The biggest essay myth: Telling your story
College essays are not the place to "just tell your story." It's not that “tell us your story” is wrong. It’s just severely misleading.
If you’ve read our earlier newsletters, you’ve seen how admissions teams actually evaluate applications. To oversimplify, there’s a Personal Score and an Academic Score, and “getting to know you” isn’t really what either is about, despite what admissions officers tend to say publicly.
As an admissions counselor, you need to be able to guide students through these mixed messages: acknowledging how widespread the “tell your story” myth is, but also able to show why it’s so problematic.
In this newsletter:
Colleges really do say “tell your story”
But colleges don’t admit students based on if they “tell their story”
The reasons colleges mislead students in this way
As always, for guidance in helping your students navigate the college application journey successfully, check out our free resources for guidance counselors.
Colleges do say they want applicants to tell their story
Let’s go on a journey of discovery through the internet. What advice do colleges give for writing the essays they require? We found one striking pattern (emphasis added):
[The essay] is an important part of your application because it gives you the chance to tell us your story as an applicant. — BU
Tell a good story. Most people prefer reading a good story over anything else. So... tell a great story in your essay. — Tulane Apps 101: Ten Tips for an Epic College Essay.
Your transcript and standardized test scores tell your academic story, your extracurricular activities, recommendations, essay(s) and background, tell your personal story. — William & Mary
In [successful] essays, students were able to share stories from their everyday lives to reveal something about their character, values, and life that aligned with the culture and values at Hopkins. — Johns Hopkins
Tell your story. Some of my most memorable offers of admission have gone to students who like to color outside the lines. — Canisius College
The college application process is a wonderful opportunity for self-discovery. You will find out things about yourself, what motivates you and what excites you. This is a passage to an exciting new chapter in your life. We want to get to know you and your story. — Muhlenberg College
Here are some videos that popped up as we researched this question:
And here’s an article from the Washington Post that ranked high in our search:
However, when you look at how colleges actually evaluate essays, it turns out that this advice is wrong at worst and incomplete at best. So let’s do that now.
What college admissions officers really look for
Let’s hop back into the internet for another journey of discovery. This time, let’s search for clues about what college admissions officers do when they’re in the process of actually reading application essays.
There are also clues that other colleges are looking for more than just a nice story or the “true you.”
Here are some approaches we found to the process of assessing admission essays:
Emory University specifically takes into account “intellectual curiosity and the potential to contribute to community life on campus.”
According to the dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, “We expect [applicants] to have high test scores and grades. That’s a given. So another way for us to think about merit for those applicants is, what did they do with that opportunity they were given? How far did they travel in their high school journey?”
“It's quick and easy for candidates to share, and for admissions readers to assess a candidate's 'what,’” says the dean of admissions at Lafayette College, “However, the hope is to find the 'how' and the 'why' behind an applicant's 'what'. If a candidate is a chemistry loving, slam poet who pole vaults, cool, that's 'what' they are. But, 'HOW' and 'WHY' have they become a chemistry-loving, slam poet who pole vaults? Too many candidates stop at the 'what' and do not give the 'how' and the 'why.'”
"As an admissions officer, I analyzed students' personalities,” says the former admissions head at Dartmouth. “If … the student came off as arrogant, entitled, mean, selfish, or, on the flip side, funny, charming, generous, witty, I wrote that exact trait in my notes. It's not enough just to be smart at top schools. Students must also show that they'll be good classmates and community builders."
“We want to enroll students who will contribute to the life of the campus, so we are eager to see how you have contributed to your high-school community or the community in which you live,” says an officer at Dickinson College.
“Applicants who are able to convey that they have spent their high school years exploring different classes, activities and opportunities immediately grab my attention,” says an officer at Drake.
According to an officer at DePaul University, “a successful applicant should highlight an ability to overcome obstacles and garner results. It’s about proving you can produce outcomes.”
During the pandemic, 315 admission leaders (including all the heavy-hitters, such as the Ivys), signed a “Care Counts in Crisis” statement, assuring applicants that they most value 5 attributes: self-care; academic work; service and contributions to others; family contributions; and extracurricular and summer activities.
Some supplemental essays also show what colleges value. For example, these are all about intellectual curiosity:
Stanford — The Stanford community is deeply curious and driven to learn in and out of the classroom. Reflect on an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning.
University of Washington — [T]ell us about something that really sparks your intellectual interest and curiosity, and compels you to explore more in the program/area of study that you indicated.
Once you start looking more closely at how colleges actually make their decision, you see that colleges really care about a number of specific characteristics.
Why colleges don't share what they're really looking for
At Prompt, we’re probably similar to you in that we study the pronouncements of college admissions officials obsessively. We’ve gotten to know them, we read books about them, we follow them on Twitter.
We don’t think that college officials are “lying” when they present this advice. Rather, there are many reasons why their advice isn’t as helpful as they probably think it is. Here are a few:
First, as we noted above, the advice to “tell your story” or “be authentic” isn’t wrong. It’s just misleading because it isn’t clear about what actually gets evaluated. Most admissions officers probably think they’re giving helpful advice.
Second, offices are intentionally vague because it gives them more room to maneuver. If they say they’re looking for X in essays, everyone will write X. They want wiggle room for kids who write Y.
Third, they may be thinking in different modes when they think about “writing an essay” compared to when they settle down to “evaluate” an essay. In Originals, Adam Grant describes how different these two modes can be. His book describes an experiment that randomly assigned some participants to think like managers and others like creatives. Those in the “manager” mode evaluated novel products correctly only 51% of the time; those in “creative” mode were correct far more often, at 77% of the time.
This is kind of the opposite. Admissions officers likely think broadly when giving advice for writing essays — they might be thinking about how they’d like to read essays, or how great essays are also original, or that they focus on small, everyday topics. But that likely goes out the window when it comes to getting through a stack of essays on their desk and using them to assign “personal scores” that can be used to advance or reject applications.
Bear in mind how overworked admissions readers are. According to an evaluator at Brown, “[W]e keep up a rigorous reading pace with the regular decision applicant pool. We were expected to read five applications per hour, which equates to 12 minutes per application. In those 12 minutes, I reviewed the application, standardized test scores, the transcript, the personal statement, and multiple supplemental essays — all while taking notes and making a decision on the admissibility of the applicant."
The key, therefore, is to ensure your students write essays that appeal to admissions officers. The one getting through a pile of essays, on a hungry prowl for qualities that will lead to success. We’ve got the stats to prove it can make up to a 10x difference in their chances of admission.
In our next issue, we’ll share how to structure the common app essay.
If you’re not a subscriber, please add your email address for more issues.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to other counselors.