The Secret to Building Fantastic College Essays

There are so many strategies out there that claim to provide all the answers. In reality, many college essay prompts are inward-focused. Colleges want to know who YOU are and what motivates you. To understand what creates a phenomenal college essay, you have to understand what colleges are looking for in your essays.

Essays are not the most important part of your application. By the time an admissions committee reaches your essays, they have reviewed your courses, test scores, GPA, and extracurricular activities. They already have a general understanding of whether you are qualified or not to attend their institution.

The purpose of essays is to explain your internal motivation. Will you actually gain anything from attending their university? Will you actually contribute to their university? Are you passionate about what you are studying? Do you have real conviction that will drive you to become a changemaker? Are you a good person who will make friends?

Colleges are accepting you not just as a student, but as a member of their community. Essays are primarily designed to interpret whether you would fit in their community and whether you would contribute to your selected field.

This is why you need to write your essays with conviction. When coaching students, I provide them with these questions to answer before ever drafting their essays:

1. What do I love to do?

2. Who do I do that for?

3. What do those people need?

4. How does what I can give people change them as a result?

Your entire application should be focused on answering these questions.

Let's look at an example:

Kendra loves to create video games for her peer group to play. They need a distraction from life and a creative story to delve into. Because she develops video games for them, she is alleviating mental health issues and creating a happier, more inspired population of young adults.

Therefore, Kendra can look at what she wrote. When applying to college, she would choose a computer science major, since this directly relates to her gift to others. Then, each essay she writes should follow this formula:

1. Introduce a specific experience related to this topic. It can be revolving around your formation of interest in the topic, a leadership experience, a challenge, an observation, etc. Tell this story in about 1-2 paragraphs.

2. Explain how that ties to why you want to pursue this topic. Explain how you have already been focusing on this topic, whether that is being involved in an extracurricular activity, learning about the topic, or creating your own projects related to this topic.

3. Explain how the school will help you change others by pursuing your passion.

This formula is guaranteed to concisely explain why you want to study your subject and position you as a compelling applicant that cares about something larger than yourself.