With a personal statement here, a why major there, and any number of creative prompts in between, you may be asking yourself, “Why all those essays? Can’t the colleges I am applying to just look at my transcript and see what a great candidate I am?”

The short answer to that is they can, and they will. But admissions officials are also going to be looking at thousands of other students with similar grades, test scores, and activities, making your essays the best (and maybe even the only) opportunity you have to show off the unique aspects of your personality that implicitly prove you will be a successful student. 

Consider why you are telling your story

As they start thinking about all the essays they have to write, I find that most of my students focus on what they are going to talk about. They brainstorm five experiences for five different essays and then work on developing those experiences into interesting narratives.

Although this is a great way to get started, it often leaves out the all-important questions of why we are telling our story and who we are showing ourselves to be. By digging deeper into these fundamental questions, we will start to discover the themes we want to explore in our essays. In practical terms, it is about going beyond a story about winning the state championship in order to explore the traits and values that shine through that experience.

Find your application's themes

When helping my students discover the themes they want to write about, I will often ask questions that help them focus on what they learned, how they changed, the insights they gained, and the impact they had on others. 

• Did their experience teaching Kung Fu show them the important role humility has in being an effective leader? 
• Did they start a club because of their passion for making their community more inclusive?

Questions like these will help take us beyond an entertaining story and into a personalized experience that defines what we value about ourselves and our actions. 

By digging deeper into who you are within your story, you will find yourself focusing less on what you want to talk about and more on the themes you have the opportunity to develop. As you start working on this, you can ask yourself questions like:

• Am I a leader, or someone learning about leadership? 
• Am I driven to succeed, or am I figuring out how to motivate myself? 
• Has my curiosity always been my guide, or am I discovering what I am passionate about?

Thinking along these lines, I suggest making a list of all the things you want admissions officials to know about you and then brainstorming the experiences and themes that will allow you to explore these aspects of your personality across your application. So more than having one essay that talks about sports, another on academics, and a third on volunteering, you can frame your essays around what you learned about being an effective leader, how your curiosity guides you, and why you are passionate about making your community a better place. 

Here at Prompt, we use the five traits colleges look for to help our students craft their themes.

As you start thinking about your application, remember that focusing on why we are writing our college essays and who we are within our narratives is the best way to show admissions officials the person behind all those grades and activities, and that is exactly what they want to see!

Check out our series on the five traits colleges look for, a deep dive into each trait and how you can know you possess it!

Contribution to Community

Diversity of Experience

Drive

Initiative

Intellectual Curiosity