Distinctive

Caroline Matas, Ph.D.

Did you recently go on an international trip that changed your life and view of the world? Did you volunteer at a local food pantry that made you realize how lucky you are to never have gone hungry? Did you volunteer to serve a marginalized community that opened your eyes to your own privilege?

Well, first of all, good! The teenage years are a critical learning period–a time when many people start recognizing the complexities of social dynamics they had previously taken for granted. To realize how the facts of where, how, and to whom you were born may have stacked the deck in your favor is to take the first steps into adulthood. It’s a worthy and lifelong learning process.

Especially if you were dealt a lucky hand, recognizing your privilege can be a profound and unsettling experience. It’s no wonder, then, that as you’re reflecting on what to write about in your college essay, this topic rose to the fore. But before you start penning your first draft, be warned: there are many, many more ways to get writing about this topic wrong than there are to get it right. As a former admissions officer who has read all kinds of versions of this essay, here are my recommendations on how to avoid common pitfalls when tackling such a nuanced topic.

• Make sure the fact of your vacation, service trip, or volunteer gig isn’t the point of your essay. 

Because a service trip to China, a vacation to visit family in Mexico, or a volunteer opportunity at their local homeless shelter feels personally significant, many students think such an opportunity will wow admissions counselors. What they don’t see is how easily such a story will become a drop in the sea of stories about teens’ “unique” travel and service experiences. If you’re relying on the wow factor of your trip or job, it will almost definitely fall flat.

What to do instead: It’s perfectly fine to write about an experience that felt personally significant–but its significance to you is the story here. Did something you saw, heard, or learned inspire you to change your own habits and behaviors? Did a new friendship bring you an understanding of a part of yourself you’d never explored? Did a service trip set the course for your future academic study? Whatever it is, be sure your essay is less about the what and more about the what happened next. 

• Resist turning people into object lessons.

Too often, I’ve read essays that depict marginalized people or groups as, essentially, cardboard cutouts whose sole purpose is to enlighten and edify privileged teens. If you find yourself writing a sentence along the lines of, “The villagers had so little, but they were so happy,” abort your mission. Any essay that reduces a person or group to what they lack–or overlooks the fact that they possess the same depth and complexity of emotion and experience as the essayist–is going to leave a bad taste in your reader’s mouth.

What to do instead: This is a mindset issue first, and a college admissions issue in distant second–but since the latter is our focus here: start by putting yourself in the shoes of those you’re writing about. Would you feel offended to be characterized in the same way? If you intend to write about a relationship you developed across differences (of economic status, geographical location, race, religion, gender identity, or anything else), be sure you are depicting the exchange as a collaborative and mutually enriching one. If you can’t do so, then it’s probably not the right topic.

• Don’t let your privilege be the most interesting thing an admission counselor learns about you.

Admissions counselors work with the same regions year after year, and they grow familiar with the reputation of various cities and schools under their purview. If you grew up in a wealthy, majority-white suburb, this will be obvious to your counselor upon simply reading the profile section of your Common Application. If all your essay does is highlight your own realization that you are wealthy, white, or experience other forms of privilege, you will have told them nothing new! Not to mention, you won’t have said much about who you are outside of factors you did not choose.

What to do instead: Look carefully at the Common Application personal statement prompts. They are actually designed to get you to dig deep into what makes you you–the specific challenges you have faced and how you overcame them, the hobby you have spent years honing, the question you can’t stop asking, the relationship for which you are most grateful. If your essay tells the reader something about you that they couldn’t get from any other part of your essay–whether your demographics section or your transcript or your activities log–then you are on the right track. 

Happy writing!