Last week, I held a training webinar for our Collegewise counselors called, “How to Give a Seminar People will Talk About.” Given that our counselors are all admissions experts and are plenty comfortable with the material, I wanted to stay true to the title and focus on how we could improve the seminar experience so that people would actually feel compelled to talk about it once they’d left. And it occurred to me that our four principles for college essays actually apply perfectly to not just presentations, but also for anyone who wants to stand out in any field.
1. Don’t try to impress—just be honest.
Impressive is great. But trying to impress often comes off as inauthentic. The act of impressing is actually a measure of others’ genuine reaction to your actions and behaviors. But the act of trying to impress is like varnish, an attempt to bring shine to something that might not necessarily have luster on its own. In college essays, this happens when students inject previously non-existent deep meaning or significance into an experience (“My work on one blood drive taught me the importance of serving humanity”). We work really hard at what we do at Collegewise. We’re proud of our effort and what we stand for. But we’re not for everybody, and that’s OK. Sure, we could pretend to be all things to all people, but that would be trying too hard to impress. Instead, we’d rather be clear and proud about what we do, how we do it, and what we stand for. People who join our program can then feel even more confident about how their college admissions experience will change as a result of working with us.
Work hard, be proud of your talents and accomplishments, and bring your best self to your interactions. You’ll then have the confidence to recognize and even admit your shortcomings. That’s what really impresses people.
2. Own your stories.
We teach our Collegewise students how to find and tell stories that nobody else applying to college could tell, a concept we call “owning your story.” But this concept runs even deeper than that. When our Collegewise counselors stand in front of a room full of people hoping to learn about college, our goal is to do something that nobody, not even our own colleagues could do. That’s not an easy task (we work with some pretty talented people). But our speakers each hope his or her own combination of information, advice, style and flat-out panache is one that a different speaker couldn’t pull off in the same way. We want to own the story of that 90 minutes that we’re in front of the crowd. And we’ll work hard to keep owning it once a family joins our program.
What are you bringing to your position, job, friendships, etc. that is uniquely yours, something that couldn’t be easily replaced?
3. Don’t repeat information from the rest of your application.
Many students feel compelled to use their essays to highlight things that have already been explained on the application. But the essay should share something the reader doesn’t know, either by revealing something that hasn’t been mentioned at all on the application, or by relating new information about a previously mentioned item. It’s a way of delivering a surprise, something that makes a student stand out and an admissions officer take notice.
Most families already know that a challenging curriculum is important, that the ACT is just as viable as the SAT, and that colleges look at a student’s extracurricular activities. To repeat that information at a seminar just wastes families’ time. So we want to bring them new information they didn’t know, something that surprises and sticks with them, like the fact that not all straight-A students are created equal, that too much test prep can actually hurt a student’s college admissions chances, and that some part-time jobs can be just as impressive as an elected leadership position.
Does your resume spend too much space explaining the parts of your position most people would know from the title alone? Are the weekly meetings you run for your staff predictable—always the same from week to week? Will you ask your kids the same question about their day that you’ve asked them every other day? Try mixing it up by sharing—or seeking—new information that they didn’t expect or don’t already know.
4. Sound like you.
Many college essays use words, phrasing, and tone that sound nothing like the teenager who wrote them (Arun once told me “plethora” is the most overused word in college essays). That drains the personality out of an essay and makes it much harder for the admission committee to better get to know and understand the writer behind the words. No, your essay shouldn’t read like a text message to a fellow teen. But it should still sound unmistakably like you.
Our Collegewise counselors aren’t just admissions experts—they’re a wonderfully creative and passionate bunch, and no two are alike. So we don’t dull them down by asking them to all act alike when they’re giving a presentation. A counselor who is funny should be funny. A counselor who is intellectual should be intellectual. A counselor who’s particularly passionate about finding great stories, or visiting colleges, or picking up every kernel of college trivia, should be the same person in front of the crowd as he or she is away from it.
Yes, you might behave differently in front of your best friend than you do in front of your principal, boss, mother-in-law, etc. But the best way to get people to like you is to just be yourself. And that starts with sounding like you.