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Jonathan HellandI have described in a previous blog the long, arduous process of writing and rewriting that BASIS students have to go through to write great college application essays. But what does great writing look like?
One oft-repeated rule of writing is “show, don’t tell,” so if I were to practice what I preach, I would simply write a beautiful, moving essay for you as a shining example. But that’s way too much pressure! Instead, I will try to describe the indescribable and reduce the sublimely subjective to a merely prescriptive set of rules and guidelines.
But there aren’t, of course, rules to writing. Great art breaks the rules. With humble acknowledgement of the irony, that’s my first rule:
Great writing breaks the rules
Great writing doesn’t follow a formula. It doesn’t blindly imitate the writing that’s come before. Don’t try to write the essay that got a top acceptance last year—they’ve already seen that essay. Don’t write the essay you think they expect of you, instead give them the unexpected.
Don’t even blindly follow the rules of grammar. End a sentence with a preposition if you want to. Use an extra exclamation point for emphasis!! Or a sentence fragment!
Ignore even the rules I lay out in the rest of this essay, if (and only if) you have a good reason.
Great writing is a conversation
Who is your audience? They are a real person, half a world away, who is trying to get to know you better. So talk to that person like you would to a human being. Have a conversation with them. Big words only impress people with small vocabularies. Or, to put it another way, give your loquacious sesquipedalian tendencies a respite.
The voice and tone of your essay are incredibly important. They are, more than anything, what creates an image in the mind of the reader of who the writer is. So show them someone friendly, authentic, and unassuming—yet intelligent and well-spoken.
Please, please, please, don’t write a personal statement in the same voice you’d use to write an academic essay. Academic writing is, by its nature, dry, impersonal, and dispassionate; which of those adjectives would you want a college admissions officer to apply to you?
Great writing tells a story
When I say “show, don’t tell”, this is part of what I mean. Put me in the moment. Show me something happening. Don’t tell me what to think. Make me visualize the moment that made you think.
Which of the following sentences would make you want to keep reading?
“Justice is hard to find in our complicated world.”
“I remember the moment I learned the world was unfair.”
One promises a dissertation. The other promises a story.
“For me it was in third grade, when my teacher made me stay in from recess to pick up markers. An avalanche of them scattered across the classroom like a rainbow fallen to earth. He refused to believe I hadn’t been the one to spill them.”
Does that story help you see, maybe even feel, the injustice?
Great writing is personal
Don’t write the essay anyone else would or could write. Write an essay that says something unique about who you are.
It can be thoughtful, witty, sad, inspiring, or a dozen other things. So long as you’re honest and a little vulnerable. (This is why I don’t like parents to read their children’s essays—it makes vulnerability so much harder.)
The purpose of reading a college application essay is to get to know the writer. The purpose of creating art is to express truths about yourself and the world. How lucky we are these two goals are in perfect harmony.
If only we weren’t so self-conscious. It can be frightening to expose truths about ourselves to people who will pass judgement on us.
Be brave.
Concision
This sentence brings me to 650 words. Every word from this point forward takes us beyond the strict limits of the Common App personal statement. Most other college application essays are even shorter.
How can one expect to do all the things I’ve suggested in such a tight space? It’s not easy. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” An apparent paradox, but so true it’s been falsely attributed to a number of famous wise men throughout history. It takes time and care to write something short that is also effective. Every word should be chosen with care, and most others ruthlessly discarded.
As Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
Other rules
There are, of course, other rules: The essay should say something new, not found in any other part of the application. Great writing embraces contradiction—the darkest essay should contain some hope, the funniest some sincerity. Great writing must be meaningful. The ending should return in some way to the beginning.
But the more rules I pile on, the greater the necessity of inevitably breaking them.