How to Make An Application Essay Pop

In Stairway to College Heaven, I mention one parent who told me, “I was talking to a friend about college applications, and she told me the essay has to ‘pop,’ whatever that means.” Her friend just meant that the essay should stand out. That’s a perfectly reasonable goal. So how do we get there?

I’m not much for jargon when talking to parents and students about essays. I like to use familiar writing terms, such as “thesis” and “details.” In simplest terms, the “thesis” of the application essay is the main point the essay makes about who your child is, and the “details” are the incidents from your child’s life that prove the thesis. Details make the essay pop. That’s why my main focus when working with students is to draw out their details.

The Starting Thesis

The starting thesis is some version of “I am _________ (adjective).” I have yet to meet a parent who couldn’t rattle off a few adjectives to describe her child. It doesn’t take much more than that to figure out what kind of details might work.

The Starting Details

If your child were writing a thesis about Heart of Darkness, she would know to cite specific passages from the text to support her claim. Similarly, if your child is writing a thesis about her personality -- such as “I am __________ (adjective),” -- she needs to cite specific moments from her life to support her claim.   

When I say “specific moments,” I mean very narrow slices of time. A moment is a slice of time so narrow that your child can visualize it. A moment occurs at a particular place with particular people. It includes what your child saw, said, heard, did, and thought at that time.

When your child starts to write a draft of the application essay, her slices of time will almost certainly be too thick. Suppose one of my students wants to write about being encouraging. He might say, “I am a very positive person, and I show that through my conversations with younger students in Model United Nations.” How do we know right away that the slice of time this student has chosen is too thick? Because of the use of the plural “conversations.” I don’t care about conversations, plural. The plural is the enemy. The singular is the ally. I care immensely about each individual conversation, singular. Each individual conversation has its own place, people, and time. Each individual conversation is a narrow slice of time which, if written about, could create a mental picture.

The Extended Thesis

Our starting thesis was some version of “I am __________ (adjective).” For example, a student might start writing with the goal of proving the thesis “I am positive.” In the case of the positive student who wants to encourage others, I would read through the specific moments he has written and ask, “How are you a positive person? Are there ways you show your positivity that others don’t?”

An adjective like “positive” is useful for a starting thesis, but adjectives are rarely monolithic concepts. You and I might describe ourselves as positive, but we probably use different words and actions to convey that positivity. That’s why this student needs to extend the thesis from “I am positive” to “I am positive, and I show that by __________ (words/actions).” For example, our positive student might say, “I am positive, and I show that by always talking to newcomers.”

In fact, we can extend the thesis even further by explaining why the adjective is important to the student’s goals or values. That is, we can ask the student to extend the thesis to “I am __________ (adjective), and I show that by __________ (words/actions). This is important to me because __________ (goals/values).” For example, our positive student might say, “I am positive, and I show that by always welcoming newcomers. This is important to me because I remember what it’s like to be excluded, and I want to create a community where everyone shares his ideas.”

Every essay must answer the implied question, “So what?” Even if a student writes an essay that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he is a positive person, the reader still wants to know the answer to “So what?” Why is being a positive person important to the student’s goals or to his values? What is the impact or the hoped-for impact of that student’s positivity? Any student hoping to stand out should address the “So what?” question.

To see why answering the “So what?” question is so important, imagine you’re shopping for a new refrigerator, and you discover one model has a linear compressor. So what? The issue isn’t that I don’t believe the refrigerator has a linear compressor. The issue is that I have no idea why I should care about a linear compressor. It’s the same with your child. Your child might be the most positive person on the planet, but so what? Why should this quality be more significant to a college than the hundreds of other qualities being described in hundreds of other essays? An adjective like “positive” stands out only when the student explains the goals or values that give it meaning in her life.

The Extended Details

Once your child has settled on an extended thesis, two things will probably happen. First, she will realize that some of the starting details she has written don’t actually support her extended thesis. This is natural. When she started writing particular moments, she did so with a broad starting thesis in mind. Now she has a narrower extended thesis. Second, she will realize that there are additional details which will support her extended thesis but which she has not written out. An important part of developing the draft is to write out these specific moments in time, especially moments of tension, conflict, or difficulty. Writing about tough moments often reveals how the student has evolved, which gets at answering the “So what?” question.

So, What Makes an Application Essay Pop?

The extended details -- the specific moments in time that support the extended thesis -- make an essay pop. If your child includes enough details from specific moments, your child’s essay will stand out. It’s that simple.

The hardest part of writing is that there aren’t any shortcuts. Even my best writers work from a simple starting thesis along the lines of “I am __________ (adjective)” to identify starting details that prove their thesis. Only after they write out specific moments are they able to generate an extended thesis that’s a more nuanced statement of who they are. And only after they write their extended thesis are they able to locate additional extended details that support their extended thesis. It’s a dynamic process. The starting thesis leads to starting details, which lead to an extended thesis and, eventually, to extended details. The thesis and details push and pull each other until they are in harmony.

Remind your child that this process takes time -- lots of it! Your child shouldn’t feel as if she’s failing just because she can’t write a perfect application essay in one day, or even in one week. Two to four weeks isn’t uncommon. That’s why summer is the perfect time to ease into the process. If your rising senior hasn’t started, it’s time to get cracking!