Top 30 Mistakes
WARNING!
If you don't have a solid list of potential topics or a rough outline of your essay, STOP READING NOW. Seriously. Don't start with lists of rules or errors because they will feel limiting or excessive, and will likely stifle creativity and actually focus your attention and energy on what you shouldn't be doing rather than devoting it to creating new ideas or topics. Ok, do you have a rough draft or an outline or at least some topics? Really? Good. Read on, and remember that these are just guidelines, so if you really want to break one of these rules, you can. Just recognize that it's risky to do so and you will need to write a really great essay to make the risk pay off. If you're interested in a professional essay review, feel free to PM me for more details - this is the best way to make sure your essay passes muster.
1. Don't choose a common topic. It's possible to write a good essay on a common topic but so much more difficult because of the sheer volume that comes in. These include the standard sports injury/championship, mission trip, divorce, moving to a new city, death of a grandparent, and slightly meta "getting into this college would be the culmination of my dreams" essays. To a lesser degree, this also includes "soup du jour" essay topics like cryptocurrency, social media, or whatever else is trending. Yes, it is theoretically possible to have a good essay on any of these common topics. But every AO rolls their eyes and dies a little inside every time they have to read another one.
2. Make sure you write about something that is actually important to you. Full meta essays about college applications/grades/tests feel like they are clever and creative, but they aren't that distinctive or original. And there's no way the college application process is that big of a part of who you are because you've only been doing it for ~7 months tops. People who write about this are trying to project intelligence and depth, but it does the opposite. Other people write about things they think AOs want them to write about. What they actually want you to write about is YOU.
3. Use caution when writing about super polarizing or sensitive issues. Be careful not to come across as too dogmatic, political, religious, cult-like, overly dramatic, aggressive, racist, sexist, or argumentative. Often you come across as somewhat crass or blunt simply because you don't have the space to explain your complex views fully enough and the topic is so delicate. Other times your opinions clash with the deeply held views of whoever is reading your essays. Again, it's possible to write good essays on delicate topics, but it's risky - just like killing a fly in your grandmother's house with a baseball bat.
4. Don't curse too much, try too hard to incite pity or catharsis, be overly pessimistic / self-deprecating, talk about your forays into illegal/unethical activities, or do anything else dark, depressing, or weird. You want to stand out as unique, but not like this. You can curse a little and brush up against dark or challenging material, but you want your essay to portray a positive view of you.
5. Avoid using too many big words. Do not, repeat, DO NOT touch that thesaurus. You want this essay to be your voice. You're smart and you want the AO to know that, but they will already see your SAT verbal score and your transcript, so you don't need to hit them in the face with a thesaurus. Using too many big words sounds unnatural and makes it sound like you're trying to be impressive rather than expressive. Instead of coming away with "wow this guy is really passionate and a creative writer" they might just find you insincere, boring, and uninspiring. Big words in excess drain emotion and jar the reader out of the story and remind them that they're sitting in a windowless room evaluating essays. They are WAY overused in these essays too, and often evoke a "here we go again" sigh. You can sound full of yourself and arrogant as well as out of touch. Remember that you want to be likeable, personable, and charismatic. These will be more impressive to an AO than people who try too hard to impress with intellect and vocabulary.
6. Take time to edit & review your essays. I've seen essays list the wrong school. I've seen a student literally misspell her own first name in the essay. I've seen essays that scream that English is not your first language so loudly they are hard to get through. You don't want any of those. Review your essays, revise them, and get someone else to help give you feedback too.
7. Don't make your essays low effort or last minute rush jobs. Too many bright students are used to churning out an essay in a couple hours and getting an A almost by default. Or they're used to putting things off until the last minute but succeeding anyway because they're very bright. Or maybe they're shotgunning too many schools and are already sick of it. Or maybe they don't actually want to go to that particular school so they don't really try. Whatever the reason, this is a recipe for disaster on college application essays because they are supposed to be much more than the typical writing you produce. They should be thoughtful, introspective, expressive, creative, inspiring, interesting, and revealing. You won't get that kind of compelling writing in a single draft or with a lazy approach. Usually, when an essay was thrown together with little effort or very quickly, it shows. That always communicates that you either don't care enough to give it the time and effort it deserves, or that you aren't capable of better. Either way it's a fast one-way ticket to the waitlist.
8. Don't try to write about your entire life from a 30,000 foot view. You simply don't have space to say everything about yourself, so don't try. Pick a few attributes and try to tell one story that showcases those. If you bite off more than you can chew, you probably won't end up saying anything really compelling about yourself. The more you zoom out, the more every student looks the same. It's only when you talk to them, get to know them, spend time with them, learn about them, and engage them that you start to see how different, vibrant, interesting, talented, and incredible they are. So give the AO an opportunity to get close to you in the essay. Go small. Zoom in on one story, not your whole life. Don't use an introduction, just jump right in and let the story fill in the details as you go.
