Few things stress high school students out more than the task of writing college admissions essays. After worrying about grades, standardized tests and extracurriculars, they have to write 650 words — a “personal statement” — about what makes them unique. For many students, this will be the first time they’ll ever write a personal essay, but they know their submission will play an important part in their college application process. It’s no wonder they often panic when they sit down to get started.
As a parent, this puts you in a bind: You want your child to go to a great college, but you don’t want them to get overwhelmed, especially when they’re so close to the finish line. So how do you support your high schooler through the college essay process? Here are the four most important things to keep in mind.
The college admissions essay is not about faking your way to impress.
Anyone will tell you that for students to get admitted to a top college, they need to excel. And it’s certainly true that a high GPA and SAT/ACT scores, along with an impressive extracurriculars list, will do wonders for an application.
But students get into trouble when they try to “crush” the college essay. They boast about their achievements — and they act as if they already know what they want to do with their lives. Unfortunately, this often comes off as sounding inauthentic and doesn’t improve a student’s chances of getting into a top college. In fact, it can actually detract from an otherwise strong application.
Remind your teen that the college essay is different from the other parts of the application, and that showing off isn’t the goal here.
Realize that the college essay cannot be “hacked.”
As you might expect, there’s a lot of bad advice about college essays on the internet. Everyone seems to be advertising the latest clever technique to get admitted to Harvard or Stanford.
If possible, encourage your teen to avoid reading sample essays or watching TikTok videos of fresh admits boasting about how they hacked college admissions and got into their dream school. Not only is this a damaging message to impart, but it’s also extremely stressful for students when they’re applying to college.
At the end of the day, admissions officers are just people like you and me, and every time they see an applicant using some “tried-and-true strategy” for the hundredth time, they roll their eyes and groan.
Instead, encourage your teen to treat the college essay as an opportunity.
Take a moment to look at the college essay prompts on the Common App website. You’ll notice they’re refreshingly honest attempts to get students to think through their life experiences. They’re a great indication of what schools are looking for in the college essay — not boasting or cleverness, but authenticity.
To make a college essay authentic, students need to be honest about their strengths and weaknesses. One of our recent students suffered from ADHD, but he noticed that when he was applying for his pilot’s license, his concentration difficulties disappeared. He wrote an original essay about how he took what he learned from flying and applied it to his schoolwork. Another student had no major challenges, but he noticed that whenever he was engaged in competitive swimming, he got bored. He came up with a fascinating essay about how something he had thought of as purely negative — boredom — often led him to be most creative. In both essays, the students reflected openly about actual experiences, leading to unique admissions essays that helped catapult them into their top-choice schools.
The college essay is an opportunity for students to stop, reflect on their experiences and discover what they’ve learned about themselves. This isn’t easy; it takes a lot of work to come up with an observation that readers haven’t heard before. But if students invest time and energy into coming up with a compelling narrative, it will serve them not only in this application, but throughout their professional careers. It’s a powerful feeling to be admitted to college after submitting an essay that reflects who you really are.
Gently ask your teen questions and get them to talk about themselves.
If you really want to help with the essay process, don’t get overly involved or tell your teen what you think they should say. Instead, take a backseat and express curiosity about what they might want to discuss. Have they encountered a challenge or setback in their lives? And if not, have they had any unusual experiences or learned any interesting lessons?
Often, the last person teens want to talk to is a parent. If this is the case, the best thing you can do is make sure they’re talking to someone they trust: a friend, a teacher or a college essay tutor. It may take some time, but if they reflect honestly about their lives, they’ll eventually hit on an idea that’s so compelling the writing will happen relatively quickly.
Writing a college essay doesn’t have to be stressful. Helping your teen uncover their authentic self is probably the most helpful thing you can do to support them through the process.
Ben Urwand is the founder of Real College Essays, which helps high school students brainstorm, structure and write college admissions essays. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and was a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows.
