The Top Four Mistakes Students Make on College Essays

This is a time of year when parents and students are starting to worry about college applications, especially if you are a junior. There are certain things that you cannot control at this point, such as your GPA and to a certain degree your ACT or SAT scores. But you have absolute control over the college essay.

And this is where a lot of students make some major mistakes.

In my private college consulting practice, about 90% of what I do is essay review. Although every essay is unique, with a combination of unique strong points and distinct challenges, I have noticed four significant problem areas with the vast majority of students I work with. These are all correctable. Let me explain these problem areas.

College Essay Mistake One: Being Boring. You can have a perfectly written essay with nothing grammatically wrong. In fact, the diction and syntax could be perfect. Yet the essay could still simply be, well, boring. No offense, but no one really wants to read about your views of global warming, events in the Middle East, or your thoughts about the Big Bang Theory. The reason colleges refer to these essays as “personal essays” is because they want to learn more about you as a person. When students write about things that have little or no relationship to their goals, values, or aspirations, then frankly the student has written an essay that will cause me – and the admissions officials – to go to sleep.

College Essay Mistake Two: Not Maximizing the Word Count. Why not use all the space you’ve been given? When you have a word count of 500 or 600 words, and you choose to write an essay that’s only 200 or 300 words, you are doing yourself a great disservice. Many English teachers will tell you that you shouldn’t feel compelled to write for the sake of writing, and of course most terrible essays often exhibit wordiness. However, when you are competing for a slot in a highly selective college or university, and you’re not using all the word count space you’ve been given, all you are really doing is giving your competition an opportunity to sell themselves at your expense. You can be concise, and still use all the work count space, and write a home run essay! I see it all the time.

College Essay Mistake Three: Trying to Tell Your Life Story. When you have an essay word count of under 1000 words, there is no possible way you can talk about your entire life in any meaningful fashion. Yet, you’d be surprised how many students try to cram everything they’ve done since kindergarten into a very short essay. The better approach is to take one or at most two important things that happened in your life and talk about those. Elaborate on things that really matter to you whether it happened in high school, middle school, or even elementary school. This is one time colleges want students to focus on individual things rather than trying to cover everything that’s happened in a student’s life.

College Essay Mistake Four: Not Knowing your Audience. You would not write the same sort of essay to Columbia University – which is extremely liberal – as you would to Pepperdine or Brigham Young University – which are extremely conservative. You have to know your audiences. Your audience, by the way, is not your English teacher and not your parents. Your audience is comprised of one or two people in the admissions offices of the schools you’re applying to. When you craft an essay you want to try to connect with that audience. Now, this does not mean that you start making up things that you believe in or don’t believe in. Obviously, don’t lie about what your values are, but to the extent you can try to find something you have in common with the politics, culture, and viewpoints of the colleges or universities you’re applying to – then speak to those things you have in common.

These are four major college essay problem areas I see from year to year. Avoid these, and you should have a fairly strong essay regardless of what college or university you’re applying to.