myUface Blog

What do you think admissions officer are looking to get from reading your essay?  Why do they insist on an essay as part of the application?  What do they think an essay is going to tell them?

A lot of students view an essay as a kind of test that they must pass.  They think the job of an essay is to impress their reader with wonderful thoughts and beautiful language.  But I would suggest that the readers of your essays don’t see the essay in this way at all.

The readers  look at an essay as a chance to learn something meaningful about a candidate, something that isn’t quantifiable (like test scores, grades, etc.)  They want to learn what it is a candidate says about him or herself, in order to have a more complete picture of who an applicant really is.

If you look at an essay in this way, you realize that the goal is not to provide a certain thought or idea, and it’s also not to write in “beautiful” language.  The goal is much more simple:  to tell the reader something true, interesting and unique about yourself.  Let me write that again in bold letters:

The goal of an essay is to tell the reader something true, interesting and unique about yourself.

Or, if you’re answering an essay with a specific question, the goal is to provide the reader with an answer to the question that reflects something true, interesting and unique about you.

Got it?

There’s no “right” or “wrong” answer to writing an essay, just as there’s no “right” or “wrong” person.  As you move forward in writing your essay, keep this in mind, and try as much as possible to STOP thinking about an essay as if it’s a test.

After all, that’s not how the readers think about it!

Posts in this Series

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing - 08 Oct
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? - 01 Oct
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays - 29 Sep
4. How To Edit Your Essay - 28 Sep
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake - 17 Sep
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four (This post)
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three - 15 Sep
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two - 14 Sep
9. Know Your Reader, Part One - 13 Sep
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays - 11 Sep
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications - 09 Sep

Let’s continue thinking about the mindset of a “typical” admissions officer reading application essays from international students.  Let’s ask the question, what do they like about their job?

Presumably, they enjoy what they’re doing.  So we might want to ask ourselves, what do they like about it?  If they’re like most people, they probably don’t like filling out reports and doing finances.  They probably like, on the other hand, the chance to meet new students from all over the world.  What do they like about that?

My guess is – and I have to admit, it’s only a guess – that most admissions officers who work with international students like it because it gives them a window into other countries, cultures, and places.  They probably enjoy the things they learn about the world in the course of reading student applications, or in working with students from abroad.  The chance to work with people from many different countries is, after all, something that differentiates their job from many other jobs.

So let’s move forward on the assumption that the readers of your application are generally interested in learning about other countries and cultures.  Why does this matter? Well, you can make sure to highlight the part of your life experience that is particular to your culture.  This doesn’t mean that you entire essay has to be about your home country.  At the same time, you should make sure you provide some information about what’s unique to your environment.  After all, your environment has undoubtedly contributed to who you are as a person, so by talking about what’s unique in culture, you’re also talking – at least to a certain point – about what’s unique in your self.

In short, making a place in your essay to explain some important points about your country or culture can make your essay more interesting to read, and also can provide a window into your own personality.

Posts in this Series

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing - 08 Oct
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? - 01 Oct
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays - 29 Sep
4. How To Edit Your Essay - 28 Sep
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake - 17 Sep
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four - 16 Sep
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three (This post)
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two - 14 Sep
9. Know Your Reader, Part One - 13 Sep
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays - 11 Sep
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications - 09 Sep

Let’s continue getting to know the reader of our college admissions essay by asking ourselves what else they are reading, besides our essay.

What else are they reading? Generally, they’re reading more essays.  Boring, right?

An admissions staff member will read hundreds, if not thousands, of applications over a few weeks or months. A few things happen when you read so many things that are in the same format:

1. you become very frustrated with the format.
2. the individual essays begin to blend together in your mind, because, generally speaking, they are very similar to one another.
3. you develop automatic ways of evaluating the essays, in order to save time (i.e., good story about leadership here, okay, that’s a plus; poor sense of career goals here, that’s a minus).

