Essay Masterclass / Module Seven
The prompt asks about a community you belong to. Almost every student reads it as a request to name a demographic, and then writes about the demographic rather than about themselves inside it. The result is an essay about a nationality, a religion or a school that any member of that group could have signed.
The prompt is testing two things. Whether you can see a group from the inside, including its awkward parts, and whether you do anything in it besides belong. An admissions reader meets this prompt several hundred times in a season and already knows what most groups are like. The reader is checking whether you have looked at your group closely enough to name one person in it, and whether you have a role in it that would exist on a campus.
In Vanderbilt Supplement C, an extracurricular response from an admitted file, the writer teaches a business class to adults in a small room in Panama. It was written for an activity prompt, and it answers the community prompt better than most essays written for that prompt, because the writer's community is a class and the essay opens by naming who is in it. Here is the version most students would write about the same material, and then the real opening.
Weak
I am proud to be part of the Panamanian community. Every summer I visit my family in Panama, and those trips have shaped who I am. Panamanians are warm, resilient and generous, and even those who have very little will share what they have with a visitor. Seeing the poverty in Panama opened my eyes to how fortunate I am, and it inspired me to give back by teaching business skills to people who need them. Being part of this community has taught me empathy and gratitude, and I hope to bring those values with me to college.
Strong. From Vanderbilt Supplement C
Sitting on a partially-rotten wooden chair, I stand up and gaze at the doorless entrance as the first locals excitedly file into the small classroom: Rodrigo, who lost his hand in a construction accident, has dreams of opening his own convenience store; Mariella, a widowed mother of four, wants to start a bakery in town. These are only the first of many students, but such experiences and tribulations aren’t exclusive to them but extend into the identity of every student who walks through the arched doorway.1
What changed. The weak sample describes a nation and attaches the writer to it. Every sentence in it could be signed by a thousand other applicants with family in Panama. The strong sample names Rodrigo, his missing hand and his convenience store, then Mariella, her four children and her bakery, before it says anything about the writer at all. A reader believes those two people at once, and believes the class because they are in it. That sentence cannot be written by someone who has not been in the room, and a reader knows it.
The rest of the essay explains how the writer came to be standing there, and then returns to the room. Here is the remainder, in full.
I grew up visiting family in Panama. For every trip to the islands or reunion with my relatives, there was a lingering aspect intrinsically intertwined with life in Panama: poverty. I was able to witness scenes beyond what are shown on television screens; kids, not much younger than I, eating dirt out of starvation. Like this experience, there were others where my thoughts raced: why is it I eat three meals a day while these children wake up worried about their next meal? Idly contemplating this societal issue would be no different than perpetuating the problem itself; I needed to act. One approach would be to donate food, but such would only be a temporary solution to a perpetual problem; I found my contribution to a permanent solution through the promotion of business ownership.
Since ninth grade, I had been studying any economics or business-related resource I could find. I believed I could share my acquired knowledge to induce the change I wished to see; I gathered all lecture notes, textbooks, online assignments, and videos I had ever used to create a business consulting program through which impoverished students could learn the basics of small business ownership.
The fragile desks of the room quickly begin to fill; through the rising murmur of the students, there is a palpable sense of excitement, not for the present, but for a more prosperous future. I gently stand up, being careful not to break the frail chair legs, and with my “Hola, yo soy Guy,” the room’s chatter immediately dies down; I take a deep breath and begin discussing the first lesson: balance sheets.
My footprint may be small in comparison to Vanderbilt’s, but for every hug and “gracias” from my students, I have found a passion for attempting to change the lives of others, one class at a time.1
Read the fourth paragraph again. The chair is frail, the desks are fragile, the greeting is in Spanish and the first lesson is balance sheets. The essay never says that the writer is generous, or that the community welcomed them. It says what the room was like and what was taught in it, and the reader supplies the rest. The second and third paragraphs are more general, and a reader forgives them because the room at either end is so exact. Put your own room at either end of your draft and the middle will be forgiven too.
The second thing the prompt tests is whether you have a role. A student who belongs to a community and can say only that it welcomed them has answered half the question. In Brown Supplement D, a community response from an admitted file, the writer returns to Rio de Janeiro after seven years abroad, joins a school where everyone already knows each other, and runs for the student council. The essay opens like this:
Returning to Rio after living seven years abroad, I found myself part of yet another community: the British School. Studying at six different schools in three countries, I had a concrete image of what an ideal school would be. Although TBSRJ had many strengths, it needed to foster more school spirit, invest in extracurricular activities and better manage the free time in student’s schedules. As the Student Council Executive Team election approached, I saw the possibility of providing a fresh perspective and solving these problems.2
The paragraph names three faults in the school. That is unusual, and it is the reason the essay works, because a writer who can say what is wrong with a place has looked at it. Here is how most students would continue after such an opening, and how this writer continues.
Weak
When I moved back to Rio after seven years abroad, I joined a new school and quickly found a community there. Everyone was welcoming, and within a few months I felt completely at home. Being part of that community has taught me the value of belonging, and I have tried to give back by getting involved wherever I can, from student council to school events and clubs. As a member of the council I worked hard to make the school a better place for everyone. My school is more than a school to me. It is a second family, and I am proud to be part of it.
