Picture this: it’s time to submit your college essay. You review it one last time and click submit. However, a cold panic settles over you as you ask yourself: What if I misspelled something? What if my essay is over the word count? Does my essay make sense? Did I even write a college essay?
Your anxieties are valid, but fear not. Here are six college essay mistakes that you should avoid to ensure that admissions officers will not skip over your essay.
Mistake 1: You don’t check the essay guidelines.
Colleges have different essay requirements. For instance, the Common App essay asks students to answer one of seven prompts in 650 words, whereas some colleges use their own application questions, such as why they want to attend their school.
Check whether the application has a word or character limit, and review each school’s AI policy for college applications. Some schools ban the use of AI in college essays; meanwhile, other schools allow students to use AI in the brainstorming stage. If a school does not have an explicit policy, assume that AI tools are forbidden.
Mistake 2: You write the college essay at the last minute.
“But I write best under pressure!” you say. That may be true, but working at the last minute means that you may not have enough time to check whether your essay follows the essay guidelines and review your essay for silly spelling mistakes. It seems unfair to have all your hard work thrown out the window because you did not follow the instructions, doesn’t it?
Students risk underestimating how long essay writing takes because writing an essay is not about just writing one draft. You brainstorm ideas, organize your thoughts, outline your essay, write a bad first draft, revise the draft into something better, present your essay for review, revise your essay based on feedback, maybe there’s another round of revision, and then you submit. That’s not something that can be easily done in a few hours.
Those deadlines will sneak up on you, so plan accordingly. Mark down when an application is due, and act as if you are going to submit a day or two early. That way, you will build buffer time into your schedule, and you’ll lower your risk of running into technical difficulties or crashing the website, especially if other students are submitting at the last minute. Then budget the approximate time you think each stage of writing will take. Set mini-deadlines for yourself, and if you need accountability to stay on schedule, you can update a friend on your progress.
Mistake 3: You overshare in your college essay.
College essays often ask applicants to share a moment when they overcame adversity, but you don’t have to write about the worst moments of your life to create a compelling essay. You should only write about a topic if you feel comfortable with a stranger reading it. If you write about a difficult experience you had, do so because you want to, not because you think you need to.
How you write about a topic matters more than what you write about. I’ve read brilliant essays about everyday experiences, such as playing soccer or staging a family play. Your experiences make you unique, but so does the way you tell your story.
Mistake 4: You tell your entire life story.
That said, one of the most common mistakes I’ve seen in college essays is a student telling me their entire life story. These essays tend to paint the student in broad and shallow strokes and leave little room for the student to reflect on their experiences. At the end of the essay, I feel as though I don’t know much about the student at all. In short, I am not interested in your autobiography, and neither are admissions officers.
The college essay word limit forces you to focus on a few life events or stories, so choose wisely. At the end of the essay, what takeaway do you want readers to have? What have readers learned about the person they read about? What personality traits do they have? What are their interests? What ambitions do they have for their college education? Once you identify a general theme, topic, or message you want to convey, the next step is to determine how to structure stories and experiences into an essay that illustrates your journey.
Mistake 5: You forget to reflect on your experiences.
Sometimes I read essays with vivid descriptions, incredible flow and pacing, and a memorable voice—but when I finish, I am left with the question: “So what?” That, friends, is what distinguishes an essay from a college essay. College essays require students to reflect on how their experiences have shaped them into the people they are today and how those experiences will prepare them for their college journey ahead.
There’s no rule of thumb for where and how much reflection to incorporate into your essay, as it will depend on how each essay is structured. When you review your essay, check whether a stranger can identify what you have learned from your experiences.
Mistake 6: You don’t have someone else review your essay.
When we work on a piece of writing for a long time, we can easily become desensitized to mistakes such as spelling errors, improper punctuation, and incorrect grammar. While you can freshen your eyes by taking a break from your draft, printing out your essay, and/or changing the font, you can also have someone else review your essay, whether that’s a friend, family member, teacher, or one of Write the World’s College Essay Advisors.
You can ask your reader to review specific aspects you are unsure about, such as whether the essay flows smoothly from one sentence to the next. Even if you are confident in your essay, receiving extra validation from someone else can give you the confidence you need to submit your essay worry-free.
About the author
As a College Essay Advisor at Write the World, Vivian Zhi supports high school students through their college application journey. Vivian looks forward to helping young writers find themselves through their writing.
