By Sam Segan
The personal essays you write for your college application must show us your lived reality: how you see the world, how you feel about the world, and how you think about the world.
How can you write vivid, compelling prose that shows us your mind and heart? To nail this tough task, my students follow a three-step process:
1. Write down something you experience through your SENSES (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste):
“As I scratched away at the portrait of my cat, my fingers cramped and stung. I paused to shake them out and studied the art.
One ear looked wrong, unnaturally crooked, marred with extra pencil lines and the blur of many erasures.”
2. Let that guide you to an EMOTION.
“My gut ached with frustration.”
3. And then THINK about that emotion.
“When I consider artwork, I notice I run into these little errors often, at least once every drawing. As annoying as it can be, it does seem to teach me something.
When we studied philosophy in school, we learned that it’s very hard for us to actually see reality the way it is. I experience that the most when I do art:
I’m trying to capture something true and real, but the mistakes I make seem to pile up so that what I put on the page is very far from the truth.
Yet I always feel compelled to seek that truth, in both art and in philosophy.”
In this example, the student has moved us from the simple, external experience of drawing and looking at a picture, through a deep emotional connection, and into that wonderful intellectualism that colleges love to see.
If you’re writing your college essays and feeling stumped, try writing each paragraph of your essay using these three steps. You’ll like the results.