Strong. From Brown Supplement D
After talking with relevant stakeholders - PTA, students, school administrators - we decided to create more spaces for student interaction to promote school spirit. After brainstorming locations for new activities, we concluded that adding a volleyball net and basketball hoops to an existing soccer court would make the space of better use for students. This change created a greater sense of community, as we began to see more people interacting with each other at break-times rather than sitting in silence on their individual phones. To increase access to extracurricular activities and provide alternatives for students during free periods, we created the STEM club. Students now had the opportunity to explore their passion for science in a hands-on manner, stimulating their curiosity and developing their knowledge.2
What changed. The weak sample says the school became a family and that the writer worked hard on the council. The strong sample says a volleyball net and basketball hoops went onto an existing soccer court, and that people stopped sitting in silence on their phones at break. One is a feeling and the other is a change a reader could go and see. Notice too that the strong sample gives the work its real shape, with the PTA, the administrators and a brainstorm before the net, rather than presenting the writer as the sole cause.
Which means the strongest answers are frequently about very small communities. Look at the four that work in the References. A family with unusual food traditions, a school joined after seven years abroad, a fifth-grade classroom in a hometown the writer had been away from, and a group of adult learners in a small room with a doorless entrance.3 None of them is a demographic. Three of them would fit in one room.
In Emory Supplement B, a community response from an admitted file, the community is one family and the essay is about its habits. Here is the answer most students would write about their family, and then the whole of the real one.
Weak
The most important community in my life is my family. We are a close-knit group, and no matter how busy everyone gets, we always make time for each other. Every year the whole family gathers for a big dinner, and those evenings are full of laughter, stories and traditions that have been passed down for generations. My family has taught me the value of loyalty, the importance of showing up for the people you love, and the joy of being surrounded by people who know you completely. Wherever I go next, I will carry my family with me, and I will always find my way back to that table.
Strong. From Emory Supplement B
There is an uncanny amount of unusual traditions in my family. Have you ever seen anyone else put honey on savoury pizza? Perhaps the most unique tradition of all is our competitive family bingo. Towards the end of every year, the entire family gets together and sits down for dinner, followed by two rounds of the most cutthroat bingo you will ever see. No one knows where the idea came from but it religiously happens every year. The fact that all of us together can turn something that was so basic into something we all so want to win is impressive in its own right. Despite this, the real reason I will miss family bingo (and our other weird habits) so much is that it serves as a constant reminder to me of how we could turn anything at all into something cherishable.4
What changed. The weak sample calls the family close-knit and supportive, which every family essay does, and its traditions are never named. The strong sample puts honey on pizza and plays two rounds of cutthroat bingo, and admits that nobody knows where the habit came from. The claim at the end, that this family can turn anything at all into something worth keeping, is earned by the bingo. Without the bingo it would be a lid of the kind Module Two warned you about.
Plenty of students genuinely do not. No strong cultural identity, no religion, no team, no obvious group. That is never a disadvantage, and the answer is never to manufacture one. Three routes work.
A community of two or three. You and your brother. You and the two people you actually talk to. Small is never disqualifying, and specificity is the whole game. The family bingo above is a community of perhaps a dozen, and the essay is about one evening a year.
A community you joined rather than inherited. A forum, a game, a subject, a shop where you worked. Chosen communities are often more revealing than inherited ones, because the choosing is itself evidence about you.
Being outside one. A completely legitimate answer, and the honest version is more interesting than a forced one. The trap in this route is self-pity, and the path past it is narrow. Write the mechanics of being outside, what you noticed from there and what you did about it, and leave out how it felt. The feeling arrives on its own if the mechanics are exact. Both samples below are ours, and both describe the same student in the same lunch room.
Weak
When I moved to a new school in the middle of tenth grade, I did not belong anywhere. Everyone had known each other since kindergarten, and I ate lunch alone for the first two months. Nobody was unkind, but nobody made room either, and I have never felt so invisible. It was one of the hardest periods of my life. Eventually I found a few friends in the art room, and I learned that belonging is something you have to build for yourself. I now know how it feels to be an outsider, and I try to make sure that nobody around me ever feels that way.
Strong
At the new school I spent the first two months learning the lunch room. There were eleven tables and each had an owner, though nobody would have called it that. I found the one table that changed hands, by the recycling bins, where people sat when their usual group had a club meeting, and I sat there every day. In two months I ate with the debate team, the two boys who ran the sound board for assemblies, and a girl who was drawing the same hand over and over in a sketchbook. I learned who in that school did not have a table either. There were more of us than I had thought. By spring three of us had made the recycling table ours, and the girl with the sketchbook is still drawing hands.5
What changed. The weak sample announces the feeling, I have never felt so invisible, and asks the reader to have felt it too. The strong sample counts the tables and finds the one that changes hands. The reader arrives at the loneliness without being asked, because eleven tables with owners is a lonely fact. The strong sample also contains what the writer did about it, which is a role. The recycling table is the community, and the writer made it.
In Rice Supplement C, a community response from an admitted file, the writer is the new girl in a fifth-grade classroom in Rio de Janeiro, the city she was born in and had not lived in for seven years. It shares its material with Brown Supplement D, and we come back to that in section six. Here are its first five paragraphs.
It was the first day of 5th grade back in my hometown. Although I was born in Brazil, I had spent the last seven years abroad; Portuguese was even my second language.
“Class, we have a new student. Her name is Ana Luisa,” the teacher said. All eyes were now on me. “Ana, please tell us a little about yourself... Where are you from?”
I hesitated. How could I limit my identity to my place of birth? Although I was born in Brazil, it didn’t fully encapsulate my cultural background. As someone who had lived abroad for almost half her life, I carried three distinct cultures with me: the warm and talkative Brazilian, the determined and polite Brit and the lively and active Houstonian. This unique cultural blend made me different from all of the other people standing in the room that day and had led me to face situations that transformed my personality.
