We Love a Good Story: Harnessing the Power of Narrative in Your College Essay
By Path Mentor A.J., a graduate of Williams College majored in Literary Studies (Originally Posted on September 23, 2019)
Human beings are storytellers. Look around and you’ll see stories everywhere. Game of Thrones? A story. Call of Duty? A story. That huge billboard you drive by every day? The conversations you have with your friends? The warnings you tell your children? Stories. We make sense of the world and our own lives through narrative. Every experience that we have as human beings becomes integrated into our personal stories. The ones that we remember well, or that led to something significant, become part of our life story.
So, what makes a story a story? First, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has a main character, that main character has an objective, and there are obstacles in the way. Let’s use the journey to college as an example, with you - the student - as the main character. You were born and grew up (beginning) always dreaming that you would go to college (objective). Now (middle), you have to write a killer essay to get into the school of your dreams, but the essay is hard to write and you’re worried it won’t be good enough (obstacle). The end of your story hasn’t been written - will you overcome the obstacles and get into the college of your dreams? Will you shoot for the moon and land among the stars at a different college? We don’t yet have an ending for this story, but we can see the direction it is taking us.
When writing your college essay, keep the idea of a narrative in mind. You’re the main character - the protagonist we are rooting for. Your essay doesn’t have to start at birth and end at 18 - it can be the story of a week or even of a single day in your life. It should have a beginning, a middle, and some kind of ending, even if that ending is implied. It should have a clear objective and a clear obstacle. And - here’s the secret sauce - the most important part of the story is how you overcame the obstacle, what you learned in the process, and what kind of person you are because of it.
So as you consider topics for your essay, figure out how you will build a story around the moment that you choose. How did it change you, how did it challenge you, and what do you know about yourself - the main character - that you didn’t know when the story began?
