I love the Common App essay. It’s my favorite part of the application process because it’s the one time a student gets to have their voice heard and say what they want to say directly to the person reading their application.
A student’s transcript and Activity List are a reflection of their effort and commitment over the course of the last few years, and letters of recommendation are someone else talking about a student. But the essay is the student’s voice in the exact moment that they are putting their application together. It’s their chance to introduce themselves to someone who hasn’t met them in real life and say, “This is who I am, this is how I think, and this is what’s important to me.”
Easier said than done, right? Maybe that’s why we’re constantly asked for our best tips for the college essay!
If you’ve checked out our webinars page, you know we’ve already covered the 10 things NOT to do in the Common App essay, so here’s 11 more tips for students to write their strongest personal statement.
1. Start early, finish early
There’s nothing stopping a student from writing their Common App essay as soon as the prompts are released. We recommend students work on their essays in the summer before senior year. That way, they aren’t having to balance writing their main essay with working on other parts of the application and the demands of senior year well into the fall.
Most students aren’t thrilled to spend their summer writing an essay, but they always tell me how good it feels to be completely finished when their friends are just starting their essays!
2. Choose a topic that excites you
The Common App essay shouldn’t be the most painful piece of writing a student has ever had to endure. This isn’t a school essay, and it isn’t a research project. Because the essay should reflect things that are important to a student, even students who don’t enjoy writing should try to tap into something that they feel some enthusiasm about.
If the essay feels like torture to write, consider a different topic because if it’s like pulling teeth to write, it probably isn’t going to be very much fun to read!
3. You are the star of this show
It really doesn’t matter what Common App prompt you’ve chosen or what you’ve decided to write about. Because, at the end of the day, the real subject of this essay is YOU!
Don’t forget that the main objective of the essay is for the admissions counselor to get to know students. In order for that to happen, students have to write about themselves.
Regardless of the theme of your essay, can your reader answer questions like, “Who is this student? How do they think? What’s important to them?”
4. Level up your details
There are around 15 million high school students in the United States these days. The odds of coming up with an essay topic that’s never been written about are slim to none. What makes an essay compelling, what makes it stand out and makes it uniquely and completely yours are the details.
No one else has lived your life the way you have lived it. So even if you’re writing about something other people have experienced, write with enough detail (I like sensory details - bring the reader into the moment with you and let them know what it looked, felt, sounded, tasted, smelled like) until it is unquestionably your experience and no one else’s.
Ask yourself, “Could someone else tell the story exactly like this?” If your answer is yes, you need more details.
5. Use your reader’s time wisely
On average, admissions counselors are spending less than 15 minutes on an entire application (and that’s a very generous estimate). Because applications are being evaluated so quickly, students should make the most of their time and not ask their reader to read the same information more than once.
Don’t repeat information from somewhere else in the application in the Common App essay. It’s a wasted opportunity. Use this space to talk about something new or give additional new context that your application would be incomplete without.
6. Make sure your main message is clear
Along the same lines as #5, students shouldn’t make admissions counselors read between the lines to understand the main takeaways of their essays.
Remember that the person who will read this essay doesn’t know you and can’t read your mind, so something that may seem obvious to you may be unclear to someone else. Make sure that your main message can be understood from your essay and from your essay alone.
7. Sound like a teenager
Admissions counselors read thousands and thousands of essays. They know what a teenager sounds like. They also know what an essay written by a teenager’s parents sound like. They also know what a teenager who spent too much time on thesaurus.com sounds like.
The most successful essays are the ones that sound like the person writing them because then the reader really feels like they’re getting to know the student, and that’s the whole point of the essay.
8. Show some growth
A lot of students use the Common App essay as an opportunity to write about a challenge they’ve overcome or a big moment in their life that had a major impact on them or something influential from their childhood. So often, in this kind of essay, we learn a lot about who that student was then. And then the essay ends.
Don’t forget to catch the reader up to the present! The essay is reflective of who you are as you are putting your application, and admissions counselors want to see how you have grown and changed into your present-day self.
9. Write more than one draft
Not to add any more stress to the admissions process, but… this is a pretty important essay. Plan to spend some time on it. I have yet to meet a student whose first draft is submission-ready, so don’t start working on your essay a few hours before the application deadline. Give yourself plenty of time to rework your rough draft into polished essay.
10. Download Grammarly
With tens of thousands of applications coming in each cycle, admissions essays are being read very quickly. This isn’t English class, and the admissions counselor isn’t holding a red pen, docking off points for split infinitives and misplaced commas. Grammar and writing skills aren’t being formally evaluated. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t noticed.
Do yourself a favor. Download Grammarly. It’s free. Enable it to work in Google Docs. Use it on your college application essays. Use it throughout college. Use it for everything. I’m using it to write this blog post.
11. Don’t get too many people involved
Students may want to share their essays with someone for feedback, but we don’t recommend sharing the essay too widely. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and too many well-intentioned editors lose a student’s voice and create a Frankenessay.
When we work with a student on their essay, we want them to create the best essay that that student is capable of writing, and preserving their voice is always our main priority. It’s hard to do, and it takes experience!