By the end of your junior year, you’ve written dozens (maybe even hundreds) of essays: from grade school book reports and five-paragraph narrative essays to literary analyses, term papers, and honors and AP exams in high school. You know how to write an essay, but this one feels different. It feels like the most important essay you’ll ever write, the one that could make or break your college decisions, or maybe even your entire future.
At this point, your GPA, activities list, and test scores aren’t likely to change much, and you’ve heard that essays are more important than ever because colleges are taking a more holistic approach to admissions. So your college essay is your last, best chance to convince your top-choice colleges to admit you, and that means it has to be absolutely perfect.
The Myth of the Perfect College Essay
If you’ve spent any time thinking about your college essay, your Google search history probably includes things like unique college essay ideas, college essay examples, and how to stand out in a college essay. You’ve seen the most recent viral “essay that got me into my dream school” social media posts and read advice from college consultants and the Harvard Crimson.
So you know there’s no shortage of information out there about writing your college essays. This isn’t a bad thing. It can be helpful to see what other students have done—and found success with—to give you a clearer idea about what colleges are expecting.
Less helpful is the impulse to treat viral essays as templates or view advice as a guaranteed formula for success, and this impulse is tempting. After all, these essays got the students who wrote them into great colleges—sometimes even Ivies—so there must be something about them. You just need to figure out what it is.
If you found this blog while searching for the secret that will help you write the perfect college essay, you’re in luck, because the secret is this: The perfect college essay doesn’t exist. And even if it did, it’s not what college admissions committees want to read.
What Colleges Actually Look For in a College Essay
There’s definitely something about those “essays that worked” that makes them special, but it’s not something you’ll find by analyzing or trying to reverse-engineer them.
The fact is, those essays weren’t successful because the students who wrote them somehow cracked the code. They were successful because they tell an honest story in an authentic voice that introduces readers to the real person behind the application.
There’s no formula that can do that, and searching for one can actually be counterproductive. If you spend too much time looking at successful essays for the secret recipe, you might start to think you can’t possibly write anything that measures up: your topic ideas aren’t unique enough, your experiences aren’t impressive enough, your writing isn’t strong enough.
But colleges aren’t only looking for the most quirky or unique ideas. They’re not looking for stories about how you climbed Mount Everest, cured cancer, or negotiated world peace. And with just a few minutes to spend on each essay, they’re certainly not looking for writing that reads like Shakespeare.
Colleges aren’t looking for a mythical “perfect essay”; they’re looking for your essay: the one that tells your story in your authentic voice and lets them get to know who you really are.
How Chasing the Perfect College Essay Can Hold You Back
As an essay coach, I work with dozens of students every year as they write their college essays, and I’ve seen students get sidetracked by the quest for the perfect essay more than a few times. Here are a few of the most common ways striving for perfection can get in the way of writing a great essay.
Waiting for a “Good Enough” Idea
At some point early in our first essay meeting, many students tell me something like this: I don’t know what to write about. There’s nothing interesting about me. My family is boringly normal. Nothing traumatic has ever happened to me. I go to school, play my sports, do my homework, hang out with my friends, do my hobbies—just normal teenage stuff.
The myth of the perfect essay says that your college essay topic should be unique, fascinating, and/or impressive (with bonus points if it’s a little quirky). But the reality is that most teenagers’ lives are primarily made up of “normal teenage stuff.”
Of all the students I’ve worked with, only one has written a college essay about something I’d consider a truly unique (and pretty impressive) experience: While volunteering at a fan event, he talked his way into serving as a bodyguard for his favorite celebrity (and learned that being open to opportunities could result in doing really cool things). It was a great essay, a lot of fun to read and help shape, and it almost certainly grabbed the attention of admissions readers.
But most of the best personal statements I’ve read have been insights gleaned from smaller, everyday moments and experiences: the student who was able to let go of perfection because of what she learned taking a pottery class, or the one who discovered that the books his father had given him for his birthday each year held lessons to help him through challenging times, or the one who (literally) found a wider perspective on his place in the world while taking videos with his drone.
The reason these essays were so good wasn’t that they were impressive—it was that they were honest, often vulnerable reflections on the writers’ own experiences. Whatever you write about, the real topic of your essay is you, and almost any idea that lets you authentically express who you are is “good enough.”
Over-Editing
Editing your essay—correcting mistakes and making changes that improve it—is a good thing. In fact, it’s vital; if there’s one thing you do want to get as close to perfect as possible, it’s spelling, grammar, and structure. Over-editing is another thing entirely: obsessing over minor details and agonizing over choices and changes that don’t really matter.
Over-editing can keep you from making real progress on your essay. I’ve worked with more than one student who wrote just a paragraph or two a week, revising and tweaking each one until they felt it was good enough before moving on to the next. One student came to me with a pretty solid essay almost completely written, with comments highlighting the words and phrases she wasn’t happy with. We spent several meetings discussing minor word choices and phrasing changes, and even after I assured her that she’d written an excellent essay, she was reluctant to consider it done and move on.
