I’ve been conducting college interviews since I was 21 years old, still in college myself. I would conduct roughly 5 interviews in my shift once a week, dressed to the nines and sweating in the Houston heat as I strolled across campus in high heels that were not well suited to the decorative brickwork.
The last five years, I conducted hundreds of practice interviews for students at the private catholic school where I taught Communications Applications. Freshmen endured five-minute practices at the conclusion of the course, and many upperclassmen took me up on a full-scale interview as the main event drew closer.
I have never enjoyed any of these interviews.
I haven’t hated most of them, but man, they could be a punishment.
The reasons vary widely, and I’m sure I’ll eventually cover all of the reasons from every angle.
But there was a special brand of frustration in the practice interviews I conducted for students I knew well. Students who I had watched for four years as they accomplished truly impressive feats. Students who I knew from their records and conversations with their parents had overcome difficult hurdles to do so. Students who then turned around to tell me they had no idea what about them might impress a college.
The most infuriating versions of this were the students who had talked, explicitly, about doing certain activities, clubs, and projects for their college applications, then turned to me four years later and acted like this was the first time they had ever thought about any of it.
It was so infuriating, in fact, that I’ve thought long and hard about what is going on. How can you be so impressive and think that you have nothing to offer? How have you worked toward this for years and still think that you have nothing to show for it?
How are you staring at this sight and insisting all you see is a “Dead End” when you’ve built a giant Charlie Chapman statue?
If you are a college junior or senior currently thinking how boring and unimpressive you are, then chances are you fall into one of the categories below. Below you’ll see my breakdown of the difference sources of this same problem and my advice to each subgroup.
1. "Everybody has a giant Charlie Chapman statue in their backyard, it's not impressive!"
There is a lot of mockery of high school students who are convinced that they and their problems are unique (and uniquely unsolvable). The saddest thing about this complaint is that it is sinking in. But usually to precisely the wrong students.
I sympathize with the sense of betrayal you might feel, on learning that thousands of students have the GPA and SAT scores that you worked toward for years as if they would be your golden ticket. Or if you were drafting an essay about being the captain of the speech and debate team while at a speech and debate tournament…and slowly realizing how many people in that cafeteria could make the exact same brag…
True story of an essay that could have been great if I hadn’t been too freaked out to finish it.
So don’t worry about being “original”. To be honest, it would take a LOT to impress an Admissions Officer with an original story. They just read too many of these damn essays every year. It’s a rare candidate who has a truly novel story/accomplishment/approach to set themselves apart.
But you don’t need to be a story they tell for years. You just need to claim all the amazing things about you. So don’t worry about how many other students became captain of their school’s debate team or how many other boys have achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.
Tell your story. The details are what makes it unique.
2. “I don’t even like Charlie Chapman! My parents pressured me to build this damn thing…”
It happens.
In fact, it’s one of the most common sources of this problem and the whole reason I insisted on covering this material when my students were freshmen. Before it was too late for them to spend four years on something they were actually passionate about rather than something their parents thought would “look good” on the applications.
Because here is the reason, all you overeager parents, that you should not force them to play soccer rather than do theatre, if that’s what they want. Why you shouldn’t make them break up their garage band in order to tutor with the National Honor Society.
Senior year, they will have to write about their accomplishments and their passions…and if those two don’t line up, then they will have a much weaker application. By a lot.
It’s tempting to think they need to collect merit badges – get enough and colleges will be beating down the door to admit them!
But most of the merit badges are too common amongst applicants, and if students don’t actually value the awards, well, that’s super easy to spot in an essay.
But that’s the advice for freshmen. What do you do if it’s already too late and you’re that senior staring glumly at the screen?
Well (besides mourning the four years that could have been and forming a resolution to do better with college itself), your best bet is to concentrate on the elements you did enjoy of those activities and framing the essay around that.
Only kinda liked playing soccer…but really cared about setting up the Senior Night every year to say goodbye to the graduating class?
Did debate team to make your parents happy even though you hate conflict…but valued the time you spent building up your team to work together? Loved having a partner and think you complemented one another well?
