Writing Your College Application Essay

by Stephen Pett

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. Good writing does what? It engages, it has a voice, a distinctive, consistent way of conjuring up experience. A piece of writing is an experience for the reader, and in the case of college essays, the experience must register, resonate, distinguish itself from the thousands of other two-dimensional representations looking for a third dimension in an admission officer's mind.
       So how have I approached this subject with my seniors—the first graduating class by the way—at the Native American Preparatory School in Rowe, New Mexico? Number one, I tell them to be honest, and that to be honest means to be personal. I do not want them to divulge private material, but I want them to reveal significant aspects of themselves. Since I believe each individual is extraordinary in the complexity and richness of his or her personality, the challenge for students is to make that singularity accessible to a stranger who may know next to nothing about the region and background the applicant comes from. Make it personal and it will be interesting, as long as the personal is specific, is concrete, and is not general and abstract. Insistent nouns and verbs are the name of the game. The game is writing an effective personal essay.
       OK, here I am on paper in all my concrete, individual glory, and without something to set me in motion on the page, I will sit, I will be static and of little interest to an admissions' reader. To create motion, student writers, I believe, should present themselves in action, doing something: "showing rather than telling." Showing is much more likely to seem authentic and true than telling. Instead of telling about connection to tradition, say, or the importance of ceremonial life, the student should show him or herself within the significant activity.
       Then a reader will understand, empathize, feel the distinctive importance of what is presented, and connect with the applicant in a real, memorable way. Consider the following passages from an essay by Kimberly Trujillo: "I'm wearing a purple Indian dress embroidered at the bottom and on the arms. I slip my black manta which is open at the top over the purple dress. The manta lays diagonally across my chest leaving my left shoulder bare. Around my waist I'm wearing a belt woven with the modern colors of dark purple, forest green, and sky blue matching the color of my dress. On my feet I'm wearing white leather wrap-around moccasins. They come up just below my knees. Around my neck hangs a beautiful turquoise and silver necklace. On my wrist I'm wearing two beautifully designed silver bracelets. I'm dressed in my traditional clothingO?L"
       
       "As I wait for the clowns to place me in line with the other dancers, I rearrange the evergreens in my hands so that they won't fall out. I make sure that everything looks right, that my belt is wrapped around my waist good and tight, and that my moccasins are tightly secured by the strings. Finally the clowns place me in line behind a tall slim guy. He's my partner for the day. The drummer starts beating the drum and the Elder of the turquoise dancers takes off down the middle of the plaza. It's finally our turn to head down the plaza. We move our feet and hands in unison to the beat of the drum."       
       I suspect that for many Native students this approach to personal college essay writing comes quite easily, since they come from communities where stories do represent people, where stories concretize the abstract, are a primary mode of knowing. They are embodying themselves in a meaningful story.
       Also, and this is no small thing since college admissions' people are seeing so few applicants with Native American backgrounds, these distinctive stories grounded in Native American experience are much more likely to catch the interest of a reader. The material will be fresh for the reader. It will be fresh if the writer has trusted his or her experience to acquire its own meaning on the page. Honestly.
       Honesty is one of the things an admissions' reader will try to ascertain about an applicant's essay. "Ascertain" is probably the wrong word, since the process is probably less conscious than that. The reader either trusts the voice and experience of an essay or doesn't. Period.
       So along with urging students to be personal, concrete, and active in their writing, I urge them also to avoid being pretentious, putting on airs, trying to write what they imagine a college essay should sound like. If they get it right, their essays are their surrogates, their stand-ins with admissions officers, them speaking from a page and coming to life distinctively and memorably.
       After all, isn't that what good colleges or universities are looking for? Dynamic, individual voices to include in their ongoing conversations about the human experience.
       The track record of our seniors is very impressive: all are accepted to colleges and universities. Most all wrote very effective essays, which I believe made a difference in their evaluation by schools. Surely personal, particular writing, like that by Heidi Brandow, is likely to establish its writer as an original presence in the mind of an admissions' reader.
      "August has always been my favorite month of the year. Not only because I was born in August, but also because of the tribal celebrations that occur during this month. On the Din? (Navajo) reservation the skies swell with gray rain clouds which bring life to the arid environment my people call home. Its waters transform the pink sandstone into crimson red. The smell of cedar burning in hogans, and the scent of hot coffee boiling on my grandmother's wood stove, linger across the canyons that surround our reservation homestead. The earth is alive again."

Poet and novelist Stephen Pett taught 11th and 12th grade English at the Native American Preparatory School. He is on the faculty at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.