College essays: Nerve-racking search for just the right words

When the time came for Mao Lee to write her first scholarship essay, she procrastinated.

She had a powerful story to tell, but it was hard to share with strangers. The day before the essay was due, she finally pulled up a chair and worked steadily for 45 minutes, setting her life down in 300 unadorned words.

"Some nights after a long day at school, we would come home to almost nothing on the dinner table," she wrote. "There was always a small amount there but never enough to feed and fulfill the hunger of six children and two adults. I used to be ashamed of living under Minneapolis Public Housing, and living on welfare. I understand more clearly now, why it is the way it is.

"I am trying to overcome this obstacle by trying to finish high school, get into college and graduate with a degree, in a career that would pay well. ... I have dreams about buying my parents their first home and I know that my hard work will pay off."

The words were uncomfortably revealing, but Mao knew they were important. They might help her win a college scholarship.

While a great essay won't get a student with bad grades or low test scores into college, essays can reveal the heart and passion behind the numbers. They're required for many scholarship applications and for entry to most selective colleges. And they're a source of stress for many students who are convinced that the essay can tip the balance between acceptance and rejection.

With more students graduating from high school than ever, more are aimed at college as well, and the competition is fierce. It's not uncommon for students to apply to seven or eight schools, and take the SAT and ACT college entrance exams two and three times.

A senior at Minneapolis Henry High School, Mao, 18, is one of four high school seniors the Star Tribune is following as they apply for college this year. Mao had two weeks in which to write a short essay for her first scholarship application.

"I admit I didn't want to do it," she said. "You don't know these people, but you're suddenly pouring your heart out to them.

"...I told myself I have to do this essay to get money for college."

A good essay should be short but pithy, original but not weird, passionate but not hysterical, well-written but not so heavily edited that it muffles the writer's voice. Sound like a tall order?

Relax, says Anne Walsh, associate director of admissions at Macalester College in St. Paul. Students should understand that admission decisions almost never rest on the essay.

"It adds texture, it adds seasoning to the application," Walsh said. "But it is not the tail that wags the dog."

Frank Sachs, director of college counseling at the Blake School in Minneapolis, said that in more than 20 years he remembers just one essay that tipped a decision the student's way. He called it an "incredibly poignant" piece written by a young woman whose grades had plunged after her mother died. That essay was unusual, he said, in that it explained why her school record was not as strong as it could have been.

"I heard from four schools that it was the best essay they'd read that year, and in two cases the schools said, 'We want her here,' " Sachs said.

And on rare occasions, a bad essay can swing admission the other way. Joan O'Connell, veteran counselor at Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, was surprised a few years ago when an outstanding student was rejected by Northwestern University. She found out the reason was "a terrible essay" apparently written at the last minute.

"I tell the kids, do anything else the night before [the application deadline], but not the essay," she said.

Forget the ghostwriter

Wayzata High School senior Luna Yang is writing four essays for the University of Michigan alone. Each one has gone through several drafts.

"Sometimes I read [the first draft] the next day and think, what was I thinking?" she said. "After a few days you'll see things you want to fix and make it flow better."

Application essays have three purposes, Sachs said: to give a college an idea of how well students write and how well they think, and to reveal something of their personality.

"It's the only part except the interview that is in the student's voice," he said.

It's also one of the few parts of the college application that nervous or controlling parents can try to influence. Essay coaches are available at a price, and some Internet sites sell essays and editing services, such as essaysrus.com and supercollege.com, which charges $185 to edit a mid-length essay. But college admissions people say they can spot a ghostwritten or heavily edited piece a mile away.

"I'm sure some have gotten past us," Walsh said. "But we have so much information about students ... that it's pretty clear when the essay doesn't line up. You can tell when it's been through the parents and through the writing coach. It's been sanded down and it's pretty bland."

That doesn't benefit students.

"The rough edges are sometimes the really interesting parts of the essay," Walsh said. She said the best essays "are reflective, they show what interests them and what makes them interesting. It's not so much baring their souls as it is getting across a sense of who they are."

Walsh remembers one student who wrote about the stories behind her scars, "little vignettes that were greater than the sum of their parts as life experiences." Sachs has had students write compelling pieces about 4-H, the death of a friend who was playing Russian roulette, and family dinner conversations. One girl wrote from the point of view of her house.

"It needs to fit you," Sachs said. "They aren't looking for a 35-year-old."

Mao is in Admission Possible (AP), a program that helps talented, needy high school students prepare for college. Her AP counselor, Carolyn Herman, spent weeks this fall talking to students about how to write essays.

Herman said she and other AP counselors want to inspire and guide students, but they're careful about heavy-handed editing. Grammatical errors are circled and questioned, but if students ignore recommended fixes, Herman said she'll send the essay off "not 100 percent" to keep the integrity of the student's work.

A challenge to imagination

While many colleges ask students to write about why they want to attend that school, others want something more ambitious. "Write page 162 of your autobiography" is one of the four choices on the University of Minnesota's application for honors programs and scholarships.

Questions on the notoriously quirky University of Chicago application include writing a reaction to a quote from jazz musician Miles Davis ("Don't play what's there, play what's not there") and writing about hosting a brunch for disreputable historical or literary figures. That essay, the application says, is meant to demonstrate "your brain power, your imagination, your sense of taste, and your capacity to tell a story that reveals something true about you."

The personal nature of some essay questions that ask what problems students have overcome can be disconcerting. Herman told Mao and other AP students to write from the heart, knowing that in most cases only she and people in admissions offices will see their work.

"I will encourage Mao to be detailed," Herman said, "but I don't want her to be uncomfortable. In the end, it has to be a representation of who she is."

Mao, unsure of what part of her life to emphasize, asked friends what they thought she should write about. Though she was uncomfortable with addressing personal issues, she finally realized that mundane themes like the transition from middle school to high school wouldn't move anyone.

In the end, she wrote about poverty and the cultural issues she struggles with every day, including the sometimes surreal divide between high school and a home where her Hmong parents don't speak much English and don't want their children to become too Americanized.

Those were subjects that wouldn't bore the reader, Mao reasoned. But they were the hardest to write down.

"It's like a confession on paper," she said. "Just to write it down is a form of letting go."

Mary Jane Smetanka • 612-673-7380 • smetan@startribune.com