by Valerie Erde

During college essay writing season — roughly July through early January — I am reminded daily how important it is for students to develop strong writing skills. This is true for college applications, of course, but also for any kind of writing. 

Sadly, this skill is often neglected until college application crunch time arrives. Though it’s never too late to improve writing skills, trying to cram in what should be years’ worth of skill development into a few weeks’ time is nearly impossible. Learning to become a great — or simply better — writer is a process.  

Certainly, top colleges want students to have excellent mechanics, so grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and the rest are a baseline expectation. But what top colleges and universities are really looking for in your essay is writing that shows great thinking. This is accomplished through organization, flow, and perhaps most important, the ability to make connections.

Certainly, top colleges want students to have excellent mechanics, so grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and the rest are a baseline expectation. But what competitive universities are really looking for in your essay is writing that shows great thinking. This is accomplished through organization, flow, and perhaps most important, the ability to make connections.

I’ve seen so many students get stuck before they even get started writing because they put so much pressure on themselves to write about something amazing. If you’re having trouble choosing a topic because you’re worried that your life is just too boring to write about, take a deep breath. You have plenty to write about, and a great essay doesn’t require an outlandish plot to make it work.

In fact, some of the best essay topics are about your everyday experiences in school or doing something you love. The trick is to make interesting connections between the events in your life and their deeper meaning. These connections will show off your unique way of looking at the world and help you demonstrate sharp critical thinking skills. Take a look at what I mean here:

The Essay: Connecting The Dots

井底之蛙 (jing di zhi wa)

Student:  A.

Attends: Dartmouth University

When I began studying Chinese five years ago, I had no clue what attracted me to the peculiar characters and guttural sounds of the world’s most spoken language. I picked Chinese to challenge myself, as it lacks the familiar alphabet and fan-favorite cognates of European languages, and also because I’d always heard that, “Chinese is the language of the future.” But I now realize that my reason for continuing is entirely different. To understand my passion, however, you first have to understand a counterintuitive guitar technique and hear the story of my favorite day in AP Physics.

Guitars have three sweet spots—the 5th, 7th, and 12th frets—where, when you gently lay a finger on the string and then simultaneously pluck it and release the finger, it creates a beautiful, hollow-sounding “natural harmonic.” Ordinarily, higher-numbered frets produce higher-pitched sounds, but the 5th fret harmonic actually produces the highest sound, then the 7th, then the 12th. I play guitar for relaxation and don’t study music in-depth, but this phenomenon always puzzled me. Why would lower frets suddenly produce higher pitches?

The answer came to me on an average day in physics. Ms. Hutchison connected a sun-yellow wire to two motors mounted on vertical poles. When activated, the motors spun the wire like two kids swinging a long jump rope. At full speed, the wire appeared stationary, taking the shape of a human eye, its pointed ends called “nodes.” As Ms. Hutchison explained, sound waves look like those eyes, and the shorter the distance between neighboring nodes, the higher-pitched the sound. Then, she gingerly pressed the spinning wire’s center, creating a third node. The class stared, mesmerized, as even after she removed her finger, two yellow eyes hovered.

A thought popped into my head. My hand and heart rate shot up.

 “Yes, A______?”

 I explained the guitar conundrum, hoping I’d found the answer. By gently touching the string, I create a node. Because sound wave patterns must repeat with an equal distance between nodes, playing the 5th fret harmonic - ¼ way up the string - naturally divides the sound wave into quarters, while the 7th divides it into thirds, and the 12th into halves. Therefore, the nodes created with the 5th fret harmonic are closest together, explaining its higher-pitched sound.

“Is that how it works?” I locked eyes with Ms. H.

She smiled. “Exactly.”

After school, I leaped onto my bed, guitar in hand, and played the three natural harmonics on the high E string, gleefully picturing those yellow eyes as my hand descended the fretboard and the pitches rose.

