Oversharing in College Essays

Oversharing in College Essays June 17 As an article in The New York Times points out, dont overshare in your college essays. Dont write about your love life. And dont write about your drug use. Oy! Theres an article in The New York Times entitled Naked Confessions of the College-Bound written by Frank Bruni that we figured wed bring to the attention of our loyal readers. In the piece, Bruni writes about how college applicants these days are more likely than ever to write completely inappropriate things in their college admissions essays in the desperate hope of standing out. If youre a regular reader of our college admissions blog, you know that we help our students stand out from the pack in the highly selective college admissions process and we offer advice on our blog on how to do just that (although we never give away our best tips as that is reserved for clients). But standing out for the sole sake of standing out is not the way to go. Writing about urinating in your pants  while speaking to a teacher to demonstrate that you are fully committed to learning more so than taking care of your bodily needsthis isnt appropriate for a college admissions essay. Neither is writing about your dating life. The fact that Robbie is really hot and has big pecs, a sick six-pack, and biceps to die for that will lead to automatic rejection. Irrespective of your perfect grades and perfect scores. Admissions officers at highly selective colleges just dont care about Robbies pectoral muscles. Hate to break it to you. And how about writing about that time that you smoked marijuana for the first time and realized it wasnt for you? No! You cant be serious. Writing about doing illegal things is a really bad idea.  And yet as logical as this seems to us, every now and then we read an essay about a student doing something illegal. These essays are typically framed with the cliche point of how the student learned from his or her mistakes. Hey, we all learn from our mistakes in life. Making mistakes is a huge part of life. But that doesnt mean you should be writing about these particular kinds of mistakes in your college admissions essays. As Nancy Reagan would say, Just Say No. Oh, and for you rising high school seniors, now is the time to be writing your college essays. And were here to help. So fill out our free consultation  form to get started.