When I was three, I moved to Surrey, without knowing a word of English. I would often go home after school having understood nothing of what the teacher said all day. However, because of my good observational skills, my ability to learn quickly, and my young age, I picked up the language fast and was soon able to connect with my peers. Two years later, I was in charge of helping people when they arrived at my school. Having been the “new kid” myself made me empathetic to their situation and allowed me to positively impact their adaptation.
But soon, I became the “new girl” again, now in Houston at a Greek Orthodox School. The culture shock doubled: not only did I have to adapt to the American way of life but also the Greek Orthodox tradition, attending church every Thursday, learning the language, eating the food and interacting with Greek families. Being exposed to this cultural blend that was very different to my own expanded both my open-mindedness and curiosity.6
The teacher's question is the prompt in miniature, and the writer's answer to it is two words. I hesitated. That hesitation is the whole essay, and the classroom makes a reader feel it before the writer explains it. The fourth paragraph is where the mechanics are. Going home having understood nothing the teacher said all day is what being outside is actually like, and being put in charge of new arrivals two years later is what the writer did about it. The third paragraph moves outward, to three cultures and a transformed personality, and a reader waits through it for the next specific thing, which arrives with Surrey. When you write your own version, stay in the classroom and in Surrey.
List every group you belong to, including groups of two or three and groups you are on the edge of. Pick the one where you can name a person and say what that person wants, in one sentence, the way Vanderbilt Supplement C names Rodrigo. Then write what you do in that group besides belong to it, in terms a reader could check, the way Brown Supplement D names the volleyball net. If the honest answer is that you are outside every group on your list, write the mechanics of the outside and cut every sentence about how it felt. Exercise one takes you through it.
The identity prompt is closely related to the community prompt and differently dangerous. It asks what your background, heritage or identity means to you, and it attracts the students for whom that background is genuinely central. That is why it fails so often. The material feels too big to be specific about, so the student writes about the category and never arrives at a person.
An answer that could be written by anybody sharing your background is an answer about the background, and a reader learns nothing about you from it. The reader already knows, in outline, what your culture values. The reader wants to know what you did inside it on one particular afternoon.
The repair is always downward. From what it means to be from somewhere, to one hour in one kitchen. From the experience of migration, to the one thing that was confusing on an ordinary day in a new school. Every step down in scale is a step towards a person, because only one person was in that kitchen at that hour. Both samples below are ours, and both are about the same household.
Weak
Being Gujarati is central to who I am. Gujarati culture places great importance on family, food and festivals, and growing up in a Gujarati household in New Jersey I was surrounded by those values every day. Our community is known for its hospitality and its entrepreneurial spirit, and I have inherited both. Every Diwali our house fills with relatives, the kitchen runs for days, and the sound of Gujarati being spoken all around me reminds me of where I come from. My heritage has taught me the value of tradition and the meaning of hard work, and I hope to bring that perspective with me to campus.
Strong
On the morning of Diwali my grandmother makes the chakri and I am allowed to do the pressing. The dough goes into a brass press that is older than my mother, and the spiral has to come out in one motion or it breaks. My grandmother says nothing when it breaks. She picks up the broken piece, eats it, and hands the press back. I broke eleven the first year. The most recent year I broke two, and she ate them both, and when the tray was full she said the word for enough and went to wash her hands. That is the only Gujarati word I am certain I understand. I know the recipe by heart now, and I still cannot read the label on the flour.7
What changed. The weak sample describes a culture and could be signed by any Gujarati student in New Jersey. The strong sample describes one hour, one press and one grandmother, and nobody else was there. It also admits something the weak sample cannot, that the writer does not read the language, and that admission is where the essay becomes about a person rather than a heritage. Notice that the strong sample never says what Gujarati culture values. The grandmother eating the broken pieces says it.
In University of Southern California Supplement A, a response from an admitted file to a prompt asking about the writer, a student from Auckland opens with a single Maori word and uses it to hold two things at once, a national identity and a family. Here is the opening most students would write about the same material, and then the real essay in full.
Weak
New Zealand is a small country with a big heart. Known for its natural beauty, its rugby and the Maori culture that shapes so much of our national identity, it is a place where people look out for one another. Growing up in Auckland, I was surrounded by this spirit of community and adventure, and it has made me who I am. The Maori concept of whanau, meaning family, is at the heart of New Zealand life, and it has been at the heart of mine. I want to bring the values of my country, and of my family, with me to university.
Strong. From University of Southern California Supplement A
Whanau. This Maori word, meaning 'family', encapsulates two things that are essential to who I am: my New Zealand identity and my family.
To me, the basis of the New Zealand identity is to be a pioneer. Pakeha and Maori share in this experience, traveling across oceans to forge a new and improved life for themselves and their families in New Zealand. The pioneering spirit is in our blood. Great New Zealanders such as Te Rangi Hiroa and Sir Edmund Hillary excellently displayed this Kiwi attitude, pushing the boundaries of humanity's physical and intellectual limits. I too feel a need to pioneer, to obtain whatever is at the limit of my grasp in the pursuit of improvement. Seeking to study at USC, traveling far from the safety of home, is a pioneering leap of faith in my journey to success.
Family is vital to my character. Spending time each summer with visiting American cousins and rural New Zealand cousins has helped me understand different perspectives and appreciate the importance of maintaining family connections. My New Zealand family has kept me in touch with the rural origins of my parents and my American family has helped inspire me to study overseas. Although I have been raised in New Zealand's largest city, Auckland, I feel that my time spent fishing, farming, and tramping with my country cousins has gifted me a broadened outlook on life. I am incredibly thankful for the international and rural experiences my Whanau have given to me.8
What changed. The weak sample spends its first sixty words on the country, and the word whanau arrives late, as decoration. The strong sample opens with the word, then its translation, then a claim about the writer, and the first sentence is at the person before it ends. Look at the two moves. One word, then what it holds. The essay is strongest where it is smallest, in the third paragraph, with the country cousins and the fishing, farming and tramping. The second paragraph moves outward to Hillary and the pioneers, and is the part a reader could have written without meeting the writer. Copy the opening move and the cousins. Leave the pioneers.
