Tips and Tricks to Improve Your College Essay

And some strategies to get started if you haven’t already!

Your college essays (whether the Common App’s “Main Personal Statement,” the UC “PIQs,” or supplementals) aren’t the same essays you write for your English or history classes. Some of the same writing tips apply, but others, maybe not so much. When you sit down and try to draft your college application essays, how do you know which essay tips to follow? We’ll break it down for you.

What is a “good” essay?

Most people can naturally recognise a well-written essay when they read one. A lot of this comes down to two things: the writing itself, and the essay’s structure. A good academic essay will be eloquent (not relying on a meager vocabulary or slang words like “cool” and “neat”), will back up the points that it makes with concrete examples, and will flow in a way that isn’t confusing, but easy to follow – where one idea leads logically into the next and leads the reader to the conclusions the writers wants them to understand.

All of these aspects of a good academic essay – vocabulary, eloquence, logical flow – carries over into the college essay, or the “personal statement,” as well. There are only a handful of additional boxes that you have to make sure your personal statement is checking.

What must a personal statement do?

A personal statement is your chance to present yourself (in the best light!) to the admissions team, and convince them that you’d be a good addition to their student body. We at ILUMIN have held webinars with admissions reps where they’ve said that your application is essentially the college’s chance (and their only chance) to get to know you. Last year, Guillermo Vasquez, Freshman Admissions Counselor at UCSB, told us, “the application is basically an interview for us to get to know you. And the more information you provide us, the better we can get to know you and the better we can review your application.”

Use your essay(s) as a chance to speak directly to the admissions reps, and let them know who you are. Unlike English essays, you’re not necessarily analyzing anything in your personal statement; you’re trying to paint a picture of your topic instead. Luckily, you know this topic better than anyone else on Earth, guaranteed: your essay should be all about you.

How do I compose an effective essay?

There are several ways to go about it, but it all boils down to the same thing: writing a good college essay takes time! You shouldn’t try for an “all-nighter session [to] try to knock out all the essays,” unless you want to risk a bad result. Here are a few things we talked about in the webinar that might help you:

Revise, revise, revise!

No one likes to hear this, but you won’t just sit down at the keyboard and type out a brilliant essay at the first go. Believe us – it’s not going to happen!

Grace Crowcroft, one of our ILUMIN college essay specialists, says, “I know it's really hard, sometimes, looking at your essay – because you're like, ‘Oh, I just want to get it over with!’ … But it's really important to go over – and really try to craft a good piece. … To do that, you’ve got to go over it a few times.”

Have other people look at it

“Because,” as Grace says, “after you've looked at it 15-20 times, you might be sick of it.” Also, other people can spot things to which you might be blind yourself (such as confusing or ambiguous wording, or repetition). Ask others – plural! And ask more people than just your parents, like an English teacher or a tutor.

Read it out loud

Reading your essay out loud is not only a secure way to catch your typos and other mistakes, but it also helps you judge the flow of your writing. If you’re stumbling over your own words, how do you think it’ll sound to an admissions reader who has to chug though ten of these in an hour?

Grace suggests, “Read it – make sure it sounds good. And that will help you get on the right track.”

Make sure that your essay actually answers the prompt

This is key when you’re writing an essay to a prompt: it has to answer the questions the prompt is asking. Going off on a tangent or losing track of the point of the essay as you write is an easily-made mistake, and one students definitely want to avoid with their college essays.

Grace suggests, “copying and pasting your prompt right above your document before you start it.” This way, you can regularly refer back to it as you write. “Have I addressed parts X and Y?” As Grace says, “Check and check.”

…and is within the word count!

Some of these essays have very limited space. 350 words (for the UC PIQs) may sound like a lot… until you realize that even the section we’ve written above has already eaten up 93. In fact, up to this point, this blog post has taken up 792 words! If this were the Common App Essay (650 word limit), you’d be cut short – not a word more, and you’d even have to go back and cut some words out to make your essay fit the limit.

To keep your essay concise, focus on talking about you. Avoid long introductions talking about your grandma, or about an imaginary recipient of your greeting card (the latter of which actually came up in our recent Live Essay Edit webinar!) As we noted in our earlier webinar about the UC PIQs: “If you write about another person… that's going to take the focus away from you.” You have 350 words, or 650, or maybe only 200. Don’t waste them.

Some writing tips from the “model” essays

In the webinar, we went over some “model” essays, which generated some great insights and tips that you can use as you write your own!

Use specifics

The first example essay was a UC PIQ written by a student interested in computer science. One of the highlights Sagrika Jawadi, ILUMIN College Essay Specialist, points out is the specificity that the author uses. “They also do a great job of being specific about what about the subject interests them. They say things like ‘…how I could make a computer think like a human.’ That's not something every computer science essay is gonna say! It helps the reader understand what aspect of computer science is interesting to them, and why they're interested in it.”

