests and my academic interests. Like, why do I want to study a particular topic? And then these two essays asked me about why insert school, why Harvard, why Michigan state. So make one Google doc where you can see all of those topics.

So you begin to strategize. Okay. These two asked about their diversity. I can actually write a very similar essay for both of them. Oh, I participated in the, uh, The Korean club in my school. That’s what I write about for that essay. These two asks about my interest in biology. Oh, I was the captain of the biology Olympiad team, whatever.

Uh, these two schools, I asked them about it. I can write similar essays for both of those. So just being strategic again, think about what essay you want to submit to all the schools, because not all the schools in your list might require a supplement. So make that the essay that you feel like you can write the most about, that is most compelling.

And then strategy wise, look at all the schools that do require supplements, put all of those essay prompts on one document, and begin to strategize, What activities or experiences you’ve had you can use to write about them?

Anesha: I have a student who’s struggling with this and feeling repetitive, and I think to your point, sometimes it’s zooming out to remember this only one school is getting this, so you’re not repeating yourself across.

You feel like it’s repetitive because you’re focusing on the same essay, but um, you know, where it’s going, it’s only going to one person, or they’re only going to see but this much of the set of essays that you submit. So, um, my last question for you. Someone asked, How can I ensure my essays are inclusive and relatable to a diverse audience of college admissions officers?

Aya: That’s an interesting question. How to make sure they’re inclusive. I mean, I don’t worry less about the essay being inclusive. I think you just want to tell your story and it’s going to resonate with never. I mean, We all have different lived experiences, so some people might not be able to relate, uh, per se, because they just never walked in our shoes before.

But that’s okay, too. You want your essay to be authentic to you. You don’t, of course, want to offend people. Now, that’s a different conversation. You don’t want to say things that would be offensive. But I think focusing on just, like, the story you want to tell and making sure it’s authentic is important.

And, as I said earlier, get a second opinion. Ask your teacher, ask your counselor, ask your CollegeAdvisor, ask your parent, and say, hey, what are you hearing when you read this essay? Like, how do you feel about this essay? Ask the opinion of others that you trust. That can also be another key. Very important sounding board.

If you’re a little nervous about your essay, feeling, um, kind of less inclusive or responding to the diverse audiences, you will encounter

Anesha: my only two cents. I would add to that is like, avoid using jargon. And if you do use colloquialism, especially in a different languages, make sure you translate everything.

Because those things actually help add personality to your essay, but they can be close off the reader if they don’t know what you’re referring to. So,

Aya: all

Anesha: right, that will be our last question. Um, oh, we were still here. Um, thank you so much, Aya, for coming out tonight and for a thoughtful session. Uh, we hope that everyone will join us for our future sessions.

Tomorrow, July 23rd, we’ll have a special session for rising juniors and seniors on building your admissions skills. timeline for so for folks who have not started, maybe circle back and join us then. Um, and on July 24th, we’ll talk about building your common app activities list and we’ll end the month with the session on key strategies for success in your first year in college.

So for any friends of the folks here who are sending people off to college tomorrow, maybe join us on July 26. But until then, take care and have a great evening, everybody.

Aya: Bye. Thank you. Good luck, everyone.