Sat through every student council meeting bored as hell…until that one when the theme they picked was obliquely racist, and you were the only one who seemed to see it?
Didn’t love any part of anything you did? Aren’t passionate at all about anything even in its smallest measure?
I don’t believe you.
Setting aside if anyone can actually live like that, I don’t believe that’s your problem. After all, you are reading this. You are spending time you could be on Netflix reading about how to get into college. So there is something you want to do enough to spend your freedom doing it.
Worst comes to worst – work backwards from there: your goal (as specific as a medical specialty you’ve pre-picked or as vague as “help the environment/world peace”) and think about ways you’ve begun preparing for that mission over the last four years.
3. “I didn’t build that statue for my college essay! I just did it for me!”
Great! So just ignore the fact that it’s a college essay and write about it for itself. Look at it as just a fresh audience. I’m sure everyone in your life is a little tired of hearing about Charlie Chapman and freeform cement statues. Tell the new people all about it!
This is the opposite of the above problem, but it is actually just as thorny an issue. At least the people above can recognize what a college might like to hear. They may not feel motivated to continue lying about things they don’t care about, but they know they have to and are used to do things in service of the goal of college.
But you are self-motivated! Huzzah! You are exactly the kind of person colleges want to admit! The people who did the work for itself, not for the brass ring!
Now the problems is that it can feel like “selling out” or betraying the purity of your passions to “use them to get into college”. As if you are cheapening your accomplishments by telling universities about them.
But the thing about college is that is a place for passion…but also for seeing how you can make your passions useful to other people.
Love reading biographies? Good for you, but all that does is make you That Person at parties. College can take your interest in history and help you learn how to identify narratives and change how we see society and ourselves and translate that into concrete reforms.
Illustrate characters in a notebook and then invent adventures for them to go on with your friends? (I’ve seen both the D&D and non-D&D versions of this over the years.) Cool! But keeping that notebook a super secret forever will lead to, at best, you getting nostalgic when you’re cleaning out your parents’ house. College can teach you about story arcs and literary tropes so you can grow those stories and sketches into genuine art that can inspire others.
So it’s great that you didn’t do it to “get into college.” But that doesn’t mean it isn’t remarkable. And it’s time to start practicing acting like it is exactly that. Because you built a two-story Charlie Chapman statue just for the hell of it…and the admissions office wants to know!
4. “What? Oh yeah, that statue? Yeah, I made it. Why?”
This is one I can’t help you with directly, but I have been in that meeting with students WAAAAYYY too many times.
I can’t make you see it for yourself, if you’re blind to the statue. But if you are a busy person, then chances are there is an awesome statue in your backyard. So ask people in your life what is awesome about you, and go from there.
I don’t know why you can’t see it. Maybe you have a lot of talent and don’t realize how hard most people would find it to even START building a giant Charlie Chapman statue. Maybe you’ve been around too many fellow high achievers and can only see that the statue is shorter than you initially aimed for. Maybe you’re just AFAB and society has spent millennia conspiring to keep you humble at ALL COSTS.
To figure out if this might be you: make a log of how you spend your days. Don’t reflexively say nothing. If you keep saying, “Nothing,” then keep a log for two weeks. I don’t believe you.
If you’ve kept a journal in the past four years, skim through it. What do you spend your time doing?
Once you have ANY kind of list of things you do – ask people what is most impressive on the list. Not parents. Not most teachers. Ask a lot of them so you don’t get a skewed sample.
If the answer isn’t something you’re actually passionate about, think about why you spend so much time doing it and see #2, even if you can’t blame your parents for it.
If the answer is something you care about a lot, then there is your topic. You just need to find the narrative to go with it.
5. “I didn’t have time for all these rich kid side projects! I had to support the family; I don’t have time to build stupid Charlie Chaplin statues!”
Believe it or not, colleges get that.
Some places use indicators like this to screen out people who couldn’t afford tuition, yes, but do you really want to go to a place like that? They start awful and continue awful. Those colleges are out there. Don’t give them your application fee.
Most colleges look favorably on people who work, people who step up to take care of their families domestically, and people who show that they know that the world doesn’t “owe” them anything. People who know they will have to work for the things they want in life.
