What many students get wrong in their college essays is picking one approach but writing it as if it were the other. 

The most common mistake I see students make is choosing approach #2 when their writing is best suited for approach #1, which often results in an essay full of garble or a string of meaningless words.

If you haven’t already, check out part one.

Here’s a scenario

I recently edited an essay in which a student wrote about wanting to attend the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) for its strong business and finance programs.

This student spent a significant portion of their essay describing how their experience in building a start-up company to support their family was the impetus for wanting to pursue degrees in business and finance.

They indicated that their ultimate goal was to use these degrees (and opportunities at UPenn) to scale their current start-up company with the hopes of making it a multi-million dollar, family business.

Note: Some of the information pertaining to this example has been altered to preserve the anonymity of this student.

Analysis

Overall, this topic was a solid essay idea. 

It was also clear that approach #1 would be the best way to structure this essay given its exclusive focus on this experience (starting a business to support their family) and its impact on their life (want to make it a career and family business).

However, issues began to arise when s/he crammed multiple, loosely related ideas into the final paragraphs in an attempt to use approach #2.

These included writing about wanting to join the fencing team (and hopefully going professional) and minoring in engineering because s/he was also vaguely interested in Fintech.

The student indicated s/he did so to demonstrate their fit and interest in the university, which is understandable and the primary reason why students, in general, make this mistake.

But I took issue with these ideas because they are secondary information that detracted from and diluted their main point.

Note: Colleges are NOT asking for an exhaustive list/description of your experiences – they just want the important and relevant stuff.

How to fix this mistake

If you find yourself making the mistake of picking an approach that is not compatible with your writing, below are the recourses you can take to remedy this issue.

• Convert it into approach #1: Choose one experience that has had the greatest impact on your life and remove everything else. Write about this in-depth, highlight who you are as a person (e.g., personal qualities, values, worldview), and reflect on the lessons learned.
• Convert it into approach #2: Write about any number of related experiences (aim for ~3) that can be used to meaningfully progress your story. Focus on the synergy between them and ensure that they work together as a collective whole to convey the message you intended.

Note: I will refer to both of these approaches using the words “option” and “approach” interchangeably.

In this case, I reminded the student that the prompt was asking why s/he was interested in the program and noted that their start-up company experience played a prominent role in the essay.

It was also clear how meaningful and impactful this experience was given that s/he was able to support their family, gain valuable business skills, and discover their dream job.

I presented the student with the same options listed above:

• Cut out everything except the part about the start-up company (best option)
• Cut back on the part about the start-up company, remove all secondary information, AND introduce new but related experiences (less efficient option)

I advised the student to go with the first option by removing all secondary information (ex: fencing, going professional, engineering, fintech) to make their essay conform to approach #1, which made it clearer and more focused on the main point. 

This was also the optimal approach because it worked best with their writing style and required the least amount of changes to their essay.

The alternative would have entailed reducing parts mentioning the start-up company and removing all secondary information to make room for new but related experiences.

This option was not efficient because it would have required significant changes made to the essay and it conflicted with the student’s writing style.