College Essays: Are they really Important?

What are the primary rules for an application(College) essay?

Before you can ace the Ivy League application essay, you must first understand

2 key things:

(A) Why it is so important

AND

(B) What the whole point of the essay is.

A. Why is the essay important?

Here’s a direct quote from the Yale Admissions Office’s

**6/11/20 admissions podcast***

The importance of the application essay:

"Essays are one of the first things that we see in the application. It's not the first piece, we are going to get some information on where you go to school, we'll probably see what your courses look like. We will see what activities you're involved in. After these items, we go straight to the essay. We love essays because [they] introduce us to the applicants... So, by all means, the essays as you say are the first impressions. It's like the opening scenes of a movie…it often sets the table for the person we meet.”

B. What’s the purpose of the essay?

In that same podcast episode, the Yale Admissions Officers explain what the best essays have in common:

“For most students, the greatest sort of effect that [the essay] can have is in tying the pieces together, drawing together the other parts of the application where we feel like you know what, I'm meeting the same person consistently throughout here. So think of it as a kind of piece of glue that's going to bind together the other parts of the application.”

Being able to tell this story and capture the uniqueness of your candidacy is incredibly important for the overall strength of your application — it’s the "glue" that holds together your case for admission.

More often than not, it's the execution of an essay topic, as opposed to the topic itself, that will determine whether or not you have a strong essay.

That being said, there are some essay topics which are typically more DIFFICULT to turn into a good, unique, and personally insightful essay. They are as follows:

1. Essays about a competition or performance

2. Essays about charities or service initiatives

3. Essays about music or art

4. Essays that are simply infeasible to write in <650 words

Now, why do these topics typically produce subpar essays?

Regarding the first three topics form the list above, these essays usually fail to show authenticity and originality, and are susceptible to tones of arrogance and self-praise. These essay topics are typically overused and fail to showcase yourself in a way that is unique. Finally, sometimes the topic is too big to effectively convert into a short essay.