Writing the US College Application Essay For Expats

Students report feeling overwhelmed by the number of essay prompts, the limited word count, and the high stakes of the entire process. As a college essay coach, I help students tackle these and other challenges throughout their application journeys. In the following piece, I’ll describe how I do so after a brief introduction to the most widely used application portal in the US, the Common App.

The Common App and “The College Essay”

The Common App is a non-profit organization to which colleges and universities can choose to belong. Its application portal allows students to apply to multiple colleges by filling out personal data and writing their “college essay” once rather than multiple times. Colleges that belong to the Common App accept one of its seven essay prompts, but not every college in the US belongs to the Common App.

(Notable exceptions include Georgetown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the entire University of California system.)

The Common App usually announces its essay prompts for the upcoming application cycle in February. Therefore, students can get started on their main personal statement – answering one of those seven prompts in a 650-word essay – the summer after their junior year ends. (I don’t recommend starting earlier unless the student’s summer schedule prohibits them from spending about 1-2 hours per week writing their college essay. Most students’ junior years are filled with academics and testing, that their essays usually benefit from the time and space of summer.)

The Common App “refreshes” for the upcoming application cycle on August 1 each year. Usually, colleges wait to post any supplemental essays that they require until that time. Since supplemental essays vary from institution to institution, students should be certain of their college list before writing supplemental essays. If a student can finish their main, 650-word essay by September 1, they can usually manage to write supplemental essays once they return to school in the fall. Many colleges do not require any essay beyond the main, 650-word personal statement.

Most highly selective colleges, however, do mandate supplemental essays, which range in length from 25 characters to 650 words and in number from one to a dozen. Students applying to many highly selective institutions should budget sufficient time for crafting these additional pieces. They may also benefit from selectively choosing supplemental essays “themes” that repeat across the colleges on their list so that they can minimize the number of new essays they need to write.

Choosing the Right Essay Prompt

One of the most common mistakes I see among all students – but especially those attending high schools outside the United States – is writing without attention to a prompt. One student from Brussels showed me a beautiful “think-piece” about a soup kitchen where she volunteered. She wanted to use this as the basis of her college essay, but it was unusable because it told the reader nothing about the writer herself.

Instead of starting with the prompts, I ask students to describe themselves. After reading their list of adjectives and phrases, we narrow them down to a primary and a secondary characteristic. I call this combination the student’s “personal brand.” Only then do we locate the two essay prompts that would best enable them to demonstrate this personal brand in writing.

Limiting the Word Count

Most teachers have little time to spend on teaching the craft of writing, let alone the discipline of editing. When students struggle to keep their pieces within the maximum word count, it’s not because every sentence and word is a precious nugget that tells an essential part of their story. It’s because their writing – like most of our early drafts – contains paragraphs and sentences that are unnecessary or even distract from their overall message.

I ask my own students to write 1000 words for their first drafts because much of it will be cut during our live, one-on-one, Zoom sessions. During these sessions, I teach students the fundamentals of strong personal essay writing so that eventually they’ll be able to write one without me.

De-Escalating the Stakes

At seventeen years old, students often believe that where they attend college will determine their ultimate happiness, success, and worth as a human being. As someone who graduated from Harvard but was often unhappy there as a student, when coaching, I share my own experience to extricate college choice from those other life outcomes. I also emphasize the importance of “right fit” in college choice as a way to ensure future contentment of all kinds.

Why the College Essay DOES Matter

Certainly, there are several utilitarian reasons to write a strong college essay. In this “test-optional” age, a standout essay can make up for quantitative metrics a student chooses to withhold. A killer essay can earn a student tens of thousands of dollars in scholarship money and / or get you accepted to your dream school. It can also help a student become a stronger writer or learn important lessons about time management. Ultimately, however, the process of self-reflection and expression involved in writing a successful college essay can help teens on the precipice of adulthood to make sense of where they’ve been – and where they’re going.

About the Author

Dominique Padurano, M.S., Ed., Ph.D. – aka “Dr. P.” – loves helping students of all ages fulfill their academic and personal goals. President and Founder of Crimson Coaching. Dr. P. herself personally tutors students in History, English, Spanish, French, Math, and study, time management, and organizational skills; prepares them for tests like the SAT and ACT; and coaches them through the college application process. Essays that students have written under Dr. P.’s guidance have earned them admission to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and other top universities, as well as scholarships totaling more than $2 million. Dr. P. is also an adjunct professor of US history at the City University of New York and a published author.