These prompts attract difficult family history, and Module Three's tests apply here at higher stakes.9
Other people get their own reasons. A parent who was strict was strict for reasons, and an essay that grants them those reasons is more persuasive than one that does not, because it shows the writer can hold a perspective other than their own. A parent who appears only as a force acting on the writer is a sign that the writer has not finished thinking.
Nothing asks the reader for sympathy. An answer that positions the reader as somebody who ought to feel sorry for you has changed the transaction, and the change is detectable. Write it as something you understand rather than as something you need acknowledged. Both samples below are ours, and both are about the same father.
Weak
My father never let me go anywhere. While my friends were at parties I was at home, because he did not trust the world outside our apartment. He had grown up in a village and could not understand that I was growing up in Chicago. Every argument ended the same way, with his rules and my silence. It was hard to be the only one of my friends who was never allowed to be a teenager, and it took me years to understand that his strictness was a form of love. I hope that whoever reads this can understand how difficult it was to grow up between two worlds.
Strong
My father did not let me go to parties, and for a long time I filed that under the things he did not understand. He grew up in a village of four hundred people where everyone knew whose son you were, and he moved to a city of three million where nobody did. When I was fourteen I thought his rules were about me. When I was sixteen I noticed that he checked the front door lock twice, and that he had done so every night since we arrived. His rules were about the lock. I still do not go to many parties. I have stopped needing him to be wrong about that.10
What changed. In the weak sample the father is a force, and the last sentence asks the reader to feel something on the writer's behalf. In the strong sample the father has a village of four hundred and a lock he checks twice, which is a reason, and the writer does not ask for anything. The final sentence reports a change in the writer rather than a hardship endured. Both samples contain the same facts. Only the second contains a writer who has understood them.
And the practical override from Module Three still stands. There is no prize for choosing the hardest available material. If the honest answer to this prompt is something modest, a brass press or a card game, write the modest thing well.
Write your first draft, then delete every sentence that explains a category rather than a person. Most drafts lose their first two sentences. Replace what you cut with one hour in one place, at the scale of the chakri press. Then find anyone in the draft who is being treated as a force rather than a person, and give them a reason of their own. Exercise two does the rest.
The intellectual curiosity prompt, often called the academic interest essay, asks why you want to study what you want to study. It is the prompt where the gap between the good answers and the average ones is widest. Average answers describe a class. Good answers describe a question the writer has not finished with.
That is the whole distinction and it is worth stating flatly. Do not write about a subject you like. Write about something you do not know the answer to. A class you enjoyed is a report on the past. An open question is evidence of a mind still running, and a mind still running is the thing being scored. The test is simple. After reading your answer, a reader should be able to ask you a follow-up question that you would be pleased to be asked. If your answer is a summary of what you learned, there is nothing to ask.
In Columbia Supplement F, an academic interest response from an admitted file, the writer wants to study computer science and psychology, and opens with the rules of a cellular automaton. Here is the opening most students write for that pair of subjects, and then the first half of the real essay.
Weak
I have always been passionate about computer science. Ever since I wrote my first program in eighth grade, I have been fascinated by the way a few lines of code can solve a real problem. In high school I took AP Computer Science A and earned a 5, and I completed two online courses in Python in my spare time. I am also deeply interested in psychology, and I took an introductory course through my school's dual enrolment programme. At university I hope to major in computer science with a minor in psychology, and I look forward to learning from world-class professors and exploring the intersection of these two fields.
Strong. From Columbia Supplement F
Surrounded by less than two cells, one dies of starvation.
Surrounded by two or three cells, one survives to the next generation.
Surrounded by four cells, one dies of overpopulation.
A dead cell with exactly three live neighbours is revived.
The above describes Conway’s “Game of Life”, where a single starting environment, or ‘seed’, leads to a potentially infinitely complex black-and-white gridded world.
The game is a grossly reductionist oversimplification of life, but it poses an interesting question. Do we humans, or any other organisms, truly have free will? Or are all our actions and thoughts predetermined by our surroundings? I was free to explore these questions through my self-study of psychology in high school, and hope to continue down the same path at university to find how much of our lives are dictated before we are born, and the implications of such determinism.11
What changed. The weak sample says the writer is passionate and lists the courses that prove it. Nothing in it could be followed up, because everything in it is settled. The strong sample states four rules, in about ten words each, as though they were facts about a person, and then asks whether a person has any say in the matter. That is a question the writer has not finished with, and a reader could ask a dozen more. Notice that the strong sample never says the writer enjoys anything. It puts the reader inside the interest rather than describing the interest from outside.
The essay then changes register and stages a second moment, this time at a keyboard. Here is the remainder, in full.
I press Enter.
The little green line blinks emotionlessly, flashing, unwavering.
Beneath the dimpled silver surface, electrons shuffle through a labyrinth of gold and copper. One, zero, one, zero. A string of gibberish is expelled from the metalwork, infinitely complex, yet immediately comprehensible to the machine in front of me. Something pops up on the screen.
‘Hello, world’.
Initially drawn to computers through the allure of games and movies, my current interest in the computer science lies within the logic and processes that drive algorithms and networks. I thrive in formulating the pseudocode behind a script or function, and seek to recreate the euphoria when a program finally runs after hours of debugging - as I experienced in Harvard’s CS50x and MIT’s 6.00.1x.