Even worse than wasting time on details that don’t improve your essay, too much tinkering can actually be detrimental. A student who was updating an essay she’d written the year before told me she thought her first draft was much better than the one she eventually used. She’d re-read and edited it so many times—incorporating feedback from her parents and teachers—that the end result lacked the personality of the original. While she loved the story she told in her essay, she wished she’d polished it a little less and kept more of her unique voice intact.
Spending too much time and energy on minor changes also means you’ll have less time to work on other parts of your application. As the clock ticks away on your application deadlines, you may find that the time you spent deciding between two equally acceptable synonyms in your personal statement leaves you rushing through supplemental essays that might have been better if you’d had a little more time to work on them.
Following Trends
New trends sprout up online almost every week, and college essays are no exception. Every spring, at least one totally oddball, quirky, or otherwise unique essay (which almost always got the writer into an Ivy League or similarly competitive school) seems to go viral on social media.
This might be the most tempting way to chase perfection, because it seems like an easy formula:
(something quirky about you + connection to character trait + insight about life)
x outside-the-box structure
= memorable essay that will get you into your dream school and maybe make you internet-famous
It’s also a strategy that’s likely to backfire.
The other obstacles we’ve discussed can all get in the way of writing your essay, but once you’ve pushed through them, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually end up with an essay that is authentically you. If you’re following a trend, you probably won’t, because you’re not using your voice to tell your story; you’re reverse-engineering what worked for someone else and trying to make your experience fit.
It’s next to impossible to write an essay that sounds authentic if it isn’t authentic, and following a trend usually isn’t. Besides, when everyone starts following a trend, it stops being unique. Do you really want to be the fifteenth essay an admissions officer reads that expounds on life lessons learned from a favorite childhood cartoon or is written in the form of a recipe?
Letting Go of the “The Perfect College Essay”
So how can you break free from the myth of perfection to find—and write—your story?
Think “Honest,” Not “Impressive”
Colleges want to admit students who are curious and engaged with their world, who are capable of reflection and growth, and who will positively contribute to the campus community. The point isn’t to impress admissions readers; it’s to show them that you are one of those students.
If you’re used to thinking of yourself mostly in terms of the subjects you like, the classes you take, and the activities you participate in, this kind of reflection might seem like a tall order. Brainstorming questions can take you on a deep dive: assessing your values, goals, interests, and dreams; articulating what you want colleges to know about you; and identifying experiences that illustrate those things.
Whatever you choose to write about, big or small, it should be something that feels true. Letting go of the idea that your essay has to be impressive and approaching it with honesty and authenticity instead is the key to finding your own compelling story and writing a great essay.
Give Yourself Permission to Write a “Bad” Draft
When a student is having trouble getting the words on the page, my go-to recommendation is the “brain dump”—writing everything you can think of that you might want to say, without worrying about style or structure or even whether what you’ve written is entirely relevant.
Brain-dumping is also helpful for students who tend to write and edit at the same time, endlessly revising the last sentence and trying to make it perfect before moving on. If this is you, try setting a timer for 30 minutes and freewriting whatever comes to mind about your topic, with no editing allowed.
The result of the brain dump is likely to be a pretty bad first draft. Some (maybe even most) of what you’ve written won’t make it into your final essay, but seeing everything you have to say on the page will help you decide what belongs and what doesn’t and how to fit the pieces together to create a better draft.
Focus on the Bigger Picture
If there’s a phrase I repeat more often than any other when I’m working with students—whether as an essay coach or as an academic or test prep tutor—it’s this: No one essay (or grade, or test score) is going to be the difference between getting into your dream school and living in your parents’ basement for the rest of your life.
Setting aside the fact that there’s a lot of space between “dream school graduate” and “permanent basement dweller,” it’s important to remember that the colleges you apply to are looking at the whole picture, and your essays are only one piece of it.
That doesn’t mean they’re not important or that you shouldn’t put in your best effort. But understanding that no single piece of the puzzle is likely to be the one thing that makes or breaks your application can shift your mindset. With the pressure off (or at least turned down a little), you can take a deep breath, relax, and shift your focus from trying to write the perfect essay to writing the best essay to tell your story.
Conclusion
Whether it’s trying to reverse-engineer a viral essay, waiting endlessly for an inspired idea, or just not being able to get out of your own way, it’s easy to derail your college applications by chasing perfection. But the perfect college essay doesn’t have to hold you back.
With an understanding of what colleges are really looking for, common traps to avoid, and a few strategies to help you let go of perfection, you can get back on track and write your essay—one that feels true, one that tells your story in your authentic voice, one that lets them get to know who you really are.
Ready to tell your story with confidence? You don’t have to figure it out alone. At HelloCollege, we’ll help you find your story and shape it into an essay that feels true to you. Reach out today to schedule a free consultation.
