Ivy League Admission
The Ivy Coach College Admissions Blog

In university admission essays, students have a great opportunity to share with college admissions officers why they’re special and what they’re all about. It’s an opportunity that students should really capitalize on and, in these essays, every word counts. Every single word. One word alone can imply that a student is pompous and what do you think college admissions officers think of pompous applicants? Who cares what they think…they’re not going to admit them!

Don't brag in your university admission essays. It can cost you your shot of admission. Big time.

Take this sentence as an example: “Winning the science fair was one of my great accomplishments.” Don’t write sentences like this for a couple of reasons. 1.) Winning a science fair shouldn’t be one of your proudest achievements. Making a scientific discovery certainly can be but, Charlie Sheen, winning isn’t everything. And 2.) Don’t tell college admissions officers your accomplishments. They can read your accomplishments on your activity sheet or in your guidance counselor’s or teachers’ letters of recommendation. Let them hear about your accomplishments from others. Not from you.

Just be mindful that every word in your university admission essays count. A typo or a word that comes across as boastful can really damage your chances for admission. So select the topic of your college essays carefully. Write creatively. Express your intellectual curiosity. But be careful of everything you write. Because every single word reflects on you. That’s why it’s never a good idea to write your university admission essays at the last minute. You just might not catch an egregious mistake if you save it until midnight!

Grammar is important. It’s important when you’re writing essays in sixth grade. It’s important when you’re writing essays in high school. It’s important as you write your college essays. And it’s important when you’re drafting emails or writing proposals during your career. The ability to write — and write well — is an important life skill. But in your college essays, realize that it’s okay to write in a colloquial tone.

It's ok to include a fragment in your college essays or begin a sentence with "but."

If you read the sentences above, you’ll notice that we started a sentence with “and” and another with “but.” Your sixth grade English teacher may tell us that this isn’t alright. Ignore your sixth grade English teacher as you write your college essays. Sometimes, breaking the rules of good grammar can be quite powerful…if done effectively.

That doesn’t mean that you should write completely ungrammatical sentences. Far from it! That would be silly. It would depict you as an applicant who doesn’t have a firm command of the English language. And that’s a really bad thing in college admissions! We simply want to emphasize to you that you shouldn’t write like a textbook. Your distinct voice should be heard in your college essays. Your distinct writing style should be on display for college admissions counselors.

So take a chance and be bold sometimes with your grammar in college essays. Not too bold. Don’t write idiotic sentences that make no sense. But feel free to start a sentence with “but.” Feel free to write a fragment after a full sentence if it conveys a powerful message. Feel free to include a one sentence paragraph to close an essay. Feel free to be yourself and shine!

Never write about trips in your college essays. That's one surefire way to bore admissions officers.

Have you ever sat next to someone while they flipped through a photo album, containing a whole lot of pictures from a trip to India? Or France? Or Egypt? Maybe they showed you pictures of themselves on a beach or at the top of a mountain or even on a camel. Maybe they recounted to you exactly what they did each day, what they had for breakfast, how they woke up to an amazing sunrise, and how they’re aching to go back. If you’ve ever found watching your friend flip through his/her photo album a bit tedious, you’re not alone!

So why would college applicants write about trips year after year in their college essays. Trips and college essays should have nothing to do with each other. Nothing. Nobody wants to read 500 words about a trip to Mumbai. It’s boring. It’s ordinary. It’s the essay that college admissions counselors dread. And don’t forget that college admissions counselors often aren’t in glamorous places when reading your college essays. They’re either in their office or at home. So don’t regal them with stories about your adventures around the world. It’s certainly not going to help your case.

But beyond that, college essays should be powerful and exciting. Recounting stories from trips is inherently boring. There’s no getting around that. When you have a boring subject matter, you can only do so much with the material. Write your college essay from a good, exciting idea. It’ll make a world of difference, we promise!

Books that students love often come up in college essays. And that’s a good thing! Books are a great way to showcase to college admissions counselors your love of learning, your love of reading and discovery (as long as you’re not simply name-dropping books or authors as that gets boring fast). When college applicants write about books, though, they too often write about the same books. And when you write about the same books as everyone else is writing about, it becomes another essay about “The Great Gatsby.”

Don't write about "The Hunger Games" in your college essays -- even if you read the books. You'll be one of way too many applicants who do so.

Try to avoid writing about books that are obviously required reading at your high school. People are pretty familiar with the required reading book list because everyone had to read those books when they were in high school. We’ve all read “To Kill A Mockingbird.” We’ve all read “The Grapes of Wrath.” We may not all remember much about the details of these books but we know we’ve read them. We know they’re taught in high school classrooms.

