I read an article last week offering college essay advice to students that included the tip, “Don’t write about a failure.” I understood the reasoning behind that advice, and it would probably hold true for some kids. But certainly not all.
A failure isn’t inherently shameful, and it’s not necessarily a scar on your high school record. What if you tried your best to make the hockey team, got cut, and found your love for cross country as a result? What if you auditioned for the school play, didn’t get chosen, and volunteered to run the lights? What if the prompt is asking you to describe a failure and what you learned from it?
A quick Google search of “college essay don’ts” came up with dozens of results, almost all of which I thought either have frequent exceptions or are just flat-out bad advice.
“Don’t write about religion, politics, drugs, or sex.”
What if you’ve spent your high school years volunteering with your church, working for a city councilperson’s campaign, volunteering at a drug rehab center, or working with an outreach group that teaches sex education workshops to junior high school students? Are you to pretend you didn’t do those things?
“Don’t try to be funny.”
What if you are funny? What if you’ve done open mic nights at comedy clubs, or perform with an improv group, or write a humor column for the school paper? Are you to hide that side of yourself?
“Don’t write a ‘woe is me’ essay.”
If you’re just manufacturing a supposed hardship in the hopes the admissions office will pity you, then this “don’t” is great advice. But what if you have suffered a challenge, a setback, or even worse, a real personal tragedy? Are you not supposed to write about it?
Some of the don’ts are true 100% of the time. Don’t plagiarize. Don’t rely only on spell-check to proofread your essay. Don’t reference how much you want to attend Boston University in an essay you’re sending to NYU.
But most college essay don’ts come with exceptions. The prompts are varied, no two colleges are alike, and applicants are complex individuals. That’s a lot of potential combinations that very few “don’ts” can apply to universally.
Colleges use the essays to get to know you in a way that they couldn’t from your application alone. The first step to finding a great response is to consider your honest answer to the question. Write it in a way that sounds like you, as if you were explaining it to your favorite teacher. Inject enough detail so that nobody else applying to college could write the same essay. And most importantly, produce something that you’re proud of, something that your friends and family would read and say, “This is so you.”
Do all those things, and you’ll almost certainly produce a great essay. Even if it violates a common college essay don’t.