“Every shoe has a story to tell and to know my shoes is to know me.”
So begins Chrissie Clemency’s college essay. Now, if you know Chrissie, a Phoenix resident and sophomore at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., you know her passion for shoes, fashion, and, well, fun. She’s never been one to take things too seriously. She’s friendly and positive, creative and social and above all, she has a heart way larger than her enormous shoe collection.
But wait a minute! She actually wrote about her shoes? For a college essay?
Writing about who you are, communicating your very essence, digging deep for the “you” inside — that’s exactly what makes the difference between a ho-hum essay filled with tired prose and platitudes and one that grabs the attention of the admissions officer who places your application in the coveted “yes” pile. But peeling away the layers to find the real “you” is not always easy, even though teens by nature spend many hours pondering who they are and who they want to be.
Sarah Myers McGinty, professor of education at Harvard University and author of Writing Your College Application Essay, notes that many teens have had little experience writing personal narratives by the time the application process begins. They can produce term papers. They can debate current issues or analyze literary characters. But writing about the self is a challenge — for anyone.
How can teens convey their unique sense of self to college admissions officers? How can parents encourage without getting over-involved? Here are a few tips to make the college essay writing experience more bearable, perhaps even fulfilling and, just maybe, fun.
“Get out the baby books, reminisce, talk, share — before you write a single word. Chrissie’s first essay attempt was to write about how she felt about a famous quote. She struggled through the process, then showed a rough draft to her parents and teachers.
“No one was impressed,” says Chrissie. “It just wasn’t good, it wasn’t me. I thought there would be a lot of essays that sounded like it.”
Back to square one. Chrissie’s mom, Carol, encouraged her to look through old letters, journals, artwork and baby books. They spent an afternoon in Chrissie’s room, just talking. What was unique about Chrissie? And then, Chrissie says, “it just came to me one night. I have a very large shoe collection — it just seemed fitting.”
One online editing service website, accepted.com, suggests exploring your identity through five categories: events, people, places, religion, or, as Chrissie did, one of your passions. Start making notes only after you have thoroughly discussed your ideas. Then spend some time sharing your ideas with others. Chrissie tapped in to the wisdom of one very dear adult friend.
“She would always give me shoe gifts — she knows me so well — so I went over to her house to tell her I wanted to write about shoes, how I wanted to connect myself with the shoes.”
• Write to the audience. The admissions team at any school is made up of individuals who vary in age as well as interests. According to tips from the admissions office at the University of Puget Sound, some students imagine these committees as being formal and stodgy, leading applicants to write that way. Don’t. Admissions committees are looking for accurate appraisals of each student, which may mean the essay could be funny or offbeat. Chrissie even got away with a pun in her essay: “If ever I tire from the hectic pace of school and work, my athletic shoes reprimand me, saying that coasting is no way to feed the ‘sole.'”
• Don’t use clichés. Be specific. Resist the urge to load the essay with multisyllabic vocabulary words. “My flip-flops have an open structure and demand that I keep an open mind,” Chrissie wrote, “and staying open to people’s differences helps me as I work with others.” Paint a picture of what you want to get across by using details. Parke Muth, of the admissions office at the University of Virginia, writes at length about the college essay on that school’s website. He urges applicants not to just tell, but to show what they mean by appealing to the senses. Everyone knows the airy freedom of sliding into a pair of flip flops. “An open design feeds an open mind,” Chrissie wrote.
• Once you have a rough draft, pass it around. Muth suggests that a writer read the essay out loud to someone who knows him/her well. As painful as it may seem, teens need to ask a variety of people to read and comment on a first draft. Ask readers to be honest. Did it hold their interest? Does the essence of the writer leap from the page? For Chrissie, this was terribly hard at first. But it helped that one requirement for her senior English class was to hand in a college essay. Most were then read out loud to the class, so she was not alone.
“I was nervous thinking they would think it was really stupid to write about shoes,” she says. In the end, Chrissie asked students, teachers, family friends and relatives to read her essay. The comments she received were a huge help. “It couldn’t have turned out better,” she says.
• Proofread. Don’t rely on your computer to check spelling and grammar. This is not the time to allow even one simple error to get by. The college essay is the one part of your application over which you have complete control, according to McGinty. It adds some color to the black and white of the test scores and the grade point average. It’s worth some extra effort, reflection and soul searching.
• Take it a step at a time, as Chrissie did: “I look for shoes that are strong yet flexible, shoes that have a kind and compassionate fit, shoes that recognize the universal need for comfort, shoes that value uniqueness in others, and shoes that allow room for growth…. Putting one foot in front of the other, I follow my feet.”
Learn more
- collegeboard.com
- ups.edu/admission/info/essay_tips.htm
- accepted.com
- virginia.edu/undergradadmission/writingtheessay.html