Why does this matter? Can you subtly change the format of the essay? Can you depart from the standard, three paragraph format that everyone else uses? Can you say something unique, something different? If you can do these things, then your essay will make the reader wake up and take notice. The reader will think, “Hey, this is different,” and he or she will be pleased that it is different. However, at the same time, the reader will struggle to fit your work into the standard mechanisms he or she has created for evaluating essays. So if you do say something different and unique you have to be certain that it is something positive, or at least something that will be evaluated positively.

There’s a pretty simple way to do this, actually, and we’ll get back to it in a later post in more detail.  But here’s a quick summary:

DON’T think, “What can I say that is really different and unique?”  If you do this, you’ll write something different just to be different, and the result can sometimes be weird.  Example: Most people will write a safe essay that doesn’t really answer the question.  Well I’m not most people.  And I’m not interested in safety . . . A student might write something like this thinking, “Wow, this is going to be great, it’s so different!”  A reader would probably say, “Wow, what is wrong with this student?”

DO think, “What about me is really different and unique?  And how can I write about that in this essay?”  If you focus on your own unique character, personality, etc., then you’ll end up writing something different that is also something true. And THAT is pure, essay-writing GOLD!  Example:  my views of my role as a woman in society were shaped primarily by my mother.  She was the model, traditional housewife.  She always spoke softly and almost never challenged the decisions of my father.  She would tell me often that the best I should hope for in life was to find a good husband who would take care of me and our children.  In high school when I took a class on leadership, I learned that “modern” women were supposed to act differently.  We were supposed to speak up and challenge others.  We should have grand ambitions and should fight, night and day, to achieve them.  I became almost ashamed of my mom.  But as I have grown older and gained more experience, I have come to realize that my mother was, in her own way, a quiet leader.  And although I do have grand ambitions, and I’m not afraid to challenge others, I have also learned more than a few lessons from my mother – things that make my own approach to leadership quite unique.  Let me tell you what those are . . .

Notice how nothing in this short paragraph is incredibly strange.  Many people have “traditional” mothers.  Many people have taken leadership classes.  Many people struggle to find a balance between “traditional” and “modern” values.  So there’s nothing that screams, I AM SOOOOOOO DIFFERENT AND UNIQUE, LOOK AT ME!!!!  At the same time, it’s clear that the writer is unique.

You want to find something in your life, your personality, or your experience that defines who you are, and then you want to relate that in the clearest, simplest way possible.

Posts in this Series

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing - 08 Oct
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? - 01 Oct
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays - 29 Sep
4. How To Edit Your Essay - 28 Sep
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake - 17 Sep
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four - 16 Sep
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three - 15 Sep
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two (This post)
9. Know Your Reader, Part One - 13 Sep
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays - 11 Sep
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications - 09 Sep

In our last essay-writing post, we heard from an actual admissions officer about good and bad traits of college application essays.  In the next three days, I want to challenge us to spend some more time inside the mind of the people who will be reading your applications.

In general, most of the essay-writing advice on the web is going to focus on you, the writer.  This is important, but we should never forget that what really matters is not how you feel about your essay, but rather what the person reading it feels.  We need to spend more time thinking about our audience.

So what about that reader?  Let’s take some time and think about some key aspects of that reader’s experience of college essays, and see if we can learn anything useful.

Where are people reading your essays? College essays are typically read in an office environment.  There are computers, desks, chairs, phones, etc.  The language of the office is precise, technical, bureaucratic.  Why does this matter? If you write an essay about something outside, something happening in another environment, with language that is active and colorful, you may be able to get your reader to sit up and feel refreshed, or to feel that your essay is something new and different. 

Example: The most challenging moment of my life came on the side of a windy, bare mountainside.  The air was crisp and cool, the sun was bright, and as far as I could see, I was the only living thing.  The problem was, I was lost.  I had become separated from my classmates on a hiking trip, and now, as I looked around me, there was nothing but rocky ridge after rocky ridge, separated by dark, forested valleys.  How would I find my classmates?  What would happen to me if I didn’t?

