Summertime is essay time! It’s my favorite time to work with students on their essays because their brains and creativity don’t have all the distractions of school, teachers, and extracurriculars. We can really dig in and get a lot accomplished before applications even open.
Over the past month or so, essays have been a big focus for our team. We’ve recorded a podcast on choosing a compelling essay topic. We did a public webinar on the 10 things students should avoid in the Common App essay. And we’ve been running our usual essay workshops with our students to get them started on their essays. For the most part, our attention has been on the personal statement. But now that we’re so close to the Common App opening, it’s time to turn our attention to supplemental essays.
A lot of students and families discount supplemental essays when thinking about the college application. They’re usually pretty short and colleges just ask for one or a few. No big deal. But supplemental essays are an important part of the application, and students need to develop a plan for them.
For one, those few short essays really add up. Last year, our students wrote an average of 11 supplemental essays apiece! That takes quite a chunk of time!
Second, this isn’t the “common” part of the Common App. These questions and prompts are carefully crafted by admissions offices to get certain information from students that they take into consideration when building their incoming class.
Today, let’s go over some of my best tips for writing supplemental essays.
MAKE A PLAN
Let’s say that, when the Common App opens, two students learn that they will have to write 14 supplemental essays apiece. They both make a list of all the prompts and start typing away.
Student A has her list in alphabetical order because she went down the line in the Common App. Student B has listed his by order of preference starting with the reach schools he’d like to attend.
By the time she’s finished writing, Student A feels like she’s written the same essay at least 3 times. Meanwhile, Student B poured his heart into his first several essays and got burned out halfway through. With the deadline approaching, he rushed through the supplements for his target and likely schools, even copying and pasting the same essay more than once.
What should these two students have done differently?
The should have made a plan.
Read through all of the essay prompts and sort them into the categories. There are the “Why _____?” prompts. The impact prompts. The kind of silly prompts.
Are any of the prompts in each category similar enough that one essay could be reworked to fit both? Have any of the colleges given a “free pass” (one of my favorites, the “tell us something we haven’t learned about you yet,” is the perfect opportunity to potentially re-use a supplement)?
Then, I recommend working in a balanced way. Students should devote time to each college on their list and give themselves enough time to thoughtfully answer each question.=
ANSWER THE QUESTION
Because colleges are asking specific questions with their supplemental essay questions, it’s important to answer what they’re asking. It’s pretty obvious when students avoid a part of the question they may not want to respond to or when the supplement better answers a similar question asked by another college (yes, colleges know their competitions’ prompts!).
Sometimes, colleges ask a question that has a straight forward answer, but they’re looking for students to dig a little deeper. It’s time to read between the lines a bit.
When the prompt is “Why this college?” the deeper questions might be “What do you know about us, and how will you take advantage of our opportunities?” Students miss an opportunity when they write their UNCW essay about how they want to go to college near the beach.
“Tell us about an activity or extracurricular activity” is a great opportunity to talk about impact and contributions and give colleges an idea of how a student might make an impact once they come to campus.
WATCH YOUR TONE
Often, I’ll read a student’s main essay, and it’s full of personality and really captures that student’s voice. Then, I’ll read one of their supplements, and it’s like they’ve been replaced by a robot. The tone takes a turn for the worse, and I’m stuck reading a formal, dry paragraph that’s way less interesting than the student who wrote it.
Length has a lot to do with this unfortunate transformation. Many supplements hover at around 250 words, and it’s not easy to say all you want to in just a paragraph. In addition, because colleges are asking a specific question, a lot of students get stuck thinking that there’s a specific answer that colleges want to hear. They box up their personality and push out a canned answer they think they’re supposed to give.
It’s boring. Boring to write, and boring to read. It might also make the reader wonder which is really the student’s true voice. Or, potentially even worse, they may wonder if the student cares enough about the college to take their time on the application. So take all of the dynamic personality from the personal statement and apply it to supplements as well. All essays in the application should sound like their writer so the reader can get a glimpse of who they are. Don’t sacrifice your voice!
