For Parents: Insights About the College Essay

1) Do you consider yourself knowledgeable about what the college essay, aka the personal statement, is intended to do?

o   Answer: Provide insight in to the applicant’s character, their values, beliefs, guiding principles, motivations, development over time, goals (short, mid, long term)

2) Have you read any good college essays? Do they sound like an English paper with a standard 5 paragraph format? An opinion piece in a publication? Or do they sound more like a personal memoir? Or an interior monologue?

3) Admissions readers would like students to tell not only what they believe, but how they reached their beliefs, and if they have grown, what made them grow; therefore, it is a statement exposing personal beliefs and the values which rule their thoughts and actions.

4) This necessarily must be highly personal. That is what we anticipate and want. This is a tough job. They may even find that it takes a request like this for them to reveal some of their own beliefs to themselves.

5) What we want is so intimate that no one can write it for them. They must write it themselves, in the language most natural to them. I ask them to write in their own words and then read it aloud, hearing their own voice.

6) This is why I have been working with your children: to better understand them and to help them realize and define their strengths.

7) Sometimes when they are stuck, I ask them to forget what to write and instead I ask them to talk with me. Then they open up and begin to speak, often quite eloquently and enthusiastically. I furiously scramble down what they say. I read it back to them. I say “Listen to this. This is great stuff.” “Now write as you speak.” And when they get stuck again, I ask them to talk with me, waiting for them to speak, so I can interrupt them with “now write that exactly as you are saying it aloud.” This is the fun part: letting them become themselves, unlocking their inner thoughts and expressing them without fear of judgment.

8) Be personal, I tell them: Make your essay about you; speak in the first person. Avoid speaking in the editorial “we.” Tell a story from your own life; this is not an opinion piece about social ideals. Write in words and phrases that are comfortable for you to speak. I recommend you read your essay aloud to yourself several times, and each time edit it and simplify it until you find the words, tone, and story that truly echo your belief and the way you speak.

9) They have rarely, if ever, had to write this way before. This is a style unfamiliar to them and often to parents as well. English teachers in some schools are beginning to work with students on these essays and they introduce it as I do, in that it is not your typical textbook school essay.

10) As a parent I ask you: How can you best participate? Are you interested in helping them with their essay work? What role would you like to play? Help them generate ideas or make your own suggestions? Help them think of how to tell their stories? Help them edit once they have a draft?

11) Here is the tough part for my parents: you might be accomplished writers, or even have a great rapport with your children. But does your child feel comfortable sharing everything with you? Does your child like to please you? Feel intimidated by you?

12) Can you see how a well-intentioned and well-informed suggestion from you as a parent might be seen as an intrusion?

13) Can you think of a time when your own parent might have been trying to help you, but you felt they didn’t trust you to make your own decision?

14) Can you imagine what it would feel like if you were working on your own personal statement and that parent came around and re-wrote it for you? Or questioned something seemingly unimportant?

15) Even if your child is receptive and welcomes your help, is this maybe the time to let them take over and lead? (Remember they aren’t out on their own. You hired me to guide them; I am a parent too and a former high school teacher, and trained in what I do.)

16) My main role as their advisor is to make sure that at the end of the day, your child will feel proud of what they submit to colleges, that they will feel a sense of ownership and empowerment. “Here I am. I am this. And I am rocking it.”

17) I encourage my students to share their essays as they get closer to the final drafts. But I recommend they ask you only for this one bit of feedback: “Does it sound like me?” And they are hoping not only you will say “yes” but also add “and that is perfect”.