The College Essay: Character over Accomplishments When It Comes to (Ad)mission (Im)possible

A parent recently said that her child planned to apply to schools as an intended zoology major, even though the student is really a humanities person and would drop the zoology façade upon college acceptance. Fraudulent ethics aside, please don't try to game the system. If we all really want to increase transparency between applicants and admissions offices, just be the most authentic version of yourself. If you indicate forestry as your intended major but have posters of the late architect Zaha Hadid’s concrete structures on your walls, trust me, your essays will fall flat. Remember that your essay reader doesn't have to share your interest and passion and may be eating a bacon burger while reading about your foray into veganism, but your essay should convince the reader that whatever you are writing about, whether about a love of Ukrainian poetry or an interest in juvenile prison reform, is genuine to you.

The LeBron James of college counseling, Sarah Harberson, in her book “Soundbite” talks about essay topics to avoid including learning differences, mental and psychological diagnoses and lower advanced placement scores.  I’d also add to the list any topics about the burdens of being a part of a large family (not the admissions officer’s problem) and having to choose between too many talents (yes, I’m not making this up).

Unless it's your personal health challenge like battling a life critical illness, tread carefully. Decades later I still cringe remembering how I unsuccessfully applied and wrote in one college application "those three inches of my dad's brain tumor taught me more than the 3,000 miles I had just traveled as a high school exchange student in Argentina." I wrote what I thought the readers wanted to hear, instead of writing that trailing around the members from the House of Saud who were also at the Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis for treatment was of most interest to me.

If you are coming from a private school or suburban school with limited diversity on multiple fronts, the admission reader probably already knows this from your school profile. You don't have to mention this, and it might come across as disingenuous. But make sure in one of your essays to at least address how you have compensated for this and that your friends and mentors don’t all look or sound like you.

Be careful of essay topics that are grounded in experiences which suggest highly parental subsidized activities like Outward Bound or exploration trips to the Galapagos Islands. If you do have an expensive life transformation experience like a trip abroad or unpaid exotic internship, make sure you work in something like “the trip to Senegal financed by mowing 123 lawns” or “the 79 bottles of Maguires boat wax used at the marina to clean boats that paid for the course enrollment.”

Remember that for every essay about "I was a counselor in training for two weeks at my summer camp" there is another essay about the first-generation student who helped run her parents gas station and did her calculus problem set between resetting the gas pumps for customers. Or the essay from the student who wasn't involved in many after school activities because right after the dismissal bell, he went straight to his dad's fishing tackle store to fix the guides on fishing rods. It's okay if you don't have a story of hardship or personal sacrifice, but you need to at least convey empathy, collegiality, and an appreciation of being born into a ready-made support network.

With Covid, many have asked, "was I really expected to start a community action program when really it was all I could do to log into my virtual classroom from my laundry room?" Actually, you were doing what Dr. Fauci told us to do, which was stay home. So what about the student who used a bull horn to amplify her trombone concert to assisted living residents during lockdown? Okay, but did her essay smack of self-aggrandizement? Don't worry if you don't have your Covid success story. Perhaps consider how Covid allowed you to think about what you missed and what your true passions are. Or maybe that the hard stop of sports showed you that you missed theatre and that’s where your passions rest. Or that you found a new interest in accounting to help a parent's business stay afloat.

Lastly, please gingerly tow the line of confidence. You're asking to be part of an entering class. You want to come across as the type of student who will help with the clean-up should there be a burst pipe in the dorm, not the type of student who just looks for the nearest Ritz Carlton a la Ted Cruz exit strategy. It's like the person who tosses the prepaid FedEx package like a frisbee across the counter and says over his shoulder, “already have a prepaid shipping label on it" with no eye contact or interaction with the Fed Ex employee. Don't be like this person. You're interacting with a fellow human being. The admission officer doesn't work for you. For all you know, the admissions officer is still paying off his own college loans. Be respectful without too much excessive flattery. It's okay to express excitement and eagerness. Especially if you have not encountered financial hardship, which is something you can't control, try to come across as the type of person who is respectful, open-minded, and willing to listen. Your interactions with the admissions office are the beginning of a practice run for a new frontier in your life as you begin a series of “first impressions” that lead to the job interviews which will lead to the careers in nonprofits and multinational companies.

You as an individual are defined so much more than the school you will go to. 

Yes, college will shape you, but the course of your lifetime will shape you more than the collective sum of your college semesters ever will. Your future workplaces and colleagues, relationships, houses of worship, civic involvements and life experiences will make you into the well-measured, balanced and contributing global citizen that I root for you to become. As I write this, more than 50 young girls and women recently were killed near a school in Kabul by a bomb set by those who didn’t want these girls to receive an education.  We as Americans are so lucky in that we have so many choices for schools and so many available scholarships, loans, and resources to reach those schools.

And before you hit that submit button, remember that it’s not about the “U” in University. David Brooks in “The Road to Character” sets up our aspirations as life-long learners:

"In the struggle against your own weakness, humility is the greatest virtue. Humility is having an accurate assessment of your own nature and your own place in the cosmos. Humility is awareness that you are an underdog in the struggle against your own weakness. Humility is an awareness that your individual talents alone are inadequate to the tasks that have been assigned to you. Humility reminds you that you are not the center of the universe, but you serve a larger order."