My joy at that moment explains why I study Chinese. I’ve always gotten satisfaction from learning new things and making unexpected connections. Chinese language and culture expand my frame of reference in exciting ways that change how I see the world. Eating fried scorpion on a stick at a crowded Beijing night market and watching the sunrise over a Buddhist monastery in rural Gansu Province deepen my experience when I dine at my local Chinese restaurant or enjoy a Malibu sunset. When an accident sent me to a Shanghai ER, where a specialist consultation, MRI, and CT scan cost only $250.00, I witnessed firsthand the stark contrast between the American and Chinese health care systems.

My favorite Chinese idiom, 井底之蛙 (jing di zhi wa), literally translates to, “frog in the bottom of a well.” When the frog is at the bottom, it sees only a tiny sliver of sky, so despite having little experience, it thinks it knows everything. As the frog climbs out, the sky widens, and the frog realizes how much it has to learn. Just as I couldn’t know what awaited me that day in physics, I can’t predict all the connections my future adventures will help me make. All I can do is look forward to those breathtaking moments.

I am that frog.

Why It Works

A_. built his essay around the first rule of good writing: write about what you know. He also kept the audience interested by going in a different direction than what was expected and making an unusual connection. Here’s what’s worth noting:

1. Upend expectations.

A. opens by answering the questions directly: the thing he loves is Chinese. He then goes on to acknowledge a common reason many people study this language, namely that it will be important and widely spoken in the future. So far, it’s a pretty basic essay—one that’s even at risk of sounding like many other essays that have come before it.

But then A. does something completely unexpected by changing the subject to physics and music. This makes the reader sit up and pay attention, because it’s not clear right away how these things could possibly be related. This makes for a great hook that keeps the reader engaged in finding out how everything will tie together. Bringing together several different topics isn’t easy, but A. resets the reader’s expectations with a great transition: “you first have to understand...”.    

2. Make ordinary events interesting with colorful details.

The centerpiece of A’s story takes place in a typical physics class. Talking about school could be dull, but A. adds lots of interesting sensory detail to bring the scene to life. For example, he describes the machine used in class by comparing it to children jumping rope and to a yellow eye — images that help put the reader in the center of the action and to experience what Asher was seeing. A. also adds a few well-chosen lines of dialogue, which turns the essay from an explanation into a narrative. The sensory details continue as he adds a few carefully selected experiences in Beijing to round out his story, including the taste of the food and the contrast between city crowds and a quiet monastery.

3. Tie it together: connect the dots

A. talks about not one but four distinct themes in his essay: the Chinese language, playing guitar, physics class, and a Chinese proverb. That’s a lot to juggle when you have a cap of 650 words! The reason it works is because A. is careful to connect the dots between the ideas. He carefully explains how everything is connected. He explains how he was able to connect music and physics in a flash of insight that shows A’s unique thought processes and intellect. He also connects this idea to his love of Chinese by explaining how his love of learning is the theme that ties them together. Including just that one sentence - an observation about the disparities between the U.S. and Chinese healthcare costs - further highlight’s this student’s insights about the world. And finally, he shares the story of a frog, which ties to his understanding of Chinese and his overall outlook on life. 

In the end, A’s writing demonstrates the thing he loves best: to find connections between seemingly disparate concepts. He explains this explicitly in his essay, but he also shows exactly how it’s done with the topics he’s chosen to write about. In this case, the form of A’s writing mirrors his theme, making for a very good piece of writing.

The Bottom Line

In the end, A’s essay ended up being as unique as he is, because he combined several elements of his personality to create a full portrait of himself as a learner. This wasn’t accomplished with a big story of a hero’s journey or newsworthy exploit. Instead, A. focused on how his unique way of looking at the world makes an ordinary experience extraordinary.  

Whether you’re feeling stuck on a class paper, a summer program application, college essay, etc. if you want to improve your writing kills, I’m here to help with anything from grammar basics to brainstorming, organizing, drafting, and more. please reach out!