9. Don't use pithy aphorisms, clichés, or generalities even if you made them up they're original to you. Don't try to include wholesome sounding life lessons or broad sweeping statements about the world or humanity. None of these: "I learned more from them than they did from me." "By striving to achieve greatness we can become more than we ever thought possible." "Only by helping others can a person truly realize their potential in the world." "I am far stronger than I knew and I'm excited to face the next set of challenges." Those are all the worst and are an instant eye-roll and "not this again" sigh.
10. Don't fail to complete a portion of the application. On multiple occasions I have been reviewing an app and the next section loads and it's empty or the essay is only partially complete. I refresh the page and still get just half an essay. I reach out to the admins to make sure there's not a clerical or systems error. Then I ask them to check the student record and if possible follow up with the student to make sure they completed the section. Sometimes we get a response with the missing section and sometimes we don't. It's hard for this to turn out well. Many schools would not be this gracious and would simply move on to the next app. If you're paying the app fee, get your money's worth by actually filling out the whole thing and completing your essays.
11. Don't be so academic or stick too close to the prompt. Some prompts are more dangerous for falling into this mistake, but so often students are conditioned to answer questions directly and fully like they would for school. The prompt is primarily there to get you to talk about yourself not to assess your ability to answer a question completely and fully. So if it asks why you want to go to X school, don't write 500 words praising the school for being so awesome. They already know how awesome they are. What they want to know about is YOU and how YOU fit the school. Make sure your response addresses the prompt and that it's clearly written for that school, but don't treat it like an exam question. Think of it more like someone asked you that question on a date to find out more about you. Let the response be more reflective of you than it is of the prompt.
12. Don't steal an essay that isn't yours. Sometimes this works and you take credit for a well-written and proven essay. But there is also the risk that you could get caught and there is no statute of limitations on this. If they discover it 25 years after you graduate, they can still cancel your degree. It's just not worth the risk. Not only is it riskier than most students realize, it's also not as effective. What was a powerful and compelling picture of one student might not work or fit for you. Holistic review means that everything is considered together in evaluating applications. When things don't fit, it raises a variety of concerns and the total picture of the applicant just isn't as strong.
13. Avoid overused words, especially SAT words - plethora, myriad, ameliorate, etc. These don't make you sound smart. They make you sound fake and basic. Use words that you would use to talk about yourself to a friend or on a date or in a job interview.
14. Don't use a template from a book, or model your essay after someone else's. One of the admissions officers that contributed to The New Rules of College Admissions tells the story of how one year she and her colleagues read many essays that all talked about a genie granting wishes and how the wishes embodied the student and his/her ambitions for college and life. They scratched their heads over the striking similarities until one of them found a book published that year that had a successful essay example that was the genie essay. This didn't end well for those students.
15. Don't go over the word limit. AO's have to read a ton of essays and if yours is demonstrably longer, it's going to be annoying at best and detrimental to your rating at worst. Many application review systems will automatically truncate responses at the word limit, so the end may not even show up.
16. At the same time, don't write an essay that is less than about 60% of the word limit. Unless you have a really clever, amazing, and heretofore unseen idea that requires this, you should aim for 80-100% of the word limit. If you're less than 60%, it just looks lazy, uninspired, aloof, and disengaged.
17. Avoid giving off bad vibes. This includes excessive bragging, self-absorption, entitlement, snootiness, arrogance, bravado, presenting an abrasive personality, or anything else that indicates you will struggle to fit in to a vibrant community and flourishing student body. Most of the major problems colleges deal with are related to a very small minority of their students. So it saves a lot of big headaches to screen these people out in the admissions process. Make sure your essay says "plays well with others" and not "social pariah bound for arrest or expulsion." You want to come across as interesting, likeable, fun, clever, creative, and upbeat. Let your SAT and grades showcase how smart you are.
18. Avoid pitymongering, humblebragging, being a victim, depressed rants, passive aggressive or reverse psychology attempts (e.g. "I just know I'm going to be rejected"), self-deprecation that goes too far, or generally an overly negative attitude. This should be a showcase of your strengths, the very best you on your very best day. Avoid putting others down, diving deep into personal conflicts (one essay I read was about a student's best friend abandoning her and how she cut her out of her life), showing inability to work with others and airs of superiority, paranoid defensiveness, or general toxicity.
19. Don't go overboard with fluff or exaggeration. AOs are pretty familiar with common accomplishments and what typical high achieving students look like, so don't try too hard to stretch things. They're also pretty familiar with BS because so many students try to pass it off as legitimate in their applications.
