Your Essay, Your Future
How a Well-Crafted Essay Can Open Doors
No doubt, one of the hardest parts of the college application is the essay section. I hear this from students and parents alike. So, in this post, I will be focusing on how to write essays that have a lasting impression on the reader, let the reader get to know a student beyond their grades, and see how they can be a positive contributor to the school community.
Like with most things in life that we don't like, I think it's important for us to take a step back and shift our minds and really think about why schools are asking young people to answer essay questions in 50-650 words. Like Macy Lenox, Associate Dean of Admissions at the University of Virginia, says, "The best essays are the ones where we don’t just want to admit the student; we want to take them out for coffee once they’re here. We’re not admitting academic machines—we’re admitting classmates and roommates and kids who will make thoughtful contributions to our community."
So how does a student make this kind of impression, and more importantly, how can you, as a parent, support your teen on this journey?
When I coach students on navigating the college application process, and we get to the essay section, they inevitably say, “There’s nothing interesting about me.” They’ve already started comparing themselves to the teen who started their own business at 15 or the climate change activist who lobbied her local government for a new law banning single-use plastics in her city…and then there’s the 16-year old figure skater who won a medal at the recent Olympics. The list goes on and on.
But what about the teen who takes care of his younger siblings after school while his parents work multiple jobs to support their family during exceptionally difficult financial times, or the teen who volunteered with the Snow Angel non-profit organization to shovel snow for seniors in his neighbourhood over the past three winters, or the teen who makes doctor’s appointments for his grandmother and translates from English to Arabic and vice versa during these appointments, and the boy who uses his passion for soccer to volunteer with a local organization that keeps kids away from the lifestyle of drugs, gangs, and violence. The list goes on and on.
In all of these examples, we meet students who are passionate, caring, and determined to help others in their own way, big or small. The size of the activity is not what matters…what matters is what the student has learned from the experience and what qualities of the student are shown in these examples - and do they align with the school community the student is applying to.
So, how can you, as a parent, support your teen on this journey?
Here are 3 important steps in the process:
Make a list of extracurricular activities your teen is involved in: These can include family responsibilities, community service, athletics, music, clubs, art, student government, hobbies, internships, employment, and more.
Identify specific examples where your teen showed key skills that college admissions officers are looking for, including resilience, community involvement, leadership, learning from failure, growth, passion, empathy, determination and persistence, and more.
Encourage your teen to reflect on the following questions:
What did I learn about myself from this experience?
What did I learn about the world from this experience?
How did my perspective change because of this experience?
What does this experience inspire me to do?
Take your teen out for coffee or their favourite restaurant and get talking about these things.
