The people who know you the best are probably, for 99% of people, your family. You’ve spent more time with them than anyone else, whether they are biological, adopted, or chosen. So, you have the most history with them, and the deepest stories with them. There is a lot of fodder in there for essays! It makes sense, then, that you would think to write about your family in your college essay.
All this makes it sound like writing about family is not just obvious, it is easy. But it’s not that simple. We’re here to help.
If you’re thinking about writing about family for your college essay, send us an email. We help students craft outstanding essays that lead them to their dream college.
All families are complicated, but we are going to break this up into three big “buckets” – the three types of family stories that we see students take on most frequently for their college essays. These aren’t the only types of stories a student can write so we don’t claim that they are all-inclusive, but we’ve found that most essays about family can fit into one of these three so it’s a useful way to break it down!
A Happy Family Story
If you are writing a happy family story, you probably loved your childhood — or at least the part of it that you want to write about for this essay. You may be thinking about writing a story that spotlights your family in a positive way, like generosity, for example. This is amazing if it tells the reader something about you that isn’t anywhere else on the application, but there is one little problem with this plan. This type of story can very quickly become more about your family than it is about you.
That isn’t an ideal situation at all. In fact, we’d label it a very bad situation. Your college essay is supposed to be about you, not about your family. After all, they aren’t letting your parents in! If you are going to write this type of essay, you need to keep yourself at the center of it and focus on what it is about you that you want to emphasize to college essay readers.
An Unhappy Family Story
Even the happiest of families have unhappy family stories. If you are considering telling a story that would be seen by someone else as an “unhappy” story — perhaps a story about struggle, conflict, or doing without — it’s important to ask yourself why you feel like it’s an important story to tell in your college application. Key words there were “in your college application.” There are tons of important stories in your life that should be shared, but your college application is only a good fit for a small fraction of them. We work with students to figure out what those small number of stories are, and then amplify them into acceptance-winning applications. And one of the first questions we ask a student who comes to us with an essay idea they are set on is, “What does it say about you that isn’t anywhere else on your application?”
This question is especially important if you are considering writing an “unhappy family” story, because the sympathy vote doesn’t count for much in the world of college admissions. You can write a sob story of an essay, but it won’t get you in — and that’s not us trying to invalidate your story, it’s simply the truth of college admissions. What will get you into your dream college is who you are, so that’s what matters.
If you are going to write about a story that could be seen as “unhappy,” you need to give your essay a narrative arc, and there needs to be success of some type and size (and not necessarily an enormous one) at the end. It absolutely cannot start and end unhappy. You must show growth and change.
A Complicated Family Story
Most stories aren’t unhappy or happy — they are complicated. That’s something readers connect to, and it means that these make for some of the most compelling family story-focused essays.
Writing about family makes sense. Your family (again: biological, adopted, or chosen) knows you better than anyone else in the world. But remember that it’s not that simple. Your essay needs to be about you, not your family.
If you’re feeling lost in the college admissions weeds, send us an email. We are experts in helping students chart a course to a successful future.