Student’s Need: Write the best possible, close-to-perfect Common-App Essay—one that could make a big difference in acceptance to Ivy League schools, Stanford, MIT, and small liberal arts colleges like Amherst, Williams, Barnard, Wesleyan, etc.
Diagnosis:
The student was applying Early Decision to an Ivy and wanted to knock the essay out of the ballpark.
I sometimes veto a student’s first or second draft, and suggest a 2 or 3 completely new topics. At the most competitive schools, where 15,000 to 20,000 applicants compete yearly for only 1500 to 2000 spots, the best applicants appear almost identical in terms of quantitative measures: the same top-notch grades, similar leadership positions, similar number of AP classes taken, similar SAT / ACT scores, and a beautiful, well written essay can tilt the decision from “maybe” to “admit.” The best essays personalize and humanize the applicant; are risky in the best sense of the word; are emotionally honest; are unafraid of showing the applicant's heart and soul; and, most important, make the student stand out from the rest of the other 20,000 applicants. I always suggest revisions that add texture, imagery, and poignancy to the piece.
In this particular case, because the student was also a top-notch athlete, I encouraged the student to be brave enough to pick a topic that showed off his sensitive and philosophical sides as well as his creative-writing skills.
The student had a solid first draft, but it was not personal enough. The best essays “show,” with personal examples, what the writer means to convey; the best essays do not simply “tell" the reader what to think. The essay also exceeded the 650-word limit by 156 words, so the final draft had to be 25% shorter than the first draft.
Obviously this type of edit requires more time and effort. The student had to write 5 or 6 different drafts. (In general, after the student emails a draft to me, I email back suggestions to the student, until the final draft is done. We often meet over Skype or FaceTime.)
Job Details:
5 hours total. ($400/hour x 5) = $2000
(Billing: I will bill the parent for my time, in increments of 15 minutes. Note: students should allow a reasonable turnover time for edits (5 to 7 days). It’s impossible for me to edit with short notice, since I have many essays to edit, in addition to my regular tutoring schedule.)
FIRST VERSION: 806 WORDS
”Chasing my Unicorn”
When people think of their greatest attribute in life I can almost guarantee that they don’t expect it to be their greatest downfall as well. Trust me, I didn’t either. But the truth of the matter is that such a paradox in actuality is my life in a nutshell.
I can still hear the words of my mother ” Nobody’s perfect Joe”, echoing in the back of my head. It was her own personal mantra to me as a young child every night before I went to sleep because even then, through my playground encounters, desire to read and among other things I faced on an everyday basis, she had seen that I struggled with accepting the truth behind my human imperfection. When I remember my consistent response to her, chills come down my spine. “Well I guess I will be the first.”, I would smugly reply. I now think to myself, if you only knew kid.
I have always had the tendency to set the bar so high that I needed a plane to reach it. While you might be thinking to yourself what’s wrong with that, the truth is that under normal restraints and balance there is nothing wrong with such a practice. In fact it is praiseworthy. But in my case, I let it consume my life. Whether it was in the classroom, on the sports field or just hanging out with friends, anything less than perfect just simply would not do. From my perspective, if I told a story to a friend, I should have told it better with more emotion. Or if I scored 3 goals in a game, I should have scored 4. And God forbid anytime I got less than 100% on a test. For me if you weren’t perfect or you didn’t win, then no matter how you looked at it you failed. To put things into perspective I considered second place the first place of the losers. I sometimes still do. But that’s neither here nor there).
After graduating middle school, devastated that I was “only” the Salutatorian, I decided that high school would just have to be an even stronger push for perfection and indeed that’s what it was. In the classroom and on the wrestling mat I felt I had to prove something. I still question if I was trying to prove it to myself, those I loved or just the world in general. Either way I lived my high school career with the misconception that I had to be perfect if I wanted to go to an amazing school, have many friends and find a beautiful girlfriend or simply just be happy. I tricked myself into believing that I would not be happy unless I was perfect. What’s ironic is that in my strive for perfection, I actually limited myself of the happiness I sought.
