Last week, the New York Times published an article about their findings and thoughts on more than 900 college admissions essays that were submitted by high school students this year.
After the summary of their collected data, a majority of the article was comprised of excerpts from various submissions: the content was primarily focused on illness, the pandemic, social justice, and racism. It is worth noting that there was one essay about bread! We suggest reading it for yourself, but there are our two biggest takeaways quoted directly from the article:
“Reading them is like a trip through two of the biggest news events of recent decades: the devastation wrought by the coronavirus, and the rise of a new civil rights movement.”
and…
“The coronavirus was the most common theme in the essays submitted to The Times, appearing in 393 essays, more than 40 percent. Next was the value of family, coming up in 351 essays, but often in the context of other issues, like the pandemic and race. Racial justice and protest figured in 342 essays.”
Two important points were made, so let’s break this down:
2020 was an incredibly trying and difficult year for many people and for many reasons. You certainly don’t need us to tell you that and we empathize with everyone who has experienced loss, grief, injustice, and any other issues with mental health. Basically, we’re here for you! We want to be helpful, and we while we’re not qualified to speak to all of the effects of 2020, we can share our thoughts on what this article means regarding the state of the college essay.
Last May, we published this article that warned our readers that hundreds of thousands of students were going to be writing about Covid-19. Fast-forward to now, and it seems that our predictions regarding college essays about the Coronavirus were correct. And in addition to the Covid essay, personal statements about racial justice, protests, and racism were also more common than ever. This is due largely in part to the events of this past summer and also because many colleges felt compelled to ask students where they are on their fight for social justice.
Our goal is to help our blog readers and clients write essays that help them stand out in the college process. We want your essays to be memorable (in the right way) and genuine. We know that the pandemic has been very hard on high school students everywhere, and we don’t want to take away from that. But we’re standing by our original stance: your common app essay should be about you, not current affairs.
We’ve cautioned against writing about sports, community service, traveling, grandparents, and extracurricular activities. You can search our blog for more posts about why, but the primary reason is that these essays aren’t memorable and will place you into a box. If you write about baseball, you go into the sports pile. Yes, even if it’s a very well-written essay. If you write about traveling, you’ll go into the travel essay pile. Not good. The numbers from the New York Times article show us that there is another box we suggest avoiding: the pandemic essay.
If your heart is set on writing about Covid-19, please read this article. We went through various roadblocks that those who choose to stick with this topic will likely encounter. As we said earlier, “Good essays are more than a description of a period in time — they’re an illustration of the person who lived in it.”
If you’re having a hard time figuring out how to get the college process started, contact us here. We’d love to help.