Twenty Five Ways To Improve Your College Essay

I have been working with high school students on their college applications essays for more than twenty years. I have worked with many admissions counselors, college counselors, and other experts to get their points of view. I am now in the middle of college essay writing season, and working with students every day!

Here are twenty-five things to consider when writing your college essay: 

1. Be true to your voice! Don’t let adults edit you out of the essay. Make sure the writing is yours. Don’t assume a persona or try to fool the reader into believing you are someone you are not.

2. Read the question and answer it completely – especially the “and its impact on you” part.

3. Have a clear thesis: what is the point of this essay? You should be able to state it in a sentence or two.

4. Back up the thesis with clear and compelling evidence. Much of this evidence could be scenes that show you living/using/applying the thesis! If you say you are going to make the world a better place, how are you doing that now?

5. When writing, don’t worry about word limits. When editing, get rid of adverbs, preamble statements, and prepositional phrases to trim an essay to the right size. Keep these processes separate.

6. Your essay must be grammatically and mechanically beyond reproach. This goes beyond proofing: you may not end a sentence with a preposition or split an infinitive even if it would otherwise be acceptable to do so.

7. For “why us” essays, do research far beyond the website. Call students at the school. Visit if you can. Discuss courses, professors, programs, buildings, events, clubs, and other things that make that school unique. If you can replace the name of the school with another and all that is wrong with it are names, you have failed the quiz.

8. Don’t do too much. No lists. No string of accomplishments. No quick descriptions of the items on your resume. Focus on a few moments or ideas. Leave the reader wanting to talk to you further, not wondering why you went on so long.

9. Don’t repeat information that is contained in other parts of the application. Use the essay to provide further reasons that the school should admit you.

10. Make sure the name of the school is correctly spelled!

11. Think cinematically. Write your essay as if it were a stage play or screenplay. Write as if you are describing scenes from your life to a blind person.

12. Write about how the parts of your life overlap or connect. Write about patterns you have noticed or created in your life. Think about how the different areas of your life are woven together.

13. If it is boring to you, how do you think anyone else will feel? Your parents don’t count.

14. Write your story. The person who influenced you, your parent, grandparent, coach, or pastor may be wonderful, but they are not applying to college. If the essay is about another person, make it clear how this person affects your choices through your interaction with them, real or imagined.

15. Be honest.

16. Are you a naturally funny person? Have people told you that you should be a comedian? If the answer is an unequivocal yes, you may use humor in your essay. Otherwise, it is very risky.

17. Write about now or nearly now. Things that happened a while ago are only useful if they affect now.

18. Vary your sentence structure. All sentences should not start with “I”.  Watch out for successive sentences with lists.

19. Read your essay aloud to a teacher or adult who you can trust to be brutally honest with you. Chances are this is not a relative. Watch out for unintended innuendo, offensive material, and phrasing that could be misinterpreted.

20. Think like an admissions officer or English teacher: what is this question doing on the application? What is the expected or trite response?

21. Have a strong opening. Create introduction seduction.  

22. Essays dealing with politics, serious issues, or other dangerous topics need special attention. Consult with your college counselor or whoever is guiding your college process before submitting an essay that paints you in a less than favorable light or deals with a hot topic.

23. No whining, complaining, or blaming.

24. Be careful of formulaic or cliché structures: Someone I know was sick, therefore I want to be a doctor; I went on a mission trip, now I am more appreciative of my life; I got cut from the team, and I learned to bounce back. If you are writing about camp, dead people or pets, humanitarian trips, the big game, or any similar trope, you must have a unique and creative angle.

25. Draft, draft, draft! Revise, revise, revise! This takes time. You must give yourself a minimum of a month to fully develop an essay. You must put it away for a day or three and come back and give it another revision.

I have recently become more skeptical about how much time admissions staff is spending reading these essays and how much weight they have in the process. This doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t give the essay time and thought. However, they shouldn’t obsess over it either. I want my students’ essays to be the ones that are so well written, thoughtful, or creative that they get a little extra attention, and the reader says, “I’d like to meet this kid!”

College Readiness Beyond ACT’s Standards

When my children were younger, I read a great deal about kindergarten readiness. My friends were concerned that their children had to know their letters and numbers before starting school. They also wanted to make sure that their kids would be able to separate from them and work well in a classroom.

As a Senior English teacher, I work with students on college essays and preparing for college academic work. And while there is no perfect predictor of college success, there are clear ways that students demonstrate that they are ready for college life.

When I did some research on college readiness, the vast majority of information was on academic preparation; ACT has published its College and Career Readiness Standards that outline the knowledge and skills students should have to succeed in college level classes. While this is certainly an important, maybe the most important, factor of college readiness, academic preparation is only one part of the college experience. I have met many students who are academically ready for college work, but not ready for the college experience. What are some key ways that students show us that they are ready for college?

The most basic way that students demonstrate college readiness is through basic school organization skills. Students ready for college can manage their own academics. They turn work in and turn it in on time (for the most part). They are aware of course standards, and understand what they need to do to meet them.

Similarly, students who are ready for college have begun to be independent self-advocating learners. They choose what is important to learn, and reach out to their teachers and other school staff when they have questions or issues. They are no longer passive recipients of curriculum but have become critical co-creators of their classes. Perhaps as important, they have developed multiple strategies to figure out what to do when they don’t know what to do; in other words, they know how to teach themselves!

One of the key warning signs that students are not ready for college is when they cannot function without consulting their parents. Parents who have put their children in the backseat for the college process create a dependency that often continues into college. Perhaps that is the point. Parents who are not ready to accept their children’s nascent adulthood may be more likely to enable them to remain children in order to keep the relationship from changing. Using excuses like, “my child is too busy,” “this process is too important,” and “he doesn’t really know much about college” are all rationalizations that are really saying that students are not able to function on their own. This may also say that the parent cannot or will not let the child become an independent and self-sufficient person. Perhaps getting away and going to college is just what the child needs, but without being able to function independently, college may be very challenging.

Lack of interest in college is certainly an issue as well. Many students are afraid to tell their parents or teachers that they aren’t interested in going to college. College talk is pervasive and ubiquitous. A student who does not see him or herself on the college path may feel isolated and uncomfortable when it feels like that is all anyone wants to discuss.

Some of the students who have taken time off from college or been unable to remain on a four-year traditional campus have done so because they found the social aspects of college far more enticing than academics. A student must, to some degree, have the ability to emotionally self-regulate. This is clearly a developmental issue. While social skills are critical for college success, the student who is unable to manage his or her own emotions, differ gratification, calm him or herself, or balance needs and desires is going to have significant challenges as a college student.

Related to this, students who are regularly using drugs, alcohol, or other substances are also going to find that college makes it easier to engage in many self-destructive behaviors. This makes college very attractive to them – and sometimes to their parents who may be eager to get them out of the house. However, these students’ substance use is likely going to sabotage their college careers.

What if a student is not ready for college? Why not do what we did twelve years earlier? Why not teach these skills and traits? Gap year programs focus on many of these issues. Of course, not all students are ready in all of these areas, but if students don’t have most of them, college is going to be far more than academically challenging.