Do you see how the above immediately takes you out of your environment and makes you imagine yourself standing with the writer on a mountain?  Do you see how the descriptions  – “windy,” “bright,” “crisp”" – contrast with the typical office space?  These contrasts will create pleasure in the mind of most readers.

This doesn’t mean your essay has to be about hiking or nature.  It could be about a busy street, a crowded shopping mall, a loud and noisy classroom – just don’t make it about a quiet, clean office, and the challenges you faced in filing papers.

Tomorrow we’ll speak about what else our audience members are reading.

Posts in this Series

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing - 08 Oct
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? - 01 Oct
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays - 29 Sep
4. How To Edit Your Essay - 28 Sep
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake - 17 Sep
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four - 16 Sep
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three - 15 Sep
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two - 14 Sep
9. Know Your Reader, Part One (This post)
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays - 11 Sep
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications - 09 Sep

A great way to understand what kind of essay you want to write for your university application is to listen to an actual admissions officer discuss how he or she reads application essays. Really, 95% of the advice you read on the internet about how to write application essays is going to be written by people who aren’t actually responsible for reading or evaluating those essays.  We want to encourage you to think more about how your essay will be read than about how it should be written.

So, here’s the assignment:  read, in its entirety, the following webpage, written by an admissions officer.

This kind of information is absolutely priceless.  Here you have someone who has actually read thousands upon thousands of essays describing, in detail, HOW he or she reads and evaluates those essays.  And what does the admissions officer say?  Well, there are at least three important points:

First, technical excellence is NOT the most important aspect of an essay:

Ninety percent of the applications I read contain what I call McEssays – usually five-paragraph essays that consist primarily of abstractions and unsupported generalization. They are technically correct in that they are organized and have the correct sentence structure and spelling, but they are boring.

This is something to keep in mind when you come across a website offering to “edit” your essay for a certain fee.  Sure, those websites can make sure you are using correct grammar and punctuation, but they can’t make your essay any more original or interesting.  And THAT is something that is very important.  It is more important for your essay to demonstrate something unique than it is for your essay to be well-written.  Strange, perhaps, but true.

Second, DO NOT think too much about what a university wants to hear:

Far too many students begin the search of what to write about by asking: What does my college want to hear? The thinking goes something like this: If I can figure out what they are looking for, and if I can make myself look like that, then I’ll improve my chances.

Far too many students begin the essay process by asking, “What will make me sound good?  What will make a university want to accept me?”  The proper question is, “What will accurately portray me as an individual?  What will communicate what is unique about me as a student?”

Third, avoid the temptation to use big words:

students try to impress us with big words. In trying to make a topic sound intellectual, students resort to the thesaurus and, as a result, end up sounding pretentious or at least insecure about using the voice they would use to describe an event to a friend. The student assumes that these “impressive” words intensify the experience for a reader rather than diminish it.

This is not an English test, people.  It is a test of your ability to communicate something meaningful about yourself as a person.  Think about the times in your life when you’ve had a really important, meaningful, emotional discussion with someone.  Did you use a thesaurus in that discussion?  NO!  You used simple, everyday language, because that is the easiest and most effective way to communicate.

What else can you learn from this webpage?  Does it provide you with a new and useful perspective on writing your essay?

Posts in this Series

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing - 08 Oct
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? - 01 Oct
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays - 29 Sep
4. How To Edit Your Essay - 28 Sep
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake - 17 Sep
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four - 16 Sep
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three - 15 Sep
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two - 14 Sep
9. Know Your Reader, Part One - 13 Sep
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays (This post)
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications - 09 Sep

Today we begin a new series entitled, “How to Write an Essay for University Applications.”  The goal of this series is to give you, international students, an idea of the kind of information you want to include in your application essays, and the style you want to use in conveying that information.

