The One Unique Thing
College essays - what are they good for? What is it that makes your essays one of the important aspects of your entire college application? There’s something about college essays that...
Your SAT or ACT test scores can’t show.
Your grades and GPA can’t show.
Your extracurricular activities can’t show.
Your school transcript can’t show.
Let’s take a look at UC Berkeley’s “Personal Insight Questions” (Link) page, as stated directly:
Pretty typical stuff. Schools use your college essays to
See what separates you from the pack outside of GPA and test scores. The schools admit it themselves! Grades are important, but do not provide the full picture. They might get you into some schools, but they definitely won’t get you into any of the top schools alone. When you are competing at the elite level, everybody’s quantifiable stats are maxed out. So how do you differentiate yourself from others? College essays.
Understand WHY you do what you do. It’s just not enough to max out the activities list with activities. Do you love what you do? Show it. In fact, it’s almost always better to have fewer extracurriculars that you are deeply involved in than many more that you randomly dabble in. Again, when you are competing at this level, qualified students also have equally amazing extracurriculars. So how do you differentiate yourself from others? College essays.
Look for anything else that the other parts of the application can’t present properly.
Furthermore:
Your college essays should also show:
The positive characteristics and values you possess. Obviously.
How you make the most out of your opportunities. Obviously x2.
Personal challenges. Obviously x3.
But is there more to this than meets the eye? Can we distill this further to find the missing kernel? I believe we can. Take a moment to think about this before reading on.
The Anything Else
Considering everything we’ve read above, the one unique thing that your college essays can show, and that nothing else in your application can, is your view on your own future. Every bit of this is vital.
Your grades, your test scores, and your extracurriculars tell colleges what you have accomplished: what’s done; what’s in the past. Your college essay, on the other hand, offers the opportunity for you to tell admissions what you want to do: your hopes and dreams; your vision of the future that you want to create.
If you do a quick Google search, you’ll also find articles with pretty good answers (Link). According to the College Essay Guy, “colleges want to know how you’d contribute to life on campus. And they want to imagine you’ll do amazing things once you graduate.” In other words, what you’ll do at college is only half the equation. The other half, which is just as important, is what you’ll do for the world. When schools admit you, what they are essentially doing is making a bet on you. They are giving you a seat over other applicants because they can see you doing more good being there and beyond. Your college essay provides universities with the reasons to believe in you.
Like climbing mountains, the years you’ve dedicated to your extracurriculars, the challenges you’ve overcome, and the joys you’ve experienced from the process have brought you to a peak from which you are currently standing. What is the view like? What do you see? Looking back, what have you learned? Looking forward, what’s the next peak you’d like to conquer? Your college essay is the opportunity for you to address these introspective issues. What is your view on your own future? Contrapositively, it’s almost fair to argue that those who have no view of their own future have not made the effort to climb their mountains. And if these students haven’t put in the effort up to this point, what’s the guarantee that they will do so once they get into college and beyond?
George Mallory, the English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to ascent Mount Everest, once recounted:
“People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.' There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron...
If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.”
If there is no practical use in climbing mountains, why did Mallory do it anyway? Because it’s there.
Can you find the same kind of conviction for what you do and what you will do?