Do you know how easy it is to spot entitlement in an applicant? Some rich kid who thinks that purchasing their way into a Summer at Sea program or sitting through NHS meetings without ever doing anything concrete should get them anything they want for the rest of their life…
Very, very easy to spot.
Your essay won’t read like that. Because you worked hard at something that was probably not very emotionally fulfilling. You did it for people you loved and so that you could move up in the world and succeed in college.
You are objectively more impressive than someone who hasn’t gone through what you have. A few colleges don’t want anyone who can’t afford to take a Kaplan course. But the good ones want students like you.
6. “I feel like I’m bragging if I talk about how hard it was to build that statue. Like, seriously, it was totally easy, only took me 10,000 hours to mix the cement myself and custom design the mold and…”
Let’s rip the band-aid off: it might sound like bragging.
It might sound like bragging to everyone, and, especially if you are AFAB, it might just sound like bragging to you. You might be the only one who hears it as bragging.
Write it without worrying about that. Focus on the details of the work. Then show it to several people and see if a single one thinks you sound like a jerk. Chances are they won’t.
But don’t worry about “not bragging.” Worry about showing your work. This is the good side of “show, don’t tell.” You don’t have to tell us you’re awesome. Just show us how hard you worked.
Bragging is only obnoxious (to Admissions Officers) if you can’t back it up.
7. “But what if I come off as a narcissist?”
Are you a narcissist? A braggart? An insufferable know-it-all?
Seriously, is that a thing that people say about you? Have parents or good friends or therapists delicately broached your pride or demeanor as an area of growth for you?
If you asked, if you made yourself vulnerable and asked someone for the truth, is that really what they would say?
If yes, then: 1) take that caution seriously, because telling a narcissist that they are a narcissist is not something that any sane person does lightly; 2) lean away from that voice screaming that they don’t know what they are talking about; 3) write the essay without worrying about it too much, then look over it being super critical; 4) find a teacher or other authority figure who sort of doesn’t like you and ask them nicely to read your essay and tell you if you’re coming off as cocky; 5) listen to feedback and then seek out a lot of feedback. If you are a narcissist, then other people’s opinions are very much your friend right now.
If not, then why do you think this process is going to transform you into one? Or do you just think you sound like one? In which case: do you sound like one normally? If so, then you might want to delicately ask people if they think you are one and then see the above paragraph.
But people in your life don’t think you are a narcissist, then chances are you are actually erring too far in the other direction.
Write a new version of the essay in which you are setting out, deliberately, to shamelessly brag. Depending on how much you enjoy creative writing, this might end up as a very entertaining hot mess. But before you read through it and tear it to shreds, have someone else read it. Have them tell you which sentences make you sound like a narcissist. If you did your job right, there will probably be several phrases that aren’t great.
But I think you’ll be surprised how many sentences you think make you sound like a jerk just sound like someone who knows their worth. Someone who has something to offer and recognizes it.
The bad news is that you never really outgrow this problem. I spent five years railing about this fear hampering my students, only to end up on the job market writing cover letters and resumes. I hired a consultant to make certain I was following the right conventions for the genre, and she rewrote everything to make me sound awesome and accomplished. I recognized myself in her description.
But I also thought, “I would never have the nerve to say that about myself.” And I have very healthy self esteem.
So I know. It is genuinely hard.
Don’t let yourself hide your accomplishments just because it’s hard to break this habit. Write a shameless brag, then listen to people you trust when they tell you that no, that sentence does not make you sound like a narcissist. Just someone who has their act together.
Change as little of the draft as you can stand.
8. “I really love that Charlie Chapman statue. What if they aren’t fans? What if they think I’m dumb and hate me?”
If they hate something you love, as an institution, then they are doing you a BIG favor by not admitting you to the university.
If you are Black Lives Matter student activist, you should not gloss over that because you’re worried about an institution being “offended” or finding you too “controversial.” Don’t give your money to a college that has a problem with Black Lives Matter!
If you are LGBTQIA+ and deathly worried that mentioning that will keep you from getting into a Christian university, what do you think the next four years will be like???
Sure, often the student body is more liberal or open-minded than the admissions office. Maybe you have dreams of infiltrating a campus and changing it from the inside. (Noble goal, but it won’t work.) But if this is your passion, then why are you so willing to shut up about it?
Or maybe it’s less political. Maybe it just feels too frivolous.
Good colleges want passionate people, not robots who repeat the path everyone else has already trod. Sure, bad colleges sometimes only want people who will go into lucrative fields and donate money to the school. They don’t want hippie artists who won’t contribute to their endowment until they divest from oil companies.
But if you’re cool and have non-mainstream interests…why are you trying to get into a school designed for a cookie-cutter mold?
Be you. If they don’t like it, they’re doing you a huge favor by not letting you in. College is too expensive to be miserable for four years.
9. “Are you sure colleges care about my Charlie Chapman statuary? It doesn’t seem frivolous and immature?”
Passion is always good. Good colleges recognize that.
Believe me: showing long term dedication to a project can be much more meaningful to a college than what that project is. Within reason, of course, but usually the weirder projects stick in the admissions officers’ minds for longer…which can only help you in their long process of choosing a new class.
And if you’re feeling silly for caring about Charlie Chapman statues, then you can always focus on the super practical parts of the work. Did you mix your own cement? Did you have to tweak the recipe? How did you decide which movie pose to recreate? Did you have help? Did that require leadership and project management? Did the first few statues cave in in the middle and require creative problem solving? Or did you start small and keep growing as more and more people got interested?
It won’t be as fun an essay to write, but maybe it will keep you from feeling silly while you do it.
10. “Sure, I’ve done a lot, and people respect me but…I can’t like say that!”
I promise you can.
I don’t recommend saying that verbatim. This is where the old “show don’t tell” rears it’s head again. I realize you’re probably tired of English teachers telling you that, but this is the moment they were drilling you for. This is the moment they wanted you to remember that piece of advice.
NO, you should most definitely not say, “I’m accomplished and people respect me.” I would find that very obnoxious if I was reading it. But, you can tell stories where you are the hero – where you solved the problem or galvanized the group or took over a job at the last minute when someone else bailed.
Talk about times you did the work, times people listened to your ideas, challenges you faced and thought your way through.
The good news is that you’re exactly right: you should NOT just say that!
You should give us examples and let us say it about you.
11. “Yeah, but I don’t want to make giant Charlie Chapman statues for a living or anything!”
Good, because that’s not a job.
Maybe your passion isn’t a job (yet) either. Maybe it is a job, but you’ll drop it your first year in college. I know I did.
I had a gold-plated resume for applying to law schools between my high school achievements and my first two years of undergrad. I was a mock trial champion, captain of the team, I had worked for judges and law firms. I had done legal research for Germer & Gertz and re-written the jury selection pamphlet for Jefferson County.
I ended up going to Shakespeare Grad School and becoming a teacher. Rice University did not revoke my acceptance or demand their (meager) scholarship money back.
Do you know how many talented actors have gone through my theatre program with no intention to go into professional theatre? A hell of a lot that I would hire for literally any job they wanted. Because of how hard they worked and what they achieved – enough to make me believe in them forever, no matter what they set their mind to.
Passions change. Usually they drift further away from the weird and wonderful youthful enthusiasms like giant Charlie Chapman statues toward more established careers. Sometimes they go the other way.
But having passions and knowing how to pursue them is much more important.
You’re not stuck with who you are now. That’s true the rest of your life, but especially when you are eighteen and about to be on your own, out of your parents’ house.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write about how much it matters to you now, all you learned in order to build it, and why you think it made a difference in your life or the lives of others.
You aren’t stuck with it forever, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make you awesome right now.
12. Do you have another theory? Don’t see yourself here and wish I knew the specifics to help you better?
Email me at roguewritingtutor@gmail.com or sign up for a session here. I’d love to update this with new categories – and I’d love to help you figure out your narrative for your application.
As a college counselor, I appreciate the candor of this advice! Especially in light of so many admissions offices going test optional (for at least the next two application cycles,) application essays will become the cornerstone of holistic review decisions.
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