Top Mistakes In College Essays

By Joanna Seifter
Its November, the days are getting shorter, and the seniors are all scared stiff.
Graduation is still awhile away, and no matter how hard you all try to convince
yourselves, you cant skip ahead to May. Were in the middle of the stickiest period of
high school--the college application process. Although some just finished compiling their
Common Apps for Early Decision and Early Action, the clock is still ticking for the rest
of us. Its time to narrow down our college lists, rack up all those community service
hours, take last-minute SAT Subject Tests, and most importantly, get our college essays
done. Those college essays, nightmare-ish bundles of sentences that have to tell some
person you never met about who you are in six hundred and fifty words or less. Those
essays.
In the spirit of the season, I, your Average Beleaguered High School Senior,
compiled a list of the top recurring mistakes I observed while reading and editing college
essays. These mistakes are not listed in any particular order, and hopefully you can use
my list to help you improve your own essays.
Top 10 Recurring Mistakes in College Essays:
1. Being too academic
Imagine youre a college admission staff member, sifting through piles and piles of
essays, looking for a unique student who is able to mature yet be spontaneous. Now
imagine you find an essay with parts of it that could be remnants of an essay someone
wrote for APUSH:

The characteristics of stereotypical American values, my fathers melting pot

values, traditional Thai values, and my mothers familial Thai values were
uncommonly divergent. Thailand is historically a very patriarchal society, where,
similar to the Confucian Principal Relationships, the father is the leader of the
household and is held in highest regard of all the family members, which resulted
in Thai women being taught from a very young age to be conservative and shy,
especially around men.
Forcing yourself to use unnatural words or to write about subjects besides yourself
prevents people from knowing who you are. This was written by a smart student, but all it
tells us is that the writer avoids talking about himself or herself personally in favor of
facts. Here is a tip: if a section could be included in a textbook or academic essay, it has
no place in a college essay. Its a waste of your precious words, and doesnt say anything
about you.
2. Using inappropriate diction
On the flip side, you dont want to be too informal. If you were a college admissions staff
member and you got this college essay excerpt, what would you think?
In junior high, books became a way for me to escape the stress of homework and
the abundant asshats during those three years of my life. Come high school, the
stress was still there and it is still here today, but the asshats seem to have quieted
down.
You would think that the essay was written by Holden Caulfield. If you wouldnt say
what you wrote in your college essay to your mom, little brother or teacher, maybe its
better to scrap the swears.

3. Pandering
Remember that kid in your English class who always referenced books, movies and
events that had nothing to do with the subject just to get a better grade for sounding
smart? Didnt you want to scream in that kids face to get back on topic and stop showing
off? It works the same way for college essays.
Though I havent traveled much yet, the world around me intrigues me, having
immersed myself in Spanish language and culture. In college, where I have the
means to do so, I plan on volunteering in communities different than mine. I look
forward to sharing the perspectives of the shtetl lifestyle with my future peers.
Im so lucky, getting to grow up here. Im happy, and thankful for all that Ive
been given. Im also thankful, for whom Ive become, and I wouldnt change a
thing about my home.
When I asked Lorne Robinson, Macalesters Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, for
tips of the trade, he told me to avoid trying to figure out what we want. Admissions
staffs dont want anything other than to learn about you. Remember, this isnt the Oscars:
no need to make a sentimental speech!
4. Being whiny or melodramatic
Take this advice: if your essay sounds like something you would whine about to your best
friend Michelle on the phone at 10 PM, maybe you should reconsider your tone.
Of course I tried talking to the school administrators but the decision wasnt up
to them. It belonged in the hands of the AP of the dance department who was
renowned for being restrictive. She despised everything but dance and would not
even vacillate on the idea of letting me play baseball. I thought going to the

principal would surely bring a final solution to the problem but even that did not
work. I was broken inside. It was like preparing an extravagant Thanksgiving
dinner but being told you could not eat the food. Inside I was not content on
simply letting go of a lifelong dream.
In a college essay, its better to focus on what you have and can do. That way, you can
portray yourself as a hardworking and mature student. Placing an emphasis on blame or
theatrical descriptions achieves the opposite, as it comes across as immature and
pessimistic.
When I die, all the baristas that have spelled my name wrong can lower me
down into my grave so they can let me down one last time.
Writing 101, guys: dont steal sentences from Twitter posts.
5. Letting an adult help you too much
While most college websites encourage you to get other people to read your essay for
advice, its important to remember that they can tell if a high school student wrote it. We
know that a seventeen-year-olds voice is different from a forty-three-year-old lawyers
voice, says Dean Robinson. If you get someone to help you fix errors in your essay,
thats fine! Just make sure to let your voice be heard. If you dont know what the word
filibuster means, its probably not the best thing to include, even if your dad added it.
6. Slipping into cliches
The last thing you want to emulate when writing your college essay is a Hallmark card:
This experience, however brief it was, impacted my thought process in a
miraculous way. It is important to understand that it is you who controls your life

