Notes from Our Q&A with Parents of College-App Essay Writers
Last week, Hillside founder Allan Reeder hosted a parent Q&A about the college essay process—and one question emerged as the clear favorite: How does a student choose a strong, unique topic? Is there any way to avoid sounding like thousands of other applicants if you’re a regular kid who does regular things?
Allan had a clear message: Stop worrying about the topic and start paying attention to memory and specificity.
Here are a few guiding ideas that came up during the conversation:
There’s no such thing as a typical kid.
Parents often worry that their child is “just a regular kid,” someone who hasn’t competed in the Olympics, made a scientific discovery, or founded a nonprofit. Allan’s take on that worry:
“You could say my own son is a typical kid. He plays soccer, he skis. But he’s not typical. No one is typical if you slow down and look at the right kind of details.”
“You’re writing from lived experience. And that lived experience exists in your memory, and your memory is unlike anyone else’s memory. Even if you were with somebody else, they’re going to recall that experience differently.”
What matters isn’t a list of impressive experiences, but a student’s distinct interaction with the world—what they noticed, how they responded, where they paid attention. Here’s a simple question to reveal promising moments to explore: How does a student spend their time?
“The college applicant who learns and grows through the writing process succeeds with the product. ”
Begin in specificity, not generality. (And set aside the prompts for now.)
When students try to choose a Common App prompt too early, they close off possibilities. When they begin broadly, with “topics” or themes, they sound like countless other applicants. Instead, start small.
We launch students in our Uncommon Essay Course with our Ten Sentences Exercise, which prompts students to recall ten moments from their lives and to describe them with precision. These memories become the material for discovery. At the outset, Allan advises:
“Don’t tell me what your experience means. Tell me what it is.”
In “The Story Inside,” a five-minute clip from our free webinar, Allan teaches students how to describe a moment with this kind of personal precision. Watch the full webinar with your applicant for more in-depth guidance on how to begin the essay-writing process. Afterwards, students can access our 3-Sentence Jumpstart Exercise and begin their own collections of moments.
Common activities really can lead to uncommon essays.
Volunteering, sports, and tutoring aren’t off-limits. The problem comes when students leap to abstract meaning before they’ve dug into the details only they know.
“When students reflect too soon, they veer into the common. They say, ‘My story is about stepping outside my comfort zone.’ But what kind of comfort zone? In what exact moment?”
To help students find specificity, encourage them to ask: what exactly happened, and how did it feel? Instead of: what does this story say about me?
It can be tempting to try to highlight an accomplishment, like being captain of a team, but that is not a distinct experience. Don’t despair, though. There absolutely could be a compelling essay inside of that experience.
“Don’t write from achievement. Write from your interactions in the world. Look inside the stories of your particular captainship with your particular sensibilities.”
And stay open to possibilities and meanings you didn’t expect to find. If your goal is to tell a story that makes admissions officers recognize what a great leader you are, they’ll see right through you. Which brings us to:
Discover meaning through the process of writing.
At Hillside, we believe writing is a process of discovery—a series of movements out of uncertainty or surface understanding toward clarity, belief, and knowing. From each discovery comes the creative impulse toward truer seeing and fresher language. Admissions officers value these discoveries, too.
“Again and again you’ll hear admissions officers say that the essays that stand out are the essays where it feels like the student — through the process of writing — actually learned something about themselves.”
“When I’m coaching, I know we’re on to something when a student pauses and says, ‘Huh, I guess I never really thought of it that way.'”
“The college applicant who learns and grows through the writing process succeeds with the product.”
The best essays don’t announce a message. They invite readers inside of the writer’s true experience as they discover something personally meaningful.
Want to Learn More?
This conversation was part of our free Parent Q&A series. Check out our Events page for upcoming teaching, and join our Outreach List to stay in the loop.
