College Admssion Essays: Final Answers - The Last Word on Format

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When a student in my senior English class applied to college some time ago, he faced a major problem. Tim had the grades, the scores, the extracurriculars, and the essays needed to make a good case for admission to the schools he favored. What he didn’t have was a typewriter. His house had joined the computer age before Tim turned five, and the family’s last typewriter hit the scrap heap when Tim started middle school. Furthermore, his handwriting ability, never great, had deteriorated over the years because he was much more comfortable with a keyboard than with a pen. Yet suddenly, paper forms arrived in the mail! After a major search, Tim and I finally located a nearly antique typewriter at my school, and this college applicant was introduced to non-computerized “word processing.”

If he were applying now — as you are — he’d have more options, including separate sheets of paper (for computer word-processed essays) and online forms. But, depending upon the institution, he might still have to scare up a typewriter or (gasp) a fountain pen. In this chapter I explain how to deal with all the situations you may face in getting the essay from your brain to the admissions committee’s hands. I tell you what to do when your word count is too high or too low and give you the lowdown on margins, fonts, and online submissions.

Reading the Directions

The average college application resembles a small book, and many graduate and professional school applications have nearly as many pages as the Income Tax code and just as much fine print. You may be tempted, in the pressure of application season, to skip the directions and rely on your common sense when it comes time to fill out the form. Resist the temptation! You need to follow their rules, and you won’t be able to do so unless you know exactly what those rules are. True, most of the time your common sense will lead you to the correct format, and most of the time the institution receiving your application won’t mind a minor lapse here and there. But why take a chance?

Read everything — and I do mean everything — before you fill out the application and while you still have time for emergencies, such as one more essay. I’m not kidding. In preparation for this book, I read hundreds of college and graduate school applications. About one in ten had an obscure statement (one tucked into the corner of the inner cover of the viewbook!) saying something like “All applicants for admission who wish to be considered for financial aid must submit an essay on. . . .” Imagine discovering that little fact two hours before the form is due or, worse yet, two weeks after you sent in what you thought was a complete application.

Some of the application fine print tells you how to answer the factual queries:

Has anyone in your family attended Woebegone University? To answer this question, list names, relationships, dates of graduation, and likelihood that said relatives will donate large sums of money to the Annual Fund for Admissions Office salaries.

Just kidding about the last part. Also in the instructions are directions for the submission of your essays. Depending on the college, you may be told any of the following: