best metaphor college essays

College Nut

College Essays with Metaphors: A Guide to Crafting Powerful Personal Statements

What are college essays.

College essays are a crucial part of the application process, which can be the deciding factor in determining whether you get into your dream school. They are an opportunity for you to showcase your writing skills, creativity, and personality, all while convincing admissions officers that you are a good fit for their institution.

Why are Metaphors Important in College Essays?

Metaphors are a type of figure of speech that compares two things that may seem unrelated, but share common characteristics or traits. They add depth and meaning to your writing and allow you to express abstract or complex ideas in a more relatable and engaging way.

Using metaphors in your college essays can help you stand out from other applicants, as they demonstrate your ability to think critically, use language creatively, and connect seemingly disparate ideas. They can also make your essay more memorable and impactful, as they provide a unique perspective and show your personality and values.

An Example of a Metaphor in a College Essay

Imagine you are writing an essay about your passion for environmental activism. You could write: “I’ve always been drawn to the ocean like a moth to a flame. Its vastness and mystery have always fascinated me, but with every beach cleanup and marine life rescue, I feel like I’m slowly putting out the fire that threatens to consume it.” This metaphor compares the ocean to a flame and implies that the author is working to protect it from destruction.

How to Use Metaphors in College Essays

Using metaphors effectively in your college essays requires careful thought and planning. Here are some tips to help you incorporate metaphors into your writing:

Start with a brainstorming session: Think about the qualities, experiences, and emotions that define you and your story. Consider different objects or concepts that could represent these ideas, such as a rollercoaster, a puzzle, or a tree.

Choose a metaphor that fits your story: Once you have a list of potential metaphors, choose one that best represents your story and message. Make sure it is appropriate to the tone and topic of your essay.

Use the metaphor throughout your essay: Once you have chosen a metaphor, use it consistently throughout your essay to reinforce your message and create a cohesive narrative.

Don’t force it: While metaphors can be powerful tools, don’t force them into your essay if they don’t fit naturally. Use them sparingly and only where they add value to your writing.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using Metaphors in College Essays

While metaphors can add depth and meaning to your writing, they can also backfire if not used correctly. Here are some common mistakes to avoid when using metaphors in your college essays:

Overusing clichés: While some metaphors are universally understood, using clichéd or overused metaphors can make your writing seem unoriginal and uninspired.

Being too abstract: While metaphors can be used to express abstract ideas, if they are too obscure or disconnected from your message, they can confuse readers and detract from your point.

Stretching the metaphor too far: While it’s important to use metaphors consistently throughout your essay, stretching them too far or using them inappropriately can undermine your credibility and make your writing seem contrived.

In conclusion, metaphors are powerful tools that can help you express complex ideas and create a more engaging and memorable college essay. By following the tips outlined above and avoiding common mistakes, you can use metaphors to showcase your unique perspective and stand out from other applicants.

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Last updated on Feb 11, 2022

90+ Must-Know Metaphor Examples to Improve Your Prose

What figure of speech is so meta that it forms the very basis of riddles? The answer: a metaphor.

As Milan Kundera wrote in The Unbearable Lightness of Being : “Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.” Yet, paradoxically, they are an inescapable part of our daily lives — which is why it’s all the more important to understand exactly how they function.

To help, this article has a list of 97 metaphor examples to show you what they look like in the wild. But if you have a moment to spare, let's learn a bit more about what a metaphor is.

What is a metaphor?

A metaphor is a literary device that imaginatively draws a comparison between two unlike things. It does this by stating that Thing A is Thing B. Through this method of equation, metaphors can help explain concepts and ideas by colorfully linking the unknown to the known; the abstract to the concrete; the incomprehensible to the comprehensible. It can also be a rhetorical device that specifically appeals to our sensibilities as readers.

To give you a starting point, here are some examples of common metaphors:

• “Bill is an early bird.”
• “Life is a highway.”
• “Her eyes were diamonds.”

Note that metaphors are always non-literal. As much as you might like to greet your significant other with a warhammer in hand (“love is a battlefield”) or bring 50 tanks of gasoline every time you go on a date (“love is a journey”), that’s not likely to happen in reality. Another spoiler alert: no, Katy Perry doesn't literally think that you're a firework. Rather, these are all instances of metaphors in action.

How does a metaphor differ from a simile?

Simile and metaphor are both figures of speech that draw resemblances between two things. However, the devil’s in the details. Unlike metaphors, similes use like and as to directly create the comparison. “Life is like a box of chocolates,” for instance, is a simile. But if you say, “Life is a highway,” you’re putting a metaphor in motion.

The best way to understand how a metaphor can be used is to see it in practice — luckily, we’ve got a bucket-load of metaphor examples handy for you to peruse.

The Ultimate List of 90+ Metaphor Examples

Metaphors penetrate the entire spectrum of our existence — so we turned to many mediums to dig them up, from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the Backstreet Boys’ ancient discography. Feel free to skip to your section of interest below for metaphor examples.

Literature Poetry Daily Expressions Songs Films Famous Quotations

Metaphors in literature are drops of water: as essential as they are ubiquitous. Writers use literary metaphors to evoke an emotional response or paint a vivid picture. Other times, a metaphor might explain a phenomenon. Given the amount of nuance that goes into it, a metaphor example in a text can sometimes deserve as much interpretation as the text itself.

Metaphors can make prose more muscular or imagery more vivid:

1. “Exhaustion is a thin blanket tattered with bullet holes.” ― If Then , Matthew De Abaitua

2. “But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.” ― Rabbit, Run , John Updike

3. “The sun in the west was a drop of burning gold that slid near and nearer the sill of the world.” — Lord of the Flies , William Golding

4. “Bobby Holloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus. Currently I was in ring two hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants dancing and clowns cart wheeling and tigers leaping through rings of fire. The time had come to step back, leave the main tent, go buy some popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down.” — Seize the Night ,   Dean Koontz

Writers frequently turn to metaphors to describe people in unexpected ways:

5. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!” — Romeo & Juliet , William Shakespeare

6. “Who had they been, all these mothers and sisters and wives? What were they now? Moons, blank and faceless, gleaming with borrowed light, each spinning loyally around a bigger sphere.  ‘Invisible,’ said Faith under her breath. Women and girls were so often unseen, forgotten, afterthoughts. Faith herself had used it to good effect, hiding in plain sight and living a double life. But she had been blinded by exactly the same invisibility-of-the-mind, and was only just realizing it.” ― The Lie Tree , Frances Hardinge

7. “’I am a shark, Cassie,’ he says slowly, drawing the words out, as if he might be speaking to me for the last time. Looking into my eyes with tears in his, as if he's seeing me for the last time. "A shark who dreamed he was a man.’” ― The Last Star , Rick Yancey

8. “Her mouth was a fountain of delight.” — The Storm , Kate Chopin

9. “The parents looked upon Matilda in particular as nothing more than a scab. A scab is something you have to put up with until the time comes when you can pick it off and flick it away.” — Matilda , Roald Dahl

10. “Mr. Neck storms into class, a bull chasing thirty-three red flags." — Speak , Laurie Anderson

11. “’Well, you keep away from her, cause she’s a rattrap if I ever seen one.’” — Of Mice and Men , John Steinbeck

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Metaphors can help “visualize” a situation or put an event in context:

12. “But now, O Lord, You are our Father, We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand.” —Isaiah 64:8

13. “He could hear Beatty's voice. ‘Sit down, Montag. Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh? Light the third page from the second and so on, chainsmoking, chapter by chapter, all the silly things the words mean, all the false promises, all the second-hand notions and time-worn philosophies.’” — Fahrenheit 451 , Ray Bradbury

To entertain and tickle the brain, metaphor examples sometimes compare two extremely unlike things:

14. “Delia was an overbearing cake with condescending frosting, and frankly, I was on a diet.” ― Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception , Maggie Stiefvater

15. "The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed: It was past eight thirty and still light.” — Fault in Our Stars , John Green

16. “If wits were pins, the man would be a veritable hedgehog.” ― Fly by Night , Frances Hardinge

17. “What's this?" he inquired, none too pleasantly. "A circus?" "No, Julius. It's the end of the circus." "I see. And these are the clowns?" Foaly's head poked through the doorway. "Pardon me for interrupting your extended circus metaphor, but what the hell is that?” ― Artemis Fowl , Eoin Colfer

18. “Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was the same as putting a red flag to a bu — the same as putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.” ― Lords and Ladies , Terry Pratchett

Metaphors can help frame abstract concepts in ways that readers can easily grasp:

19. “My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.” — Fault In Our Stars , John Green

20. “If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me.” — Macbeth , William Shakespeare

21. “Memories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces.” ― Kill the Dead , Richard Kadrey

22. “Wishes are thorns, he told himself sharply. They do us no good, just stick into our skin and hurt us.” ― A Face Like Glass , Frances Hardinge

23. “’Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.” ― A Room with a View , E.M. Forster

24. “There was an invisible necklace of nows, stretching out in front of her along the crazy, twisting road, each bead a golden second.” ― Cuckoo Song , Frances Hardinge

25. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” — As You Like It , William Shakespeare

Particularly prominent in the realm of poetry is the extended metaphor: a single metaphor that extends throughout all or part of a piece of work . Also known as a conceit , it is used by poets to develop an idea or concept in great detail over the length of a poem. (And we have some metaphor examples for you below.)

If you’d like to get a sense of the indispensable role that metaphors play in poetry, look no further than what Robert Frost once said: “They are having night schools now, you know, for college graduates. Why? Because they don’t know when they are being fooled by a metaphor. Education by poetry is education by metaphor.”

Poets use metaphors directly in the text to explain emotions and opinions:

26. She must make him happy. She must be his favorite place in Minneapolis. You are a souvenir shop, where he goes to remember how much people miss him when he is gone. —“ Unrequited Love Poem ,” Sierra DeMulder

27. She is all states, and all princes, I. Nothing else is. Princes do but play us; compared to this, All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy. —“ The Sun Rising ,” John Donne

28. I watched a girl in a sundress kiss another girl on a park bench, and just as the sunlight spilled perfectly onto both of their hair, I thought to myself: How bravely beautiful it is, that sometimes, the sea wants the city, even when it has been told its entire life it was meant for the shore. —“I Watched A Girl In A Sundress,” Christopher Poindexter

Extended metaphors in particular explore and advance major themes in poems:

29. All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. Thinking is always the stumbling stone to poetry. A great singer is he who sings our silences. How can you sing if your mouth be filled with food? How shall your hand be raised in blessing if it is filled with gold? They say the nightingale pierces his bosom with a thorn when he sings his love song. —“ Sand and Foam ,” Khalil Gibran

30. But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage / Can seldom see through his bars of rage / His wings are clipped and his feet are tied So he opens his throat to sing. —“ Caged Bird ,” Maya Angelou

31. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference. —“ The Road Not Taken ,” Robert Frost

32. Marriage is not a house or even a tent it is before that, and colder: the edge of the forest, the edge of the desert the edge of the receding glacier where painfully and with wonder at having survived even this far we are learning to make fire —“ Habitation ,” Margaret Atwood

33. These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis. They grew their toes and fingers well enough, Their little foreheads bulged with concentration. If they missed out on walking about like people It wasn't for any lack of mother-love. —“ Stillborn ,” Sylvia Plath

34. Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul / And sings the tune without the words / And never stops at all. —“ Hope Is The Thing With Feathers ,” Emily Dickinson

Daily Expressions

Here’s some food for thought (35): you’ve probably already used a metaphor (or more) in your daily speech today without even realizing it. Metaphorical expressions pepper the English language by helping us illustrate and pinpoint exactly what we want to say. As a result, metaphors are everywhere in our common vocabulary: you may even be drowning in a sea (36) of them as we speak. But let’s cut to our list of metaphor examples before we jump the shark (37).

38. Love is a battlefield.

39. You’ve given me something to chew on.

40. He’s just blowing off steam.

41. That is music to my ears.

42. Love is a fine wine.

43. She’s a thorn in my side.

44. You are the light in my life.

45. He has the heart of a lion.

46. Am I talking to a brick wall?

47. He has ants in his pants.

48. Beauty is a fading flower.

49. She has a heart of stone.

50. Fear is a beast that feeds on attention.

51. Life is a journey.

52. He’s a late bloomer.

53. He is a lame duck now.

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Metaphors are a must-have tool in every lyricist’s toolkit. From Elvis to Beyonce, songwriters use them to instinctively connect listeners to imagery and paint a visual for them. Most of the time, they find new ways to describe people, love — and, of course, break-ups. So if you’re thinking, “This is so sad Alexa play Titanium,” right now, you’re in the right place: here’s a look at some metaphor examples in songs.

54. You ain't nothin' but a hound dog / Cryin' all the time —“Hound Dog,” Elvis Presley

55. You're a fallen star / You're the getaway car / You're the line in the sand / When I go too far / You're the swimming pool / On an August day / And you're the perfect thing to say — “Everything,” Michael Buble

56. 'Cause baby you're a firework / Come on show 'em what your worth / Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh!" / As you shoot across the sky-y-y — “Firework,” Katy Perry

57. I'm bulletproof nothing to lose / Fire away, fire away / Ricochet, you take your aim / Fire away, fire away / You shoot me down but I won't fall, I am titanium —“Titanium,” David Guetta

58. Life is a highway / I wanna ride it all night long / If you're going my way / I wanna drive it all night long —“Life Is A Highway,” Rascal Flatts

59. She's a Saturn with a sunroof / With her brown hair a-blowing / She's a soft place to land / And a good feeling knowing / She's a warm conversation —“She’s Everything,” Brad Paisley

60. I'm a marquise diamond / Could even make that Tiffany jealous / You say I give it to you hard / So bad, so bad / Make you never wanna leave / I won't, I won't —“Good For You,’ Selena Gomez

61. Remember those walls I built / Well, baby, they're tumbling down / And they didn't even put up a fight / They didn't even make a sound —“Halo,” Beyonce

62. Did I ever tell you you're my hero? / You're everything, everything I wish I could be / Oh, and I, I could fly higher than an eagle / For you are the wind beneath my wings / 'Cause you are the wind beneath my wings —“Wind Beneath My Wings,” Bette Midler

63. You are my fire / The one desire / Believe when I say I want it that way —“I Want It That Way,” Backstreet Boys

64. Your body is a wonderland / Your body is a wonder (I'll use my hands) / Your body is a wonderland —“Your Body Is A Wonderland,” John Mayer

65. I'm walking on sunshine (Wow!) / I'm walking on sunshine (Wow!) / I'm walking on sunshine (Wow!) / And don't it feel good —“I’m Walking On Sunshine,” Katrina and the Waves

66. If you wanna be with me / Baby there's a price to pay / I'm a genie in a bottle / You gotta rub me the right way —“Genie in a Bottle,” Christina Aguilera

67. If God is a DJ, life is a dance floor / Love is the rhythm, you are the music / If God is a DJ, life is a dance floor / You get what you're given it's all how you use it —“God Is A DJ,” P!nk

68. If this town / Is just an apple / Then let me take a bite —“Human Nature,” Michael Jackson

69. I just wanna be part of your symphony / Will you hold me tight and not let go? —“Symphony,” Clean Bandit

70. My heart's a stereo / It beats for you, so listen close / Hear my thoughts in every note —“Stereo Hearts,” Gym Class Heroes

71. I'm the sunshine in your hair / I'm the shadow on the ground / I'm the whisper in the wind / I'm your imaginary friend —“I’m Already There,” Lonestar

Films can add a different angle to the concept of a metaphor: because it’s a visual medium, certain objects on-screen will actually represent whatever the filmmaker intends it to represent. The same principle applies, of course — there’s still a direct comparison being made. It’s just that we can see the metaphor examples with our own eyes now.