Show how you love to read outside of school. Show how you’re eager to read books that aren’t required reading. But don’t just write about “The Hunger Games” books or the “Twilight” books. Don’t write about “Harry Potter.” Show your thirst for knowledge. Show how you like reading books that you don’t just read because the Lionsgate marketing department tells you that it’s going to be a blockbuster movie franchise. Read a book off the beaten path and show (don’t tell) why you love it and how this sheds insight on what you’re all about.

While you’re here, check out this post: Advice on College Essays.

Over the years, we’ve heard from many students who’ve told us that they had their high school English teachers look over their college essays. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s always good to have additional eyes read your college essay writing. Your English teacher may well be able to offer some great feedback. Maybe he or she will correct some grammar or find a typo. Maybe she’ll recommend that you start your college essay at a different point. Maybe she’ll tell you to scrap it entirely and write an essay on another subject.

High school English teachers often are not the best people to give feedback on college essays.

But, over the years, we’ve also noticed what high school English teachers do wrong. For instance, we’ve seen college essays that high school English teachers have scrutinized by removing any sentences that begin with “and” or “but.” BUT there is nothing wrong with beginning sentences in such a conversational way in your college essays. Maybe it’s not best practices according to grammar queens but, in the highly selective college admissions process, you want to strike an informal tone that captures your unique writing voice.

Also, high school English teachers like students to stick within a finite structure in their college essays. But this structure is often not original. It’s often not special. And it won’t set you apart from the thousands of other college applicants. So before you start taking all of your advice from your well-meaning high school English teacher, you might want to think twice. Not all college essay advice is good advice and that’s the bottom line!

If there is one thing that we’ve noticed in the many years we’ve worked in the field of highly selective college admissions, it’s that test scores and grades in no way correlate with writing ability. We’ve seen students with straight A’s and near-perfect or perfect SAT scores write some awful, awful college essays. Maybe they wrote about kicking in the winning goal in a soccer game. Maybe they wrote about winning a science competition. Maybe they wrote about a trip to India. All of these topics, by the way, are trite and should be avoided in college essays.

You don't have to be Aaron Sorkin (creator of "West Wing") to get into college. But your writing abilities do matter and too many college applicants can't write. At all.

But even if you choose a boring, trite subject matter (don’t do this…but if you do), it’s ironic that these students with such perfect grades and scores can’t even execute a well written essay. A good writer can make something good out of nothing. A bad writer can’t. It’s that simple. And most college applicants are bad writers. This may not be PC. This may not be what you want to hear. But it’s true. Most college applicants don’t have the slightest clue what makes a good essay. They seem to lack a command of the English language. It’s so very unfortunate.

That’s why we read what good essays are to our students. We’ll read them essay after essay. But even this isn’t enough. They’ll still turn in bad drafts after reading good essays. But then we’ll work with the students to make their essays stronger. Draft after draft, we will help bring out the essay’s strengths and rid it of its weaknesses. Good writing is grounded in revising. And we sure do revise essays with our students. Paragraph after paragraph. Draft after draft. Through this process, we don’t just help our students craft more compelling college essays. We make them better writers. They learn what good writing is and become more confident in their own writing abilities. And that’s one of the most satisfying parts of private college counseling.

While you’re here, check out this post on Mistakes in College Essays.

Don’t wait until the last minute to write your college essays! It’s a really bad idea. Maybe you pulled it off when you wrote your A.P. U.S. History paper on the Cold War the night before. Maybe you pulled off studying for an A.P. Calculus exam with only a few hours to spare. But for college essays, this is a really, really bad idea. Good writing doesn’t happen overnight. Good writing is rewriting. Even for the pros! There are professional writers in Hollywood who are paid to rewrite the scripts of other writers. There are executives who are paid to give feedback on scripts. Good writing doesn’t come out of a vacuum. Good writing is, quite often, a collaborative process.

Don't write your college essays at the last minute. It's never a good idea and we have reasons why.

If you wait until the last minute to write your college essays, the process invariably is less collaborative because you won’t have the time and opportunity to share your writing with others. Even if you don’t have a private college counselor helping you, how can your guidance counselor review your essays if you write them the night before they’re due? How can your English teacher look them over for content, spelling, and grammar? What if you write something that you really shouldn’t say in a college essay? The vast majority of college applicants indeed do this!

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you shouldn’t have help with your college essays. The writing process in Hollywood with screenplays and TV scripts is collaborative for a reason. So is the book business. There are editors, publishers, etc. Don’t submit your college essays in a vacuum. It’s a major mistake that you can easily avoid by starting your college essays well in advance of the deadlines! It’s that easy!

