Myths of the College Application Personal Essay

‍Myth #1

I won’t get into college without a brilliant, mind-blowing essay.

First of all, as I addressed in the introduction, the College Application Personal Essay is only one of the five elements of the college application; the others are GPA, test scores, recommendations and interviews, and extracurriculars.  And just as there are plenty of students in colleges with GPAs, test scores, recommendations, and extracurricular histories that are less than stellar, colleges and universities are filled with students whose College Application Personal Essays have fallen short of blowing any minds.

As I’ll discuss in greater detail in a few pages, the purpose of the C.A.P.E. is for your colleges to know who you are, if you’re ready to write at the college level, and if you’ve got a pretty good shot at thriving on their campus. You can do all of these things without writing a miraculous, award-winning essay that goes virile on TikTok.

Myth #2

I’ve heard that the best college essays are written by students who have experienced dramatic events. I can’t compete with that. 

The best college essays are great, not because they describe an exciting or dramatic event, but because they convey an interesting way of looking at the world. In 2016, Brittany Stinson’s college essay about shopping at Costco went viral after she was accepted into five Ivy League schools. I don’t know much more about Stinson’s life, but unless she lived her life in a bubble, I’m guessing she had at least some drama greater than a Costco visit. The point is, you don’t have to wow your readers with some dramatic experience. Your goal should be to write about something that is meaningful to you, and to convey that meaning in your writing.

Myth #3

Everyone I know has a more amazing story than I do.

The accomplishments, successes, gifts, talents, and skill sets of other people have nothing to do with you. Admissions teams want to know how you see the world, how you live in it, and how you move through it. The idea isn’t to write an epic story. Your essay should say something about how you think, what you stand for, who you are, and what you want to be. You’re a work in progress, and they know that. If you were already at the peak of your knowledge, the top of your game, the best you could be at everything, maybe you should think about starting your own university instead of merely attending one.

Myth #4

So many college essays are about overcoming adversity, I’ve had a pretty challenge-free existence (until this college application process came along).

There is no doubt that overcoming challenges is a common essay topic; the second Common App essay prompt actually addresses this topic directly. 

Like most of us, college admissions officers are well aware that some people have had significant challenges to overcome in their lives. But they are not in the business of comparing one student’s experience with another to find out who has suffered the most.

And as we’ve hinted at with Brittany Stinson’s Costco essay, there are many C.A.P.E.s that have little or nothing to do with overcoming adversity.

Myth #5

The college essay is supposed to be intensely personal. 

The point of the C.A.P.E. is not delve into your deepest and darkest secrets; it’s to show colleges who you are and how you might thrive in, and contribute to, the college campus. The C.A.P.E. is not the appropriate arena for your deepest and darkest secrets. There are absolutely some topics that are inappropriate material for this essay. Experiences related to drugs and crime and sex, calling in-depth attention to personality flaws, and calling attention to unresolved mental health issues are just a few examples that are probably inappropriate topics for the college essay. I urge you toward meaningful and deliberate self-reflection, but revealing something very private may be interpreted as inappropriate. This is not the space for raising red flags.

Myth #6

I’ve actually had pretty significant challenges that I’ve overcome, but I don’t want to write about them.

This is probably one of the most commonly accepted myths about the College Application Personal Essay. You’ll hear it from teachers, guidance counselors, friends, neighbors, and relatives.

Every student has more than one personal essay in them. We are, all of us, layered and complex individuals whose lives cannot always be summed up in a single 650-word essay. How we face challenges does say something about us, but each of us is more than the challenges we face.

I have worked with students who have written great essays that have nothing to do with adversity, and I've worked with students who have had major challenges that aren’t even mentioned in their essays.

It’s not an uncommon topic, so it’s not impossible to imagine that a stack of essays might contain several overcoming adversity themes. So, imagine that the admissions officer reading your essay has just read five applications of students whose essays are about overcoming adversity. Many students may actually wonder how their pain compares to the pain of the other applicants. That’s not the best mindset for creative writing. You don’t want to be comparing your anguish to the anguish of others when you’re sitting down to write your essay. 

This point bears repeating. You are more than the challenges you have faced.

The focus of your essay has to be about who you are as a person, and not “are my challenges enough.” In May of 2021, Elijah Megginson, a graduating senior at Uncommon Charter High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times titled, When I applied to College, I Didn’t Want to Sell My Pain. The article addresses the issue rather nicely, and is worth the trouble of a search.