Why Reading Great College Essay Examples Makes Yours Worse
Utrecht’s Old Canal, The Netherlands. Not for swimming.
I take the contrarian view that reading college essay examples confuses more than clarifies. If you search on Amazon for “College essay examples,” almost 500 titles appear. There are a billion results on Google and thousands of YouTube videos. I’m not brave enough to install TikTok to measure its college essay content coverage. My essay example blog posts are by far my most popular content.
However, I argue that the more essay examples students and families read, the less informed they seem about how to build compelling essays of their own. Essay examples often amplify rather than reduce confusion at every stage of the process, from brainstorming to editing and when it’s time to submit.
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College essay examples are a self-selected sample
There are five significant issues with essay-example books and blogs. First, examples reflect a highly self-selected sampling size. They almost always receive professional help from counselors like me, yet the book or post often doesn’t disclose whether the applicant received professional assistance. Essay examples are submitted by the kinds of ambitious students who permit content creators to share their essays.
The “average” essay example published online is realistically a top 1% or .1% submission, wildly distorting how typical college essays appear. Even Harvard admits students with crappy essays. Many applicants gain admission despite their poorly written submissions. Many of the essay examples themselves are not particularly strong either, which I argue in other videos is because most college essays aren’t very good.
Applicants often gain admission despite their crappy essays
The essays that “got a student in” may be low-quality, while their stellar academics, resume, and recommendation letters were adequate to gain admission. Survivorship bias means only the best essay submissions appear publicly, yet not the tens of thousands of mediocre ones that aren’t bad enough to earn an admissions rejection. Nobody would read “50 Mediocre but Good Enough Essays for Harvard.”
Final essay drafts without the intermediate stages mislead
Second, college admissions blogs, including mine, only provide the final draft.
You don’t see the brainstorming or other topics considered and discarded. College essay books rarely, if ever, detail the intermediate revision steps that polish essay turds into diamonds. Recreating intermediate revision stages is almost impossible, although I’ve attempted to detail essay-building stages on my course. Students read final essay submissions and feel intimidated. They say, “I could never write something so unique and compelling.”
Essay examples lack context
Third, essay examples almost always present a Common App submission without supplying any other context, like the transcript, resume, recommendation letters, demographics, and other supplemental essays. Since holistic review implies that reviewers assess applications as a whole, attempting to separate an essay from essential context provides limited utility to the reader. It would be more helpful if content creators provided “college applications that work” rather than focusing on the single Common App essay. I attempt to recreate complete applications with applicant backgrounds on my course and “student profile” blog posts.
Reading college essay examples requires mental gymnastics
Fourth, reading college essays requires a level of detachment, humility, and precision that is almost impossible for any teenager or emotionally invested parent to attain. Reading too many examples almost always confuses rather than clarifies.
I have a clients-only “48 Tell Us Your Story” examples PDF. When I share it, students will zero in on one or two submissions and declare, “I could never write an essay like that.” Either they take issue with an unconventional style that seems outside of their writing abilities or personality, or they lament, “I don’t have any significant obstacles or challenges.” Instead, I reframe the discussion for them to identify a few examples that resonate with them stylistically and thematically. Nudging toward what appeals to them rather than repels helps to identify possible opportunities for experimentation or finding similarities.
Reading essay examples can be informative if the applicant identifies the underlying structure of an essay rather than the superficial styles and themes. For example, suppose they have a single prominent extracurricular that they wish to illustrate in a UT Proud Short Answer. In that case, it can help to find other supplement examples that provide a single example.
Moreover, Main Essay examples that develop a single event or experience, like a robotics problem or a memorable band competition, help provide a possible way to respond. Some students write Main Essays that begin in early childhood and lead to the present, so reading similar examples can help students frame a more longitudinal approach.
Essay examples amplify anxiety and analysis paralysis
The final misstep is that students feel tempted to read essay examples after they’ve completed and even submitted their own. It almost always causes anxiety, second-guessing, and analysis paralysis. Students read problems, gaps, or “not good enoughs” into their work. A consequence of my highly personalized services means that, although your completed essays may have similarities and differences from previous clients, they will always be slightly different yet excellent. There are dozens of successful kinds of college essay submissions.