How To Make Your Montage College Essay A Lot Better

What is a montage essay?

If you’ve been reading up on your college essays, you’ve probably encountered what College Essay Guy terms the “Montage” essay. “Montage,” an editing technique in film, is a somewhat odd and not entirely accurate term for this kind of essay structure, but let’s set that aside. The montage approach involves establishing a central motif for the essay—it might be an object, or a concept, or a distinct experience—and then connecting it to different aspects of your experience or personality. If you haven’t heard the term “montage” used to describe a college essay, I can guarantee that you’ve still seen examples of it in practice.

What do montage essays look like?

Let’s take three versions—centering on an object, concept, and experience.

The game plan for a fairly basic object version of a montage essay: I will claim that the objects on my wall form a tapestry of who I am. I will discuss my grandma’s broach from Japan (which touches on culture and family), my coding certificate (which touches on academics), and the photo of me and my robotics club (which touches on service and leadership).

The game plan for a fairly basic concept version: As a nature lover and biologist, I have learned that ecosystems are interdependent. I will write about three/four ways in which I have meaningfully experienced interdependence in my life within the “human ecosystem”—on my basketball team, in the lab, and in my local community as a volunteer.

The game plan for a fairly basic experience version: I am a lifelong ballet dancer. I will write about three dance moves in ballet—a tendu, an arabesque, and a pirouette—and connect each to a different part of my life.

You probably get the picture already…

These three examples could be subbed out for thousands of other examples. Point is that you establish the central idea and then plug in the connections. Maybe at the end you circle back to that idea for a beat of neat closure. Boom. Done.

Why are montage essays so popular?

One, the montage approach gives you a readymade formula for your essay—you just need to find that central thing and then plug in the connections. Two, it gives you the flexibility to discuss different parts of your experience without locking yourself into a single story about a single experience. Three, it seems to offer an easy way to create a unique, quirky approach. Different drinks at the boba tea place! A Rubik’s cube and how it applies elsewhere in my life! My Spotify playlist! And so on.

Except there’s a problem…

Why aren’t most montage essays all that great?

Despite what might look like a quirky surface, this kind of essay is quite common, and the montage method is now highly familiar to admissions readers.

But there’s a deeper issue. You can theoretically connect just about anything to anything else. Your favorite Yogurtland flavor connects to your creative approach as an engineer? Fine, but so can a miniature schnauzer, or your superpower of empathy, or your favorite room in the house, or your cupcake baking. The connection is arbitrary, and the montage essay never has that much to say about its main connecting idea. It just uses it like some sort of electrical outlet.

How can you make a montage essay better?

You have to find a really interesting idea to establish/develop/resolve within the central motif itself. Your connections can then show different parts of your experiences while also moving along your development of that idea. Think of it as the missing second piece of the montage essay, the piece that makes the central motif seem necessary and important rather than just plucked at random because it’s cute. Think of it as the spine giving posture to an otherwise loose, liquid essay.

Let’s take the object version. Maybe one of the objects in your room is something that doesn’t even exist, something you lost or perhaps never even received—say, the letter from your dead grandfather that you wish he had written to you before he died. Now your essay can offer a reflection on how our lives are shaped by both real objects and the objects of our hopes, sorrows, wishes, etc. Much more interesting, right?

Let’s take the idea version. As a biologist and nature lover, you’re talking about ecosystems in nature and the human ecosystems in our lives. So why not come full circle and show how the human ecosystem in our lives is itself just a piece of the natural ecosystem. Ultimately, these two worlds—the natural and the human—have become part of the same bigger world for you. The biologist also is nature.

Let’s take the experience version. You’re talking about dance movements. Maybe look to the opposite of movement—stillness—and show us how stillness is its own form of movement. A dancer needs to know the expressive power of not moving at times, or of limited movement, of withholding. It has its own power. This could then connect to an entire philosophy as a dancer, and as someone “dancing” in the world through learning the balance of movement and stillness.

Wrapping it up…

Sure, moving a montage essay beyond the readymade approach is harder work. It requires really developing and exploring something deeper within your central motif. But it makes for a far more sophisticated, exciting, and uncommon essay. And it’s also something you’re totally capable of doing. Go for it!