This series will not be about how to write.  Many guides on college essays focus on issues of how to write essays in general – how to make an outline, structure your arguments, use the active voice, etc., etc.  We will not be talking about these issues.  Instead, we’ll be talking about broader questions, such as:

• Why do U.S. universities ask you to write an essay in the first place?
• How are your essays read and evaluated?
• What information should you include in your essays?
• Who can you ask to proofread your essays?  What questions should you ask of them?

Now, this isn’t to say that information about essay writing in general isn’t useful.  To the contrary, you should make sure to check out all the information you can about the mechanics of writing an essay.  However, there is so much excellent information on the internet that it would be a waste of time to try to copy it here.  If you want some good sites for this kind of information, try here, here, here and here.  Or just Google “how to write a college admissions essay” and marvel at the results.

We want to provide you with something different, something unique:  a window into the college admissions process, through which you can see the part that essays play in selecting students.  Our hope is that once you understand how admissions officers use essays, you can write a better one yourself.

As always, as the series go on we encourage you to ask questions and make comments.

Tomorrow we’ll get started by asking how an actual admissions officer reads application essays.

Posts in this Series

1. Tell Us About Yourself: Final Advice for Essay Writing - 08 Oct
2. Should You Pay To Have Your Essay Edited? - 01 Oct
3. The Greatest Editing Trick For College Application Essays - 29 Sep
4. How To Edit Your Essay - 28 Sep
5. The "What They Want to Hear" Mistake - 17 Sep
6. Know Your Reader, Part Four - 16 Sep
7. Know Your Reader, Part Three - 15 Sep
8. Know Your Reader, Part Two - 14 Sep
9. Know Your Reader, Part One - 13 Sep
10. Listen to an Admissions Officer Discuss Essays - 11 Sep
11. How to Write an Essay for University Applications (This post)

Hello, most loyal blog readers.  I am back from a trip to the Pacific Northwest (a very, very cool place to live or study) and am re-energized.    I’m ready to fire out a long string of daily blog posts here, so I hope you’re ready for some advice.

A few quick notes:

• You may notice the new, sleek look of the blog.  This is the first part of a general redesign of the website, which will culminate in the official opening of the myUface application this Thursday at 09:00 A.M. Eastern Time.  We are really, really sorry it took so long, but we wanted to make sure we have all the technical capacities in place before we opened it up.  Actually, it’s open right now at www.myuface.com, but there are some kinks that are still being ironed out, so if you use it expect some rough patches.  Official opening this Thursday.
• Over the next three months, this blog will concentrate on the following five topics:  first, questions about how to use the myUface application. Second, advice for writing essays to universities. Third, advice about preparing your application – not only on myUface, but to universities.  Fourth, continued information on US states. And finally, advice about preparing for and taking standardized tests.
• It is that time of year – time to get serious about applying to universities.  We are going to be ready with our online application, and also with TONS of advice.  Our advice will NOT be only about myUface.  It will also be about preparing your applications for individual universities.  Why?  Because our main goal is to get students into U.S. universities. myUface is one powerful tool for students, but we want to help all students, regardless of whether or not they end up using myUface.  So please, visit us often.  Start taking the application process seriously.  Don’t put off for tomorrow what you could do today.  AND ASK US QUESTIONS.

Alright?  It’s time to get working, people! Ready, Set, GO!

One of the criteria most universities will use to evaluate you is “leadership potential.”  A common problem people have – not just international students – is that they think of “leadership” in a very narrow way.  This can hurt you when you’re trying to think about how you might be a leader.  I want to talk today about what it means to be a leader, and hopefully show you how you do have leadership potential, even if you don’t match the “traditional” image of a leader.

And what is that traditional image?  In the popular imagination, leaders generally come up with great ideas and convince other people (followers) to help them implement the idea.  The generally command others.  This image of leadership has led more than one international student to write things like this on their application essays:  “I’m good at being a leader, because I like telling other people what to do and making them understand the right thing.”

That is not what universities see as “leadership potential.” So what can you do to show you are a leader?