Ultimately, I hope to synthesise my studies in computer science and psychology to explore the feasibility and applications of AI, and compare it to the human mind.11
Three things to notice. I press Enter is a paragraph on its own, and the essay slows down to the speed of a cursor, so that the reader is waiting for the screen with the writer. The two online courses appear in half a sentence, as the place where a feeling was felt, rather than as a list of credentials. And the final paragraph joins the two subjects with a question that is still open, whether a machine can be compared to a mind, rather than with a career plan. Two interests, each staged as a moment, joined by something the writer does not yet know.
Name the thing that annoys you about your subject. A real irritation with a field is stronger evidence of engagement than praise for it. Somebody who is bothered by something has been paying attention. Both samples below are ours, and both are about the same student and the same subject.
Weak
What I love most about biology is how everything connects. Every system in the body depends on every other, and the more I learn the more elegant it all seems. My AP Biology teacher encouraged us to ask questions, and I often found myself staying after class to discuss the Krebs cycle or the structure of DNA. Reading about how a single hormone can regulate an entire process fills me with wonder. Biology has shown me that the natural world is full of beautiful patterns waiting to be discovered, and I want to spend my life discovering them.
Strong
What bothers me about biology is the word regulates. A textbook will say that a hormone regulates a process and then move on, and the sentence sounds like an explanation when it is a placeholder. I went looking for what insulin actually does at the level of a single cell and found that the answer is known in outline, disputed in detail, and drawn differently in every diagram I could find. I have a folder of eleven such diagrams. None of them agree about the arrows. I do not know which is right, and I am more interested in that than I was in anything the textbook explained.12
What changed. The weak sample praises the field and uses the word regulate without noticing it. The strong sample notices it, is annoyed by it, and goes looking. The folder of eleven diagrams that disagree is evidence that the writer has been paying attention in a way that staying after class to discuss the Krebs cycle is not, because it records a question the writer still holds.
Include a dead end. Something you tried that did not work, or a book you did not finish and why. Curiosity with no failure in it reads as a claim rather than a history.
Go outside the classroom for at least one item. Admissions blogs at technical schools say this repeatedly and students consistently ignore it. What you did unsupervised is worth more than what you did for a grade.13 Columbia Supplement F does it in half a sentence, with two courses taken for no credit at all. The samples below are ours. Both describe the same physics student, and the strong one contains a dead end and an unsupervised afternoon at once.
Weak
Outside the classroom I have pursued my interest in physics in every way I can. I have read popular books on relativity and quantum mechanics, watched lecture series online and built a small telescope with my father. I have also attended two summer programmes where I worked alongside other students who share my curiosity. These experiences have deepened my understanding of the subject and confirmed that physics is the field I want to devote myself to, and I am confident that my curiosity will only continue to grow at university.
Strong
Last spring I tried to build a cloud chamber from a fish tank, dry ice and a strip of felt soaked in isopropyl alcohol, because a video made it look like an afternoon. It took four attempts. The first three produced fog and nothing else. The fourth produced two tracks in twenty minutes, both faint, and I could not tell a muon from a stray alpha particle, which the video had not mentioned was a problem. I have not fixed it. I have a notebook of what I tried and a list of what I would change, and the list is longer than the notebook. The tank is in the garage and still smells of alcohol.14
What changed. The weak sample lists unsupervised activities without a single detail from any of them, so a reader cannot tell whether the telescope was ever pointed at anything. The strong sample gives one afternoon in full, including three failures and a problem the writer still has not solved. The dead end is what makes it believable. A reader trusts the two faint tracks because of the three attempts that produced fog.
Write down a question in your subject that you do not know the answer to and have thought about unprompted. Write down what annoys you about the field. Write down one thing you tried that failed. Draft the answer from those three, with at least one item from outside a classroom, and then test it by asking whether a reader could put a follow-up question to you that you would enjoy. If not, you have written a report. Exercise three gives the steps.
Tell us more about one activity, in a hundred and fifty words. It is small, many schools ask it, and it is badly done almost universally, because students treat it as a description. The reader already has your activity list, with the name of the club, your role and your hours. The elaboration exists to add what the list could not carry, and a description adds nothing the reader does not have.
So skip the summary. No sentence explaining what debate is, or what the role of a treasurer involves. Start at the specific thing.
In Vanderbilt Supplement A, an extracurricular response from an admitted file, the writer joins debate because his parents made him, and finds out at his first tournament what the activity is for. Starting from reluctance gives you somewhere to travel in a hundred and fifty words, and starting from competence gives you nowhere. Here is the answer most students write about debate, and then the real one in full.
Weak
Debate has been my most significant extracurricular activity. Over four years I have competed in more than twenty tournaments, qualified for the state championship twice and served as captain of my school's team in my senior year. Debate involves researching both sides of a resolution and then arguing whichever side you are assigned, which has taught me to think critically, speak confidently and consider perspectives very different from my own. As captain I organised practices, ran drills for the novices and mentored younger members through their first tournaments. I plan to continue debating in college and to bring what I have learned to every discussion I join.