Films can visually make clear comparisons between two elements on the screen:

72. “What beautiful blossoms we have this year. But look, this one’s late. I’ll bet that when it blooms it will be the most beautiful of all.” —from  Mulan

73. “Love is an open door Can I say something crazy? Will you marry me? Can I say something even crazier? Yes!” —from  Frozen

Metaphors are used in dialogue for characters to express themselves:

74. “You're television incarnate, Diana. Indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy.” — Network

75. “Life's a climb. But the view is great.” — Hannah Montana: the Movie

Famous Quotations

Did you know that Plato was using metaphors to express his thoughts all the way back in 427 BC? Since then, some of our greatest minds have continued to turn to metaphors when illuminating ideas in front of the general public — a practice that’s become particularly prominent in political speeches and pithy witticisms. Here’s a sample of some of the ways that famous quotes have incorporated metaphor examples in the past.

76. “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.” —Albert Einstein

77. “A good conscience is a continual Christmas.” —Benjamin Franklin

78. “America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.” —John F. Kennedy

79. “I don't approve of political jokes; I have seen too many of them get elected.” —Jon Stewart

80. “Conscience is a man’s compass.” —Vincent Van Gogh

81. “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” —Albert Camus

82. “Time is the moving image of eternity.” ―Plato

83. “Every human is a school subject. This is rather a metaphorical way of saying it, to put it straight, those you love are few, and the ones you detest are many.” ―Michael Bassey Johnson

84. “Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.” —Will Rogers

85. “Life is little more than a loan shark: it exacts a very high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes.” —Luigi Pirandello

86. “America: in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words.  With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come.” —Barack Obama

87. “Bolshevism is a ghoul descending from a pile of skulls. It is not a policy; it is a disease. It is not a creed; it is a pestilence.” —Winston Churchill

88. “Books are mirrors of the soul.” —Virginia Woolf

89. “My life has a superb cast, but I can't figure out the plot.” —Ashleigh Brilliant

90. “I feel like we’re all in a super shitty Escape Room with really obvious clues like, ‘vote’ and ‘believe women’ and ‘don’t put children in cages.’” — Natasha Rothwell

91. “I travel the world, and I'm happy to say that America is still the great melting pot — maybe a chunky stew rather than a melting pot at this point, but you know what I mean.” —Philip Glass

92. “Life is a long road on a short journey.” —James Lendall Basford

93. “What therefore is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human relations which become poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage seem to a nation fixed, canonic and binding.” —Nietzsche

94. “Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.” —Christopher Morley

95. “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” —Emily Dickinson

96. “And your very flesh shall be a great poem.” —Walt Whitman

And as a bonus gift, here’s one last metaphor for the road, from one of our brightest philosophers. We’ll let Calvin have the last word:

Did we miss any of your favorite metaphors? Have more metaphor examples for us? Leave them in the (non-metaphorical) box below and we'll add them right in.

6 responses

James Hubbs says:

21/10/2018 – 23:44

Very useful article. Thank you. However, Fahrenheit 451 was written by Ray Bradbury, not George Orwell.

↪️ Reedsy replied:

22/10/2018 – 00:42

Great spot, James! That's now been fixed. Glad that the article was useful :)

Jonboy says:

21/05/2019 – 19:11

That Sylvia Plath quote nailed me. Ouch! Haven't read it but have to now...

21/06/2019 – 17:02

Another metaphor I love is “I’m just like them— an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies.” It’s from Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

DAVID COWART says:

18/11/2019 – 01:59

life is a highway is Tom Cochrane, not Rascal Flats

↪️ Martin Cavannagh replied:

22/11/2019 – 12:54

Rascal Flatts did a cover of the song. We were deciding between the two and decided that "Rascal Flatts" sounded funnier :D

Comments are currently closed.

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Strong Personal Statements, Part 3: Extended Metaphors Add Cohesion

• August 22, 2018

We’re sharing exceptional personal statements from last year’s applicants to illustrate that a good personal statement can be on a variety of topics, but ultimately, showcases the student’s character, curiosity, and voice. These statements, written by students now enrolled at Emory University, were selected for a multitude of reasons, and we asked our admission staff to share what made each statement stand out.

This is one of a 5-part series on application writing; read  Part 1 here ,  Part 2 here , Part 4 here , and Part 5 here .

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

“It’ll die.”

“No it won’t, I’ll be careful, I promise!”

“Let it go, Chul-Soo”

“But mom !”

Twelve years ago, my dad’s studies moved my family across the Pacific to a small university in the quiet New Jersey suburbs. That first night, my parents and I were exploring the campus grounds when I spotted lights sleepily blinking amidst the trees like stars. These stars I could run through, reach out and touch, gaze at up close, they were fireflies. Growing up in the hustle and bustle of the largest city in Korea, I’d never seen these luminous creatures before. Their beauty sparked curiosity and wonder in my five-year old imagination. One drifted near, and I tiptoed towards it, heart beating a little faster with giddy excitement. “Gotcha!” I breathlessly watched my cupped hands flicker. “Mom! Can I keep it?”

“Sorry honey, you can’t.”

“Please?”

I was devastated to let the lightning bug go. It had been my first companion in America, where everything and everyone was unknown to me. I’d wanted so badly for it to stay…

I hold a lightning bug in my palms again for the first time in a long while. A high school senior now, I understand the firefly’s chemical secret: bioluminescence. And yet I find the same old captivation with its beauty, its way of whispering “let there be light” into the darkness. I now comprehend why my mother had insisted I let the firefly go – to preserve its fragile beauty. To protect its gift of light, not in an empty plastic water bottle where I alone could sit entranced by it, but rather somewhere it was free to inspire the rest of the world.

I see myself in this small glowing beetle – so miniscule in a large world yet still striving to find my own light. But rather than a self-made product of reactions between oxygen, adenosine triphosphate and luciferin, my lights come from the people in my life.

I stare at a blank canvas during the entire 40 minutes of class. I’m afraid…of paint. Afraid to mess up. In moments of doubt, my high school art teacher provided me with more than instruction. She asked me questions about the things in my life that made me distinctive: how was my sports team doing? What goals did I have for the future? She reminded me that my work gained meaning not only by way of craft and composition but each weight of line and shade of color that spoke true to my individuality, my own unique light.

My fingers stiffly play through the Beethoven piano sonata once, twice… after the fifth time, I stop. I have completed my finger exercises. While I was merely reading notes, my piano teacher gently swayed my body, demonstrating how to lean into stormy moments of appassionato and recline back in delicate moments of espressivo. She gave my emotions a voice, one that transcended notes and allowed my light to illuminate the entire stage.

A long day of shy class introductions as the new kid. The phone rings- a familiar name from my old area code. Though the amount of time I spent with some were short and the distance between us now great, the friends I made in New Jersey, in Michigan, and finally in Ohio opened my eyes to the light we all have in common. I still smile at their homecoming social media posts, laugh over the phone at the new drama updates, and cry with them at their struggles with high school pressures. These lifelong friends taught me how to find happiness in the memories we still share.

Confidence, passion, love… As I encounter more people, I continue to add reactants to the secret equation for my own bioluminescence. As I share energy and curiosity with others, together we make our light stronger and the world a little bit brighter.

Feedback from Admission Staff

As we read applications, each student has a team of admission staff assigned to their file to review it and assess the student’s potential. The staff responsible for this student’s file had this to say about the personal statement:

This essay starts out as a simple encounter with a firefly and evolves into story of growth, reflection, and connection. This student writes about first noticing the beauty of the firefly, then as they get older, learning more about how and why the firefly glows. They compare themselves to the firefly and discuss the people and experiences in their life that explain how and why they shine. This essay is textured, authentic, and beautifully written.

Don’t hesitate to connect with us by posting a comment to this blog, tweeting us @emoryadmission , or emailing us at [email protected] . We look forward to hearing from you!

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1 Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing Students

E. Shelley Reid

1. A Thousand Rules and Three Principles

Writing is hard. [1]

I’m a writer and a writing professor, the daughter and granddaughter of writers and writing professors, and I still sit down at my keyboard every week and think, writing is hard .

I also think, though, that writing is made harder than it has to be when we try to follow too many rules for writing. Which rules have you heard? Here are some I was taught:

Always have a thesis. I before E except after C. No one-sentence paragraphs. Use concrete nouns. A semi-colon joins two complete sentences. A conclusion restates the thesis and the topic sentences. Don’t use “I,” check your spelling, make three main points, and don’t repeat yourself. Don’t use contractions. Cite at least three sources, capitalize proper nouns, and don’t use “you.” Don’t start a sentence with “And” or “But,” don’t end a sentence with a preposition, give two examples in every paragraph, and use transition words. Don’t use transition words too much.

When we write to the rules, writing seems more like a chore than a living process that connects people and moves the world forward. I find it particularly hard to cope with all those “Don’ts.” It’s no wonder we get writer’s block, hands poised above the keyboard, worried about all the ways we could go wrong, suddenly wondering if we have new messages or whether there’s another soda in the fridge.

We can start to unblock the live, negotiated process of writing for real people by cutting the thousand rules down to three broader principles:

• Write about what you know about, are curious about, are passionate about (or what you can find a way to be curious about or interested in).
• Show, don’t just tell.
• Adapt to the audience and purpose you’re writing for.

When we write this way, we write rhetorically : that is, we pay attention to the needs of the author and the needs of the reader rather than the needs of the teacher —or the rules in the textbook.

Everything that matters from the preceding list of rules can be connected to one of those three rhetorical principles, and the principles address lots of aspects of writing that aren’t on the list but that are central to why humans struggle to express themselves through written language. Write about what you know about so that you can show not just tell in order to adapt to your audience’s needs and accomplish your goals. (Unless you do a good job showing what you mean, your audience will not understand your message. You will not meet their expectations or accomplish your goals.) Make clear points early so that your audience can spot your expertise or passion right from the start. Write multi-sentence paragraphs in which you show key ideas in enough detail that your audience doesn’t have to guess what you mean. Use a semi-colon correctly in order to show how your carefully thought out ideas relate to one another—and to win your reader’s confidence.

Writing will still be hard because these are some of the hardest principles in college; they may be some of the hardest principles in the galaxy. But if you write from those three principles, and use some of the strategies listed below, your writing will finally have a fighting chance of being real , not just rules . And that’s when writing gets interesting and rewarding enough that we do it even though it’s hard.

2. Show & Telepaths

What does that “show, don’t just tell” idea really mean? Let’s try some time travel to get a better idea. Can you remember being in kindergarten on show-and-tell day? Imagine that a student gets up in front of you and your fellow five-year-olds, empty-handed, and says, “I have a baseball signed by Hank Aaron that’s in perfect condition, but I can’t bring it to school.” You’re only five years old, but you know that she’s got two problems, right? Not only can you not see the ball to know exactly what “perfect condition” looks like, to eyeball the signature and smell the leather and count the stitches, but you have no reason to believe this kid even if she describes it perfectly. If you tell without showing, your reader might not only be confused but might entirely disbelieve you. So you’re two strikes down.

Another way to explain show vs. tell is with a story. There is a very, very short science fiction story in a collection of very short science fiction stories entitled “Science Fiction for Telepaths.”

This is the entire story, just six words: “Aw, you know what I mean” (Blake 235).

“Wah-ha-ha!” go the telepaths, “what a great story! I really liked the part about the Martian with three heads trying to use the gamma blaster to get the chartreuse kitchen sink to fly out the window and land on the six-armed Venusian thief! Good one!” Since the telepaths can read the storyteller’s mind, they don’t need any other written details: they know the whole story instantly.

This story is a little like when you say to your best friend from just about forever, you know what I mean , and sometimes she even does, because she can almost read your mind. Sometimes, though, even your best buddy from way back gives you that look . You know that look : the one that says he thinks you’ve finally cracked. He can’t read your mind, and you’ve lost him.

If you can confuse your best friend in the whole world, even when he’s standing right there in front of you, think how easy it could be to confuse some stranger who’s reading your writing days or months or years from now. If we could read each other’s minds, writing wouldn’t be hard at all, because we would always know what everyone meant, and we’d never doubt each other. If you figure out how to read minds this semester, I hope you’ll tell us how it works! In the meantime, though, you have to show what you mean.

3. The Little Green Ball and Some People: Doing Details Right

Now we know: I can read my own mind, and you can read your own mind, and this self-mind-reading is even easier to do than breathing in and out on a lovely April morning. When I write something like “I have a little green ball” on the whiteboard, I read my mind as I read the board, so I understand it—and I’m positive, therefore, that you understand it. Meanwhile, you read my sentence and your own mind together and the meaning is so perfectly clear to you that it’s nearly impossible to imagine that you’re not understanding exactly what I intended.

I have a little green ball . Even a five-year-old could read this sentence and know what I mean, right?

Try something. Bring both hands up in front of your face, and use each one to show one possible size of this “little” ball. (You can try this with friends: have everyone close their eyes and show the size of a “little” ball with their hands, then open their eyes, and look around.) Hmm. Already there’s some possible disagreement, even though it seemed so clear what “little” meant.

Maybe “green” is easier: you know what “green” is, right? Of course. But now, can you think of two different versions of “green”? three versions? five? In the twenty-five minds in a classroom, say, we might have at least twenty kinds of little, and maybe a hundred kinds of green, and we haven’t even discussed what kind of “ball” we might be talking about. Those of you who are math whizzes can see the permutations that come from all those variables. If I sent you to Mega Toyland with the basic instructions, “Buy me a little green ball,” the chances are slim that you would come home with the ball I had in mind.

If I don’t care about the exact ball—I just need something ball-like and not too huge and somewhat greenish—then it doesn’t matter. I can leave it up to you to decide. (Occasionally, it’s effective to avoid details: if I were writing a pop song about my broken heart, I’d be deliberately vague so that you’d think the song was about your heart, and then you’d decide to download or even buy my song.) But the more I care that you know exactly what I’m thinking, the more the details matter to me, then the more information I need to give you.

What information would you need to write down so that someone would buy the exact little green ball that you’re thinking of while he or she is shopping at Mega Toyland?

If you’re going to show me, or each other, what you’re thinking, using only language, it will take several sentences, perhaps a whole paragraph—filled with facts and statistics, comparisons, sensory description, expert testimony, examples, personal experiences—to be sure that what’s in your mind is what’s in my mind. After my students and I finish examining my ball and choosing rich language to show it, the whiteboard often reads something like this: “I have a little green ball about an inch in diameter, small enough to hide in your hand. It’s light neon green like highlighter ink and made of smooth shiny rubber with a slightly rough line running around its equator as if two halves were joined together. When I drop it on the tile floor, it bounces back nearly as high as my hand; when I throw it down the hallway, it careens unpredictably off the walls and floor.” Now the ball in your mind matches the ball in my hand much more closely.

Showing is harder than just telling, and takes longer, and is dependent on your remembering that nobody reads your mind like you do. Can you think of other “little green ball” words or phrases that you might need to show more clearly? How do you describe a good movie or a bad meal? How would you describe your mother, your hometown, your car? Try it on a blank page or in an open document: write one “you know what I mean” sentence, then write every detail and example you can think of to make sure that a reader does know what you mean. Then you can choose the most vivid three or four, the ones that best show your readers what you want them to understand.

There’s another kind of description that requires mind reading. If I write on the board that “some people need to learn to mind their own business sometimes,” would you agree with me? (By now, you should be gaining some skepticism about being able to read my mind.) In my head, I’m filling in “some people” and “their business” and “sometimes” with very specific, one-time-only examples. It’s like I have a YouTube clip playing in my head, or a whole season’s worth of a reality TV show, and you don’t have access to it yet. (I might as well be saying “I have cookies!” but not offering to share any of them with you.)

