The College Essay Can Be a Soul Search

Here's how to get from stress to a thoughtful self-examination.

Photo of a teenager with long hair dancing in a field with a bunch of flowers in their right hand by Quan Nguyen on Unsplash

Given the high expectations for high school seniors, it's easy to forget how special a task the college essay is. A seventeen-year-old is effectively asked to consider their emerging self, find the right words for it, and present it to readers. For all the adolescents' clamoring for independence, the college essay is one of the first opportunities for a teenager to examine themselves as a near-adult.

Moreover, those 650 or fewer words--the word limit on the personal statement, or main college essay--is part of a search for a college where they might live, study, and socialize for four years. This can be an exciting moment, the beginning of a relationship with a place and its people.

As an essay coach, my work is to help the applicant soar in writing, eventually sending out the most brilliant version of their personal statement. To achieve that, I work with the student to break down the different parts of this assignment and to reframe the experience as a search for selfhood.

Something my students find helpful as an initial step is what I call the "brainstorming interview." I ask the student compassionately phrased questions that help them begin speaking about and understanding their inner self.  I know this is both important and hard, and I am genuinely interested in what they have to say.

Where do the questions come from? The Common App website features several prompts for the personal statement. However, many students are initially blinded by these prompts; they can see that they cannot immediately answer these broadly phrased questions, and they tend to panic a little. A friendly coach--or perhaps a parent or friend--can help break a prompt down into parts and then frame it in a way that sets the student on the path to an effective essay.

Here is an example. One of the Common App prompts says: "Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story." Here are some ways to break this prompt down.

• Is there anything you feel passionate about? It doesn't have to be an academic passion, and you don't have to be fantastic at it.

• What do you care about? As a former college professor, I have seen many college students who are not exactly sure why they are there; perhaps their parents sent them, or they think they can get a better job by going, or everyone around them is going. But you might be different. What engages you? What do you love doing?

• What community helped you become yourself? This is another way to answer this question, with an eye to a collective identity, or a helpful mentor or friend. Race-conscious affirmative action has been struck down by the Supreme Court, but the personal statement is a unique part of the application, where a young person is welcome to talk about what matters to them and who helped them get here. It does not have to be about race or ethnicity.

Some young people are a bit calmer; maybe they have not yet found a passion that they can commit to, only something they have studied for a while or something they do in their spare time. That is totally normal. Psychology now thinks adolescence lasts well into our 20s--perhaps even 30s, some say--and it is okay not to know yet.

This student might try a different Common App prompt: Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more? Here is how we can process this prompt. First--I would say to the writer--do not worry about impressing anyone here; talk about yourself, the things you like, and your patterns of behavior with these things. What makes this idea or interest fun? Perhaps hiking is your thing--so talk about what you love, such as exploration, or plants and animals, or being fully present...

Here are some more questions to explore different aspects of this topic:

• Who taught you or is teaching you about this idea or interest? Don't worry if they don't have a PhD in it...

• You can also chat about your patterns of what you've done when you were so engaged. Don't worry about thinking you had an epiphany; rather, describe your process. Did you hike to the top of the mountain? Where did you use French in Quebec City when you were in the groove of speaking the language?

• When you got this interest, how did you get into it? (This is an excellent spot to show yourself as a self-directed learner or self-starter. Did you teach yourself to play the flute? Read all the books on lichen at the local library? Ask your family if you could have a Mandarin tutor? Any of this counts. Again, you are seventeen; tell your story as a seventeen-year-old.)

• Did you learn anything when you did this? If so, what?

After I ask any question, I play secretary. I listen actively and take notes  on what the writer says in a shared Google Doc, only speaking up to ask a follow-up question that helps a student get from the general or abstract to the specific. I find that teens need a great deal of space from adults to speak at length, explore what they have to say, and construct themselves in words. This is best done without another person's interference, judgment, or attempts to shape their writing. An upshot of that is that they tend to find their own words, which is invaluable for the originality of their personal statement.

Within the next ten minutes, a student will have a bullet list of notes they can transcribe into their essay. This is usually when the applicant gets their first spark of hope (sometimes even excitement!) for this genre. Instead of the frightening blank screen, they have an overview of what they might say--and it's in their own words. (This also helps us navigate academic honesty. I do not tell students what to say or how to say it--I am there only as an unobtrusive, compassionate presence.)

Part of the reason why the interview lends good results is that the applicant does not have to write or even type notes and can focus on talking. As a species, long before we wrote, we talked; our ancestors told stories around a fire for millennia, and writing is fairly new to us. Not surprisingly, it is still easier to speak than it is to write.

Can the young writer trust a parent or sibling to play interviewer? If the teen has a warm relationship and the family member is quiet and gives the teen the space to think and talk, this may work well. Sometimes things break down either because teens tend to read into their parents' or friends' reactions to what they say, feeling as if they are being judged harshly or already evaluated for success in their application process. I've seen this play out in situations where a young person was feeling worried by this pivotal point in their lives. In those cases, hiring an essay coach may be a good idea.

Whichever road you take, I hope that if you are the young writer, you do find some meaning in the process, and if you are that writer's friendly grownup, you can imagine the possibilities for making this experience a thoughtful one. I am available for coaching. To get started, email me at olga(at)olgalivshin(com) or DM me on Instagram or Facebook @olgalivshin.

The important thing to keep in mind is that there are many friendly, thoughtful ways to get a teenager under a lot of pressure out from all that external stuff that weighs on them and into who they are. With a little curiosity and empathy from others, they may even enjoy the process.

What has helped you brainstorm for a college essay? What questions or ideas were useful in that process? Comment below!