Despite the fact that Five underutilized ways to give yourself an advantage with your college essay doesn’t seem like an accurate title for Jay Mathews’ recent post (only the first two tips have to do with essays), this first tidbit is worth considering.
1. At least once in any essay, make fun of yourself. It’s called self-deprecation. It should be (but is not) taught in every essay-writing and speechmaking class. When my daughter Katie’s first-choice college asked her to tell it something not on her application, she wrote about her friend’s label for her: the human jukebox. She could identify songs by just the first three or four notes. She told the college, “The happiest place in the world for me is inside my car singing (badly) to pop music.” That’s self-deprecation. You can slip some into whatever you have already written. If it’s about your volunteer hospital work, describe a clumsy moment. Did you mix up a patient’s urine sample with his apple juice? That tells the college you are not just smart but enjoyable to have around.
I’d offer just one potential revision to that advice.
Self-deprecation works when it’s true, and some stories don’t necessarily involve a mistake, an embarrassing moment, a less-than-perfect showing, etc. Tell the whole truth. Don’t polish out every bit of reality to the point that you’re presenting yourself as perfect (you’re not—none of us are, including the people reading your application). But don’t feel like you necessarily have to wedge it into every story.