Specifics excel in the sections of your essay where you are explaining your motivations and thought processes, because they highlight your individuality, even in areas that may otherwise make you seem similar to other applicants, such as common majors. For example, in the model UC PIQ essay, the student writes, “Problems like this made me curious to learn more algorithms and see how they can expedite other things, such as creating a bot to automatically reply to certain emails.” In this way, the student illustrates their unique mindset. As Sagrika points out, “Not everyone is going to write that. Not everyone is interested in algorithms, and how they can expedite different day-to-day activities.”

The specifics help this PIQ to shine!

Answer the prompt… and go beyond

In the webinar, another one of our writing tips was “not only answering the prompt, but also going beyond and answering the ‘So what?’”

In the second model essay, written for the “describe a special talent” prompt for the Common App, Sagrika was immediately able to identify that the student answered the prompt. “It's pretty clear what they're sharing about. Their talent is piano. And we can see why it's so meaningful to them.”

But this student goes beyond just answering the prompt, too; they use a big “lesson” that they learn (“I realized the painful truth that all musicians eventually encounter: trying your best does not equate to being the best.”) – which Sagrika warned could be “a cliché” if left at that, but – not as an ending point, but as a stepping-stone on their journey.

It was about the journey, and the essay’s title, “Journey of a Skill”, exemplified that. “While I was reading it,” Grace says, “I felt like there was actual personal development… Honestly, I felt like this is something that could be like a short story – where it took me from ‘Here's how I got really discouraged…’ [on] this epic hero’s journey, and then you grow into learning these lessons, [and] finding something even greater. They take us to all of those… and make us feel the things as well, along with them.”

Effortlessly, it answers the prompt, and then goes well beyond.

The tortoise and the hare

If you’ve ever read this famous Aesop’s fable, you’ll know that “slow and steady wins the race.” Slow and steady also gets you a better college application! As Sagrika warns in the webinar, “Because, trust me, those deadlines are going to come up – and you're not even going to realize. And it's going to be stressful. So just try to do a little bit each day.” The tortoise has a better shot getting to the school that fits them than the hare does by rushing it or trying to finish it all in one go.

What if I haven’t gotten started?

Don’t panic! Panicking is not going to help you – starting will. Take a deep breath, forego one game, twenty minutes of music practice, or one nap, and use one of our tips to get going ASAP.

Sagrika says, “Starting is always the hardest part. And it's okay if you haven't started. It happens.”

Go slow and just start with a free write

Again, slow and steady wins the race! If you can just spare 20 minutes a day to work on those essays, that’s more than enough time for you to make steady progress, and it doesn’t feel like too much time to sacrifice from other schoolwork, activities, or things you want to do. It’ll make the difference between you getting into your mid-range of “safety” school, and you getting into one of the best schools for you, where you’ll truly shine!

Here’s a suggestion for getting out a draft number one: “It's about – for when you're starting – never hitting that “delete” or “backspace” button, and just being able to put everything out there: anything you remotely think could be discussed in an essay.” Just put it all out there. Don’t worry if it feels like garbage – at least not now. You’re going to revise this at least five times over!

Brainstorming

If you truly have nothing, you shouldn’t let the prompt pick your story. You should let your story pick the prompt. “You should not necessarily look for the best prompt, but look for the best story you have. And then you kind of play a matching game to see where that fits.”

Grace gives some great questions that students can use to find their story: “What are your activities? What are you interested in academically? What do you do in your free time? Have you played any sports? All the questions trying to get to know them, and trying to find out what stories and what characteristics they have that are going to be helpful for these essays.”

And if I have two – or more – “stories”?

The last topic of the webinar was what a student should do in the “Why X major?” essay if they have two academic interests – but this can easily be applied to having two formational stories as well. Imagine you’re a refugee who fled your country 8 years ago, and you came to California, confused and surrounded by strangers. But you found a home in a martial arts team – and advanced to winning a national competition in 2021.

Do you write about martial arts, or about your struggles as a refugee, and with the side of your family who stayed in your home country?

Grace gives some tips here, but she warns that “It boils down to some reflection: which one you're more interested in.” Or maybe, in the case of having two “stories” about which you might write, which one (you feel) more clearly defines who you are.

Grace said, “I actually had this with a student recently. I just asked her, ‘Which one are you more interested in? Which one are you more passionate about?’ I think that's a strong indicator.”

But if it’s hard to do that, Grace has a tip: “You just gotta sit down. Maybe it's easiest to do a pro and con list: pros and cons of these two. [For] which one do you have the more engaging stories or examples?”

Refugee or martial arts? How will you define yourself to the admissions readers? Which gives you a better chance to paint the best picture of yourself – your resilience, kindness, or whatever qualities are most salient in you? (And without bragging or getting into a “sob story”?)

Find your story – and then fit it to a prompt and just go!