What Admissions Officers Actually See

Quickly and with intent.

What is an AO’s job? To fill the incoming class with the best combination of the best applicants. In order to do that, they’re looking for takeaways — positive traits and qualities demonstrated through stories.

Write your essays and activities list in a way that makes that easier for them.

Admissions officers are actively looking for reasons to say yes.

Insight into what makes you you — how you think, why and how you do what you do.

They are looking for reasons to say yes to highly-qualified applicants. They want evidence that makes it easy for them to defend their recommendation of you to the committee.

Think of this as non-romantic speed dating. They want as many reasons to fall in love with you as an applicant.

As the world’s leading expert on you, you are uniquely qualified to give them exactly what they’re looking for in your essays and across your entire application.

The flip side of what they want is what they consistently don’t want.

They’re not scanning for the qualities every applicant claims (hardworking, passionate, leader). Those words land flat — every essay says them. They’re scanning for the specific traits and stories that only you could provide: the particular detail, the unusual angle, the way of seeing the world that no one else applying could write.

If a phrase in your essay could appear in someone else’s, it’s noise. If it could only appear in yours, it’s signal.

Significantly.

The goal of the essays is to positively differentiate yourself from the pool of other highly-qualified applicants. It’s hard to compete on grades — there are lots of straight-A students with about the same number of APs, dual enrollment, and IB credits. You can’t get more than 99th percentile ACT/SAT. You have no control over your letters of recommendation, but those are probably all glowing too.

Once you reach the penultimate pile — the everyone-in-this-group-would-do-well-here pile — the essays and the activities list are your best and perhaps only chance to move the needle.

At the Ivy level, your essays and activities list may be the only things in your application that are actually yours.

It’s redundant. It’s repetitive. And it’s redundant.

Your resume should read like a resume. Your essay should read like a set of narratives that highlight your best traits and qualities — not your biggest accomplishments.

Even if you write about an accomplishment, the how and why you accomplished it is far more interesting to an AO than the accomplishment itself.

Your activity list shouldn’t read like one either.

Voice-type your essay.

You speak far more than you write. Voice typing gets that onto the page — the rhythm, the word choices, the way you actually talk. That’s what you’re going for.

When you edit, say the change out loud before you make it. If you’d never say it that way in conversation, rewrite it or cut it.

Sounding like yourself is the easiest thing to do — when you’re not trying too hard to sound like whoever you think you’re supposed to sound like.

Accomplishments stated in context are just facts.

If you did X, Y, and Z, and you explain why you did them or how you did them, you’re not bragging — you’re reporting. College admissions essays are one of the few socially acceptable places to be slightly immodest. Use that.

Two rules: don’t exaggerate, and don’t tear anyone else down to make yourself look better.

If you want to be sneaky about it, have someone else say it for you. Put it in dialogue. The technique is brilliant — if I do say so myself.