College Essay Public Service Announcement

Various clips of this video have appeared on my timeline several times and I can’t get enough of it. For me it expresses joy, confidence, admiration of a true thing of beauty. This is exactly how I felt when I finished helping my niece with her college essay this week.

She knew exactly what she wanted to say and believed she’d said it. Well, she had. Even pointing it out, “See it’s right there, Auntie, in the last paragraph.”

“Right,” I thought—right where many busy, tired reviewers would never reach having given up long before so they can move through the pile of applications that are their additional workload responsibility. Or should they reach the end, they would not understand or lose its import. Once I understood her main point, I was able to help her remedy the essay’s fatal flaw.

Yes, there were edits throughout, but what really pulled the previously rambling, disparate ideas together was a stronger introduction. Just a few, key sentences in the opening—otherwise known as “The Hook”— would better prepare the reader for the journey her narrative would take them on. We would like to believe that all readers of these essays and applications are somewhere with a cup of tea cozying up for a delightful afternoon of getting to know you and your peers through your all-important college essay. Alas, it’s just not so.

So, what do you say to draw your reader in and set them up to meet you and understand why they need or want to invest in you or have you as part of their community?

Our college essay editing session was a true “Allow me to re-introduce myself…” moment and the result had us high-fiving and getting it in—Ayyy!

Happy Writing!