If I give you a snapshot from that film, if I use language to provide a one-time-only example, I show you: “My ninety-year-old grandmother needs to stop calling up my younger cousin Celia like she did last night and telling her to persuade me to move back home to Laramie so my mom won’t get lonely and take up extreme snowboarding just to go meet some nice people.” Does that help you see how the one-time-only example you were thinking of, when you read my boring sentence along with your own mind, is different from what I wanted you to think? As writers, we need to watch out for the some-people example and the plural example: “Sometimes things bother me” or “Frederick Douglass had lots of tricks for learning things he needed to know.” If an idea is important, give an exact one-time snapshot with as much detail as possible.

In a writing class, you also have to learn to be greedy as a reader, to ask for the good stuff from someone else’s head if they don’t give it to you, to demand that they share their cookies: you have to be brave and say, “I can’t see what you mean.” This is one of the roles teachers take up as we read your writing. (One time during my first year teaching, one of my students snorted in exasperation upon receiving his essay back from me. “So, like, what do you do,” he asked, “just go through the essay and write ‘Why? How so? Why? How so? Why? How so?’ randomly all over the margins and then slap that ‘B–’ on there?” I grinned and said, “Yep, that’s about it.”)

It’s also your job as a peer reader to read skeptically and let your fellow writer know when he or she is assuming the presence of a mind reader—because none of us knows for sure if we’re doing that when we write, not until we encounter a reader’s “Hunh?” or “Wha-a-a-?” You can learn a lot about writing from books and essays like this one, but in order to learn how not to depend on reading your own mind, you need feedback from a real, live reader to help you gauge how your audience will respond.

4. Lost Money and Thank-you Notes: What’s in an Audience?

Writing teachers are always going on and on about audience , as if you didn’t already know all about this concept. You can do a simple thought-experiment to prove to them, and to yourself, that you already fully understand that when the audience changes, your message has to change, sometimes drastically.

Imagine that you’ve done something embarrassingly stupid or impulsive that means you no longer have any money to spend this semester. (I won’t ask you what it is, or which credit card or 888 phone number or website it involves, or who was egging you on.) You really need the money, but you can’t get it back now. If I just said, “Write a message to try to get some money from someone,” you might struggle a bit, and then come up with some vague points about your situation.

But if I say, “Ask your best friend for the money,” you should suddenly have a very clear idea of what you can say. Take a minute and consider: what do you tell this friend? Some of my students have suggested, “Remember how you owe me from that time I helped you last February?” or “I’ll pay you back, with interest” or “I’ll do your laundry for a month.” Most of my students say they’ll tell their friends the truth about what happened: would you? What else might you say to your own friend, particularly if he were giving you that skeptical look?

Suppose then that your friend is nearly as broke as you are, and you have to ask one of your parents or another family adult. Now what do you say to help loosen the parental purse strings? Do you tell the truth about what happens? (Does it matter which parent it is?) Do you say, “Hey, you owe me”? Some of my students have suggested choosing messages that foreground their impending starvation, their intense drive for a quality education, or their ability to learn a good lesson. Would your parent want you to offer to pay back the money? What else might you say?

Notice how easy it is for you to switch gears: nothing has changed but the audience, and yet you’ve quickly created a whole new message, changing both the content and the language you were using.

One more try: when your parent says there’s just no extra cash to give you, you may end up at the local bank trying to take out a loan. What will you tell the bank? Should the loan officer hear how you lost your money, or how you promise you’ll be more responsible in the future? Should you try looking hungry and wan? Probably not: by discussing collateral (your five-year-old Toyota) and repayment terms (supported by your fry-jockey job at McSkippy’s), you’re adjusting your message once again.

Sometimes writing teachers talk about a “primary” and “secondary” audience, as if that were really a complicated topic, but you know all about this idea, too. Take just a minute and think about writing a thank-you note. If it’s a thank-you note to your grandmother, then your primary audience is your grandmother, so you write to her. But if your grandmother is like mine, she may show your note to someone else, and all those people become secondary audiences. Who might see, or hear about, your note to your grandmother? Neighbors, other relatives, her yoga group or church friends? If you know your note will be stuck up on the fridge, then you can’t use it as a place to add snarky remarks about your younger brother: you write for a primary audience, but you also need to think for a minute to be sure your message is adjusted for the needs of your secondary audiences. (If you haven’t written a thank-you note recently, try to remember the last time someone forwarded your email or text message to someone else, without asking you first.)

In a writing classroom, everyone knows that, in reality, your primary audience is the teacher—just as during rehearsal or team practice the primary audience is the director or coach who decides whether you’ll be first clarinet or take your place in the starting line-up. Your classmates (or teammates) may be part of a secondary audience who also need considering. It can be tempting to take the middle-of-the-road route and forget about any other audiences. But in all these cases, you won’t be practicing forever. It helps to imagine another primary audience—sometimes called a “target audience”—outside the classroom, in order to gain experience tailoring your performance to a “real” audience. It also helps to imagine a very specific primary audience (a person or small group or publication), so that instead of staring at the screen thinking vague “some people” thoughts, you can quickly come up with just the right words and information to match that audience’s needs, and it helps to consider some exact secondary audiences so that you can include ideas that will appeal to those readers as well. (Who do you suppose are the specific primary and secondary audiences for this essay? How does the writing adapt to those audiences?)

5. Pink Houses & Choruses: Keeping Your Reader With You

Once you’ve identified a target audience, and put down all the detail you can think of to help show your ideas to those readers, you need to focus on not losing them somewhere along the way. Earlier in your writing career as you worked on writing cohesive essays, you may have watched writing teachers go totally ballistic over thesis statements and topic sentences —even though some teachers insisted that they weren’t requiring any kind of set formula. How can this be? What’s up with all this up-front information?

The concept is actually pretty simple, if we step out of the writing arena for a minute. Say you’re driving down the interstate at sixty-five miles an hour with three friends from out of town, and you suddenly say to them, “Hey, there’s that amazing Pink House!” What happens? Probably there’s a lot of whiplash-inducing head swiveling, and someone’s elbow ends up in someone else’s ribs, and maybe one of your friends gets a glimpse, but probably nobody really gets a chance to see it (and somebody might not believe you if she didn’t see it for herself!). What if you had said instead, “Hey, coming up on the right here in about two miles, there’s an amazing huge neon Pink House: watch for it”? They’d be ready, they’d know where to look and what to look for, and they’d see what you wanted them to see.

Writers need to advise their readers in a similar way. That advice doesn’t always need to be in a thesis statement or a topic sentence , but it does need to happen regularly so that readers don’t miss something crucial.

“But,” you say, “I’m not supposed to repeat things in my essay; it gets boring!” That’s true, up to a point, but there are exceptions. Have you ever noticed how the very same company will run the exact same advertisement for light beer five or six times during one football game? It’s not as if the message they are trying to get across is that complex: Drink this beer and you will be noticed by this beautiful woman, or get to own this awesome sports car, or meet these wonderful friends who will never ever let you down . The ad costs the company hundreds of thousands of dollars each time, but there it is again. Beer: sports car. Beer: sports car. Contemporary Americans have a very high tolerance for repeated messages; we even come to depend on them, like football fans relishing the instant replay. Beer: sports car.

If you’d rather think like an artist than an advertising executive, consider popular music. Pick a pop song, any song—“Jingle Bells,” for instance, or whatever song everybody’s listening to this month—and the next time you listen, count the number of times the chorus, or even the title phrase, comes up. Do we get bored by the repetition? Not usually. In fact, the chorus is crucial for audience awareness because it’s often the first (or even the only) part of the song the listener learns and can sing along with. Repeating the chorus helps bring the audience along with you from verse to verse: the audience thinks, “Aha, I know this!”

Now, what you’re trying to say in your essay is much more complex than beer: sports car or I will always love you . If you only say it once or twice—there, in the last paragraph, where you finally figured out the most important point, or maybe once at the start and once at the end—we might miss it, or only get a piece of it. Here you’ve spent hundreds of minutes working on this idea, and we zoom past it at sixty-five m.p.h. and miss it entirely! You have to bring it back to our attention throughout the essay. Of course, you don’t want to repeat just anything. You certainly don’t want to repeat the same examples or vague “some people” theories, stuffing baloney into the middle of the paper to fill it out. But the core idea—beer: sports car—needs to appear early and often, using the same key words, even, as an anchor for all the complex ideas and examples you’re connecting to it, as a place for the audience to recognize the main idea and find a way to “sing along.”

So as you’re revising, add your chorus back into some key middle parts of your essay—the beginnings and endings of paragraphs, like commercial breaks, can be places that readers expect repetition—until you start to really feel uncomfortable about your repetition . . . and then add it one more time, and it might be enough, but it shouldn’t be too much. (Since you read the essay dozens of times and you read your own mind, you’ll get antsy about repetition long before your readers will in their one trip through your essay.) If you get a good balance, your reader—the same person who keeps laughing at the beer ad or mumbling the chorus to the pop song without knowing the rest of the lyrics—won’t even notice that you’re repeating. When I work with my students, I say: “I promise to tell you—no harm, no penalty—if you’re ever too clear about your main point.” I find that very few people make it that far, but they like having the encouragement to try. You and your peer readers can make the same agreement.

6. Fruit Jell-O: Balancing Arguments & Examples

“Great,” you say, “so I’m supposed to have all these examples and to have all these Pink House reminders, but it’s hard to keep it all straight.” That’s a very smart observation—because one of the main challenges writers face, when we can’t read someone’s mind or get them to read ours, is learning how to balance the writing that states our theories and arguments with the writing that provides our evidence and examples . It turns out that it’s easier to do just one of these things at a time when writing, but having theories and arguments without evidence and examples is a recipe for confusion and misunderstanding.

I find that it helps sometimes to think about fruit Jell-O™, the kind my mom used to take to family get-togethers: lime Jell-O with mandarin orange slices in it, or berry Jell-O with cherries in it. Fruit Jell-O is a pretty good balance of foods to take to an informal family gathering: it meets the needs of the audience.

You wouldn’t want to take plain gelatin to show off to your family, after all. Think of the last time you ate plain old Jell-O, with no additional food (or beverage) added to it. Weren’t you in a hospital, or a school cafeteria, or some other unhappy place? Hospitals serve plain gelatin because it looks and behaves like food, but it has so few ingredients that it won’t irritate your mouth or upset your digestion. That same blandness means that not a lot of family members will choose it over the tortilla chips or the macaroons.

Writing just your opinions, theories, and arguments is a lot like serving plain Jell-O: it seems like you’re doing something productive, but there’s not much substance to it. Politicians often write plain Jell-O speeches with no details or examples, because that kind of talk motivates people but won’t irritate voters with tiny details about time or money. Talent-show contestants sometimes choose to sing plain Jell-O songs for the same reason.

On the other hand, if you took a bowl of cherries with you, your family might perk up a bit, but cherries are kind of hard to serve. They roll out of the bowl and off of those flimsy paper plates and end up sliding into the cheese dip or being squished into the new carpet by your two-year-old cousin. People finger all the cherries but take just a few (using tongs on cherries just seems too formal!), and it’s hard to know how to handle the pits, or to eat gooey already-pitted cherries with your hands.

Writing just your examples, reasons, and details is a lot like bringing cherries to the party: it’s interesting and lively, but readers don’t know what to make of it all. Some of your reasons or stories will roll out of readers’ heads if they aren’t firmly attached to an argument; some readers will meander through all your details and just randomly remember one or two of them rather than building a whole picture.

Good writers blend argument and evidence as they write, so that readers get both elements together all the way through. Good revisers go back and adjust the recipe, seeking a workable combination. Sometimes as you’re revising it can feel odd to be just adding cherries: it can seem like you’re packing in too many extra details when there’s already a perfectly good piece of fruit there. Other times it seems weird to be just adding Jell-O, because all those “chorus” sentences sound the same and have the same flavor, and you don’t want to repeat yourself unnecessarily. It’s hard to get the balance right, and you’ll want to have your readers help you see where to adjust the ingredients. But if you remember that the fruit/evidence is the tastiest part (so you want the most vibrant examples), and the point of Jell-O/argumentation is to provide consistency to hold everything together (you want statements that sound alike), you may start to gain additional confidence in balancing your writing.

7. Wash-and-wear Paragraphs

If you’re going to have Jell-O and cherries, a chorus and one-time-only examples, in every paragraph, that’s going to take some managing— and you’ll want to manage rhetorically rather than going by some rules you once heard about exactly how long a paragraph should be. What paragraph-length rules have you been taught? Should a paragraph be five to eight sentences? always more than two sentences? never longer than a page? Some of my students have learned rules that specify that all paragraphs have twelve sentences and each sentence has a specific job. That sounds complicated—and you know that a rule like that can’t be universally true. What if you’re writing for a newspaper? for a psychology journal? for a website? Paragraph length doesn’t follow clear rules, but once again depends upon a rhetorical negotiation between the writer’s needs and the reader’s needs.

Switch gears for a minute and try out another metaphor: what do you know about how big a load of laundry should be? Right: it depends. What’s wrong with a very small or a very large load? Paragraphs face the same kinds of boundaries: too small, and they can waste a reader’s energy, always starting and stopping; too large, and they overload a reader and nothing gets clean. But there are no definite rules in laundry or in paragraphs. Is there ever reason to do one tiny laundry load, even if it might waste money or energy? Sure: maybe you’ve got an important event to attend Friday night and you just need to wash your best black shirt quickly, or maybe you have a small washing machine. Is there ever reason to do one slightly oversized load? Absolutely: perhaps you’re low on quarters or there’s only one machine open in the dormitory laundry room, and you need to get all those t-shirts clean. The same is true for paragraphs: sometimes, you have just one important thing to say, or your readers have a short attention span, so you want a short paragraph—even a one-sentence paragraph. On the other hand, sometimes you have a complex explanation that you want your reader to work through all at once, so you stretch your paragraph a little longer than usual, and hope your reader stays with you.

You want to write paragraphs that your target audience can handle without straining their brains or leaving suds all over the floor. I bet you’re pretty good at sorting laundry into the basic loads: darks, colors, whites, like the three body paragraphs of a five-paragraph essay. But what if you’re writing an eight-page paper using three basic points? What if you have an enormous pile of whites?

You sometimes have to split up even the loads that look alike. Would you split an all-whites pile into all the long-drying socks vs. all the quick-drying shirts? the dirty stuff vs. the really gross, stinky stuff? the underwear you need tomorrow vs. the towels you could wash later? You can find lots of ways to split a too-long paragraph based on how you want your reader to think about the issue: pros and cons, first steps and next steps, familiar information and more surprising information.

Writers need to remember that paragraphs help readers focus and manage their analytical energies. It’s good to have some variance in size and shape but not to overtax your readers with too much variation; it’s useful to write each paragraph with a clear beginning and ending to direct readers’ attention; and it’s helpful if paragraphs come with a blend of information and analysis to help readers “see what you mean” about your subpoints and see how they relate to the overall point of your essay. It’s not true that paragraphs are “one size fits all,” and it’s not true that “anything goes”: you need to adjust your paragraphs to connect your ideas to your readers’ brains.

8. Hey Hey Hey and the Textbook Conspiracy: Annotating Your Reading

I know, you thought this was an essay about writing. But part of being a writer, and being a helpful companion to other writers, is being a careful reader, a reader who writes.

Besides, I want to be sure you get what you pay for: that kind of critical thinking helps all of us be better writers. Did you know that you pay for most textbooks in two ways, and most students never do the simplest thing to recoup their investment?

How do you pay? First, except for texts like the one you’re reading right now, you’ve paid some exorbitant price for your books, even if you bought them used. Why would you do that, instead of checking them out of the library or sneaking a look from a friend? Right: you can read them whenever and wherever you get around to it. (No, I don’t want to know where you read your class book!) But you may be overlooking one more benefit, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Second, you pay for the book—even a free one like this one—with your time. You pore over page after page, the minutes ticking by, instead of building houses for orphans in Botswana or coming up with a cure for insomnia or even giving that double-crossing elf what he deserves in World of Warcraft . Did you ever finish all that poring (with a “p,” not a “b,” really) and realize you had tuned out and didn’t remember a thing? Now you’ve paid dearly, and you may have to pay yet another time when you re-read it.