Strong. From Vanderbilt Supplement A
I first joined debate as a reluctant ninth grader at the behest of my parents. It was not until my first tournament that I began to see not only the value but the beauty in debate. The best debaters' approaches were in no way formulaic, they were dynamic. The debaters possessed a stunning ability to account for incoming information and synthesize it into a coherent, compelling speech - right there on the spot. In order to be convincing, you have to be creative, and nothing encourages spontaneity like the pressures of the debate arena. Recently during a debate tournament we were given a resolution about equalizing pay for professional athletes by gender and even though I had to debate against what I actually believe I was able to quickly draw on knowledge from my Economics class in order to make the point that the proposition was not feasible. Debate also highlighted to me the importance of confidence. Every debater knows the discomfort of watching someone who's trapped in their head deliver a speech. Debate taught me that the only way to avoid this is to let go of any attachment to the outcome of one's performance. In this way, I've found debate has been an irreplaceable tool for me to not only express my creativity but also become more confident as a speaker and a person, while providing me a platform to explore my own thoughts and beliefs about current affairs.15
What changed. The weak sample opens at the summit, with tournaments, qualifications and a captaincy, and then explains what debate is. The list already had all of that. The strong sample opens with a reluctant ninth grader at the behest of his parents, and then spends its words on what the best debaters could do that the writer could not yet do. It names one resolution, about pay for athletes, and admits the writer argued against his own belief. It names one discomfort, watching someone trapped in their head. Nothing in it is an achievement, and everything in it is information the list could not hold.
In Brown Supplement A, an extracurricular response from an admitted file, the writer has danced ballet since she was four and does not have the body for it. The whole response is about a hundred and fifty words, and it concedes the problem in the first thirty. Here is the answer most students write about the same thirteen years, and then the real one in full.
Weak
I have danced ballet since I was four years old. Over the past thirteen years I have trained at two academies, performed in eight full-length productions, including the lead in our academy's production of Coppélia, and passed my Advanced 2 examination with distinction. Ballet has taught me discipline, dedication and the importance of practice. Balancing daily rehearsals with a full academic schedule has never been easy, but it has made me a stronger student and a more resilient person, and I intend to keep dancing at university, whether in a company or simply for the joy of it.
Strong. From Brown Supplement A
Despite my passion and the fact that I’ve been dancing since I was four, ballet isn't natural for my body; I was born with little flexibility and feet with low arches. These physical barriers could’ve been sufficient justification to quit. But instead, I dedicated myself, arriving an hour earlier to stretch everyday, exercising my feet and calves at home and never missing a lesson. My success in ballet is therefore a result of my constant effort and, without it, I would never have been able to graduate from my academy and reach the professional level. The feeling of never finding my comfort zone means that I always seek to improve, giving me resilience and perseverance that has shaped the way I face all other pursuits. Dancing ballet has always brought me great joy but it also reminds me to never settle and to face my challenges head-on.16
What changed. The weak sample lists productions and examinations, which are on the activity list, and says ballet taught discipline, which every ballet essay says. The strong sample says the writer was born with little flexibility and low arches, and that she arrives an hour early every day to stretch because of it. She is not telling the reader that she dances, which the list already says. She is telling the reader the body she is doing it with, which the list cannot say. The lesson at the end is the same lesson, resilience and perseverance, and a reader accepts it here because the arches came first.
Notice the structure available to you. A hundred and fifty words fits one small scene plus one sentence of consequence. It does not fit an arc. A student who tries to compress ninth grade to twelfth into the space produces the thing that reads as a summary of a longer essay, and a summary is a description again.
Name one thing you changed. Not one thing you achieved. Anybody can list an outcome. Naming the specific practice, rule or system you altered is much harder to invent and much more informative about what you would be like on a campus. Both samples below are ours, and both are about the same robotics team.
Weak
When I joined the robotics team in ninth grade I knew nothing about programming. By tenth grade I was writing the autonomous routines, and in eleventh grade I became lead programmer. Under my leadership the team qualified for the world championship for the first time in its history. As co-captain I have focused on mentoring the new members so that the team continues to succeed after I graduate. Robotics has taught me leadership, teamwork and perseverance, and it has shown me that with enough determination any problem can be solved.
Strong
Our robot failed the same way at three competitions. It would drive its autonomous route perfectly in the practice pit and then veer left on the field, and nobody could say why. At the fourth competition I sat on the floor beside the field with a stopwatch and noticed that the carpet there was thicker than ours, which was enough to change how the wheels slipped. We had been tuning for the wrong floor. The fix was one line of code. The change that lasted was a rule, that no autonomous routine is ever tested only in the pit, which the team still follows and which is the only thing I did there that will outlast me.17
What changed. The weak sample is four years compressed into ninety words, and every sentence is an outcome. The strong sample is one competition, one carpet and one rule. The rule is the thing the writer changed, and it tells a reader more about what this student would be like in a laboratory than the world championship does, because it is a habit rather than a result. The world championship might be on the list. The carpet cannot be.
Pick your activity and write the answer without any sentence that explains what the activity is. Start at a specific moment, or at the point where you were bad at it. Name one thing you changed rather than one thing you achieved. Then cut to a hundred and fifty words, one scene plus one sentence of consequence. If you are trying to fit an arc, you have over-scoped, and the fix is to choose one competition, one class or one rehearsal. Exercise four gives the steps.
Chicago's invented prompts, the odd short takes, the questions that are clearly testing something other than what they ask. These frighten students more than any other category, and they are the most enjoyable to write once you understand what is happening.
They are testing whether you can play. Cleverness is a different thing, and the distinction matters. A strange prompt answered with a display of cleverness is a worse answer than one answered with genuine curiosity about the strangeness, because cleverness is a performance aimed at the reader and curiosity is a report of the writer's own mind. Three rules hold, and the humour rules from Module Four apply to all of them.18
The single commonest failure is hedging. A student given an absurd question writes two sentences of the absurd answer and then explains what it reveals about their leadership. That explanation is the failure. If the question is silly, be silly all the way to the end, and trust the reader to draw the conclusion.