The modern study of leadership is a very broad and popular topic.  There are a zillion books published on the subject.  These books have all come to different conclusions, but they all agree that the popular image of a leader – someone in a position of authority who comes up with a great idea and makes others follow – is not, in fact, a good one.

Instead, the trend today is towards a different version of leadership, in which a leader doesn’t come up with a good idea, so much as he or she listens to others and helps them harness their own potential.  The verbs associated with this are not verbs like “command,” “tell,” or “motivate;” they’re more like “collaborate,” “empower,” and “enlist.”   It’s less about imposing your own vision, and more about recognizing the vision of others.

If you’re interested in reading about the evolving theory of leadership, one of the best ways is to visit The Leadership Challenge, a website based on the best-selling book of the same name.

The main thing I want you to take away from this post, however, is this:  if you are asked in an essay or interview to talk about a time when you showed leadership potential,  do not think of a time when you made a group of people do what you want.  Instead, think of a time when you helped a group of people do what they want.  If you do that, you’ll be much closer to the idea of leadership most Americans hold today.

Here at myUface, we continually recommend to international students that they give serious, prolonged thought to their future careers before they apply to U.S. universities.  Doing so will focus your thoughts during the application and essay-writing process, and lead to a better, sharper application – one with a much greater chance of being accepted?

We hear from students quite often, however, that thinking about what they plan to do so early on in their lives is a difficult challenge.  Before introducing today’s blog post, let me first of all say, that’s OK, you can always CHANGE your career plans – but it’s still a good idea to have some!

Beyond that, though, I thought it might be useful to give all of the readers of the blog an insight into where the global economy is headed, as a tool for you to use in thinking about your own careers.

The following is excerpted from Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat, a national bestseller here in the United States that introduces us all to “globalization.”  I would recommend that anyone interested in understanding the global economy today, and the direction in which it’s headed, should buy this book.  For now, I wanted to focus on two sections:  one (today) about the skills that workers of tomorrow are going to need in order to be successful; and the second (tomorrow) on the ability ot the U.S. educational system to impart those skills.

What Skills Do You Need To Survive In A Globalized World?

The way to succeed [in a globalized world is] . . . by upgrading your skills and making the investment in those practices that will enable you . . . to claim your slice of the bigger but more complex pie.

You have to constantly upgrade your skills.  There will be plenty of jobs  . . . for people with the knowledge and the ideas to seize them.

You actually want to become really adaptable.  You want to constantly acquire new skills, knowledge and expertise that enable you constantly to be able to create value . . . . Being adaptable in a flat world, knowing how to “learn hot to learn,” will become one of the most important assets any worker can have . . . because innovation will happen faster.

Atul Vashistha, CEO of NeoIT, a California consulting firm . . . has a good feel for this:  “What you can do and how you can adapt and how you can leverage all the experience and knowledge you have . . . that is the basic component for survival.  When you are changing jobs a lot, and when your environment is changing a lot, being adaptable is the number one thing.  The people who are losing out are those with solid technical skills who have not grown those skills.”

In short, it’s not enough to simply know information or possess skills.  You have to know how to be able to use those skills and apply them to new situations.  You also have to know how to learn new information quickly and efficiently.  The watchwords of the age are:  innovation and adaptability.

And as we’ll see tomorrow, these are precisely the attributes that U.S. universities specialize in cultivating in students.

The podcast for today is about giving yourself enough time to complete you application.

As always, if you would like us to answer your questions in the podcast, send us your questions at podcast@myuface.com.

Other Podcasts

1. Podcast: Asking Questions - 18 Jul
2. Podcast: Give Yourself Time To Complete Your Application (This post)
3. Podcast: What to Do if your Application is not Accepted - 06 Jun
4. Podcast - The View from Albania - 23 May
5. Podcast: University Rankings - 16 May
6. Podcast: Timeline for Applying to a U.S. University - 09 May
7. The Inaugural myUface Podcast - 02 May