Five Things Not To Do In Your College Essay, Part One

Passion

What’s the single most overused word in college essays? Passion. Perhaps at one point the word glowed with excitement and originality. But that was about 5,144,567 college essays ago. At this point, it’s a reminder to your admissions reader that they’re probably trudging through the usual stuff.

Why did the word become so popular in the first place? Because the English language doesn’t offer many alternatives for what passion does as a word, which is to combine the ideas of intellectual and emotional commitment. If you have a “passion” for chemistry or robotics, your brain and heart are both engaged. Sounds good, right? The problem is that everyone else thinks so, too.

Instead, try to offer more original, still pithy ways of expressing interest in something, whether fun (“Like sodium and chlorine, I react to chemistry”, “Nothing’s more romantic to me than a beaker, pipette, goggles and gloves”) or forceful ( “Chemistry explains the properties and transformations of matter. It also explains me.”).

Sweaty palms

One of the most overused hooks for opening an essay is the vivid moment of anxiety, often in response to a challenge—“As I stepped up to the podium, my heart pounded in my chest,” “My mind was racing as I held my violin and faced the packed auditorium,” etc.

Even more importantly, if you start this way, it means you’re likely boxing yourself in with another “I overcame [this highly familiar challenge]” essay.

Your openings give your reader a signal for what type of essay is coming, but they also give you a signal. Now, an atypical opening doesn’t necessarily mean the essay will end up being a strong one, but it’s often a good sign. A common opening, on the other hand, is a pretty surefire sign that what follows isn’t likely to move us much. Sure, as humans we genuinely celebrate your victory over the challenge, but as readers we’re celebrating moving on to the next essay. The real challenge is pushing yourself beyond this approach.

The “Every Day, Charlotte Sat Alone in the Corner” Anecdote

This is a tricky one. Basically, this is when your essay involves an inspirational anecdote about a person—usually a child or a peer—whom you successfully reached in an educational/care role. That role is typically in teaching, tutoring, camp counseling, or medical settings.

In the anecdote, the person you reached is often shy, or they’ve fallen behind, or they’re struggling in some way. You come along, connect with them, and discover an approach that helps them through their challenge. They pass the class. Or they come out of their shell. Or they gain the courage to leap off the high dive board.

The language is often a little too sugary, you come off a little too saintly, and we all have the general feeling that you’re laying it on a bit too thickly. More importantly, we know the essential beats of this story before we even start reading it.

Now, the experience behind these anecdotes can be really important to you, and in turn to us. But try to find an angle that makes them feel less like a ready-made inspirational unit. Vary the tone and the telling, give us unusual insights into care (or whatever the subject might be), and let it all become a little more complicated.

Food Metaphors

Food is delicious. I love it. You love it. We all love it. But food as an organizing metaphor for an essay can be a little…bland.

Some interesting recipes are out there, but topics like “I am like [such-and-such] dish” or “here’s why baking is my happy place” or “my family’s culture through food” are the Big Macs of this approach. I’ve seen really interesting things done with cooking—an engineer chef who sees through the lens of both art and science as he cooks, someone who organized supper clubs where participants wrote short stories about their contributions to the dinner, or all the ways in which the writer’s complex Indian family eats none of what we might expect.

In short, if you’re thinking food, cook something original, avoid empty calories, and remember to keep it spicy.

“Ever since I was young, I’ve…”

….been curious. …loved science. …been a problem solver.

Let’s keep it simple: don’t start an essay this way. It’s common, and it also feels like a cheap way to substantiate the extent of your interest in a subject or the depth of a personal quality. More importantly, it often leads to you wasting words on telling us about your childhood exploits in the subject at hand. But the younger you is almost always less important than the high-school you. That latter you has a bigger brain and more relevant expertise and experience. So, you’ll probably fare better if you start with a compelling hook about the present or future. As a reader, I’m likely to care much more about cutting-edge prosthetic limbs than I am about your six-year-old Lego creations.