Several of these prompts recur every year, including one built around a line of Oscar Wilde about being careful in the choice of one's enemies. Recurring does not mean you should look up previous answers. It means the reader has seen a thousand of them, which raises the cost of the obvious response and lowers the risk of the strange one. Both samples below answer that prompt. Both are ours.
Weak
If I had to choose an enemy, it would be procrastination. Like Wilde, I believe that our enemies define us, and my struggle with procrastination has defined me more than any of my successes. In tenth grade I left a history paper to the last night and received a B minus, and I promised myself it would never happen again. Since then I have kept a planner, broken every project into steps and finished early. Choosing procrastination as my enemy has made me disciplined, organised and ready for the demands of college, and I am grateful to it for that.
Strong
I have chosen the pigeon that lives on the ledge outside my bedroom window, and I chose carefully. A worthy enemy must be persistent, and he arrives at six every morning. A worthy enemy must be unreachable, and the window does not open. A worthy enemy should not know that he is your enemy, because then he would have the satisfaction, and he does not know. I have tried a paper owl, a strip of foil and a recording of a hawk, and after each he returned looking, if anything, slightly better fed. He has never once acknowledged me. I admire that. We have been at this for two years and I would not trade him for a rival who could be beaten.19
What changed. The weak sample answers the prompt for one sentence and then spends the rest explaining what the answer reveals, which is the pivot the prompt was set to catch. Procrastination is also the enemy a thousand other applicants chose. The strong sample takes the premise seriously, sets out criteria for a worthy enemy and applies them, and never once says what the pigeon shows about the writer. The reader can see that the writer is patient, self-mocking and observant, and sees it precisely because nobody said so.
The second commonest failure is using a strange prompt as a vehicle for a prepared answer about yourself. Readers set these prompts precisely to defeat prepared answers, so a recycled one is more visible here than anywhere else. Suppose the prompt asks which object in your house deserves a commemorative plaque. Both samples below are ours.
Weak
The object in my house that deserves a plaque is the workbench in our garage, because it is where I built my first robot. Robotics has been the most important part of my high school experience. As captain I led our team to the state championship, learned to manage a budget of several thousand dollars and discovered that I love teaching younger students what I know. The workbench is where all of that began, and it is where I learned that failure is only the first step towards success. If a plaque could hold all of that, it would be a very large plaque.
Strong
The plaque goes on the third stair from the top, which creaks. It has creaked since before we moved in, and every member of my family has learned to step over it, so that we now climb the stairs in an identical and slightly ridiculous way, like people avoiding a puddle only they can see. Guests do not know, and the creak tells us the moment a guest goes upstairs. The stair has never been fixed because nobody wants to lose the warning. The plaque should say that. It should be small, and it should be placed where you have to stop on the stair to read it.20
What changed. The weak sample uses the plaque for one sentence and then delivers the robotics paragraph the writer had already prepared for a different prompt, and a reader who has that paragraph elsewhere in the file will notice. The strong sample answers the question that was asked. It chooses an object, explains the choice in the object's own terms, and ends on the plaque, which is where the prompt began. Nothing in it could have been written for any other prompt, and that is the test.
Module Four's rules hold. Understatement rather than jokes, precision rather than punchlines, and the joke is at your own expense. But this is the one place in the file where the register can be light throughout rather than in one or two moments. Both samples below are ours, and both describe the same dog.
Weak
My dog Biscuit is the laziest animal on the planet. Seriously, I have seen rocks with more ambition. When I tried to teach him to fetch, he looked at the ball, looked at me, and went back to sleep, which is basically his response to everything, including fire drills. If laziness were an Olympic sport, Biscuit would take gold, except that he would have to get up to collect it. I guess we are more alike than I would like to admit, because I did not get up either!
Strong
I spent one summer teaching my dog to fetch. I read two books on the subject. He watched me throw the ball a great many times and appeared to be considering it. By August he would walk to the ball, lie down beside it, and wait for me to come and collect both of them, which I did. I have since read that some dogs simply do not fetch, and I have decided to believe that this was his position from the start and that he was waiting for me to arrive at it.21
What changed. The weak sample is built from punchlines, and each one tells the reader when to laugh. The exclamation mark at the end is the writer laughing first. The strong sample never signals a joke. It reports two books, a great many throws and a dog lying down beside a ball, and lets the reader notice that the summer was spent training the writer. The joke is at the writer's expense, it is precise, and it is understated, which is all three of Module Four's rules in one paragraph.
Take your strangest prompt and answer it in one sitting without stopping to judge it. Then check two things. Whether you committed to the premise all the way to the last line, and whether any sentence explains what the answer reveals about you. Delete that sentence. Then check you have not smuggled in a prepared answer from another prompt, and read it once for punchlines. Exercise five gives the steps.
Now the thing that makes the volume survivable. It has to be done deliberately, or it becomes the copy-paste failure instead.
Several schools will ask you the same archetype. Four community prompts, five academic-interest prompts, three of the second personal statement. You do not write those from scratch each time, and you do not send the same text either.
Write one core, then write school-specific ends.22
The core is the part that is about you. The anecdote, the reasoning, the change of mind. That is genuinely reusable, because it does not change according to who is asking. The ends are the parts that touch the school, and those are written fresh every time.
In practice a hundred and fifty word community answer might be a hundred words of core and fifty words of school-specific material, and a four hundred word one might be two hundred and fifty and a hundred and fifty. The proportions vary. The principle does not vary. No sentence containing the school's name is ever reused, and no sentence about what this place offers is ever reused.
Both samples below are ours. The weak one is what a student produces when the whole answer is treated as reusable and the school's name is left as a slot to fill. The strong one is a core written once, with the end marked as the part to be written for each school.