When I sit back and think of all of the work I did just to be perfect because I thought that was the only way I would be happy, I have to fight away tears. It's amazing how ignorant and superficial a person can be. As my younger self so boorishly prophesied I spent my entire 17 years chasing something that doesn’t exist. I could have just as well been chasing a unicorn. I think Spanish painter, Salvador Dali said it best ““Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.” If only I had known of this guy 17 years ago!
I don’t want you to think that I regret all of the work and effort that I put in. What I regret is that I didn’t allow myself to enjoy the ride because I always thought I could be better. It cost me friends, relationships and ultimately my happiness.
To this day I still am chasing perfection. I think a part of me always will be. The difference is that I no longer let it dictate my life. I now know that one of my greatest flaws was that I have spent my entire life making decisions to be perfect, basing them on what college I would get into. It’s almost comical that now that the time has finally come to apply I realize that that doesn’t really define me as a person. I can’t tell you exactly what it was, but for some reason the words of my mother finally reached home this summer when I started my application. Maybe it was something I ate the night before but whatever it was it stood firm. While I still dream of the image of myself opening an acceptance letter from (insert college name), while whispering to myself “You did it Joe”, I understand that the answer on the paper whether it is an acceptance or a decline does not define my life.
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Final Version: 647 Words
"Wax Wings"
When people are asked to identify their best character trait, most would never name something that also happens to be their biggest flaw. Such a paradox, however, defined my identity for much of my life.
When I was a child, my mother sometimes tucked me into bed not with “I love you” but with “I love you no matter what. Nobody’s perfect!” She had seen me overexert myself on the playground and crumple page after page of my coloring book, simply because I was dissatisfied with my work. Despite her loving advice, I refused to accept the truth of my human imperfection. If I scored three goals in a game, I asked myself, “Why not four?” If I told friends a joke, afterward I’d think, “I should have shown more emotion.” I was disappointed to graduate “only” salutatorian of my middle school. Once, to prepare for the state wrestling tournament, I tried so hard to lower my weight that I fainted. When I recovered, I felt a perverse pride; I considered my fainting as testament to my dedication and strength. Pain is weakness leaving the body, I wrote on my bedroom wall.
Of course, there are advantages to setting high standards for yourself. Like the Greek character Icarus, I have strived to soar to new athletic, interpersonal, and intellectual heights; my striving shaped me into a varsity athlete and an avid reader, passionate about other cultures and new ways of thinking. And I like to think that I have made my parents proud, a goal that has always been important to me because my parents have worked extra hours so that they can send me to the best schools in my neighborhood, schools they couldn’t afford to attend.
I aimed for perfection because I naively thought that I needed to be perfect in order to make friends, find an amazing girlfriend, or secure a bright future. Worse, I thought perfection was the only path to happiness. Recently, however, I’ve recognized the disadvantages of my quest for perfection, that doomed flight toward the sun with wax wings on my back. How many months or years—how much emotional peace—have I lost? There have been countless occasions when, instead of socializing, I stayed home to study late into the night and often until dawn.
Fortunately, I now recognize all that I’ve lost, and I’ve made changes to improve my wellbeing. There is one loss, however, that hurts the most and that the future can’t salvage.
Every time I see the sun rising, I think of him.
He had spent countless hours teaching me about fractions, car engines, batting averages, and, most important, how to be respectful and compassionate. For the two years when my grandfather battled cancer, my parents repeatedly ordered me to visit him more often. I managed to see him at least once a week. But I know that I should have visited more often. I was only a boy then, naive and hyper-focused on grades. And then it happened so fast: his deterioration. In just a few months, he lost fifty pounds and then quietly passed away.
Since his death, I’ve been berating myself for not visiting him more often. I have had imaginary conversations with him, in which I’ve explained that my motives were good, that by studying so much I was trying to make him proud of me. Part of me will always live with a certain amount of guilt.
The past few months, however, I’ve had a recurring dream. In this dream, I am flying, gaining height, soaring toward someplace even higher than the sun. When I arrive, my grandfather comes out to greet me, with white wings on his back. “Joe,” he says, “nobody's perfect. I know that you love me. I know you’re a good man. I forgive you. Maybe now you can start forgiving yourself.