20. Don't use the essay to explain the reason you don't have a 4.0. Don't make excuses, blame others or society for your shortcomings/struggles, gripe about injustices in your life, etc. The essay is a space for you to showcase your personality, skills, abilities, accomplishments, talents, strengths, and potential. Don't waste it on justifying your faults.
21. Make sure every essay you write says something meaningful about YOU. So many well-written essays end up being less impactful because they fail to say anything about the student. If you tell a story, make sure it shows something compelling and insightful about you. No matter what the prompt is, the essay should be something only you could write because of how much it shares about you.
22. Don't simply rehash all the other stuff in your application. Essays take a lot of time to review, and AOs do not appreciate redundancy. If you do write about something already listed in your application, make sure it adds more information and shows more of your personality, character, ability, etc.
23. Don't discuss or complain about your mental illnesses or other limitations. If you want to address extenuating circumstances, you can do so in the additional information section or have one of your recommenders explain it on your behalf. Note that even here you want the focus to be on how you've overcome challenges, grown through them, and what you've learned in the process. The essay shouldn't be wasted just trying to get you back to par with "normal" applicants, instead it should show how you are unique, awesome, and desirable as you are.
24. Don't try too hard. This includes overdone attempts to impress, to be unique, to write well, to sound smart, to be funny, to make light of something serious, to be creative etc. It's a little hard to define exactly what constitutes trying too hard, but AOs know it when they see it. When you aren't yourself and it's not your voice, it's always going to be a worse essay. "Go home and write a page tonight and let that page come out of you. Then it will be true." - Langston Hughes. I'm taking that quote out of context, but if you go read the full poem, Theme For English B, you'll see exactly what I mean.
25. Don't recycle an essay that was clearly written for something else. This includes submitting an essay that was done for a class in school, making bad and obvious copy/paste errors, or shoehorning a different application essay in. All of these result in an essay that just doesn't feel right. It isn't necessary to be married to the prompt as noted above. But it is necessary to make the essay polished and specifically oriented to that prompt or college.
26. Don't get cute with fonts, presentation, etc. This means no secret codes, wingdings, mirror writing, weird poetry, Elvish, Klingon, Morse code, all caps, or arranging the words to form a pattern or picture. I have seen or heard of all of these and they never go well. Write the essay in English unless it's an international or multilingual school in which case you should write in the language you would be using there. Don't try to impress AOs with how well you know French. AO's don't have time or patience for that – they'll just skip over it and move on. Don't write illegibly or incoherently either. Use proper grammar, syntax, and diction – but remember to use your own voice. Do not cite sources or do anything too academic. This is an essay about you, not a documented research paper. But it still needs to be easy to read. An AO with hundreds of essays to read will appreciate it.
27. Don't regurgitate the prompt in your introduction. This is boring, commonplace (thanks freshman English teachers…), and wasteful of your precious word count. Keep your essay unique and interesting. Don’t be bland, predictable, or too straightforward. Don't answer the prompt like you would on a test in school. Instead, tell a story about your life or write in a way that showcases your personality and the things that make you unique.
28. Don't put down or belittle the college. Some students do this because it's not their first choice, they legitimately feel like insulting the institution, they want to intimate that the college is somehow "beneath them", or someone is making them apply. Whatever the reason, it will only make you look petty, negative, and self-absorbed. If you give off the sentiment that you don’t want to attend that college, the AO will probably oblige you with a rejection letter.
29. Don't tell a story or write an essay that doesn't have a point. Some essays seem aimless and just ramble until the word limit is fulfilled. I think many students are used to doing this in school to BS their way through an essay assignment of a given length. Others don’t know what they want to say in the first place and end up rambling a lot and saying nothing. Remember that the focus of the essay (regardless of the prompt) is to reveal yourself to the AO. Get them to like you, be curious about you, and leave with a positive impression of you.
30. Never start with a definition, especially for a word most people already know or a big obscure word that doesn't have any personal meaning or connection to you. An alarmingly high number of applicants do this and it starts you off with a sigh from your AO. It's overdone, pedantic, and worthless. It says nothing about you. It does not make anyone actually want to keep reading. You should also avoid starting out with a quote, especially one that is inspirational, philosophical or by a famous person like Lincoln, Franklin, Jobs, MLK, Einstein, or Gandhi. Students think that borrowing from or attaching themselves to a famous author, philosopher, statesman, or businessman will give them cache, rapport, or credibility. It would be somewhat weak even if it wasn't overdone. The essay is supposed to showcase you – not the famous person, and quotes cut into your word count. Most great essays don't start with a quote, especially a lame one.