The simplest thing you can do to get your money’s worth and your time’s worth from your books and other reading material is this: you can write on them.

Whatever you pay for the book (minus whatever you might sell it back for), the only two benefits you get are convenient reading access, and the chance to write in the book. If you don’t write in your book , or type notes into the document, you’re being cheated, as if you’d paid for a Combo Meal but ate only the fries. (Do you think maybe you won’t be able to re-sell your book if you write in it? Check with your friends: I bet someone’s bought a used book that’s been scribbled all over. So clearly someone will buy your book back even if you write in it. Don’t let the textbook industry scare you out of getting what you pay for.)

Some of you may think you are writing on your text, but I wonder if that’s true. Smearing it with hot pink highlighter pen doesn’t count as writing . Why not? That takes another story and another metaphor. There’s a classic Far Side cartoon from back in the twentieth century that reveals what dogs are really saying when they bark all day long. According to cartoonist Gary Larson, when we finally translate their secret language, we find that they say, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” (144). You can just see a dog thinking that way, everything new and surprising, but not much complexity of analysis. Hey!

When you read something and gloss it with your highlighter pen, that’s what you’re saying: Hey! Hey! Hey! You can come back six weeks later to write an essay or study for an exam, and you have an entire book filled with Hey! It’s a good start, but as a smart writing student, you’re ready to go further to get your money’s worth.

Without having to expend much more energy, you can begin to add a wholly intelligent commentary, putting your own advanced brain down on the page, using an actual writing utensil such as a pen or pencil (or a comment function for an electronic document). For starters, let’s just vary Hey:

Ha. Heh. Hee. Hooboy! Hmm. Hmph. Huh? Whoa!

Each of those responses records some higher-brain judgment : if you go back later, you’ll know whether you were saying “Hey, this is cool!” or “Hey, this is fishy.” You can also use other abbreviations you know: LOL, OMG, WTH(eck), or :). You can underline short phrases with a solid or a squiggly underline, depending on your reaction. And of course, you can always go back to “Why? How so? Show me !” If you get really bold, you can ask questions (“will this take too much time?”), write quick summaries (“annotate so there’s no hey”) or note connections (“sounds like the mind-reading thing”). It doesn’t take very long, and it keeps your brain involved as you read. What other short annotations could you write or type on this page right now?

Every time you write on the page and talk back to the text, you get your money’s worth, because you make the text truly your own, and you get your time’s worth, because you’re staying awake and you’re more likely to remember and learn what you read. If you don’t remember, you still have an intelligent record of what you should’ve remembered, not just a pile of Hey! Bonus: being a writer when you’re a reader helps you become a better reader and a better writer.

9. Short-Time Writing: Use Your Higher Brain

So far, we’ve been thinking about writing when you have plenty of time to consider your audience, play with your paragraphs, and recalibrate your Jell-O/cherry balance. But you won’t always have that much time: sometimes you’ll get a late start or have an early deadline. In college, you might encounter essay questions on an exam. Learning how to be a good timed-exam writer can help you in lots of short-time writing situations.

What’s hard about writing an essay exam? The stress, the pressure, the clock ticking, the things you don’t know. It’s like trying to think with a jet airplane taking off overhead, or a pride of hungry lions racing your way. But wait: the coolest thing about the essay exam is that, in contrast to a multiple choice exam that shows what you don’t know, the essay exam allows you to focus on what you do know. The problem is that only your higher brain can show off that knowledge, and for most people in a stressful situation like an essay exam, the higher brain starts to lose out to the lower brain, the fight-or-flight brain, the brain that sees breathing in and breathing out as one of its most complicated tasks, and so the writing goes awry.

Essay exams—or those last-minute, started-at-1:22-A.M. essays that you may be tempted or forced to write this semester (but not for your writing teacher, of course!)—generally go wrong by failing to meet one of the three principles described at the beginning of this essay. Sometimes students fail to study well so that they can write from knowledge. (Unfortunately, I don’t know if I can help you with your midnight cram sessions.) More often, though, some very smart, well-prepared students fail to adapt to their audience’s needs, or fail to provide specific support. All that late-night study-session agony goes for nothing if your lower brain takes over while you’re writing. Your lower brain can barely remember “I before E,” and it knows nothing about complicated rhetorical strategies like ours: you have to make sure your higher brain sets the pace and marks the trail.

So the teacher hands out the questions, and the first thing you do is . . . panic? No. Start writing? Heavens, no. Never start an essay exam—or a truly last-minute essay—by starting to write the essay, even if (like me) you generally prefer to “just start writing” rather than doing a lot of restrictive planning. Freewriting is an excellent writing exercise, but only when you know you have plenty of time to revise. Instead, ignore all those keyboards clacking, all those pens scribbling: they are the signs of lower brains at work, racing off screeching wildly about lions without remembering the way writing happens. You’re smarter than that. You’re going to use your higher brain right at the start, before it gets distracted. Speed, right now, is your enemy, a trick of the lower brain.

The first thing you want to do is . . . read the gosh darn question . Really, really read it. Annotate the assignment sheet or exam prompt, or write the key question out on a separate piece of paper, so you know you’re actually reading it, and not just pretending to. (If you’re in a workplace setting, write down a list of the top things you know your audience—or your boss—wants to see.) In every essay exam I’ve ever given, some body has not answered the question. When I say this in a class, everyone frowns or laughs at me just the way you are now, thinking, “What kind of idiot wouldn’t read the question? Certainly not me!” But someone always thinks she’s read the whole question, and understood it, when she hasn’t. Don’t be that writer. Circle the verbs: analyze, argue, describe, contrast . Underline the key terms: two causes, most important theme, main steps, post–Civil War . Read it again, and read it a third time: this is your only official clue about what your audience—the teacher—wants. On a piece of scratch paper, write out an answer to the question, in so many words: if it asks, “What are two competing explanations for language acquisition?” write down, “Two competing explanations for language acquisition are ___ and ___ .” In an examination setting, this may even become your opening line, since readers of essay exams rarely reward frilly introductions or cute metaphors.

But don’t start to write the whole answer yet, even though your lower brain is begging you, even though the sweat is breaking out on your brow and your muscles are tensing up with adrenaline because you know the lions and probably some rampaging T-Rexes are just around the corner. In real time, it has only taken you two minutes to read and annotate the question. Some students are still pulling out their pens, while across campus at least one student is just waking up in a panic because his alarm didn’t go off. Meanwhile, far from being hopelessly behind, you’re ahead of everyone who’s writing already, because you’re still working with your higher brain.

You have one more task, though. You know that showing takes longer, and is more complicated, than telling . Given the choice, your lower brain will tell, tell, and tell again, blathering on about Jell-O generalities that don’t let readers see all the best thinking going on in your mind. Before your higher brain starts to abandon you, make it give you the cherries: write yourself a list of very specific examples that you can use in this essay, as many as you can think of. Do not just “think them over.” That’s a lower brain shortcut, a flight move, and it’s a trick, because your lower brain will forget them as soon as the lions get a bit closer. Write them down. If you don’t know all the possible transmission vectors for tuberculosis that were discussed, write down excellent examples of the ones you do know. If you can, number them in an order that makes sense, so that you leave a good breadcrumb trail for your lower brain to follow. Don’t call it an “outline” if you don’t want to; that can feel intimidating. Just call it a “trail guide.”

Now you can start writing: take a deep, calming breath and begin with your in so many words sentence, then follow the trail your higher brain has planned. About every two or three sentences, you should start out with “For example, . . .” or “Another example of this is . . . ,” to be sure that you’re not forgetting your higher brain’s advice or sliding into a vague “some people” sentence. About every three or four sentences, you should start out with “Therefore, . . .” or “In other words, . . .” and come back to a version of that very first, question-answering sentence you wrote on your paper. Bring the chorus back in; stay in tune and on the trail. Don’t try for too much variation or beauty. Knowing that your higher brain has already solved the problem, all you have to do is set it down on paper, to show what you know . Writing is hard, especially under time pressure, but when you use higher brain strategies and don’t get trapped in the rules or caught up in random flight, when you take control and anticipate your reader’s needs, you can make writing work for you in very powerful ways even without a lot of time.

10. Rules vs. Rhetoric, or, The Five Paragraph Essay vs. “Try Something!”

We started out by thinking of all the rules—all those “Don’ts”—that writers can face. Each of the metaphors here replaces a rule with an idea that helps you consider how real people communicate with each other through writing, and how writers make judgments and choices in order to have the most powerful effect on their readers. That is, we’ve been thinking rhetorically , about the audience and purpose and context of a writing situation.

Interestingly, many of those rules are just short-cut versions of really good rhetorical principles. If you were a middle-school teacher faced with a room full of thirty squirrelly teenagers who all wanted to know What’s Due On Friday? and who didn’t have patience for one more part of their chaotic lives to be in the “it just depends” category, you might be tempted to make some rules, too. You might even come up with The Five Paragraph Essay.

That is, instead of saying, “Most readers in the U.S. prefer to know exactly what they’re getting before they invest too much time,” which is a thoughtful rhetorical analysis that can help writers make good choices, you might say, “Your thesis must come in the first paragraph.” Instead of saying, “In Western cultures, many readers are comfortable with threes: three bears, three strikes, three wishes, even the Christian Trinity,” you might make a rule and say, “You must write an essay with a beginning, an end, and three middle paragraphs.” Instead of saying, “Your readers need to know how your examples connect to one another, and how each set of examples is related to your overall point,” you might say, “Every paragraph needs to start with a transition and a topic sentence and finish with a concluding sentence.” And instead of saying, “Writers in the U.S. face one of the most heterogeneous groups of readers in the world, so we need to be as careful as possible to make our meaning clear rather than assuming that all readers know what we’re talking about,” you might just say, “Each paragraph needs to include two concrete-detail sentences and two commentary sentences.”

You would intend to be helping your students by saying these things, and for many young writers, having clear rules is more useful than being told, “It depends.” But eventually the rules start to be more limiting than helpful, like a great pair of shoes that are now a size too small. Good writers need some space to grow.

As a writer in college now, and as a writer in the larger world full of real readers—whether they’re reading your Facebook page, your letter to the editor, or your business plan—you need to free yourself from the rules and learn to make rhetorical decisions. From now on, when you hear someone tell you a rule for writing, try to figure out the rhetorical challenge that lies behind it, and consider the balancing acts you may need to undertake. What do you want to say, and what will help the readers in your primary audience “see what you mean” and follow your main points?

There aren’t any easy answers: writing is still hard. But the good news is that you can use a few helpful “rules” as starting points when they seem appropriate, and set aside the rest. You can draw on some key principles or metaphors to help you imagine the needs of your readers, and when you come to an open space where there doesn’t seem to be a perfect rule or strategy to use, you can try something . In the end, that’s what writers are always doing as we write: trying this, trying that, trying something else, hoping that we’ll make a breakthrough so that our readers will say “Aha, I see what you mean!”—and they really, truly will see it. You know James Bond 007 would try something ; Jane Eyre would try something ; those Olympic medalists and rock stars and pioneering cardiac surgeons and Silicon Valley whiz kids are always trying something . In the same way, being a good writer is always more about trying something than about following the rules, about adapting to a new situation rather than replicating last year’s essay. So take a deep breath, push all those nay-saying rule-makers into the far corners of your brain, focus on your current audience and purpose, and write!

• Which section of this essay do you remember most clearly? Write down what you remember about it, and explain how you might use an idea in that section to help with a writing task that you’re doing this week. Why do you think this section stuck with you?
• Without looking back at the essay, what would you say is the chorus of the essay, the “beer: sports car” message that keeps getting restated? Write it down: it may be a sentence, a phrase, and/or a few key words. Now go back to a section of the essay and underline or highlight sentences or phrases where Reid repeats this chorus or key words. Does she repeat them as much as you thought she did?
• What other rules for writing have you been told to follow, either at school or outside of school in your workplace, community group, or online setting? List a couple of rules that weren’t described in this essay, and note down whether you think they’re most connected to the principle of writing from knowledge, showing enough detail, or adapting to readers’ needs. Also, if there’s another principle for writing that helps you a lot, something you always try to do, add a note about it so you can share it with your classroom peers.
• Where in this essay does Reid practice what she preaches? Go back through the essay and label a few places where she seems to be doing what she says writers should do (“here she gives a Pink House heads-up sentence at the start of a section”), and note a few places where she doesn’t. Even though Reid admits that writing is hard and depends on a specific context, her essay may make some of the strategies sound easier or more universal than they are. Which one of her suggestions seems like it would be the hardest for you to do, or seems like it would be the least effective in the kind of writing you do most often? Explain why this suggestion is trickier than it looks, and how you might cope with that challenge as a writer.

Works Cited

Blake, E. Michael. “Science Fiction for Telepaths.” 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories . Ed. Isaac Asimov, Martin Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander. New York: Avon, 1978. 235. Print.

Larson, Gary. The Far Side Gallery 5 . Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1995. Print.

• This work is licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionNoncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License and is subject to the Writing Spaces’ Terms of Use. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. To view the Writing Spaces’ Terms of Use, visit http://writingspaces.org/terms-of-use . ↵

Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing Students Copyright © 2011 by E. Shelley Reid is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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25 Elite Common App Essay Examples (And Why They Worked)

Applying to competitive colleges? You'll need to have a stand-out Common App essay.

In this article, I'm going to share with you:

• 25 outstanding Common App essay examples
• Links to tons of personal statement examples
• Why these Common App essays worked

If you're looking for outstanding Common App essay examples, you've found the right place.

If you're applying to colleges in 2023, you're going to write some form of a Common App essay.

Writing a great Common App personal essay is key if you want to maximize your chances of getting admitted.

Whether you're a student working on your Common App essay, or a parent wondering what it takes, this article will help you master the Common App Essay.

What are the Common App Essay Prompts for 2023?

There are seven prompts for the Common App essay. Remember that the prompts are simply to help get you started thinking.

You don't have to answer any of the prompts if you don't want (see prompt #7 ).

Here's the seven Common App essay questions for 2022, which are the same as previous years:

• Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
• The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
• Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
• Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?
• Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
• Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
• Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

The last prompt is a catch-all prompt, which means you can submit an essay on any topic you want.

Use the Common App prompts as brainstorming questions and to get you thinking.

But ultimately, you should write about any topic you meaningfully care about.

What makes an outstanding Common App personal essay?

I've read thousands of Common App essays from highly motivated students over the past years.

And if I had to choose the top 2 things that makes for incredible Common App essays it's these:

1. Being Genuine

Sounds simple enough. But it's something that is incredibly rare in admissions.

Authenticity is something we all know when we see it, but can be hard to define.

Instead of focus on what you think sounds the best to admissions officers, focus on what you have to say—what interests you.

2. Having Unique Ideas

The best ideas come about while you're writing.

You can't just sit down and say, "I'll think really hard of good essay ideas."

I wish that worked, but it sadly doesn't. And neither do most brainstorming questions.

The ideas you come up with from these surface-level tactics are cheap, because no effort was put in.

As they say,

"Writing is thinking"

By choosing a general topic (e.g. my leadership experience in choir) and writing on it, you'll naturally come to ideas.

As you write, continue asking yourself questions that make you reflect.

It is more of an artistic process than technical one, so you'll have to feel what ideas are most interesting.

25 Common App Essay Examples from Top Schools

With that, here's 25 examples as Common App essay inspiration to get you started.

These examples aren't perfect—nor should you expect yours to be—but they are stand-out essays.

I've handpicked these examples of personal statements from admitted students because they showcase a variety of topics and writing levels.

