A tough one to read as a college counselor. Nothing new here from where we sit, but these are still hard truths and a call to action. It’s on all of us—not just parents!
A must-read!
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Colleges are starting to outline potential next steps if affirmative action is overturned and race can no longer be explicitly used as a factor in the admissions process.
A recent article in the Brown Daily Herald noted:
Associate Provost for Enrollment Logan Powell says essays would focus on race as one part of identity, describes ‘structured meetings’ of Brown officials to prepare for rulings
And today, Penn’s DP posted about how Penn may respond if affirmative action is overturned. The DP also noted diversity statements (aka essays)
Half of The Complete College Essay Handbook is dedicated to supplemental essays, which are the essays schools can request in addition to the Common App essay (aka the personal statement). Once you know the story you’re conveying in your personal statement, you can use the supplements to “round out” your application, whether by elaborating on an extracurricular, conveying your interest in an area of study, or even focusing on meaningful aspects of your identity or a community to which you belong.
Community and Identity is one of the four types of supplements we discuss in the book, and it’s this category of essay Provost Powell is referencing. If race-conscious admission is eliminated, more essays of this type should emerge on applications and become even more critical in the efforts of colleges to build well-rounded, diverse classes.
Through Community and Identity essays, admissions officers hope to get a sense of not only who you are and what shapes you but also how you interact with others in a group setting—a skill needed in college and your career. Often, Community and Identity essays are just as personal as the personal statement, though many are much shorter in length, averaging between 250 and 450 words.
The types of communities you belong to might include but are not limited to:
You might have noticed that many of these communities speak to diversity in some way. Diversity is something admissions officers want, and now more than ever before might need, to learn about when they ask you to discuss your communities and identity. Diversity encompasses a wide range of other aspects of identity. Diversity is whatever experience or aspect of your identity makes you unique. The communities we belong to often help determine and define this difference. Community, identity, and diversity are all closely intertwined.
Reflection is also an important component of many Community and Identity essays. When considering your identity in relation to a community, you will need to reflect on your role within that community, consider what it means to you, and examine what you have learned as a member. This means you can’t simply describe or celebrate the community or simply list all the accomplishments you’ve had as a member; you should take the time to reflect on the difficulties (and joys) of being a part of that community and how that community has helped make you who you are today.
For sample Community and Identity essays and a deeper discussion of how to approach writing this type of essay, grab a copy of The Complete College Essay Handbook. If you would like a complimentary copy for your school library or counseling office, or if cost is a barrier, please write to us.
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The supplemental essays (or “supps” as we call them) are a chance for you to “supplement” your personal statement (aka the Common App essay) with more information about who you are and what makes you tick. Although many supps ask you to write about seemingly straightforward topics, like your extracurriculars or academics, they are not merely an opportunity to rehash your résumé or the activities section of the Common Application. They are, like the personal statement, an opportunity to tell another deeply personal story—not to brag about your brag-worthy accomplishments. Remember: it is stories, not accomplishments, that will make your application memorable.
For your essay to count as a story, it needs to tell a narrative that charts personal progress and change. Maybe your résumé is full of community service, and though you love it now, when you started, it felt like a chore. Tell that story. Maybe you played piano for ten years only to quit in tenth grade so you could devote more time to your real passion—computer science. Tell that story. Maybe you founded a club, and no one came to the first meeting, but you decided to keep going, and now you have a small but devoted core group. Tell. That. Story. In other words: Tell the unvarnished true story, even if that story isn’t neat or pretty. Those are the best stories!
Although supps present a valuable opportunity to make yourself even more memorable to your favorite schools, they also present a daunting amount of work: the majority of schools require at least one supplemental essay, and some, like MIT and Wake Forest, ask you to complete five or more. Many students we work with end up having to complete, on average, ten to fifteen sets of supps, or anywhere from eight to twenty additional essays. This is an insane amount of writing, and it can seem especially challenging because the prompts for these essays appear to vary greatly from school to school.
Don’t be daunted. You don’t have to write twenty unique essays!
Over the years, we have identified four types of essays that admissions officers most commonly look for. The students we work with write, on average, these four essays that they are then able to adapt and repurpose for different word counts and prompts. They are:
And following our method, you can do this too! In The Complete College Essay Handbook, we provide:
We also show you how to adapt your essays for higher or lower word limits and how to repurpose your essays for the few prompts that fall outside of the four types. Using our methods, you’ll be able to maximize your time by writing fewer, but more effective and widely applicable, supplemental essays.
Get a copy today (paperback or ebook option), or if you are interested in working with us 1:1, reach out via email!
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Hi. If this were a podcast, this would be the part where we’d say, in our distinct voices: “I’m Brittany.” And then: “I’m Emma.” We’ve been working together to guide students through their college applications since 2016. After a few years, we realized our process was not reflected in any of the essay materials we found elsewhere, so we decided to write it down. What started as internal documents for our students eventually turned into a book. Since it is time to start thinking about essays, remember that…
The Complete College Essay Handbook is available on Amazon!