Check out this post on College Essay Mistakes!

“The Daily Pennsylvanian,” the newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania, ran an article today in which we’re quoted that discusses the frustration students have with the Common Application word limit. In recent years, on the Common App’s personal statement, for instance, there hasn’t been a word limit. But last spring, the Common Application implemented a change by declaring a 250-500-word limit on the personal statement. Many students, parents, and guidance counselors were upset by this. We weren’t. Word limits are a good thing.

Do not exceed the word limits on college essays. The Common Application has a personal statement word limit for a reason. Even Aaron Sorkin, creator of "The West Wing" has to stick to hard outs.

When you don’t have a word limit in place, students tend to be all over the place. They think more is better when in fact, the truth of it is, less is often better. As the University of Pennsylvania Dean of Admissions Eric Furda stated to “The Daily Pennsylvanian,” “There are a number of risks if the essay is too long. We might not read the whole essay…That doesn’t mean that you’re not admitted, but you’re running a risk that’s probably not necessary.” While the Common Application doesn’t have the mechanism to reject personal statements that are submitted that exceed the word limit, we strongly urge applicants to abide by the Common Application word limit. It’s there, after all, for a reason.

No matter how gripping your college essay is, it can be said in 500 words. Would you say Aaron Sorkin, the creator of “The West Wing” and the writer of “The Social Network” is a pretty good writer? Each episode of “The West Wing” had a hard out. Same with David Chase in “The Sopranos.” They, too, abide by word limits (although, admittedly, Sorkin’s “Studio 60″ did often run about a minute long which put NBC brass in a predicament). But you’re not Aaron Sorkin. You’re a high school senior.

What’s a tip to improve your odds of admission to highly selective colleges? Find your voice in college admissions. Alright, sounds easy, but one may ask, “What do you mean?” We mean that to better distinguish your application from the pile of others, it helps to share your unique voice, one that weaves a compelling narrative about just who you are and what makes you, well, you.

Larry David wrote about nothing and yet he said so much. Try to take a page from his playbook in your college essays.

The majority of college applicants are either unable to find their voice or their voice is so ordinary or, well, to use teenager vernacular, “lame” that it leads college admissions counselors to roll their eyes. We haven’t seen a statistical analysis of the data but we suspect that eye rolls do not positively correlate with offers of admission to highly selective colleges. So one of the major things that we help our students with is to find their voice in college admissions.

Too often, students feel that it’s necessary to share trite stories about overcoming odds to win a game or grappling with the death of a grandparent (sorry if we’re a bit harsh…but it’s true nonetheless) that it’s virtually impossible to discover an applicant’s true voice. That’s why writing about smaller things often helps in finding a student’s voice. When you write about something small, there’s a lot more room to truly share who you are. Don’t forget, the hit NBC comedy “Seinfeld” was about nothing. Absolutely nothing. And yet that series had one of the most distinct voices that television has ever known. Take a page from Larry David. Try writing about nothing in your college essays and see if it just might help you find your voice. It often beats writing about something! We’re not kidding.

In "Up in the Air," George Clooney's character eliminated redundant employees. In your college application, eliminate redundancies throughout your college essays!

Too many college applicants submit college essay redundancies in their applications! What does that mean? That means that if you write about playing basketball in your activity essay (which already isn’t a very good idea since sports essays are overdone and typically come across as trite), don’t then write about basketball in your personal statement. Is that all you know? Is that the only side of you? No. Well, maybe…but then you’re not going to get into a highly selective college. Are colleges looking for well rounded applicants? No. They want students who demonstrate talent in specific areas. Maybe it’s as a science researcher or as a tennis player. But that doesn’t mean that you should only shine in one specific area in your college essays. There’s a difference between being an typical, well rounded applicant who doesn’t shine in any one area and having essays that show different sides of who you are.

If you write about science research in your activity essay, consider writing about juggling in your personal statement if indeed you have a passion for juggling. While juggling may sound silly, the best college essays are often about the silliest things that nonetheless show that you’re intellectually curious and interesting. Have you ever seen an episode of “Seinfeld?” We bet you have. What do you think “Seinfeld” is about on a week to week basis? It’s about nothing. Don’t try to write about too much. Often times, writing about something small can showcase you the best to colleges. It can make you come across as different, as someone they have to add to their incoming class.

So, to be utterly redundant but at the same time to drill in the point, don’t write about science research in every one of your college essays. Don’t write about crew in every one of your essays either. Show different sides of yourself. Show interesting sides of yourself. In doing so, you’ll make your college application less redundant and more compelling! Less redundant, more compelling. Less redundant, more compelling…

While you’re here, check out our post on another major college essay mistake.