by Marie Todd
How to Write Strong College Essays: Top Writing Techniques
There are many places to find sample college essays, such as here and in the many books written to help students apply to college. When reading sample essays, you want to pay attention to how they are structured and try to understand what makes them effective. Then, you can combine what you’ve learned with the ideas you’ve been developing for your college essays to craft your own compelling submissions.
As you read sample essays, take note of what you like about them – the honesty, simplicity, humor, cleverness, innovative nature, poignancy, relatability. Ask yourself how the writer created a certain tone or feeling. What specific details help set the scene? What does the writer reveal about themselves that allows you to understand them and encourages you to care about their story? What about the essay convinces you that the applicant would be an asset to their college class? What can you learn about how the essay was written that you can later apply in a relevant way to your own story?
Well-written essays don’t just convey feeling, they also have logic and structure. Most solid essays rely on one or more of the following elements.
- Description tells us about something in a way that makes it easy to envision. It involves more showing than telling, which is achieved by using words that appeal to the five senses. For example, rather than simply saying what kind of person your grandfather was, quote something that he often said, and describe his expression and tone of voice when he said it. Recount the way he would do a characteristic task, such as maintaining his backyard garden. Did he walk stooped over and shrug his shoulders a lot? Smoke a pipe that he held between tobacco-stained fingers? Go every Sunday to the horse races wearing his “lucky” but threadbare red tie? Wear a musky, woody aftershave that everyone recognized as his signature scent? Bring your grandfather to life for the reader by sprinkling in lively details when you discuss his doing or saying something. Let the reader know what you see, hear, touch, taste, and, if appropriate, even smell, such as the freshly turned earth in his backyard garden.
- Narration walks a reader through the progression of an event over time. Recount each step or phase of the story you want to share with the adcom, emphasizing why the experience was important to you. Use descriptive details, as explained in the previous bullet point, while also conveying to the reader an insight you arrived at as a result of the situation.
- Comparing and contrasting allows you to highlight the stark difference between how things are and how you would like them to be. For example, you might compare yourself to someone you admire today, or to a historical or literary character, and discuss how college will facilitate becoming more like that esteemed person. How might your college experience help you achieve your goal? You can also highlight a situation in your life or society that bothers you and contrast it with how you hope it might one day be instead, with you aspiring to help effect that change for the greater good.
- How-to explanations let you share knowledge about the way something is done or made and can be useful when describing your accomplishment of a meaningful achievement, or your plans to approach your college years in a strategic way. Offer specific steps to clearly illustrate the different phases of the process.
- Cause and effect allows you to show the relationship between how your skills or your understanding of certain situations, events, or experiences has evolved, and in turn, how this has shaped your life and outlook.
- Definition is useful when discussing a meaningful role or experience in your life and how it has influenced you. For example, you might describe coping with a chronic condition, or you could detail your experience as an immigrant, a minority, or the sibling of a special-needs individual.
- Argument and persuasion are essential elements when you are stating a case or addressing an issue that concerns you. When writing a persuasive essay, you cannot rely solely on your own personal experiences to support your claims; you need evidence, data, and research from another reputable source to reinforce your argument and convince others of its importance.
You probably already use these elements of thinking and communicating every day in your conversations with friends, in classroom discussions, as part of writing and research assignments, and when taking tests. These strategies will expand the number of tools in your toolbox when you are deciding on your essay topic and approach.
Now when you read sample essays, see how many of these approaches and elements you can identify. Which ones are the most effective at engaging you, and why? How does each element help the writer bring their experiences to life on the page? You can learn a lot from reading sample essays, but in the end, always remember that writing your authentic story in your authentic voice is what matters most.
Marie Todd has been involved in college admissions for more than 20 years. Marie has both counseled applicants to top colleges and evaluated more than 5,000 applications for the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts; College of Engineering; School of Kinesiology; School of Nursing; and Taubman College of Architecture. Want Marie to help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch.
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