What Is a College Essay, Anyway?

 

As admission to the nation’s most selective schools becomes more and more competitive, the college essay has increased in significance as well. That means to gain admission to college today, it’s likely you will need to write at least one college essay—and probably more. In a world full of information overload where anyone can post anything to any platform, you’ll find a lot of buzz about the college essay: videos, blogs, books, webinars, social media posts. It’s so hard to tell what’s useful and what’s not. If you search the term college application essay (or similar terms), you’ll discover plenty of material that is either irrelevant, out of context, or inaccurate. We’ve read and heard it all, and if you’re a high school junior or senior searching for information about college essays, you’ve probably heard it too. If not, brace yourself. Some folks share templates for writing standout college essays. (Don’t be fooled. This is not a fill-in-the-blank task.)

Others promise that if you answer a bunch of specific questions, you’ll be guaranteed great essays. (Questions can help you think through your ideas, but there’s no magic. Writing takes time and exploration. No one can do it for you.) You’ll find countless books filled with sample essays that supposedly got students admitted into the nation’s most selective schools. (This type of claim is out of context; even the most amazing essay never got a student into college on its own.) Some people might tell you there are only a few types of college admission essays; if you master those, you’ll be golden. (This is way too simplistic, and inaccurate.) Some might even suggest colleges are looking for four or five specific traits, which you should highlight in your essays. (This is not true. College admissions officers want to read an authentic story about you that is insightful, answers the prompt and showcases the trait or traits you want to share—whatever those traits may be.) The application essay is the new SAT/ACT. (We have never heard any admissions officer say this. To us, this sounds like conjecture and anxious thinking.) When it comes to college essay advice, we understand why it can be hard to decipher good from bad, accurate from inaccurate, complete versus out of context. Just be careful. Gimmicks don’t work. And you cannot shortcut this process

If you want to write an effective essay that supports your case for admission. At Wow, we teach an approach, not a cookie-cutter template. We’ll always give you the facts, even when they are hard to hear or sound different from something you heard at school or read online. We’ll help you sort through the chaos. We’ve been working with students for a long time, and we’ve learned from our experience and from our students’ successes. We’ll show you how to write for college admissions officers without a pre-designed structure, without reading sample essays and without added stress. Your task: write a college application essay that gets the attention you want inside the admissions office. To do that, you’ll need simple instructions, a plan from start to finish, and a schedule to help you stay on track. Writing is a process, just like science or math.

Our book will explain our writing process, called The Wow Method, but we want to be clear about what a college essay is in the first place before we talk about process. Simply put, the term college essay refers to any piece of writing that a college requires as part of the admissions process. Because most schools do not conduct interviews, essays are often the only opportunity to share your unique voice. You may hear several different terms used to describe this type of writing: personal statements, personal insight questions, supplemental essays, or short answers. We include all of them under the umbrella term, college essay. To read more about this topic and gain other useful tips and tricks, download our free ebook.