These students got into top schools and Ivy League colleges in recent years:

Table of Contents

• 1. Seeds of Immigration
• 2. Color Guard
• 3. Big Eater
• 4. Love for Medicine
• 5. Cultural Confusion
• 6. Football Manager
• 9. Mountaineering
• 10. Boarding School
• 11. My Father
• 12. DMV Trials
• 13. Ice Cream Fridays
• 14. Key to Happiness
• 15. Discovering Passion
• 16. Girl Things
• 17. Robotics
• 18. Lab Research
• 19. Carioca Dance
• 20. Chinese Language
• 21. Kiki's Delivery Service
• 22. Museum of Life
• 23. French Horn
• 24. Dear My Younger Self
• 25. Monopoly

Common App Essay Example #1: Seeds of Immigration

This student was admitted to Dartmouth College . In this Common App essay, they discuss their immigrant family background that motivates them.

Although family is a commonly used topic, this student makes sure to have unique ideas and write in a genuine way.

Common App Prompt #1: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. (250-650 words)

I placed three tiny seeds, imagining the corn stalk growing while the pumpkin vines wrapped around it; both sprouting, trying to bear fruit. I clenched a fistful of dirt and placed it on them. “Más,” my grandpa told me as he quickly flooded the seeds with life-giving dirt.

Covered. Completely trapped.

Why This Essay Works:

Everyone has a unique family history and story, and often that can make for a strong central theme of a personal statement. In this essay, the student does a great job of sharing aspects of his family's culture by using specific Spanish words like "yunta" and by describing their unique immigration story. Regardless of your background, sharing your culture and what it means to you can be a powerful tool for reflection.

This student focuses on reflecting on what their culture and immigrant background means to them. By focusing on what something represents, rather than just what it literally is, you can connect to more interesting ideas. This essay uses the metaphor of their family's history as farmers to connect to their own motivation for succeeding in life.

This essay has an overall tone of immense gratitude, by recognizing the hard work that this student's family has put in to afford them certain opportunities. By recognizing the efforts of others in your life—especially efforts which benefit you—you can create a powerful sense of gratitude. Showing gratitude is effective because it implies that you'll take full advantage of future opportunities (such as college) and not take them for granted. This student also demonstrates a mature worldview, by recognizing the difficulty in their family's past and how things easily could have turned out differently for this student.

This essay uses three moments of short, one-sentence long paragraphs. These moments create emphasis and are more impactful because they standalone. In general, paragraph breaks are your friend and you should use them liberally because they help keep the reader engaged. Long, dense paragraphs are easy to gloss over and ideas can lose focus within them. By using a variety of shorter and longer paragraphs (as well as shorter and longer sentences) you can create moments of emphasis and a more interesting structure.

What They Might Improve:

This conclusion is somewhat off-putting because it focuses on "other students" rather than the author themself. By saying it "fills me with pride" for having achieved without the same advantages, it could create the tone of "I'm better than those other students" which is distasteful. In general, avoid putting down others (unless they egregiously deserve it) and even subtle phrasings that imply you're better than others could create a negative tone. Always approach your writing with an attitude of optimism, understanding, and err on the side of positivity.

Common App Essay Example #2: Color Guard

This student was admitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . Check out their Common App essay that focuses on an extracurricular:

Sweaty from the hot lights, the feeling of nervousness and excitement return as I take my place on the 30-yard line. For 10 short minutes, everyone is watching me. The first note of the opening song begins, and I’m off. Spinning flags, tossing rifles, and dancing across the football field. Being one of only two people on the colorguard means everyone will see everything. It’s amazing and terrifying. And just like that, the performance is over.

Flashback to almost four years ago, when I walked into the guard room for the first time. I saw flyers for a “dance/flag team” hanging in the bland school hallway, and because I am a dancer, I decided to go. This was not a dance team at all. Spinning flags and being part of the marching band did not sound like how I wanted to spend my free time. After the first day, I considered not going back. But, for some unknown reason, I stayed. And after that, I began to fall in love with color guard. It is such an unknown activity, and maybe that’s part of what captivated me. How could people not know about something so amazing? I learned everything about flags and dancing in that year. And something interesting happened- I noticed my confidence begin to grow. I had never thought I was that good at anything, there was always someone better. However, color guard was something I truly loved, and I was good at it.

The next year, I was thrown into an interesting position. Our current captain quit in the middle of the season, and I was named the new captain of a team of six. At first, this was quite a daunting task. I was only a sophomore, and I was supposed to lead people two years older than me? Someone must’ve really believed in me. Being captain sounded impossible to me at first, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from doing my best. This is where my confidence really shot up. I learned how to be a captain. Of course I was timid at first, but slowly, I began to become a true leader.

The next marching season, it paid off. I choreographed many pieces of our show, and helped teach the other part of my guard, which at the time was only one other person. Having a small guard, we had to be spectacular, especially for band competitions. We ended up winning first place and second place trophies, something that had never been done before at our school, especially for such a small guard. That season is still one of my favorite memories. The grueling hours of learning routines, making changes, and learning how to be a leader finally paid off.

Looking back on it as I exit the field after halftime once again, I am so proud of myself. Not only has color guard helped the band succeed, I’ve also grown. I am now confident in what my skills are. Of course there is always more to be done, but I now I have the confidence to share my ideas, which is something I can’t say I had before color guard. Every Friday night we perform, I think about the growth I’ve made, and I feel on top of the world. That feeling never gets old.

Common App Essay Example #3: Big Eater

This Common App essay is a successful Northwestern essay from an admitted student. It has a unique take using the topic of eating habits—an example of how "mundane" topics can make for interesting ideas.

This essay uses their relationship with food to explore how their perspective has changed through moving high schools far away. Having a central theme is often a good strategy because it allows you to explore ideas while making them feel connected and cohesive. This essay shows how even a "simple" topic like food can show a lot about your character because you can extrapolate what it represents, rather than just what it literally is. With every topic, you can analyze on two levels: what it literally is, and what it represents.

Admissions officers want to get a sense of who you are, and one way to convey that is by using natural-sounding language and being somewhat informal. In this essay, the student writes as they'd speak, which creates a "voice" that you as the reader can easily hear. Phrases like "I kind of got used to it" may be informal, but work to show a sense of character. Referring to their parents as "Ma" and "Papa" also bring the reader into their world. If you come from a non-English speaking country or household, it can also be beneficial to use words from your language, such as "chiemo" in this essay. Using foreign language words helps share your unique culture with admissions.

Rather than "telling" the reader what they have to say, this student does a great job of "showing" them through specific imagery and anecdotes. Using short but descriptive phrases like "whether it was a sum or Sam the bully" are able to capture bigger ideas in a more memorable way. Showing your points through anecdotes and examples is always more effective than simply telling them, because showing allows the reader to come to their own conclusion, rather than having to believe what you're saying.

This student's first language is not English, which does make it challenging to express ideas with the best clarity. Although this student does an overall great job in writing despite this hindrance, there are moments where their ideas are not easily understood. In particular, when discussing substance addiction, it isn't clear: Was the student's relationship with food a disorder, or was that a metaphor? When drafting your essay, focus first on expressing your points as clearly and plainly as possible (it's harder than you may think). Simplicity is often better, but if you'd like, afterwards you can add creative details and stylistic changes.

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Common App Essay Example #4: Love for Medicine

Here's another Common App essay which is an accepted Dartmouth essay . This student talks about their range of experiences as an emergency medical responder:

I never knew I had the courage to talk a suicidal sixteen-year-old boy down from the edge of a bridge, knowing that he could jump and take his life at any moment.

I never knew I had the confidence to stand my ground and defend my treatment plan to those who saw me as less than capable because of my age or gender.

This essay has lots of detailed moments and descriptions. These anecdotes help back up their main idea by showing, rather than just telling. It's always important to include relevant examples because they are the "proof in the pudding" for what you're trying to say.

This topic deals with a lot of sensitive issues, and at certain points the writing could be interpreted as insensitive or not humble. It's especially important when writing about tragedies that you focus on others, rather than yourself. Don't try to play up your accomplishments or role; let them speak for themselves. By doing so, you'll actually achieve what you're trying to do: create an image of an honorable and inspirational person.

This essay touches on a lot of challenging and difficult moments, but it lacks a deep level of reflection upon those moments. When analyzing your essay, ask yourself: what is the deepest idea in it? In this case, there are some interesting ideas (e.g. "when they were on my stretcher, socioeconomic status...fell away"), but they are not fully developed or fleshed out.

Common App Essay Example #5: Cultural Confusion

This student's Common App was accepted to Pomona College , among other schools. Although this essay uses a common topic of discussing cultural background, this student writes a compelling take.

This student uses the theme of cultural confusion to explain their interests and identity:

Common App Essay Example #6: Football Manager

Here's a UPenn essay that worked for the Common App:

This essay has lighthearted moments in it, such as recognizing how being a football manager "does not sound glamorous" and how "we managers go by many names: watergirls..." Using moments of humor can be appropriate for contrasting with moments of serious reflection. Being lighthearted also shows a sense of personality and that you are able to take things with stride.

The reflections in this essay are far too generic overall and ultimately lack meaning because they are unspecific. Using buzzwords like "hard work" and "valuable lessons" comes off as unoriginal, so avoid using them at all costs. Your reflections need to be specific to you to be most meaningful. If you could (in theory) pluck out sentences from your essay and drop them into another student's essay, then chances are those sentences are not very insightful. Your ideas should be only have been able to been written by you: specific to your experiences, personal in nature, and show deep reflection.

Although this essay uses the topic of "being a football manager," by the end of the essay it isn't clear what that role even constitutes. Avoid over-relying on other people or other's ideas when writing your essay. That is, most of the reflections in this essay are based on what the author witnessed the football team doing, rather than what they experienced for themselves in their role. Focus on your own experiences first, and be as specific and tangible as possible when describing your ideas. Rather than saying "hard work," show that hard work through an anecdote.

More important than your stories is the "So what?" behind them. Avoid writing stories that don't have a clear purpose besides "setting the scene." Although most fiction writing describes people and places as exposition, for your essays you want to avoid that unless it specifically contributes to your main point. In this essay, the first two paragraphs are almost entirely unnecessary, as the point of them can be captured in one sentence: "I joined to be a football manager one summer." The details of how that happened aren't necessary because they aren't reflected upon.

In typical academic writing, we're taught to "tell them what you're going to tell them" before telling them. But for college essays, every word is highly valuable. Avoid prefacing your statements and preparing the reader for them. Instead of saying "XYZ would prove to be an unforgettable experience," just dive right into the experience itself. Think of admissions officers as "being in a rush," and give them what they want: your interesting ideas and experiences.

Common App Essay Example #7: Coffee

This student was admitted to several selective colleges, including Emory University, Northwestern University , Tufts University, and the University of Southern California . Here's their Common Application they submitted to these schools:

I was 16 years old, and working at a family-owned coffee shop training other employees to pour latte art. Making coffee became an artistic outlet that I never had before. I always loved math, but once I explored the complexities of coffee, I began to delve into a more creative realm--photography and writing--and exposed myself to the arts--something foreign and intriguing.

This essay uses coffee as a metaphor for this student's self-growth, especially in dealing with the absence of their father. Showing the change of their relationship with coffee works well as a structure because it allows the student to explore various activities and ideas while making them seem connected.

This student does a great job of including specifics, such as coffee terminology ("bloom the grounds" and "pour a swan"). Using specific and "nerdy" language shows your interests effectively. Don't worry if they won't understand all the references exactly, as long as there is context around them.

While coffee is the central topic, the author also references their father extensively throughout. It isn't clear until the conclusion how these topics relate, which makes the essay feel disjointed. In addition, there is no strong main idea, but instead a few different ideas. In general, it is better to focus on one interesting idea and delve deeply, rather than focus on many and be surface-level.

Near the conclusion, this student tells about their character: "humble, yet important, simple, yet complex..." You should avoid describing yourself to admissions officers, as it is less convincing. Instead, use stories, anecdotes, and ideas to demonstrate these qualities. For example, don't say "I'm curious," but show them by asking questions. Don't say, "I'm humble," but show them with how you reacted after a success or failure.

Common App Essay Example #8: Chicago

Here's another Northwestern essay . Northwestern is a quite popular school with lots of strong essay-focused applicants, which makes your "Why Northwestern?" essay important.

To write a strong Why Northwestern essay, try to answer these questions: What does NU represent to you? What does NU offer for you (and your interests) that other schools don't?

This essay uses a variety of descriptive and compelling words, without seeming forced or unnatural. It is important that you use your best vocabulary, but don't go reaching for a thesaurus. Instead, use words that are the most descriptive, while remaining true to how you'd actually write.

This essay is one big metaphor: the "L" train serves as a vehicle to explore this student's intellectual curiosity. Throughout the essay, the student also incorporates creative metaphors like "the belly of a gargantuan silver beast" and "seventy-five cent silver chariot" that show a keen sense of expression. If a metaphor sounds like one you've heard before, you probably shouldn't use it.

This student does a fantastic job of naturally talking about their activities. By connecting their activities to a common theme—in this case the "L" train—you can more easily move from one activity to the next, without seeming like you're just listing activities. This serves as an engaging way of introducing your extracurriculars and achievements, while still having the focus of your essay be on your interesting ideas.

Admissions officers are ultimately trying to get a sense of who you are. This student does a great job of taking the reader into their world. By sharing quirks and colloquialisms (i.e. specific language you use), you can create an authentic sense of personality.

Common App Essay Example #9: Mountaineering

Here's a liberal arts college Common App essay from Colby College . Colby is a highly ranked liberal arts college.

As with all colleges—but especially liberal arts schools—your personal essay will be a considerable factor.

In this essay, the student describes their experience climbing Mount Adams, and the physical and logistical preparations that went into it. They describe how they overcame some initial setbacks by using their organizational skills from previous expeditions.

This Colby student explains how the process of preparation can lead to success in academics and other endeavours, but with the potential for negative unintended consequences.

Common App Prompt #2: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? (250-650 words)

This essay does a great job of having a cohesive theme: mountaineering. Often times, great essay topics can be something simple on the surface, such as your favorite extracurricular activity or a notable experience. Consider using the literal activity as a sort of metaphor, like this essay does. This student uses mountaineering as a metaphor for preparation in the face of upcoming challenge. Using an overarching metaphor along with a central theme can be effective because it allows you to explore various ideas while having them all feel connected and cohesive.

Admissions officers want to see your self-growth, which doesn't always mean your successes. Often times, being vulnerable by expressing your struggles is powerful because it makes you more human and relatable, while providing the opportunity to reflect on what you learned. The best lessons from come failures, and writing about challenge can also make your later successes feel more impactful. Everyone loves to hear an underdog or zero-to-hero story. But counterintuitively, your failures are actually more important than your successes.

This essay has some nice ideas about focusing only on what's in your control: your attitude and your effort. However, these ideas are ultimately somewhat generic as they have been used countless times in admissions essays. Although ideas like this can be a good foundation, you should strive to reach deeper ideas. Deeper ideas are ones that are specific to you, unique, and interesting. You can reach deeper ideas by continually asking yourself "How" and "Why" questions that cause you to think deeper about a topic. Don't be satisfied with surface-level reflections. Think about what they represent more deeply, or how you can connect to other ideas or areas of your life.

Common App Essay Example #10: Boarding School

This personal essay was accepted to Claremont McKenna College . See how this student wrote a vulnerable essay about boarding school experience and their family relationship:

I began attending boarding school aged nine.

Obviously, this is not particularly unusual – my school dorms were comprised of boys and girls in the same position as me. However, for me it was difficult – or perhaps it was for all of us; I don’t know. We certainly never discussed it.

I felt utterly alone, as though my family had abruptly withdrawn the love and support thatI so desperately needed. At first, I did try to open up to them during weekly phone calls, but what could they do? As months slipped by, the number of calls reduced. I felt they had forgotten me. Maybe they felt I had withdrawn from them. A vast chasm of distance was cracking open between us.

