Students often approach me at the end of my college essay seminars to ask what I think about a topic they’re considering. It’s difficult for me to tell students I’ve just met whether the story they’re considering is the right one. In fact, few stories are inherently good or bad—it depends on how they’re approached and written.
But I can say that a student who struggles to even describe the topic is likely to struggle to write it in an engaging way.
For example, is there potential in a story about how a student found her love of poetry after leaving the violin behind? The way she describes it tells me a lot. Compare these two sample descriptions of her own topic (this is fictional, but based on actual conversations I’ve had with students):
I started playing the violin when I was younger, but I kind of want to explain that I did it for social and family pressures, not so much in elementary school, but later in junior high. And I thought I could talk about how writing poetry was like a way of going against that. And how my parents always encouraged me to do music, so at first I only wrote in my spare time even though it wasn’t really something that other people were doing. And then I could talk about how poetry took the creative side of me that music used represent. Basically, I’m a creative person. That’s what I want to get across.
vs.
The best decision I ever made was to quit playing the violin and start writing poetry. I’m so much happier now. I actually lose track of time when I write. It’s my favorite thing to do.
I’m not evaluating the student’s story-telling ability. But the first description sounds like a student who is working too hard to wring meaning from the experience. It’s not top-of-mind or from the heart. It sounds like so many college essays where a student scans her life for something that she thinks colleges will appreciate, then tries to draw a formative experience or lesson from it to share in her essay.
The second description isn’t just pithy—it’s real. She isn’t struggling at all to find the story or the meaning. It’s right there, spilling out of her. Her biggest challenge will be just fitting all she likely has to say about it within the word limit.
I’ve often said that the best stories for college essays write themselves. But that’s not entirely true. Great writing takes time, thought, and revision. The best stories for college essays present themselves. You don’t have to work too hard to find—or quite as hard to write—them.