The College Essay: Who Are You and How Do You Know?

For High School Seniors:

Who are you and how do you know? That’s an essay you’re never asked to write in high school, or rarely anyway, and it’s a question you should ask and answer before you leave home. Write one essay that answers this question before you even see the questions from colleges. Fundamentall, each college asks the same question.

Some thoughts and advice:

The struggle to write a memorable essay:

Your essay will be one of 50-200 read on a weekend by an admissions officer who is not looking forward to this weekend.

Unless you really do exhibit some measure of uniqueness, your essay will not be memorable.

Nearly every essay the admissions officer will read will be well-organized, mechanically clean, and responsive to the question. So will yours. Some kids will be a little more literate than others, some offer a better combination of simple and complex sentences. Nice, but not sufficient to be memorable.
You become memorable -- your essay will be remembered 10 essays later -- not as a result of your mechanical proficiency.

Ideally, your essay moves the reader so that s/he wants to share parts or all of it with others who don't have to read it. Ideally, your essay compels your reader to put your essay forward to complement a great transcript or to replace a merely good one.

So . . . again: Unless you really do exhibit some measure of uniqueness, your essay will not be memorable. You can do this if you give yourself sufficient time and you allow yourself to examine who you are.

Don't turn a resume into an essay:

Nor will your essay be memorable if it is, in fact, a narrative of all your accomplishments that make the world a better place, i.e., resume as essay.

The opportunity to write this essay is a gift. The world does not give you many opportunities to sit for a while, a long while, to take stock of yourself, to examine yourself . . . not just sell yourself.

If you think of the essay as little more than an opportunity to sell yourself, to commodify yourself, it will not be memorable. It will sound like everyone elses.

Getting Started, Just Notes, Killing Your Babies:

Just write some notes, some lines, some phrases. Don't think about beginning, middle or end. Just write.

Don't get attached to anything you write. There will be some great lines that just won't be right for the essay. Gotta kill your babies.

The first really clean, well organized, draft is probably good, but . . . not nearly what it could be. It's good for a generic student; it's not good enough for you as a unique individual.

Writing is hard. You'll have taken stock of yourself as you introduce yourself to the greater world.

Where do you start? With what? Here are some ways in:

-- Find a moment in your life that, for whatever reason, you return to as something that resonates, something you can't help but keep returning to, something that maybe didn't tell you anything at the time, but you keep returning to it anyway, something that maybe sneaks up on you after months of not making an appearance. Often this involves a quandary in your life, a confusion, a struggle. We are who we are because of that with which we struggle.

-- Go deep, not broad. A list of attributes with a little explanation for each is tedious.

-- Show . . . and tell. A beautiful essay is different than most essays you've written. It has to include a measure of storytelling.

-- Flesh and blood. The essay is about a real, flesh and blood person. Don't write in abstractions.

-- Humans, especially teens, are messy things. Don't be afraid to share the mess. Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." But the examined life does not provide a whole of lot neat, no longer loose ends.

-- Does this mean that you have to write a depressing essay about a neurotic? No. It means you approach profundity without bathos. Yes, when you start to approach your core in writing, the writing may be really bad, but that's because language fails us initially when we approach something we've never written about that is complex, difficult, and stranger than you thought it would be.

-- Ideally, you should be a revelation to yourself.


Last Notes:

-- No cliches. Ever.

-- Don't try too hard to be poetic. Just get the tools off the shelf. The beauty of what you write will come last, arising organically out of the content, not imposed like flashy nothing on dross.

-- Have ONE editor -- a good listener: You would do well to hash ideas, notes, moments, stuff . . . with someone who listens well and doesn't know you extremely well. Like your college counselor or just about anyone who listens other than your parents. They know you too well and will be too anxious. The essay you send is the one you should share with them. It might prove to be a great gift to them, too. It will help them with their Rite of Passage, too . . . the one where they say goodbye to you.

-- However, you do need to work with one person on getting to the core of who you are. Don't work with several people. No more than 2 really. One ideally. You can definitely have too many cooks in that kitchen.

-- But DO work with someone who asks the hard questions and tells you when the writing is . . . not so good.

Is this daunting? Yes. Can it be done? Yes, if you commit yourself and your time to it.