What the College Essay Is Really For

Most students approach the college essay as an obstacle. Something to get through, get right, and get submitted. By the time they sit down to write, they have usually already asked some version of the following question: "What do colleges want to hear?"

That is the wrong question. And the answer, ironically, is that colleges want to hear something other than what most students say when they try to give colleges what they want.

Admissions officers read thousands of essays. They have read the sports injury that taught resilience. They have read the service trip to another country that opened a student's eyes. They have read the grandmother whose wisdom changed everything. These are not bad topics. They become ineffective when they are selected because they seem impressive rather than because they are true.

The personal statement exists for a specific purpose: to give an admissions committee a window into who this student is that the rest of the application cannot provide. Grades and test scores speak to academic preparation. Activities speak to how a student has spent their time. The essay speaks to how they think, what they notice, what they care about, and how they move through the world.

That is a meaningful invitation. Most students underestimate it.

The students who write the most compelling essays are almost never the ones who chose the most dramatic topics. They are the ones who wrote about something real with enough specificity and honesty that a stranger could recognize a distinct human being on the other side of the page. A great essay can be about a summer job, a family recipe, a long drive, an argument that changed something. The topic matters far less than the quality of attention the student brings to it.

My advice, when I work with students on their essays, is the same advice I have given for years. Start with what is actually true. Write toward it rather than around it. Trust that your real voice, at its most specific and most honest, is more interesting than the voice you think colleges want to hear.

They have heard that one. They are waiting for yours.