Are you curious how you can completely ruin your college essays? What are four huge mistakes that students make in the college essay writing process? In this blog, I’m going to talk to you from my experience as an essay coach and college consultant, though I really specialize in how students present themselves, how to craft essays that are awesome, and how to create the best portrait of yourself through your application so that you can get into the best colleges possible. I’ve been working with students for 20 years, getting them into top colleges from Stanford and Harvard to UCLA and on down the line. About half my students that I work with intensively for essays get into their first-choice school or their ED school. So I’m going to share with you things that I don’t want you to do.
Procrastination
The first huge mistake that students make when writing their essays is procrastination. If you don’t have time to proofread it or if you’re rushing, bad things happen. I have students who turn in essays with a sentence that is missing words or forget they were editing, and then there’s this weird gap and no capital letter. Bad things happen when you procrastinate. I had a student even this year who was applying to what he thought was a fit school, got completely 100% rejected, and then I read his essays afterwards because he didn’t have time to work on those with me because he thought it was an easier school to get into. It doesn’t work. You run out of energy. I can tell your Common App essay is stronger than the rest of it, and then everything starts to kind of go downhill, and the later in the night it gets, the worse your essay gets. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t let that be you. Do things in advance. Make sure you have time for at least two or three drafts minimum of every essay you write, or ideally, four drafts of every essay you write. Get feedback. Get a human being to read it.
Just Answering the Questions
Number two is just answering the questions. Another issue that I’ve seen come up sometimes with some of the most amazing students is that students just answer the questions. I had a student that I worked with and did college admissions activity consulting with since ninth grade. We’d had conversations multiple times per year about what activities she was doing and how she could best pursue her interests, and we brainstormed how she could get more experience doing the things that she loved, and she accomplished some really incredible things. She did really amazing scientific research. She had a really incredible personal project that she had embarked on that had gotten press attention. Lots of really cool things happened to her. And she had applied to a top 10 college restrictive early action and got deferred, so she came to me and asked if I could help, and I told her to send me her essays. And I also was wondering why she didn’t come to me for the essays, but her mom thought if she did all the activities, then that was all they needed. And it’s true, those are important, but what you write and how you present yourself are also important. So, I looked at her essays, and I realized she had literally just treated it like it was a homework assignment. If they asked to name something you do just for fun, she would answer she liked to watch this TV show. Something you do for fun.
You’ve got to realize that every question on your application is an opportunity to share something that’s unique about who you are and what you have to offer this college. I don’t even care if it’s simply what you do for fun. I want answers that are dynamic, that are quirky, and that are interesting. And the truth is this young woman had so many answers to these questions that were so much better than what she put down. But she thought that she didn’t want to brag. Don’t think that when you’re doing your college essays. I asked her about these other activities where she had all these accomplishments, and she said she wrote about those in her activities section. And that may be true, but there’s only one line there. There were so many amazing stories that she left out the page because she treated it like an assignment. This is not a homework assignment. These are not just questions to answer where if you have answered the question, you get it right. It’s not about right and wrong. It’s an opportunity to reveal the most awesome parts of yourself. So, please do not just answer the questions. Figure out what are the most awesome parts of you that colleges should know, and then find a way to stuff all of that into the responses for all of the questions that you have. You guys have to approach this differently. Don’t just answer the questions. Use this as an opportunity to reveal who you are, why you’re awesome, and what you have to offer.
Too Much ChatGPT
Number three, too much ChatGPT. Did you just use the word tapestry? I’m on to you. We all know when you use too much ChatGPT. There are even AI detectors on the internet that college admissions officers can use to detect that an essay used AI. Don’t be that person. The other thing that I’m going to say—and I actually don’t know if these students used ChatGPT and lied to me, which is quite possible, or if they just write like ChatGPT—but even if you don’t use ChatGPT, I think it’s a good idea to throw your essay into an AI detector and see if there are any segments that sound AI-ish or generic, because if there are, it might be good for you to try to get more specific.
How do you un-AI an essay? Be specific and tell stories that only you could tell. If you do those two things, it’s not going to sound like AI. The other thing is to use language that you would use as a 17-year-old, which brings me to number four.
Having Mom and Dad Write Too Much
Having your mom and dad write too much and work on your essays, over-edit your essays, or even write them straight-up. If you want to know how to get rejected from a college, have your mom write your essays, even though you’re incredible and you’ve accomplished a lot. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen students with wow factors, and their mom writes the essay, and guess what happens? They don’t get in. The other thing that happens if your mom over-edits your essays, but she doesn’t get to edit all of them, is you have this unevenness of voice that can occur across your essays. When you have a Common App essay that sounds like it was written by one person and then you have these supplements that sound like they were written by a 55-year-old attorney, there’s this disparity that occurs where it doesn’t even sound like the same person. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have a variety of voices in your essays—you can—but they should all be written by you and sound like you.
When I coach students in essay writing, I don’t want to ruin your voice. I want it to be you on the page. I want you to write it. Am I going to help you correct your grammar? Am I going to help you cut things down and tell you which sentences should go or which word clumps should go? Sure, I’ll do that. And your mom and dad can do that too, and that’s perfectly safe. Cutting things out is much safer than putting things in. Will I occasionally suggest a single word to replace seven words that are really clunky that you put in a sentence because it’s confusing? Yes, on occasion, but I don’t want to be writing whole paragraphs. I don’t even want to be writing whole sentences, because then this thing is going to start to sound like me and not like you. I want it to be your voice. It’s really important that it sound like a 17-year-old. Other indications that your mom wrote your essay are two spaces after every period, so don’t do that. And if your parents do give you feedback and they rewrite things, rewrite it again in your own voice. Make it sound like you. If they use words you wouldn’t use, don’t use them. And I even tell my students this: if I come up with a word and suggest it, but they never use that word, I tell them not to use it then. I instead ask them what word they would use instead. I ask questions, and we try to get to the bottom of that. And don’t feel bad; it doesn’t mean your mom and dad are bad writers. In fact, they could be so good that it’s bad. I’ve had professional journalists as parents write portions of essays, and I can tell, so I call it out and say, I need more of your voice here.
Remember, you matter more than where you go. Don’t get too stressed out. You’re going to make it out the other side. Put your best self on paper. Let the world decide where you head. And I wish you all the best!
