College application season is here so many high school seniors are busy composing their admission essays. Speaking of admission essays, there are three common mistakes that students make when writing them that should be avoided. If you haven’t started your essay yet, keep these in mind while you are preparing your draft.

Mistake #1: Disregard the essay reader’s perspective

It’s natural for students to write about their personal stories (that’s what essay prompts are about, the student’s story), but they tend to get carried away and write about something that only makes sense to themselves. For example, a Chinese student may emphasize day-to-day interactions he has had with his grandma since he was a baby. He doesn’t provide any explanation about why he lives with his grandma or what the bond means to him. What admission officers may not know is that it’s a common practice for Chinese parents to leave their young child under the care of grandparents. What seems natural to the Chinese student doesn’t make sense to the American reader.

Another thing that students tend to do is use their own language or relate to their personal experience from their own perspective, assuming that the world knows what they are talking about. For example, one student may use a metaphor from the book “Joy Luck Club” while another student may use special terminology from a computer programming club he was in. The book may be popular and the student might have read it three times, but if the essay reader didn’t read the book, writing anything about it is wasting some of the available limited word count. Likewise, using big words from a computer programming club in hope of impressing the reader comes with a considerable risk also. What are the chances that the reader has gone through the same club experience or will take the time to research the terminology that they don’t understand? Remember, this is not your personal journal and the readers have full control over your essay. If they don’t understand and connect with you after reading your essay for a minute, your essay has failed– it’s that simple.

Mistake #2. Telling the story, not showing it

How realistic is it for a college admission officer to really know you as a person simply from reading a few brief essays of yours? Given that essays have word limits, students tend to fit in as many facts about themselves as they can, hoping to let the reader know more about themselves. This is like trying to film a person’s entire lifetime story and then fitting it into a one hour movie. Students should only pick the best parts of their story and reenact them using vivid words. If students don’t allow essay readers to “see” their story in their mind, even the best story can be dry. See the following examples:

“I am grateful to my English teacher. It was hard to say goodbye.”

“My tears fell on the farewell letter to my English teacher and blurred the ink that said ‘thank you.’”

Which one gives you a stronger image?

Mistake #3. “Loud thunder, little rain” – writing a fancy beginning with simplistic support or ending

Imagine loud thunder rumbling. We expect a huge amount of rain to come after but only a few drops follow.

Many students like to make themselves sound like heroes, especially when it comes to writing about their aspirations. Some students want to be more successful in business than their entrepreneurial parents while others want to be an astronaut to find a new world for humans like Columbus did five centuries ago. Trump wannabe, Einstein aspirant, world savior - the list could go on. Say you manage to catch the essay reader’s attention, what next? Have you started your own business or established a club? Have you engaged in any astronautics as your extracurricular activity? Chances are students have done nothing constructive to support their aspirations and the essay communicate a “nice dream” with nothing catchy or constructive to support it. When an admissions officer sees a student as just a dreamer or talker, their essay typically backfires.

Given our extensive experience, there is much more advice we can offer about college essay writing. If you’d like to learn more about how to write a winning college application essay, please feel free to contact us at support@apprentice-edu.com.

Three most commonly made mistakes when writing college essays

John Ma

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