The personal essay is the part of your college application that lets you stand out as an individual — which is important, given that your application will be one among thousands. Your essay can show admissions officers how you think and what makes you unique. You can reveal how you create meaning out of challenging situations and how you view the world.
More than your resume, extracurricular activities, and teacher recommendations, your essay is the one place where the focus is on your voice alone. It’s natural to be intimidated, because the essay can make the difference in whether or not you’re accepted into college. To help you get started, we’ve gathered the most critical tips for writing a college essay that have guided our teaching over the years. Here are the top five.
1. Keep your focus personal and narrow
Your college admissions essay is not the place to list all your accomplishments or tell your entire life story. Instead of spreading yourself too thin, choose one story that reveals something significant about you. You might hone in a challenge that transformed you or a failure that taught you a valuable lesson. Whatever you choose, you want to “explode the moment” and delve into how it affected you. Choose a moment, experience, or event that significantly impacted your life in some way.
2. Use vivid imagery and language that brings your writing to life
The college admissions essay isn’t like an analytical essay you write for English class or a research paper you produce for History. It’s a personal narrative that should be engaging and tell a story. The best stories come to life before our eyes and draw us in with vivid imagery and sensory language. Plus, they start with a “hook” that grabs the reader’s attention right from the beginning. Each sentence should propel the reader forward until they reach the end, realizing they just read an essay they won’t soon forget!
3. Avoid tired cliches
We have read the same essay a hundred times about the baseball game or the track race a student thought was lost, until they tried really hard and won it for the team… but that same old story is boring! Instead of repeating cliches, find an angle that makes your story personal and unique. If you can’t think of one, it might be time to come up with a new topic. You don’t need to have a crazy experience in your back pocket, but you should at least put a new spin on a classic topic.
4. No topic is too small if you present it right
We have had students write about seemingly inconsequential things — one student wrote about her challenge with shyness in school, for instance, and another wrote about her love for the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. But both essays were so phenomenally personal and honest that admissions officers included notes to these students with their acceptance letters about how impressed they were with their essays! A good story can come from anywhere, as long as it feels honest and important on a personal level — after all, it is called the “personal essay.”
5. Use your authentic writing voice, not a thesaurus, and definitely not ChatGPT
You are the person the admissions committee wants to get to know. Using big words incorrectly, or a style that isn’t yours, is going to do more harm than good. Again, the personal essay isn’t like a lot of the academic papers you’ve written for school. Clear, vivid, uniquely personal language and honest writing will go a lot farther than dry, academic jargon or the generic, cliched style of writing created by AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. You can be certain that admissions committees are on the lookout for any signs of suspected AI use, which is why writing your own personal statement is always the safer choice.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Of all our tips for writing a college essay, this last one is extremely important. Your college essay should prove the following to its readers: “I know who I am… and this is how I know.” Use our tips for writing a college essay to choose a story that sheds light on who you are as an individual, that shows how you create meaning as a reflective, thoughtful person. If you can accomplish this — and engage your reader at the same time — your personal essay will stand out among those piles of applications.
Acton Essay Center 