Demonstrating Values in Your Experiences to Enhance Your College Admissions Essay
My clients and their parents always have questions about how to:
Optimizing Your Summer Experiences for College Essays
Enriching your College Essays by Highlighting Your Summer Experiences
Every time I work with a student on an essay, we naturally start at the brainstorming topics phase… and they all look at me like I’ve grown 6 heads in the span of 2.2 seconds when I tell them-
“You can write about any topic you’d like!”
This scares them. And, to be fair, I remember sitting in their shoes trying to figure out what I was going to write for my college essays and having no idea where to start. If I’m being honest: looking back, I have no idea what I wrote about and it’s unlikely that our students will remember in 10 years either.
I say that because I want you, parents and students, to know that it is a big deal what you choose to write about for your college admissions essay, but it’s also not a big deal.
Last year, I wrote a blog post on how to write a well-written college essay, which you can find here. It’s really great. And no, I’m not just saying that because I wrote it, there are great tips from a current admission professional about how to ace your college essays. A great place to start to get the basics of writing a college admission essay.
This time around, I’m going to talk about how you can use your summer experiences to enhance your essays or if you are stuck for an essay topic, how you can use your summer experiences to optimize your essay.
Before we get into the “how” of how you do this, I’d like to share an example.
A few years ago, I had a student who loved to scuba dive. We lived in a landlocked state, so she didn’t have many opportunities to go regularly. But on school breaks, she went diving as much and as often as she could. This included the summer between her junior and senior years of high school, her last time to get some life experience, a job, an internship, some great volunteering, or basically do anything else that would help her college applications stand out from others. So, when she came back in the fall and we sat down to talk about all-things-college, it’s no surprise that she had the usual deer in the headlights look as we began brainstorming possible essay topics.
The brainstorming process can be slow and it usually involves a number of times when either my client or I say “no, this topic isn’t working.” We revisit the drawing board or change the angle at which we are approaching the topic and restart. Usually, this only happens once or twice for each student, but it is a common occurrence.
Our brainstorming process went like this:
Me: So, have you thought about any topics you might like to write about for your college admission essays?
Her: … …
Me: I’ll take that as a no. Let’s review the Common App prompts first, which might get you thinking about a possible topic idea (we proceeded to review the prompts for that year). Anything stand out to you?
Her: …
Me: Okay, we will need to try this another way…
And so began our thorough brainstorming process.
There were lots of questions (some of which I’ll talk about in a bit). There was lots of debate and conversation (I’ll spare you all of the details), but you are starting to get the idea that it was fairly in-depth.
Ultimately, she decided to focus on her time scuba diving in her essay. Not because she was going to be a marine bio major and thought that having the scuba thing in the bag would help her get in (it wouldn’t), but because she ended up spending much of her time scuba diving volunteering and picking up litter and debris from the ocean floor. In her time not in the water, she volunteered with an ocean rehabilitation center that focused on educating people on the detrimental impact of pollution on the ocean habitat and wildlife, as well as issues with coral bleaching.
Neither the diving nor the volunteering were related to her chosen major, but that didn’t matter. I’ll say that again for the parents in the back, you do not need to write about why you choose your major in your college essay- not everything is about your major.
To her credit, she did have something to work with. But, it took a while to get there. At first, in typical teenage fashion, I asked her about her summer and she talked about diving all the time, but left out the part about volunteering. It wasn’t until she decided that it was important that she share her passions outside of the classroom with the admission committee that we were able to come full circle and use her interest in diving to showcase some of the other things that most people, including her counselor, don’t hear from her or about her.
So, how did we get there? Great question and I’m so glad you asked. My methodology involves a lot of conversation- I am a counselor after all so this should be of no surprise to anyone. Here, I’ll share some of the questions I ask students directly or ask them to ponder when we are working on brainstorming topics for college admission essays.
(note, these questions work really well if you have a skill, value, or experience you’d really like to include in your college admission essay)
(another note, the more specific specific you are in your answers, the better your essay will be)
The best questions to answer if you want to write about an experience in your college admissions essay:
What is the experience that you’d like to share with the admission committee?
What was the most meaningful part of this experience for you? Why?
What did you expect to get out of this experience before you started it? Did the experience meet your expectations? If yes, how? If no, how?
What surprised you most about the experience?
How does the experience and your participation in it reflect your personality? Reflect your values?
How did the experience change you (yes this is hard to answer, but you need to do it for the best essay possible)?
How did this experience challenge you?
Name 2-3 key character traits or values that you have that were demonstrated during your experience? How were they demonstrated?
Why are these values/traits meaningful to you?
What are other ways that these values/traits manifest in your life (other experiences, interactions, etc.)?
I know, that was a lot. Maybe it doesn’t seem like it if you are just reading through this, but I promise, if you actually sit down with pen and paper and complete this, answering all questions to the fullest extent you are able, you will have the start of a great essay. After that, it will simply be a matter of organizing your thoughts and editing.
If you are stuck on values or traits, feel free to click here, for an amazing and complete list of values you can consider.
I hope you’ve found this helpful and I wish you the best of luck in your writing process. If you are looking for more information, please visit my website- Higher & Hire. If I can be of assistance to you, please reach out to me here.
Many Thanks!
Valerie Palmer
College Admission Expert