At first, I shared my hurt feelings with my peers, who were amazingly supportive, but there was a limit to how much help they could offer. After a while, I realized that by opening up, I was burdening them, perhaps even irritating them. The feelings I was sharing should have been reserved for family. So, I withdrew into myself. I started storing up my emotions and became a man of few words. In the classroom or on the sports field, people saw a self-confident and cheerful character, but behind that facade was someone who yearned for someone to understand him and accept him as he was.

Years went past.

Then came the phone call which was about to change my life. “Just come home Aryan, it’s really important!” My mother’s voice was odd, brittle. I told her I had important exams the following week, so needed to study. “Aryan, why don’t you listen to me? There is no other option, okay? You are coming home.”

Concerned, I arranged to fly home. When I got there, my sister didn’t say hi to me, my grandmother didn’t seem overly enthusiastic to see me and my mother was nowhere to be seen. I wanted to be told why I was called back so suddenly just to be greeted as though I wasn’t even welcome.

Then my mother then came out of her room and saw me. To my immense incredulity, she ran to me and hugged me, and started crying in my arms.

Then came the revelation, “Your father had a heart attack.”

My father. The man I hadn’t really talked to in years. A man who didn’t even know who I was anymore. I’d spent so long being disappointed in him and suspecting he was disappointed in me, I sunk under a flood of emotions.

I opened the door to his room and there he was sitting on his bed with a weak smile on his face. I felt shaken to my core. All at once it was clear to me how self-centered I had become. A feeling of humiliation engulfed me, but finally I realized that rather than wallow in it, I needed to appreciate I was not alone in having feelings.

I remained at home that week. I understood that my family needed me. I worked with my uncle to ensure my family business was running smoothly and often invited relatives or friends over to cheer my father up.

Most importantly, I spent time with my family. It had been years since I’d last wanted to do this – I had actively built the distance between us – but really, I’d never stopped craving it. Sitting together in the living room, I realized how badly I needed them.

Seeing happiness in my father’s eyes, I felt I was finally being the son he had always needed me to be: A strong, capable young man equipped to take over the family business if need be.

Common App Essay Example #11: My Father

This Cornell University essay is an example of writing about a tragedy, which can be a tricky topic to write about well.

Family and tragedy essays are a commonly used topic, so it can be harder to come up with a unique essay idea using these topics.

Let me know what you think of this essay for Cornell:

My father was wise, reserved, hardworking, and above all, caring. I idolized his humility and pragmatism, and I cherish it today. But after his death, I was emotionally raw. I could barely get through class without staving off a breakdown.

Writing about tragedy, such as the loss of a loved one, is a tricky topic because it has been used countless times in college admissions. It is difficult to not come off as a "victim" or that you're trying to garner sympathy by using the topic (i.e. a "sob story"). This essay does a great job of writing about a personal tragedy in a meaningful and unique way by connecting to values and ideas, rather than staying focused on what literally happened. By connecting tragedy to lessons and takeaways, you can show how—despite the difficulty and sorrow—you have gained something positive from it, however small that may be. Don't write about personal tragedy because you think "you should." As with any topic, only write about it if you have a meaningful point to make.

This essay is effective at making the reader feel the similar emotions as the author does and in bringing the reader into their "world." Even small remarks like noting the the "firsts" without their loved one are powerful because it is relatable and something that is apparent, but not commonly talked about. Using short phrases like "That was it. No goodbye, no I love you..." create emphasis and again a sense of relatability. As the reader, you can vividly imagine how the author must have felt during these moments. The author also uses questions, such as "What did I last say to him?" which showcase their thought process, another powerful way to bring the reader into your world.

Admissions officers are looking for self-growth, which can come in a variety of forms. Showing a new perspective is one way to convey that you've developed over time, learned something new, or gained new understanding or appreciation. In this essay, the student uses the "sticker of a black and white eye" to represent how they viewed their father differently before and after his passing. By using a static, unchanging object like this, and showing how you now view it differently over time, you convey a change in perspective that can make for interesting reflections.

Common App Essay Example #12: DMV Trials

Here's a funny Common App essay from a Northwestern admitted student about getting their driver's license.

This topic has been used before—as many "topics" have—but what's important is having a unique take or idea.

What do you think of this Northwestern essay ?

Breath, Emily, breath. I drive to the exit and face a four-lane roadway. “Turn left,” my passenger says.

On July 29, [Date] , I finally got my license. After the April debacle, I practiced driving almost every week. I learned to stop at stop signs and look both ways before crossing streets, the things I apparently didn’t know how to do during my first two tests. When pulling into the parking lot with the examiner for the last time, a wave of relief washed over me.

This essay does a good job of having a compelling narrative. By setting the scene descriptively, it is easy to follow and makes for a pleasant reading experience. However, avoid excessive storytelling, as it can overshadow your reflections, which are ultimately most important.

This essay has some moments where the author may come off as being overly critical, of either themselves or of others. Although it is okay (and good) to recognize your flaws, you don't want to portray yourself in a negative manner. Avoid being too negative, and instead try to find the positive aspects when possible.

More important than your stories is the answer to "So what?" and why they matter. Avoid writing a personal statement that is entirely story-based, because this leaves little room for reflection and to share your ideas. In this essay, the reflections are delayed to the end and not as developed as they could be.

In this essay, it comes across that failure is negative. Although the conclusion ultimately has a change of perspective in that "failure is inevitable and essential to moving forward," it doesn't address that failure is ultimately a positive thing. Admissions officers want to see failure and your challenges, because overcoming those challenges is what demonstrates personal growth.

Common App Essay Example #13: Ice Cream Fridays

This Columbia essay starts off with a vulnerable moment of running for school president. The student goes on to show their growth through Model UN, using detailed anecdotes and selected moments.

My fascination with geopolitical and economic issues were what kept me committed to MUN. But by the end of sophomore year, the co-presidents were fed up. “Henry, we know how hard you try, but there are only so many spots for each conference...” said one. “You’re wasting space, you should quit,” said the other.

This essay has a compelling story, starting from this author's early struggles with public speaking and developing into their later successes with Model UN. Using a central theme—in this case public speaking—is an effective way of creating a cohesive essay. By having a main idea, you can tie in multiple moments or achievements without them coming across unrelated.

This student talks about their achievements with a humble attitude. To reference your successes, it's equally important to address your failures. By expressing your challenges, it will make your later achievements seem more impactful in contrast. This student also is less "me-focused" and instead is interested in others dealing with the same struggles. By connecting to people in your life, values, or interesting ideas, you can reference your accomplishments without coming off as bragging.

This essay has moments of reflection, such as "math and programming made sense... people didn't". However, most of these ideas are cut short, without going much deeper. When you strike upon a potentially interesting idea, keep going with it. Try to explain the nuances, or broaden your idea to more universal themes. Find what is most interesting about your experience and share that with admissions.

Stories are important, but make sure all your descriptions are critical for the story. In this essay, the author describes things that don't add to the story, such as the appearance of other people or what they were wearing. These ultimately don't relate to their main idea—overcoming public speaking challenges—and instead are distracting.

Common App Essay Example #14: Key to Happiness

Here's a Brown University application essay that does a great job of a broad timeline essay. This student shows the change in their thinking and motivations over a period of time, which makes for an interesting topic.

Let me know what you think of this Brown essay:

Common App Prompt #3: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? (250-650 words)

This student's first language is not English, which provides some insight into why the phrasing may not seem as natural or show as much personality. Admissions officers are holistic in determining who to admit, meaning they take into account many different factors when judging your essays. While this essay may not be the strongest, the applicant probably had other qualities or "hooks" that helped them get accepted, such as awards, activities, unique background, etc. Plus, there is some leniency granted to students who don't speak English as their first language, because writing essays in a foreign language is tough in and of itself.

It's good to be confident in your achievements, but you don't want to come across as boastful or self-assured. In this essay, some of the phrasing such as "when I was the best at everything" seems exaggerated and is off-putting. Instead of boosting your accomplishments, write about them in a way that almost "diminishes" them. Connect your achievements to something bigger than you: an interesting idea, a passionate cause, another person or group. By not inflating your achievements, you'll come across more humble and your achievements will actually seem more impactful. We all have heard of a highly successful person who thinks "it's no big deal," which actually makes their talents seem far more impressive.

This essay has some takeaways and reflections, as your essay should too, but ultimately these ideas are unoriginal and potentially cliché. Ideas like "what makes you happy is pursing your passion" are overused and have been heard thousands of times by admissions officers. Instead, focus on getting to unique and "deep" ideas: ideas that are specific to you and that have meaningful implications. It's okay to start off with more surface-level ideas, but you want to keep asking questions to yourself like "Why" and "How" to push yourself to think deeper. Try making connections, asking what something represents more broadly, or analyzing something from a different perspective.

You don't need to preface your ideas in your essay. Don't say things like "I later found out this would be life-changing, and here's why." Instead, just jump into the details that are most compelling. In this essay, there are moments that seem repetitive and redundant because they don't add new ideas and instead restate what's already been said in different words. When editing your essay, be critical of every sentence (and even words) by asking: Does this add something new to my essay? Does it have a clear, distinct purpose? If the answer is no, you should probably remove that sentence.

Common App Essay Example #15: Discovering Passion

Here's a Johns Hopkins essay that shows how the student had a change in attitude and perspective after taking a summer job at a care facility.

It may seem odd to write about your potential drawbacks or weaknesses—such as having a bad attitude towards something—but it's real and can help demonstrate personal growth.

So tell me your thoughts on this JHU Common App essay:

Common App Prompt #5: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. (250-650 words)

This student uses vulnerability in admitting that they held preconceived notions about the elderly before this experience. The quote introduces these preconceived notions well, while the description of how this student got their job in the care facility is also engaging.

Admission officers love to see your interactions with others. Showing how you interact reveals a lot about your character, and this essay benefits from reflecting upon the student's relationship with a particular elderly individual.

It is good to be descriptive, but only when it supports your expression of ideas. In this essay, the author uses adjectives and adverbs excessively, without introducing new ideas. Your ideas are more important than having a diverse vocabulary, and the realizations in this essay are muddled by rephrasing similar ideas using seemingly "impressive," but ultimately somewhat meaningless, vocabulary.

This essay touches on some interesting ideas, but on multiple occasions these ideas are repeated just in different phrasing. If you have already expressed an idea, don't repeat it unless you're adding something new: a deeper context, a new angle, a broadened application, etc. Ask yourself: what is the purpose of each sentence, and have I expressed it already?

It's true that almost any topic can make for a strong essay, but certain topics are trickier because they make it easy to write about overly used ideas. In this essay, the main idea can be summarized as: "I realized the elderly were worthy humans too." It touches upon more interesting ideas, such as how people can be reduced down to their afflictions rather than their true character, but the main idea is somewhat surface-level.

Common App Essay Example #16: "A Cow Gave Birth"

This Common App essay for the University of Pennsylvania centers on the theme of womanhood. Not only is it well-written, but this essay has interesting and unique ideas that relate to the student's interests.

Common App Essay Example #17: Robotics

This Common App essay was for Washington University in St. Louis .

This student writes about their experience creating and using an engineering notebook to better document their robotics progress. They share the story of how their dedication and perseverance led to winning awards and qualifying for the national championships.

Lastly, they reflect on the importance of following one's passions in life and decision to pursue a business degree instead of a engineering one.

This essay touches on various lessons that they've learned as a result of their experience doing robotics. However, these lessons are ultimately surface-level and generic, such as "I embraced new challenges." Although these could be a starting point for deeper ideas, on their own they come off as unoriginal and overused. Having interesting ideas is what makes an essay the most compelling, and you need to delve deeply into reflection, past the surface-level takeaways. When drafting and brainstorming, keep asking yourself questions like "How" and "Why" to dig deeper. Ask "What does this represent? How does it connect to other things? What does this show about myself/the world/society/etc.?"

Although this essay is focused on "VEX robotics," the details of what that activity involves are not elaborated. Rather than focusing on the surface-level descriptions like "We competed and won," it would be more engaging to delve into the details. What did your robot do? How did you compete? What were the specific challenges in "lacking building materials"? Use visuals and imagery to create a more engaging picture of what you were doing.

The hook and ending sentences of "drifting off to sleep" feel arbitrary and not at all connected to any ideas throughout the essay. Instead, it comes off as a contrived choice to create a "full circle" essay. Although coming full circle is often a good strategy, there should be a specific purpose in doing so. For your intro, try using a short sentence that creates emphasis on something interesting. For the conclusion, try using similar language to the intro, expanding upon your ideas to more universal takeaways, or connecting back to previous ideas with a new nuance.

Common App Essay Example #18: Lab Research

Common app essay example #19: carioca dance.

Having a natural-sounding style of writing can be a great way of conveying personality. This student does a fantastic job of writing as they'd speak, which lets admissions officers create a clear "image" of who you are in their head. By writing naturally and not robotically, you can create a "voice" and add character to your essay.

This student chooses a unique activity, the Carioca drill, as their main topic. By choosing a "theme" like this, it allows you to easily and naturally talk about other activities too, without seeming like you're simply listing activities. This student uses the Carioca as a metaphor for overcoming difficulties and relates it to their other activities and academics—public speaking and their job experience.

Showing a sense of humor can indicate wit, which not only makes you seem more likeable, but also conveys self-awareness. By not always taking yourself 100% seriously, you can be more relatable to the reader. This student acknowledges their struggles in conjunction with using humor ("the drills were not named after me—'Saads'"), which shows a recognition that they have room to improve, while not being overly self-critical.

Common App Essay Example #20: Chinese Language

The list of languages that Lincoln offered startled me. “There’s so many,” I thought, “Latin, Spanish, Chinese, and French.”

As soon as I stepped off the plane, and set my eyes upon the beautiful city of Shanghai, I fell in love. In that moment, I had an epiphany. China was made for me, and I wanted to give it all my first; first job and first apartment.

Using creative metaphors can be an effective way of conveying ideas. In this essay, the metaphor of "Chinese characters...were the names of my best friends" tells a lot about this student's relationship with the language. When coming up with metaphors, a good rule of thumb is: if you've heard it before, don't use it. Only use metaphors that are specific, make sense for what you're trying to say, and are highly unique.

Whenever you "tell" something, you should try and back it up with anecdotes, examples, or experiences. Instead of saying that "I made conversation," this student exemplifies it by listing who they talked to. Showing is always going to be more compelling than telling because it allows the reader to come to the conclusion on their own, which makes them believe it much stronger. Use specific, tangible examples to back up your points and convince the reader of what you're saying.

Although this essay has reflections, they tend to be more surface-level, rather than unique and compelling. Admissions officers have read thousands of application essays and are familiar with most of the ideas students write about. To stand out, you'll need to dive deeper into your ideas. To do this, keep asking yourself questions whenever you have an interesting idea. Ask "Why" and "How" repeatedly until you reach something that is unique, specific to you, and super interesting.

Avoid writing a conclusion that only "sounds nice," but lacks real meaning. Often times, students write conclusions that go full circle, or have an interesting quote, but they still don't connect to the main idea of the essay. Your conclusion should be your strongest, most interesting idea. It should say something new: a new perspective, a new takeaway, a new aspect of your main point. End your essay strongly by staying on topic, but taking your idea one step further to the deepest it can go.

Common App Essay Example #21: Kiki's Delivery Service

Common App Prompt #6: Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more? (250-650 words)

I spent much of my childhood watching movies. I became absolutely engrossed in many different films, TV shows, and animations. From the movie theatres to the TV, I spent my hours enjoying the beauty of visual media. One place that was special to me was the car. My parents purchased a special screen that could be mounted on the back of the headrest, so that I could watch movies on trips. This benefited both parties, as I was occupied, and they had peace. Looking back, I realize this screen played a crucial role in my childhood. It was an integral part of many journeys. I remember taking a drive to Washington D.C, with my visiting relatives from Poland, and spending my time with my eyes on the screen. I remember packing up my possessions and moving to my current home from Queens, watching my cartoons the whole time. I can comfortably say that watching movies in the car has been an familiar anchor during times of change in my life.

