Why metaphors lead students astray, while clarity gets them in
For this newsletter edition, this meme says it all. (JK, if you want to see our reasoning, see below. But … the meme does stand.)
Can we translate this into non-meme terms? Students can increase their chances of admission by up to 10% by writing clear, straightforward essays that focus on their potential. And yet, in large part due to influencers and social media, they keep messing it up by going for flowery writing and metaphors.
In this newsletter:
Case study — the Harvard essay that went viral
A metaphor is of utterly marginal value
Influencers rarely know what they did right in their essays
3 ways a viral essay on TikTok can lead students astray
Don’t let students get distracted by (metaphorical) beautiful women on the street
Case study: “This Girl's Harvard University Admissions Essay Is Going Viral”
Buzzfeed had a great story about an essay by a recent Harvard admit that went viral on TikTok. Actually, it wasn’t the essay. It was just the first two paragraphs of the essay (that turns out to be important to our point). The student’s essay does have a killer intro:
I hate the letter 'S.' Of the 164,777 words with 'S,' I only grapple with one. To condemn an entire letter because of its use .0006 percent of the time sounds statistically absurd, but that one case changed 100 percent of my life. I used to have two parents, but now I have one, and the 'S' in 'parents' isn't going anywhere.
This is an excellent intro.
The problem here is that students seeing this viral story will think two things: (1) that the reason her essay is strong is because of the clever letter “S” metaphor, and (2) that coming up with this metaphor is what got her into Harvard.
No and no. Let’s take each point in turn.
Metaphors in colleges essays are like chopped parsley on pasta — utterly marginal
Brilliant metaphors and flowery language, cleverly weaved into college essays, are like fresh chopped parsley on a pasta dish. Is the parsley a nice touch? Yes. Does it add an element of striking visual color? Yes. When you think about how much you liked the pasta dish, does the parsley factor in … at all? No.
At best, it ranks minimally. But if the pasta was great, it’s not because of the parsley. More important: if the pasta dish is bad, no amount of parsley — no matter how fresh and peppery — is going to save that pasta dish. A great metaphor will not save a bad essay.
Influencers rarely know what they did right in their essays
The essay that went viral has been published. As Prompt analyzed it, what made it great wasn’t the S metaphor — although, the student did nicely weave it in throughout the essay. Rather, the less flashy parts stood out and helped this essay do its job.
Colleges aren’t looking for creativity or great metaphors or even great writing skills in essays. Instead, as we’ve said a million times, they’re looking for the 5 traits that show a student has what it takes to succeed in college and beyond.
But only if you’ve spent considerable time interviewing admissions officers, dissecting admissions data, and reading books on admissions are you likely to understand what’s working. For the “S” metaphor student, it so happens that an admissions official has written what they liked about her essay.
Was it the “S” metaphor? No.
True, the “S” metaphor gets a positive mention: “she utilizes wit and a framing device using the letter ‘S’ to share a profoundly personal journey.” Notably, this mention is extremely brief. Even in this one sentence, the focus is on the “profoundly personal journey.”
The Harvard reviewer talks about “the adjustments she has had to make” in the wake of her parent’s death. They also talk about how “satisfying” it is to see her “discover[ ] things that she has become passionate about.” The essay also has a sense of “realism and maturity.”
In Prompt parlance, this reviewer is talking about at least 3 of the 5 traits:
Drive or grit — Here, despite the enormous setback of losing a parent, this applicant is demonstrating that she has the drive to turn pain into something useful and positive. This type of trait leads to success.
Initiative — Here, the essay makes clear that it’s the applicant herself who has taken the initiative to improve her situation by keeping busy instead of letting herself wallow excessively. She comes off as the type of person who won’t accept the status quo but will work energetically to improve it.
Intellectual Curiosity —By discussing her passions, the applicant indicates that she’s an interesting person who is curious about and engaged with the world. Although she leaves the details of her passion vague (as we’ll explore below), that curiosity is still something colleges love.
3 ways a viral essay on TikTok can lead students astray
Here are 3 serious way in which the “S” essay might lead someone on TikTok astray:
Getting distracted by the metaphor, they try for their own. But these kinds of metaphors are extremely difficult to pull off. Instead of telling a compelling, but simple story about their potential to succeed, the student gets bogged down in an unnecessarily complicated metaphor that doesn’t work. Their chances of admission plummet.
They get distracted by the pathos of the parent’s death. As the Harvard reviewer notes, it’s a “common pitfall … to take a tragic event and effuse it with too much pathos [because it] fails to reveal much about the author’s own personality.” Going for tragic subject matter usually results in a worse personal statement.
They think this essay is perfect. It’s good, but it’s not perfect. The Harvard reviewer says as much: “this essay could have been strengthened further by giving the reader a sense of what those passions might be, as we’re left to speculate based on the activities she had mentioned.”
That’s a huge point. We do not know why this student got admitted. Chances are, she has much more than just this essay going for her — she probably has great grades and test scores, and we know from her essay she has great extracurriculars.
What we do know, however, is that her essay left out some great material. If she’d given just a little more detail on the passions she developed as she worked through her grief, this essay would have said more about her intellectual curiosity (as well as initiative and drive). And that’s where she might have seen an even higher score on her essay.
It didn’t matter in the end: she got in. But students applying don’t have that luxury.
Don’t let students get distracted by (metaphorical) beautiful women on the street
To summarize, students can’t get distracted! They’ve got a beautiful girlfriend (metaphorically). That girlfriend = their experiences, potential to succeed, and traits that prove their potential. Those are the things that will boost their chances of college admission.
Remind them of that. And turn their attention to sharing that in their essays, as clearly and straightforwardly as possible. Frown on metaphors and you may see your students’ admission rates go up.
How to help your students write great college application essays
Prompt’s Essay Planning Tools help students identify what to write about and how to write about it. The tools are available for free for every student either by requesting a Prompt college application essay resource page for your school (click here to request a page) or through our integration with MaiaLearning.
Click here for a 12-minute video overview of Prompt’s Essay Planning tools.
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