Finding Your Life’s Theme

by Valerie Erde

As a tutor and college advisor, I get asked about college essays a lot. Students and parents both want to know just one thing:

How do I write an essay that will get me into my dream school?

There is no magic formula, and the answer is different for everyone. That’s because writing the personal essay is, well, personal. The idea is to highlight your personality and what makes you unique, while at the same time showcasing your impeccable writing skills and depth of thought.

That’s a tall order for just 650 words — and often fewer, if you’re talking about a supplemental essay for the more competitive colleges. But there are some tried-and-true hallmarks of good writing that you should know about to make your essay really shine.

One effective way I know to teach good essay writing is by example, so I’m starting a series of blog posts that will examine winning college essays from students I’ve worked with in the past. In each post, I’ll show you a wonderful essay from a real-life student and break down exactly why it works.

Let’s get started!

The Student

Student: Lucas, public high school CT, not legacy

Attends: Harvard University. He was not admitted to UPenn, his ED first choice, but was accepted to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown, Wash U., among others during Regular Decision. (Not sure what the folks at UPenn were thinking, but it goes to demonstrate that element of randomness in the college process.)

The prompt he chose: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. N.B. You do not need to use the Common App. prompts as #7 is “write whatever you want.”

The Essay

“Our next guest is the president of Cruchas. Please give a warm welcome to Viktor Moogly!”

A poised, elegantly dressed man with an impressive beard emerges from behind the curtain to raucous applause, greeting the crowd with a charming smile that stretches the length of his face. But as he takes his seat, a stage light focuses on him and reveals that he is not, in fact, the president of an imaginary Eastern European nation but me, an eight-year-old student of Glenville Elementary School draped in my dad’s oversized suit jacket and armed with a tacky stick-on goatee. This is not ​The Tonight Show; ​it’s my basement on Thanksgiving Day.

When I was younger, I ran my own fictional TV series: ​The Jonny Help Show. ​My cousin Jon, acting as a world-renowned psychologist, would miraculously diagnose and rehabilitate his patients within minutes. The few times a year when our extended family was gathered, I spent my time tirelessly building sets, writing lines and orchestrating some of the most outlandish content my family had ever seen. As far as I was concerned, my Spielberg-esque masterpieces were ready for primetime NBC.

What I discovered from ​The Jonny Help Show​ was a profound love for creation. Since then, I’ve led many more extravagant productions, including more than 10 elaborate Spanish class skits ranging from an episode of Celebrity Apprentice Español to an ad for Spain’s National Christmas Lottery with more than a few dramatic twists.

In seventh grade, I found another outlet for my creativity: jazz. By teaching me to improvise, my new piano teacher equipped me to organize the abundant creative energy I had always harbored into something just as presentable as my show. But unlike ​The Jonny Help Show​, where I could produce only a few videos a year, I now had a myriad of creative possibilities at my fingertips whenever I took a seat on the piano bench.

This constant innovation awakened me to a new world of opportunities. It was invigorating.

My thirst to create is not confined to my computer’s editing software or the piano in my living room; it shapes my view of the world. When my school implemented a mandatory “opportunity block” that was, in effect, an unproductive study hall, my creativity turned to action in the form of the Student Policy Initiative, a club aimed at empowering students to champion their own visions for change. While it seemed like everyone else in the community was debating only whether to keep the opportunity block the way it was or scrap it completely, I saw beyond these options, leading a team that developed and defended before the Board of Education a detailed, three-stage plan to optimize our school day in ways nobody had imagined.

When the Student Policy Initiative was having trouble gaining traction, I again looked beyond the typical solutions, setting out to replace the poorly organized, sparingly-updated PDF that was the only source of club information with a completely new vision for how to match students with clubs. I asked two friends to help me develop Clubsource, a comprehensive web platform where clubs make personalized pages and students input their interests to be matched with right-fit clubs. To encourage clubs to join, we recruited local advertisers and distributed half of the revenue they provided to clubs based on their page views. The platform now features several local businesses, dozens of clubs and hundreds of registered students.

Sculpting hours of screenwriting, acting and filming into ​The Jonny Help Show​ captivated me; I was enthralled by seeing my wildest ideas manifested in a tangible product. And when I fell in love with jazz, I realized that being creative doesn’t require days of preparation--it’s possible at any moment. Now, my creative spirit continues to flourish in the form of many distinct passions, and the boyish enthusiasm and resolve of the eight-year-old president of Cruchas have yet to peak.

Why It Works

Lucas seized the opportunity to write about some of his accomplishments, but he kept it interesting by finding the through-line that connects his passions, and he also opened with some dramatic storytelling. Here’s what’s worth noting:

1. Opens with action and cinematic flair.

By starting the essay with a quote, Lucas immediately puts the reader into the middle of the action. At first, we’re not sure what’s happening, and that curiosity makes us want to read more. The second paragraph uses lots of sensory details and gradually sets the scene, guiding the reader’s attention the way a camera would zoom out to reveal additional information in a movie. By the time we know we’re in his basement, we’re completely hooked. By using the creative writing skills often found in fiction, Lucas made his essay highly engaging. 

2. Includes a clear main point & provides context for the resume details.

“What I discovered from ​The Jonny Help Show​ was a profound love for creation.”

“This constant innovation awakened me to a new world of opportunities.”

“My thirst to create is not confined to…”

If there’s one thing I can hammer home about writing a strong Common App. personal statement, it’s that you need to have a clear main point that you can articulate in one or two sentences. (Learn more about how to write a compelling college essay.)

It would be easy for Lucas to spend too much time telling amusing stories about his childhood TV show, but he skillfully changes the subject to other activities he’s involved in. He does this by telling us why the TV show was important to him: in this case, creativity is the through-line that connects all of the seemingly unrelated achievements in the essay. This does two things. First, it lets the reader know exactly what kind of person he is. Second, it ties the essay together instead of letting it feel like a brag list of great things he’s done. By finding the theme that connects them, Lucas shows us what all his activities mean to him — and that’s much more interesting than a resume.

3. Varies sentence structure and vocabulary.

When you’re trying to impress someone, it’s tempting to write the most complex sentences you can. Lucas does a nice job balancing the use of very specific vocabulary (“miraculously,” “raucous” “optimize,” “flourish”) and longer, compound-complex sentences with short, clear bursts of language. For example, notice the extra-short paragraph summing up his love of jazz: “This constant innovation awakened me to a new world of opportunities. It was invigorating.” Because this is so short, it calls the reader’s attention to its significance. Good writing doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective!

The Bottom Line

Lucas wrote an essay that balanced self-promotion (talking about his accomplishments) with self-discovery (finding and nurturing his creativity). This works because he tied it all together with a clear theme and told a story that got the reader interested from the opening sentence. This essay is personal, clear, and at times even amusing, thanks to Lucas’s awareness that his eight-year-old self was perhaps a bit overconfident in his homemade television show. 

And, of course, this essay was carefully proofread to be mistake-free and use the best possible word choice for each sentence. I can’t stress this enough! It pays to revise and edit, so always give yourself enough time to do so.

If you need help with your college essay, please reach out! No matter what stage of the process you’re in right now, I’m here to assist, from the brainstorm to the final proofread.

To read the first essay in Real College Essays That Work click here.