College Essay Coaching

College essays are among the most important documents you will ever produce. They provide an opportunity to reflect upon your experiences, worldviews, goals, interests, and much more. Many students approach these essays as a burden — just another item on the seemingly endless checklist to college admission. Additionally, the self-reflective nature of many essay prompts can stoke anxiety. Students are commonly taught to write only what they “know,” either in terms of research or analysis, as factual or persuasive analysis reinforced through proscribed academic source material.  

College essays often do not have such simple parameters, though. A student cannot simply turn to online research, classroom notes, or other source materials to support an answer to the prompt. In fact, college essays cannot typically be “answered” at all, at least not in any definitively prescribed way. The reason for this lies with the intention of the college essay: to portray not what a student knows, but how they think and feel, in addition to their motivations, the source of their drive, and other ephemeral qualities of character. 

When asked to describe themselves, people tend to rely on some combination of material truths (where I am from, what I look like, what I can do) and broadly descriptive categorizations such as personality traits and cultural identifiers. This can work just fine for job applications and personal introductions, but fails to satisfy the intent of the college essay. Why? When we consider people as employees or new acquaintances, we match them against a set of criteria. In order to gauge someone’s practical ability to do a job, we want to see a record of their education and experience. In the same way, the viability of a new friendship often depends upon shared interests or common traits. However, these simple criteria can often prove misleading. Just because someone has excellent bonafides in marketing does not mean their personality will jive with a specific office culture, or that their work ethic will translate to the demands of a particular time and place. At the same time, we’ve all formed relationships that ultimately hurt and disappointed us. The reason for this is clear. You simply can’t form a full picture of someone based on traits and identifiers. People are a mess of intangibles, often hidden beneath the layers of decorum and pretense we use to ease, aid, and simplify our daily walks through life. 

Colleges certainly care about material truths and descriptive categorizations. However, they judge these criteria against all the other documentation required for admission. The college essay is not meant to bolster your academic record, reflect upon your intellectual capabilities, or showcase your commitment to excellence. For those items, you’ve got your transcripts, test scores, and awards and honors. Instead, it seeks the ephemeral, even the impossible: to reveal, beneath the layers of accomplishment and easy descriptive terms, the real, honest you. 

I am a professional academic tutor, writer, and educator who can help students not only overcome mental blocks in regards to the writing process, but also find their own, unique writing voice. College essays represent a golden opportunity. In addition to their practical function, they also allow students an opportunity to think about who they are, what they think, and what they value. Skill with the expression of these ephemeral traits can leave a student not only confident in their thoughts and abilities, but guide them toward a greater sense of self understanding.