Weak
Teaching adult learners at my town's library has shown me that a community is built one person at a time. Every Thursday evening I sat with people who had come to learn English, and I saw how much a small amount of patience could change. I want to bring that spirit to [school], whose commitment to community and diversity matches my own values. I know that at [school] I will find a community that welcomes every voice, and I look forward to contributing to campus life in every way I can.
Strong
Mr Okafor came to the library class every Thursday for nine months to prepare for the citizenship test, and he failed the practice test six times on the same question, the one about the number of amendments. He did not fail it because he did not know the number. He failed it because he wanted to tell the examiner which amendments he thought were unnecessary, and the form had no box for that. I stopped teaching him the number and started letting him argue, and on the seventh attempt he wrote the number down without comment, which he told me afterwards was the hardest thing he had done that year.
[Fifty words written for this school alone, naming one room, course or programme you have looked up, and saying what you would do in it. Nothing in these fifty words is sent anywhere else.]23
What changed. The weak sample is a single reusable paragraph with the school's name as a variable, and the sentences about the school are the sentences any school could receive, which means they say nothing. The strong sample has a core about Mr Okafor and the amendments that will hold for every community prompt on the list, because it is about the writer, and a marked space for the end, which is written once per school and never reused. The line between the two is the line between what is about you and what is about them.
The References hold a real instance of this. Brown Supplement D and Rice Supplement C, both quoted in section one, share their material. Both return to Rio after seven years abroad, both run for the Student Council Executive Team, and both talk to the PTA, the students and the administrators before creating new spaces at school. That is one core sent to two schools. Here is how each of them ends.
I saw the opportunity to improve a place I had grown so fond of and was willing to translate my ideas into action. I intend to continue leaving behind my legacy and working to improve every community I become a part of.2
Back in Rio, my hometown, all these traits came into great use. The fact that I wasn’t afraid of change allowed me to question my surroundings and assess what I thought had to be improved in my school community, resulting in my election to the Student Council Executive Team. In this role, collaboration with key stakeholders - students, school administrators and the PTA - led to the creation of community spaces on campus, new extracurricular opportunities and academic support for students through a notes-sharing database.
Altogether, I try to make every new place I live feel like home. My open-mindedness allows me to connect deeply with others and through my collaborative leadership style, I attempt to help my fellow classmates reach their fullest potential so that together we can achieve great results. Whether it be during Fridays on the Quad at Brown or at Monday Bright Lights at Duncan, I can picture myself surrounded by friends, sharing interesting stories about our unique life journeys.6
The first ending is general and could close an essay to any school. The second names two of Rice's residential colleges, Brown and Duncan, and pictures the writer inside them. Brown here is a college at Rice, which is why it appears in a Rice supplement. The second is the shape we mean by a school-specific end. The core carried between the two files unchanged in substance. The end was written for the file it went into, and that is what makes the reuse invisible to the reader at either school.
Two disciplines make the method safe.
Keep an anecdote ledger. A one-page list of every story you have used, and where. Updated after every draft. Ten minutes every few days, and it prevents the error a reader actually notices, which is the same story appearing twice inside one school's file. Both ledgers below are ours, and both track the same student's five stories across four schools.
Weak
Library class, Mr Okafor. Personal statement, sent to all four schools. Also School One, community prompt. Also School Three, extracurricular prompt.
Cloud chamber. School One, academic interest. School Two, academic interest. School Three, academic interest. School Four, academic interest.
Grandmother's chakri press. Not used.
Pigeon on the ledge. Not used.
Robot and the carpet. School Two, extracurricular prompt.
Strong
Library class, Mr Okafor. Personal statement, sent to all four schools. Not used in any supplement.
Cloud chamber. School One, academic interest. School Three, academic interest.
Grandmother's chakri press. School One, community. School Two, community. School Four, community.
Pigeon on the ledge. School Two, strange prompt.
Robot and the carpet. School Three, extracurricular. School Four, extracurricular. School Two, academic interest, the carpet measurement only.
Checked against each school's file. No story appears twice in any one file.24
What changed. In the weak ledger, School One receives Mr Okafor twice, once in the personal statement and once in the community supplement, and so does School Three. That is the error a reader notices, and the reader concludes that the student has one story. The cloud chamber goes to all four schools while two good stories go nowhere. In the strong ledger, every story is used, no school's file holds any story twice, and the last line records that the check was done. The ledger is not the essay. It is the thing that lets you send five essays to four schools without embarrassment.
Vary the core, not just the ends. If four schools get the same community anecdote, a reader at any one of them sees nothing wrong. But you have spent your best material once and told four schools the same thing about yourself, which wastes three opportunities to show something else. Where you have two good anecdotes, split them across the list rather than sending your favourite everywhere. The strong ledger above does this with the cloud chamber and the robot.
Group every remaining prompt by archetype. For each group, write one core with no school named anywhere in it. Then write the ends, fresh, one per school, and never reuse a sentence that names the school or describes what it offers. Start the ledger before the second draft of anything, and read it once per school's file, looking for the same story twice. Exercise six gives the steps.
Done when your answer contains a named person and something you do rather than something you are.
Done when nothing in the answer could be written by somebody else who shares your background.
Done when the answer contains an open question, an irritation, and one failure.
Done when the answer adds something the activity list could not carry and fits the limit.
Done when the answer commits to its own premise and never explains itself.
Done when every archetype has a core, the ends are all school-specific, and the ledger is current.
If you keep one sentence: every one of these prompts is asking for one specific person doing one specific thing, and the category, the subject and the activity are all things the reader already has.
Every student essay quoted on this page is reproduced in full, with its source, in References. Every weak example on this page was written by us and is not any student's writing.