by Marie Todd
Identifying a School’s Values for Your College Essays
A valuable first step in devising a writing plan for your college essays is identifying the attributes that are most important to your target schools, which you can glean from their websites and promotional materials.
If you have not already done so, download the current Common App essay questions, as well as any supplemental essay prompts for the schools you plan to apply to. After you have familiarized yourself with these questions and developed a foundational understanding of what the schools want to learn about you, start reviewing the schools’ sites and promotional/catalog material in depth. In particular, you want to find where the school states what it values in its applicants and students. For each school, make a list of the qualities it emphasizes, such as “talented,” “diverse backgrounds,” “self-starters,” and “community minded.”
For example, Stanford University’s motto is “The wind of freedom blows,” which is understood to be an invitation to free and open inquiry in teaching and research. Indeed, as of May 2025, Stanford has more than 650 organized student groups, 45 institutes and centers, and more than 20 libraries. In addition, the school’s Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education provides close to $7.5 million in funding to facilitate undergraduate student research, programs, and projects. On its “Academics” page, Stanford proclaims, “Students who enjoy learning and challenging themselves thrive at Stanford.” So, if you were to make a list of attributes that align with the school’s desired qualities, you might include being multitalented; displaying high performance; contributing to one’s community, school, team, or other organization; and thriving in a place where one’s talents would flourish alongside those of others with similar motivation and ability.
Using Stanford as our example, let’s look at how Lidia, a hypothetical applicant, might present herself to the school in her essays. Lidia is the star of her high school girls soccer team and could discuss skills she uses on the team to create an image of herself that fits into Stanford’s student body.
Lidia could write about the time she had to communicate about strategy with a teammate from a different cultural background; this teammate had been taught to deal with competition and criticism very differently than Lidia had. In the end, Lidia was able to successfully influence her teammate with respect to strategy, ultimately leading the team to victory in the state championships. Her essay would therefore focus on her efforts to learn to communicate effectively with a teammate who was different from her and what she also learned about herself in the process. This would allow Lidia to demonstrate to the adcom that she possesses not only superior soccer skills but also the discipline necessary to be part of a winning team. In addition, she would be highlighting her team-building and leadership abilities, and showing her capacity for self-reflection in discussing how she grew personally from the interaction.
Once you have a list of the attributes each of your target schools appears to value, brainstorm the stories you could tell about yourself that illustrate these attributes. Identify various events, experiences, challenges, and successes that relate to those characteristics, and then return to the school’s essay prompts to determine which stories align with which essay questions.
Often, you will be able to find similarities among various application essay questions. This could allow you to use some of the same core experiences for more than one essay, though you might need to tailor how you focus on each experience to ensure that it highlights and reflects the values the school in question is seeking in its students.
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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