Talking Supplements
Don't restate the prompt. Surprise the reader with unpredictable values.
What is your favorite subject to study, and why?
One of my favorite subjects to study is science becauseWhat is your favorite source of inspiration?
My favorite source of inspiration is…What compliment are you most proud of receiving, and who gave it to you?
The compliment I’m most proud of receiving was…
Sitting down the other day with a student, I felt bad crossing out the first line of each of her short essay responses. Visually, though, it was the easiest way to illustrate how dull and repetitive it is to start by restating the prompt.
Not to mention a word suck when students sometimes only have as few as 50 words to make an impression on admissions officers.
It’s simple to say that an effective college essay doesn’t list accomplishments but tells a personal story. What’s hard is asking students to create a window into their unique character in 650 words. What feels impossible is completing the herculean task of writing your Common App personal statement, only to find out that you now must capture what makes you, YOU, in a series of even shorter supplemental essays.
My advice for the supplements is the same as the personal statement: Identify specific story moments that help admissions officers picture you in their academic community.
Similar to the What? and Why? of personal statements, supplemental essays still need the story (WHAT?) or narrative = first half or two-thirds of the essay, and the significance (WHY?), which tends to come at the end.
For example, looking at this prompt for an Extracurricular Essay (150-word limit):
In addition to your academic interests, what is an after-school activity that has taught you valuable life lessons?
A meh essay response has a story (WHAT?) that sounds something like this:
In addition to my academic interests, an after-school activity that has taught me valuable life lessons is tennis. I’ve played tennis since I was in the seventh grade, and it has taught me teamwork, leadership and perseverance. It has also taught me about never giving up and about working the hardest in whatever I do.
A meh essay response has a significance (WHY?) that sounds like this:
Being on the tennis team taught me many important lessons such as teamwork, leadership and working hard in whatever I do. I believe tennis has also helped me in my schoolwork since I have achieved straight As in the past two quarters and haven’t given up in school either.
Why the story (What?) is not great: It’s not a story. Along with restating the prompt, it serves as a reflection that works better toward the end.
[story vs. reflection is active vs. passive]
Why the significance (Why?) is not great: 1. It repeats what’s already been said. 2. The “insight” isn’t much of an insight. We could have guessed that those are the things the student learned from tennis.
Why? Because those are things everyone learns from tennis!
An effective essay response has a story (What?) that sounds something like this:
“WHAM!”
The ball hit me straight in the nose. I looked down on the court and saw blood. Lots of it.
“Do you need a minute?” the umpire asked me.
“No, I’m okay,” I said, pinching my nose and wiping the blood on my shorts. “Play on.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
“Match point,” he announced to the crowd. My opponent tossed the ball up in the air to serve.
An effective essay response has a significance (Why?) that sounds like this:
Playing tennis has taught me some of the things you might expect—the value of teamwork, discipline, yadda yadda—but it’s also taught me something even more important: knowing my limits. That day when I decided to play through a broken nose, I wasn’t being “hardcore,” as I’d thought I was being. I was being stupid.
Why the story (What?) is effective: Because it’s a story! As a reader, I’m wondering, What’s gonna’ happen next? I’m in it. I’m engaged.
Why the significance (Why?) is better: Because the insight is unexpected. When I read the opening, I thought the narrator was just being hardcore … then I realized what the narrator did:
Playing with a broken nose wasn’t hardcore, it was silly.
And I believe the student truly learned that lesson that day.
Here’s an activity to help take a supplemental essay from meh to effective:
Look at the essay, identify the values gained, and highlight or underline them.
Ask: Are these values predictable? Could someone guess what lessons I learned from this activity without reading my essay?
Example of predictable value gained from hospital internship: helping others
Example of unpredictable value gained from hospital internship: democracy
Aren’t you more interested in reading about the connection between medicine and democracy than the connection between medicine and helping others?
Example of predictable values for violin: discipline, commitment, hard work
Example of unpredictable values for violin: privacy, risk, personal integrity
Again, isn’t the second set of values already a more interesting essay?
(Bonus Tip: Make sure all your values are clearly different. In the example above, how are “discipline, commitment, and hard work” different?)
So how do you turn your predictable values into unpredictable ones?
Along with restating the prompt, CUT the predictable values, then use your beautiful, infinite imagination to come up with new, unpredictable values.
Dig deep. Think about specific moments of difficulty. How’d you work through them?
Supplemental essays only give you around 50 to 300 words to work with, depending on the school. Don’t waste a word restating the prompt or on predictible values.
Instead, hook the reader by dropping them into an active story moment, then surprise them by connecting how your life experience illustrates an unpredictable value.