I used to watch many different cartoons, nature documentaries, and other products in the car, yet there has been one movie that I have rewatched constantly. It is called “Kiki’s Delivery Service” by Hayao Miyazaki. My parents picked it up at a garage sale one day, and I fell in love. The style of the animations were beautiful, and the captivating story of a thirteen year old witch leaving home really appealed to me. To be honest, the initial times I watched it, I didn’t fully understand the story but the magic and beauty just made me happy. Then, the more I watched it, I began to see that it was more about independence, including the need to get away from home and establish yourself as your own person. This mirrors how I felt during that period of my life,with mehaving a little rebellious streak; I didn’t agree with my parents on certain topics. That is not the end of the story though. As the years passed, and I watched it a couple more times, although with less frequency than before, my view of this movie evolved yet again.

Instead of solely thinking about the need for independence, I began to think the movie was more about the balance of independence and reliance. In the movie, the girl finds herself struggling until she begins to accept help from others. Looking back, this also follows my own philosophy during this time. As I began to mature, I began to realize the value of family, and accept all the help I can get from them. I appreciate all the hard work they had done for me, and I recognize their experience in life and take advantage of it. I passed through my rebellious phase, and this reflected in my analysis of the movie. I believe that this is common, and if I look through the rest of my life I am sure I would find other similar examples of my thoughts evolving based on the stage in my life. This movie is one of the most important to me throughout my life.

Common App Essay Example #22: Museum of Life

Using visuals can be a way to add interesting moments to your essay. Avoid being overly descriptive, however, as it can be distracting from your main point. When drafting, start by focusing on your ideas (your reflections and takeaways). Once you have a rough draft, then you can consider ways to incorporate imagery that can add character and flavor to your essay.

Admissions officers are people, just like you, and therefore are drawn to personalities that exhibit positive qualities. Some of the most important qualities to portray are: humility, curiosity, thoughtfulness, and passion. In this essay, there are several moments that could be interpreted as potentially self-centered or arrogant. Avoid trying to make yourself out to be "better" or "greater" than other people. Instead, focus on having unique and interesting ideas first, and this will show you as a likeable, insightful person. Although this is a "personal" statement, you should also avoid over using "I" in your essay. When you have lots of "I" sentences, it starts to feel somewhat ego-centric, rather than humble and interested in something greater than you.

This essay does a lot of "telling" about the author's character. Instead, you want to provide evidence—through examples, anecdotes, and moments—that allow the reader to come to their own conclusions about who you are. Avoid surface-level takeaways like "I am open-minded and have a thirst for knowledge." These types of statements are meaningless because anyone can write them. Instead, focus on backing up your points by "showing," and then reflect genuinely and deeply on those topics.

This essay is focused on art museums and tries to tie in a connection to studying medicine. However, because this connection is very brief and not elaborated, the connection seems weak. To connect to your area of study when writing about a different topic, try reflecting on your topic first. Go deep into interesting ideas by asking "How" and "Why" questions. Then, take those ideas and broaden them. Think of ways they could differ or parallel your desired area of study. The best connections between a topic (such as an extracurricular) and your area of study (i.e. your major) is through having interesting ideas.

Common App Essay Example #23: French Horn

This student chose the creative idea of personifying their French horn as their central theme. Using this personification, they are able to write about a multitude of moments while making them all feel connected. This unique approach also makes for a more engaging essay, as it is not overly straightforward and generic.

It can be challenging to reference your achievements without seeming boastful or coming across too plainly. This student manages to write about their successes ("acceptance into the Julliard Pre-College program") by using them as moments part of a broader story. The focus isn't necessarily on the accomplishments themselves, but the role they play in this relationship with their instrument. By connecting more subtly like this, it shows humility. Often, "diminishing" your achievements will actually make them stand out more, because it shows you're focused on the greater meaning behind them, rather than just "what you did."

This student does a good job of exemplifying each of their ideas. Rather than just saying "I experienced failure," they show it through imagery ("dried lips, cracked notes, and missed entrances"). Similarly, with their idea "no success comes without sacrifice," they exemplify it using examples of sacrifice. Always try to back up your points using examples, because showing is much more convincing than telling. Anyone can "tell" things, but showing requires proof.

This essay has a decent conclusion, but it could be stronger by adding nuance to their main idea or connecting to the beginning with a new perspective. Rather than repeating what you've established previously, make sure your conclusion has a different "angle" or new aspect. This can be connecting your main idea to more universal values, showing how you now view something differently, or emphasizing a particular aspect of your main idea that was earlier introduced.

Common App Essay Example #24: Dear My Younger Self

Common App Prompt #7: Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design. (250-650 words)

Younger Anna,

• Don’t live your life as if you're constantly being watched and criticized. Chances are, no one is even paying attention to you.
• Wear your retainer.
• Empathy makes your life easier. People who are inexplicably cruel are suffering just as much as the recipients of their abuse. Understanding this makes your interactions with these people less painful.
• Comparing yourself to your classmates is counterproductive. Sometimes you will forge ahead, other times you will lag behind. But ultimately, you’re only racing yourself.
• Speak up to your stepmom.
• Always eat the cake. I couldn't tell you how many times I’ve turned away a slice of cake, only to regret it the next day. If you really can’t commit, do yourself a favor and take a slice home with you.
• Cherish your grandparents.
• Forgive your mother. Harboring resentment hurts you just as much as her. All the time I spent being angry at her could’ve been spent discovering her strengths.

This essay chose a unique structure in the form of a letter addressed to themselves with a list of lessons they've learned. This structure is unique, and also allows the student to explore a variety of topics and ideas while making them all feel connected. It is tricky to not seem "gimmicky" when choosing a creative structure like this, but the key is to make your essay well thought-out. Show that you've put effort into reflecting deeply, and that you aren't choosing a unique structure just to stand out.

This essay is highly focused on lessons they've learned, which shows a deep level of reflection. Your ideas and takeaways from life experience are ultimately most compelling to admissions officers, and this essay succeeds because it is focused almost entirely on those reflections. This student also manages to incorporate anecdotes and mini stories where appropriate, which makes their reflections more memorable by being tangible.

Showing humility and self-awareness are two highly attractive traits in college admissions. Being able to recognize your own flaws and strengths, while not making yourself out to be more than what you are, shows that you are mature and thoughtful. Avoid trying to "boost yourself up" by exaggerating your accomplishments or over-emphasizing your strengths. Instead, let your ideas speak for themselves, and by focusing on genuine, meaningful ideas, you'll convey a persona that is both humble and insightful.

The drawback of having a structure like this, where lots of different ideas are examined, is that no one idea is examined in-depth. As a result, some ideas (such as "intelligence is not defined by your grades") come across as trite and overused. In general, avoid touching on lots of ideas while being surface-level. Instead, it's almost always better to choose a handful (or even just one main idea) and go as in-depth as possible by continually asking probing questions—"How" and "Why"—that force yourself to think deeper and be more critical. Having depth of ideas shows inquisitiveness, thoughtfulness, and ultimately are more interesting because they are ideas that only you could have written.

Common App Essay Example #25: Monopoly

Feeling a bit weary from my last roll of the dice, I cross my fingers with the “FREE PARKING” square in sight. As luck has it, I smoothly glide past the hotels to have my best horse show yet- earning multiple wins against stiff competition and gaining points to qualify for five different national finals this year.

This essay uses the board game "Monopoly" as a metaphor for their life. By using a metaphor as your main topic, you can connect to different ideas and activities in a cohesive way. However, make sure the metaphor isn't chosen arbitrarily. In this essay, it isn't completely clear why Monopoly is an apt metaphor for their life, because the specific qualities that make Monopoly unique aren't explained or elaborated. Lots of games require "strategy and precision, with a hint of luck and a tremendous amount of challenge," so it'd be better to focus on the unique aspects of the game to make a more clear connection. For example, moving around the board in a "repetitive" fashion, but each time you go around with a different perspective. When choosing a metaphor, first make sure that it is fitting for what you're trying to describe.

You want to avoid listing your activities or referencing them without a clear connection to something greater. Since you have an activities list already, referencing your activities in your essay should have a specific purpose, rather than just emphasizing your achievements. In this essay, the student connects their activities by connecting them to a specific idea: how each activity is like a mini challenge that they must encounter to progress in life. Make sure your activities connect to something specifically: an idea, a value, an aspect of your character.

This essay lacks depth in their reflections by not delving deeply into their main takeaways. In this essay, the main "idea" is that they've learned to be persistent with whatever comes their way. This idea could be a good starting point, but on its own is too generic and not unique enough. Your idea should be deep and specific, meaning that it should be something only you could have written about. If your takeaway could be used in another student's essay without much modification, chances are it is a surface-level takeaway and you want to go more in-depth. To go in-depth, keep asking probing questions like "How" and "Why" or try making more abstract connections between topics.

In the final two paragraphs, this essay does a lot of "telling" about the lessons they've learned. They write "I know that in moments of doubt...I can rise to the occasion." Although this could be interesting, it would be far more effective if this idea is shown through anecdotes or experiences. The previous examples in the essay don't "show" this idea. When drafting, take your ideas and think of ways you can represent them without having to state them outright. By showing your points, you will create a more engaging and convincing essay because you'll allow the reader to come to the conclusion themselves, rather than having to believe what you've told them.

What Can You Learn from These Common App Essay Examples?

With these 25 Common App essay examples, you can get inspired and improve your own personal statement.

If you want to get accepted into selective colleges this year, your Common App essays needs to be its best possible.

What makes a good Common App essay isn't easy to define. There aren't any rules or steps.

But using these samples from real students, you can understand what it takes to write an outstanding personal statement .

Let me know, which Common App essay did you think was the best?

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People love to ask why. Why do you wear a turban? Why do you have long hair? Why are you playing a guitar with only 3 strings and watching TV at 3 A.M.—where did you get that cat? Why won’t you go back to your country, you terrorist? My answer is... uncomfortable. Many truths of the world are uncomfortable...

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Her baking is not confined to an amalgamation of sugar, butter, and flour. It's an outstretched hand, an open invitation, a makeshift bridge thrown across the divides of age and culture. Thanks to Buni, the reason I bake has evolved. What started as stress relief is now a lifeline to my heritage, a language that allows me to communicate with my family in ways my tongue cannot. By rolling dough for saratele and crushing walnuts for cornulete, my baking speaks more fluently to my Romanian heritage than my broken Romanian ever could....

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Using Metaphors in Creative Writing

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What is a metaphor?

The term metaphor meant in Greek "carry something across" or "transfer," which suggests many of the more elaborate definitions below:

Related terms

Why use metaphors.

People get so accustomed to using the same words and phrases over and over, and always in the same ways, that they no longer know what they mean. Creative writers have the power to make the ordinary strange and the strange ordinary, making life interesting again.

When readers or listeners encounter a phrase or word that cannot be interpreted literally, they have to think—or rather, they are given the pleasure of interpretation. If you write "I am frustrated" or "The air was cold" you give your readers nothing to do—they say "so what?" On the other hand, if you say, "My ambition was Hiroshima, after the bombing," your readers can think about and choose from many possible meanings.

By writing "my dorm is a prison," you suggest to your readers that you feel as though you were placed in solitary, you are fed lousy food, you are deprived of all of life's great pleasures, your room is poorly lit and cramped—and a hundred other things, that, if you tried to say them all, would probably take several pages.

There are many gaps in language. When a child looks at the sky and sees a star but does not know the word "star," she is forced to say, "Mommy, look at the lamp in the sky!" Similarly, when computer software developers created boxes on the screen as a user interface, they needed a new language; the result was windows. In your poems, you will often be trying to write about subjects, feelings, etc., so complex that you have no choice but to use metaphors.

Or so says Aristotle in Poetics: "[T]he greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor." It is "a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars."

Creative ways to use metaphors

Most books give rather boring examples of metaphors such as my father is a bear or the librarian was a beast. However, in your poetry (and fiction for that matter) you can do much more than say X is Y, like an algebraic formula. Definitely play with extended metaphors (see above) and experiment with some of the following, using metaphors...

When you apply to colleges, you will do plenty of writing. Aside from filling in information and completing a resume, you will have to write essays or short answers based on prompts universities give you. Looking at college essay examples can be a helpful way to prepare for this important part of the application.

Generally, your college entrance essays are meant to convey something about you that could not be known from other parts of your application. For example, your essays should do more than show you are a hard worker because good grades and a busy resume already do this. Some essays for college will ask for something very specific. For example, the “why this college” essay tries to gauge your knowledge and commitment to the institution. For the personal essay on the Common Application, expectations are less clear. This is a college essay about yourself, and you will submit one for all schools that require the Common Application . 

The Common App essay is supposed to give admissions officers a sense of your personality. This is a chance to make you stand out in a way that other parts of the application could not. That being said, the best college essays do more than just display the author’s quirks but create a picture of a dynamic person who offers something to a college community. This will help set you apart during the college admissions committee review process . 

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4 winning college application essay examples that can help you get admitted

Here are some examples of college essays that worked. Pay attention to how students used one part of who they are (a memory, their background, a challenge) to paint a larger picture. Overall, this is a great way to communicate a lot of information in a relatively small space. 

College essay example #1

This first essay was submitted to Harvard University during the 2021 college admissions cycle: 

When I was a child, I begged my parents for my very own Brother PT-1400 P-Touch Handheld Label Maker to fulfill all of my labeling needs. Other kids had Nintendos and would spend their free time with Mario and Luigi. While they pummeled their video game controllers furiously, the pads of their thumbs dancing across their joysticks, I would type out labels on my industrial-standard P-Touch with just as much zeal. I labeled everything imaginable, dividing hundreds of pens into Ziploc bags by color, then rubber-banding them by point size. The finishing touch, of course, was always a glossy, three-eighths-inch-wide tag, freshly churned out from my handheld labeler and decisively pasted upon the numerous plastic bags I had successfully compiled.

Labeling became therapeutic for me; organizing my surroundings into specific groups to be labeled provides me with a sense of stability. I may not physically need the shiny color-coded label verifying the contents of a plastic bag as BLUE HIGHLIGHTERS—FAT, to identify them as such, but seeing these classifications so plainly allows me to appreciate the reliability of my categorizations. There are no exceptions when I label the top ledge of my bookshelf as containing works from ACHEBE, CHINUA TO CONRAD, JOSEPH. Each book is either filtered into that category or placed definitively into another one. Yet, such consistency only exists in these inanimate objects.

Thus, the break in my role as a labeler comes when I interact with people. Their lives are too complicated, their personalities too intricate for me to resolutely summarize in a few words or even with the 26.2 feet of laminated adhesive tape compatible with my label maker. I have learned that a thin line exists between labeling and just being judgmental when evaluating individuals. I can hardly superficially characterize others as simply as I do my material possessions because people refuse to be so cleanly separated and compartmentalized. My sister Joyce jokes freely and talks with me for hours about everything from the disturbing popularity of vampires in pop culture to cubic watermelons, yet those who don’t know her well usually think of her as timid and introverted. My mother is sometimes my biggest supporter, spouting words of encouragement and, at other instances, my most unrelenting critic. The overlap becomes too indistinct, the contradictions too apparent, even as I attempt to classify those people in the world whom I know best.