It’s a no-frills, practical guide that will give students the confidence and know-how they need to craft the best essays for every single school on their list—in less time and with less stress. The Complete College Essay Handbook walks students through:
We are excited to get our expertise and years of experience into the hands of as many students as possible—especially now that it’s college application season!
We’d be so grateful if you shared a link to The Complete College Essay Handbook with friends and family, and if you decide to purchase it—thank you, and also consider leaving a review (verified Amazon reviews are huge for increasing exposure). If you have feedback—or just want to say hi—email us at brittemmaessays@gmail.com.
Thank you for your support!
Brittany & Emma
There’s a new-ish college book that I actually like! It just so happens to be authored by Penn’s Eric Furda and longtime higher ed writer, Jacques Steinberg (if you studied high ed you’ve read his stuff; excellent!).
For years, Valerie Strauss has published an annual summer reading list assembled by Brennan Barnard, the director of college counseling at the private Derryfield School in New Hampshire and college admission program manager of the Making Caring Common project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Barnard asks fellow high school college admissions counselors as well as college admissions deans for recommendations of books for students and parents to read. Some of the several dozen suggestions are related to the education world, and some are not.
You can find the full 2019 list here.
I have my own reading list for this year, and I am excited to add a few from his list. I am currently reading The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates. It was a slow start for me, but I am glad I kept reading; there are some wonderful messages around unity, inclusion, and connection, and I have enjoyed learning about her early years at Microsoft, how she ramped up her work in their foundation, and even her relationship with Bill. I was not expecting to learn about their relationship at all! How she weaves together data and storytelling appeals to me, and I more now than before (which I did not think was possible) believe that when you lift up women, you lift up humanity. This book is a call to action if you did not feel compelled already.
I have also read the following books this year:
And I will be adding the following from Barnard’s list to my list:
It seems that on almost every book list related to college, Julie Lythcott-Haims’ book is included, and I could not be more happy about that!!! I absolutely loved this book when I read it and its messages are as powerful and relevant today as they were in 2015. I suggest all parents read this book:
“How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success” by Julie Lythcott-Haims
Happy reading!!!
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Did you find yourself feeling a little uneasy as you read this list? Did some of these warning signs hit a bit too close to home?
Okay, so some of these are just for fun, but many aren’t a joke. Head to Forbes to read Brennan Barnard’s full article. In it, he provides some thoughtful commentary as well as an amazing reading list, which includes one of my favorites:
Give his article and Lythcott-Haim’s book a read if you have not already!
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Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” So with this in mind, Brennan Bernard (director of college counseling at the Derryfield School in Manchester, N.H.) asks his colleagues in high school counseling and college admission to recommend their favorite books from the year, and every year, the recommendations are amazing.
Right now I am reading:
There are some older ones here that I can personally recommend, for example:
“Colleges That Change Lives” by Loren Pope, revised by Hilary Masell Oswald
And a few I just read recently that I really liked:
“Educated: A Memoir” by Tara Westover
“The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds” by Michael Lewis
“How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success” by Julie Lythcott-Haims
Read the full list here. I have already put these on hold at my local library:
“Enough As She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success to Live Healthy, Happy, and Fulfilling Lives”by Rachel Simmons
“At What Cost?: Defending Adolescent Development in Fiercely Competitive Schools” by David L. Gleason
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I love sports, but youth sports are wild. I recently read an insightful article by Douglas Brunt that is worth a read by all parents—especially those with young children. He notes:
The problem is that the wealth and fame of sports is a lure for the wrong-headed parenting that specializes kids who are too young to decide for themselves, all for an outcome with lottery odds of success.
The road to professional contracts in all sports is littered with the teenage bodies that made the same sacrifices but fell short and are now largely unprepared for an adult life apart from sports. Our society is about to experience its first full generation of these teenagers entering the workforce, or not.
The answer to this problem lies in the home and in the schools. Some possible remedies are limits on organized off-season sports practice in high school, minimum age requirements in professional leagues, heightened parental awareness of the importance of balanced education and experience for kids.
Brunt also notes that awareness seems to be building, and I agree. I often speak with parents who struggle to get their children/teens to do anything other than sports, even though they know they won’t play in college or professionally. But I also know plenty of parents who think sports is their kid’s ticket to a selective college or university—not hard work and focus academically. All these kids do outside of school and homework is their sport because “they don’t have time” for anything else. Beyond the life imbalance this creates, these families face a major challenge when it comes time to apply to college if their child is not recruited: what concrete value do they have to add beyond their sport? Students are not admitted to schools based on the value they will add to a club or intramural sports team. If you are not a recruited athlete, athletics matter very little. So when that is all you’ve done, you’ll have a much harder time highlighting how you will uniquely contribute to a college or university campus. You simply won’t be a very attractive candidate.
I am all about sports because they help many kids and teens build confidence, learn how to work with others, and simply get them out of the house and moving, but I think it is time to get real about the harm that laser-sharp focus on a single sport can have on the life experience of youth. The same can be said for other fields and areas of focus. As it applies to college admission, you do want to have a specialty, but you don’t need to be—and shouldn’t want to be—a one-trick pony.
To read more about this topic, make sure to check out Brunt’s third book, Trophy Son, available for pre-order now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250114802/?tag=timecom-20.
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