and the actions you take. If you live to please others, youll make yourself
miserable.
If there is anything that makes a college essay lose its identity more than being written by
someone else, its centering it around cliches. Try to make your essay less about proving
a message and more about how an experience, thought, or feeling in your life relates to
the prompt.
7. Making errors in diction
Dean Robinson says its important to avoid careless proofreading errors, and you can
see why:
Leo and I could not more me different.
As I look for a place to sit, all I see are robots affixed to its devices, selfietakers, and Instagrammers ready to post their quad venti half caf verve no foam
with whip two
splenda stirred skinny three-pump peppermint mocha on their page.
His favorite game being scavenging through my purse for my EOS lip balm.
This is an obvious point for most people at this stage, but its still worth mentioning. If
you have difficulty proofreading your own work and dont want to share it with anyone
else, read it aloud. If it sounds unnatural or you stumble while reading it, there is
probably something wrong with your diction or sentence structure.
8. Summarizing instead of describing
Whats more interesting: reading JK Rowlings Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,
or the back cover of the DVD?

About a half an hour into the show, after shed dubbed me Christina, this
fantastic [drag] queen pulled me onto the floor, pretending to hit me with a wire
hanger. While this could seem terrifying, I didnt feel afraid. I was laughing,
despite having no idea what was going on. It has always been like this - chaotic,
spontaneous and proud.
When you read the back of a DVD box, you get a summary, but no actual details. The
back of a DVD box is meant to make you want to know more--college essays are not. In
addition, descriptions make a college essay more unique and hence stand out.
I could hear the distant beeps from airport security slowly fade to a chatter as
people raced by me in hopes of making their flight. The sunlight glistened through
the window, casting a silent shadow of the resting airplane. I sat alone swinging
my dangling feet back and forth across the floor. Pieces of soft blonde hair framed
my chubby cheeks and my favorite flowered dress stuck to my frail body. The
lady next to me furrowed her eyebrows as she turned her head to glance at me.
This is an effective use of details--they are immersive, interesting and make the essay
more personal than it would be without them.
9. Getting off-topic
Nothing makes a person sound less organized and prepared than straying from a topic.
From driving your uncle to his night school classes to perfecting your cat eyeliner, its
always important to stay focused, and college essays are no exception.
My name illustrated this collision and fusion of two very different cultures. It
took me years to come to my senses and embrace my heritage. What unified these
two cultures for me was cuisine. Food was the integral part of childhood and

being. On both sides of my family, Saturday evenings were spent at the dinner
table where delicious aromas wafting from the kitchen tickled my nose.
If you want to liven up your essay by providing another example, thats fine. But make
sure to separate them or integrate such ideas throughout the essay. Here is a tip: when you
re-read your essay and it feels imbalanced or like something comes out of nowhere, it
probably goes off-topic.
10. Ending on a weak note
Picture a snowball rolling down an icy hill. The further it rolls, the larger it grows. By the
time it reaches the bottom of the hill, the snowballs huge, heavy, fast, and ready to knock
down anyone standing in its path. Now apply this image to your college essay. The more
somebody reads it, the more they know who you are. The more they get sucked in. The
more they want to know more. By the time they reach the end of your essay, they expect
something huge. Something with a punch. Not something that seems to stop dead in its
tracks.
My relationship with [my brother] remains challenging and I still struggle to
comprehend some of the unusual things he does. But out of our conflicts almost
always comes a fresh perspective to help me better understand the behavior of
others. No, we arent the perfect pair or the best brothers in the world but we sure
are a dynamic duo.
When ending a college essay, just remember to keep up the pace. You want whoever is
reading it to end on a high note with strong feelings, not to shrug off the last sentence,
disappointed.

A special thank you to all the students who bravely and kindly submitted their essays for
me to use as examples, and thank you to Ms. Healy and Ms. Washburn for supporting this
article.