Stuck on the Essay? Try Writing a Letter to an
Imaginary College Roommate
By DAVE MARCUS
You’re a high school senior staring
at a blank screen. The weather’s getting colder, the deadline for college
applications is nearing, and your best friends have finished their admissions
essays (or pretend they have).
You’re befuddled. You haven’t
sequenced a human genome or danced in “The Nutcracker” at Lincoln Center. How
do you find a topic for the personal statement and supplemental essays?
One way is to write an introductory
letter to an imaginary college roommate. Discuss your favorite movies or books
or a favorite word. Then split off the section you enjoyed writing the most and
build that into an essay.
That’s the suggestion of Rebecca
Joseph, a professor at California State University, Los Angeles.
“Think about the important traits
that colleges should know about you when they finish reading the application,
and make sure those come across in the essays,” Ms. Joseph said Friday in a
quick interview after participating in a panel about essay writing at the
annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling,
in Denver.
Ms. Joseph’s suggestion is a
variation on essay prompts by Stanford and Harvard universities in recent
years, which suggested writing a letter to a future roommate.
Ms. Joseph read a student’s essay
that included these lines: “The first things I look for in someone’s room are
the books they keep. … I’ve been sleeping with a two-foot stuffed bear for nine
years. … I’m obsessed with the game Bananagrams.”
“Any one of those lines could’ve
been made into a full essay,” Ms. Joseph said.
Other panelists recommended coming
up with essay topics through brainstorming techniques. Here are a few of their
ideas:
Find
the Extraordinary in the Ordinary
Jessie Hill, an admission officer
at Yale University,
said she did not need to be wowed by extraordinary experiences. She discussed a
simple but memorable essay about a father kissing his daughter goodnight as she
grew older and stayed up later.
Another favorite was by a boy who
left a liberal New England community for an internship that challenged his
political beliefs. The boy began by describing his bookshelf, featuring authors
like Jon Stewart, facing his roommate’s shelf, with authors including Bill
O’Reilly.
Write
About Something That Isn’t on Your Transcript
Erica Sanders, the managing
director of recruitment and operations at the University of Michigan’s undergraduate
admissions office, was impressed by the essay of a boy from a politically
conservative high school where one of his parents was a teacher. The boy
discussed his reluctance to acknowledge that he was gay, and his desire to
attend Michigan, where the word “respect” is part of the curriculum.
Ask
Yourself, ‘What Am I Proud Of?’
Ms. Joseph recalled a time when one
of her students decided to make a difference in his community. He had seen
parents getting tickets for dropping off students in a “no standing” zone at
school, so he spent months lobbying local officials for a safe place for
drop-offs.
Ms. Joseph summed up the purpose of
the essay: “Give the admissions officer a gift – the gift of you.”