Neither would I want others to be predictable enough for me to label. The real joy in human interaction lies in the excitement of the unknown. Overturning expectations can be necessary to preserving the vitality of relationships. If I were never surprised by the behaviors of those around me, my biggest source of entertainment would vanish. For all my love of order when it comes to my room, I don’t want myself, or the people with whom I interact, to fit squarely into any one category. I meticulously follow directions to the millimeter in the chemistry lab but measure ingredients by pinches and dashes in the comfort of my kitchen. I’m a self-proclaimed grammar Nazi, but I’ll admit e. e. cummings’s irreverence does appeal. I’ll chart my television show schedule on Excel, but I would never dream of confronting my chores with as much organization. I even call myself a labeler, but not when it comes to people. As Walt Whitman might put it, “Do I contradict myself? / Very well, then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.).”

I therefore refrain from the temptation to label—despite it being an act that makes me feel so fulfilled when applied to physical objects—when real people are the subjects. The consequences of premature labeling are too great, the risk of inaccuracy too high because, most of the time, not even the hundreds of alphanumeric digits and symbols available for entry on my P-Touch can effectively describe who an individual really is.

A pleasure to read, filled with witty remarks and earnest self-reflection. This essay uses humor, along with meticulous attention to detail, to convey certain personal truths. The opening anecdote demonstrates the student’s passion for order and organization, while the second half of this essay shows the student’s willingness to contradict themself to engage with others meaningfully. 

Not only is this essay creative and entertaining, but it also demonstrates how this student is eager to challenge themself and embrace a wide variety of perspectives. Furthermore, the specific details this student includes, especially their literary references, help express their academic interests and values. Overall, this essay is witty, creative, and memorable, while engaging in a larger meaningful discussion.

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College essay example #2.

This second essay was submitted to Hamilton College during the 2021 college admissions cycle: 

I dreaded their arrival. The tyrannical cicadas swarmed DC and neighboring areas in 1987, 2004, and again in 2021. I was freaking about Brood X, the worst of them all. Brood X is a cluster of cicadas that descend on Washington, D.C., every 17 years. I live in the epicenter of their swarm. Cicadas battled with mosquitoes for first place in the top tier of the human annoyance pyramid. I hate these off-brand cockroaches.

For 17 years, cicadas live underground feasting off of sap, running free of danger. Then, they emerge and face the real world. That sounds familiar. I have lived in the same house, in the same town, for 17 years, with my parents feeding me pasta and keeping me safe.

Is it conceivable that I have more in common with cicadas than I previously thought? Cicadas have beady, red eyes. After a year of enduring Zoom classes, attending tele-health appointments, and spending too much time on social media and video games, I too feel a little blurry-eyed and disoriented. But what about their incessant hum and perpetual noise? That is not me. OK, maybe I do make protein shakes with a noisy blender at all hours of the day. Maybe I do FaceTime vehemently with friends, blare music while I shower, and constantly kick a ball around both inside the house and out.

At least I do not leave damaged wings, shedded skin, or rotting carcasses everywhere. Smelly soccer socks on the clean carpet after a long practice? Check. Pools of turf in the mudroom after sliding all over the field? You got it. Dirty dishes and trail mix stains after accidentally sitting on a mislaid M&M are hardly as abhorrent as cicada remains, right?

The more I reflected, the more I realized these bugs and I are more alike than different. After 17 years of being cooped up, we are both antsy to face new experiences. Of course, cicadas want to broaden their wings, fly, and explore the world, even if it means clumsily colliding into people’s faces, telephone poles, and parked cars. Just like I want to shed my skin and escape to college, even if it means getting lost on campus or ruining a whole load of laundry. Despite all my newbie attributes, I am proceeding to the next phase of my life whether I am ready or not.

Only the hardiest of cicadas survive their emergence and make it to trees to mate, lay eggs, and ensure the existence of their species. I want to be a tenacious Brood X cicada. I will know what it means to travel into the wrong classroom before getting laughed at, bump into an upperclassman before dropping textbooks everywhere, fail an exam after thinking I aced it. I may even become the cicada of the lecture hall by asking a professor for permission to go to the bathroom. Like cicadas, I will need time to learn how to learn.

No matter what challenge I undergo that exposes and channels my inner-cicada, novice thought process, I will regroup and continue to soar toward the ultimate goal of thriving in college.

When I look beyond our beady red eyes, round-the-clock botherment, and messy trails, I now understand there is room for all creatures to grow, both cicadas and humans. Cicadas certainly are on to something … Seventeen years is the perfect amount of time to emerge and get ready to fly.

This essay uses a humorous extended metaphor to express their eagerness to attend college — as well as their inner trepidations. Mostly this essay is about resiliency and embracing change. What makes this essay stand out, however, is its subject matter. By comparing themself to a cicada, an organism they’ve already admitted to strongly disliking, the student demonstrates humor, humility, and a willingness to approach the world with creativity and curiosity. 

While this essay isn’t necessarily about a particular interest or experience, it characterizes the student exceedingly well. Overall, this essay is memorable and creative, using humor and humility to express a greater truth about how this student views themself and how they approach their surroundings. 

College essay example #3

This third essay was submitted to Tufts College  during the 2019 college admissions cycle: 

My first dream job was to be a pickle truck driver. I saw it in my favorite book, Richard Scarry’s “Cars and Trucks and Things That Go,” and for some reason, I was absolutely obsessed with the idea of driving a giant pickle. Much to the discontent of my younger sister, I insisted that my parents read us that book as many nights as possible so we could find goldbug, a small little golden bug, on every page. I would imagine the wonderful life I would have: being a pig driving a giant pickle truck across the country, chasing and finding goldbug. I then moved on to wanting to be a Lego Master. Then an architect. Then a surgeon.

Then I discovered a real goldbug: gold nanoparticles that can reprogram macrophages to assist in killing tumors, produce clear images of them without sacrificing the subject, and heat them to obliteration.

Suddenly the destination of my pickle was clear.

I quickly became enveloped by the world of nanomedicine; I scoured articles about liposomes, polymeric micelles, dendrimers, targeting ligands, and self-assembling nanoparticles, all conquering cancer in some exotic way. Completely absorbed, I set out to find a mentor to dive even deeper into these topics. After several rejections, I was immensely grateful to receive an invitation to work alongside Dr. Sangeeta Ray at Johns Hopkins.

In the lab, Dr. Ray encouraged a great amount of autonomy to design and implement my own procedures. I chose to attack a problem that affects the entire field of nanomedicine: nanoparticles consistently fail to translate from animal studies into clinical trials. Jumping off recent literature, I set out to see if a pre-dose of a common chemotherapeutic could enhance nanoparticle delivery in aggressive prostate cancer, creating three novel constructs based on three different linear polymers, each using fluorescent dye (although no gold, sorry goldbug!). Though using radioactive isotopes like Gallium and Yttrium would have been incredible, as a 17-year-old, I unfortunately wasn’t allowed in the same room as these radioactive materials (even though I took a Geiger counter to a pair of shoes and found them to be slightly dangerous).

I hadn’t expected my hypothesis to work, as the research project would have ideally been led across two full years. Yet while there are still many optimizations and revisions to be done, I was thrilled to find — with completely new nanoparticles that may one day mean future trials will use particles with the initials “RK-1” — that cyclophosphamide did indeed increase nanoparticle delivery to the tumor in a statistically significant way.

A secondary, unexpected research project was living alone in Baltimore, a new city to me, surrounded by people much older than I. Even with moving frequently between hotels, AirBnB’s, and students’ apartments, I strangely reveled in the freedom I had to enjoy my surroundings and form new friendships with graduate school students from the lab. We explored The Inner Harbor at night, attended a concert together one weekend, and even got to watch the Orioles lose (to nobody’s surprise). Ironically, it’s through these new friendships I discovered something unexpected: what I truly love is sharing research. Whether in a presentation or in a casual conversation, making others interested in science is perhaps more exciting to me than the research itself. This solidified a new pursuit to angle my love for writing towards illuminating science in ways people can understand, adding value to a society that can certainly benefit from more scientific literacy.

It seems fitting that my goals are still transforming: in Scarry’s book, there is not just one goldbug, there is one on every page. With each new experience, I’m learning that it isn’t the goldbug itself, but rather the act of searching for the goldbugs that will encourage, shape, and refine my ever-evolving passions. Regardless of the goldbug I seek — I know my pickle truck has just begun its journey.

This essay uses a humorous childhood anecdote to introduce an impressive series of scientific projects and inquiries. As evident through their various scientific projects, this student is very talented and driven. Furthermore, by periodically revisiting the playful language of the opening anecdote, the student’s scientific achievements are further emphasized through its contrasting language and tone. 

Overall, this essay strikes a really good balance between playful and scientific language, which ultimately ties into the student’s parting conclusion that they want to use their love of storytelling to make scientific discoveries more accessible to a wider audience. This essay is memorable, highly detailed, and leaves a lasting impression. 

College essay example #4

This final essay was submitted to John Hopkins University as a part of the 2018 college admissions cycle: 

The sound was loud and discordant, like a hurricane, high notes and low notes mixing together in an audible mess. It was as if a thousand booming foghorns were in a shouting match with sirens. Unlike me, this was a little abrasive and loud. I liked it. It was completely unexpected and extremely fun to play.

Some instruments are built to make multiple notes, like a piano. A saxophone on the other hand doesn’t play chords but single notes through one vibrating reed. However, I discovered that you can play multiple notes simultaneously on the saxophone. While practicing a concert D-flat scale, I messed up a fingering for a low B-flat, and my instrument produced a strange noise with two notes. My band teacher got very excited and exclaimed, “Hey, you just played a polyphonic note!” I like it when accidents lead to discovering new ideas.

I like this polyphonic sound because it reminds me of myself: many things at once. You assume one thing and get another. At school, I am a course scholar in English, but I am also able to amuse others when I come up with wince evoking puns. My math and science teachers expect me to go into engineering, but I’m more excited about making films. Discussing current events with my friends is fun, but I also like to share with them my secrets to cooking a good scotch egg. Even though my last name gives them a hint, the Asian students at our school don’t believe that I’m half Japanese. 

Meanwhile the non-Asians are surprised that I’m also part Welsh. I feel comfortable being unique or thinking differently. As a Student Ambassador this enables me to help freshmen and others who are new to our school feel welcome and accepted. I help the new students know that it’s okay to be themselves.

There is added value in mixing things together. I realized this when my brother and I won an international Kavli Science Foundation contest where we explained the math behind the Pixar movie “Up”. Using stop motion animation we explored the plausibility and science behind lifting a house with helium balloons. I like offering a new view and expanding the way people see things. In many of my videos I combine art with education. I want to continue making films that not only entertain, but also make you think.

A lot of people have a single passion that defines them or have a natural talent for something specific. Like my saxophone I am an instrument, but I can play many notes at once. I’m a scholar and a musician. Quiet but talkative. An athlete and a filmmaker. Careful but spontaneous. A fan of Johnny Cash and Kill The Noise. Hard-working but playful. A martial artist and a baker. One of a kind but an identical twin.

Will polyphonic notes resonate in college? Yes. For instance, balancing a creative narrative with scientific facts will make a more believable story. I want to bring together different kinds of students (such as music, film, and English majors) to create more meaningful art. Understanding fellow students’ perspective, talents, and ideas are what build a great community.

I’m looking forward to discovering my place in the world by combining various interests. Who I am doesn’t always harmonize and may seem like nothing but noise to some. But what I play, no matter how discordant, can be beautiful. It’s my own unique polyphonic note.

The opening anecdote is unique, engaging, and succinct. It also allows the student to include a lot of personal details and interests in a way that feels natural and matches the tone of the opening anecdote. In less than a page, we learn that this student is a musician, athlete, filmmaker, jokester, twin, martial artist, baker, lover of literature, and twin. We also learn that the student is half-Japanese, half-Welsh, and has learned to embrace her cultural differences and personal nuances while encouraging others to do the same. The upbeat, excitable tone of this essay also helps characterize this student as well as demonstrate how she would enhance the school’s campus culture. 

Key takeaways from college essay examples

Writing a successful personal statement is a key factor in holistic college admissions practices . This is because your personal statement is your opportunity to share more about who you are as a person and what you’re passionate about. Every year thousands of qualified students apply to highly-selective colleges, such as Ivy League institutions , but only a small fraction of students are admitted. So how do you stand out in a pool of equally qualified applicants? Your personal statement. 

This is why it is important to learn more about components of a strong personal statement , as well as overused college essay topics that are best to avoid. Reading examples of successful Common App essays is a great way to start thinking about how to best approach your college essays. By identifying key strategies and characteristics that helped set these essay examples apart, you are one step closer to writing your own successful personal statement.

Need college essay help?

Prepory offers a college admissions essay help package to assist high school students with the most important part of the college application process. Our expert editors have degrees in writing, attended elite colleges and universities, and have hundreds of success stories editing college essays. Our college essay review process goes further than editing for a missing comma or period. We dig deep to learn more about who you are and what you want to tell admissions officers. 

Our college admissions team helps students write compelling college essays and construct, edit, and flesh out their resumes, too! If you feel like you could benefit from professional guidance during this college application season, reach out to learn more about our services .

• November 7, 2022
• College Admissions , Common App

4 Winning College Essay Examples from Top Schools

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How to Use Rhetorical Devices in Your College Essay

←Essential Grammar Rules for Your College Applications

Developing a Personalized Metaphor for Your College Applications→

Writing the personal statement is one of the most important, yet difficult aspects of the college application process. The elusive perfect personal statement is deeply moving, expertly written, rich with details of accomplishments or inspiring life stories, and fits neatly into the word limit. These constraints can leave many struggling to fit what they want to say in so few words. But what many fail to realize when writing personal statements is that admissions officers are evaluating more than just the story you have to tell. They’re also examining your writing style and ability to convey the abstract qualities in an eloquent way.

Long story short: you should be focused on not only what you’re saying, but also how you’re saying it.

Presenting Your Case: The Seed of a Personal Statement

It’s crucial to acknowledge that a personal statement should contain, at its core, an argument. We don’t mean an argument in the same way you might write a debate or an SAT essay – there’s no need for a rigid evidence and analysis structure here. However, you are setting forth a case to the office of undergraduate admissions at your school of choice that you’ll contribute substantially to their community; by telling your story, highlighting your personal strengths, and displaying how you’ve grown into the person you are today, you are essentially arguing that you’re a great candidate for admission. Like any great argument, your personal statement should contain the same rhetorical strategies you would employ when trying to write a persuasive essay or speech. The difference is that the subject matter isn’t some topic your teacher assigned – it’s you!

An exceptionally written personal statement that successfully employs rhetorical strategies can elevate your application enormously; it’s an opportunity to display creativity, strong writing skills, and personal depth that can’t be conveyed through a stellar GPA or strong test scores. Additionally, a personal statement is not a piece of academic writing. It’s meant to be personal – it should give the reader as clear an idea of who you are in the word count given. So don’t agonize over grammar conventions, formal speech, and populating your essay with as many vocabulary words as possible. Rather, take the opportunity to showcase your creativity and make the most of it!

Rhetorical Devices to Use in Your College Essay

While any rhetorical devices used in your essay will elevate the quality of your writing and strengthen your argument, there are some that work particularly well for the purpose of the personal statement. Below are a few of our favorite rhetorical devices and how you can use them to set your essay apart.

A conceit is a metaphor that extends throughout the length of a piece of writing. A well-developed conceit will leave a strong impression on readers and immediately make your essay distinctive and memorable. If you can assign a metaphor to the narrative of your personal essay that you can extend throughout, it will make your essay not only more interesting to read, but also more unique; standing out is, of course, of utmost importance in the college admissions process. For example, if you’re struggling to explain a powerful emotional experience like depression, consider using a conceit to develop the idea:

“In television and magazine advertisements, depression is often depicted as a small, feeble raincloud, showering its sufferer with negative thoughts and tiny anxieties. In reality, however, depression is more like a vast ocean; expansive, terrifying, impossibly powerful and seemingly invincible. Depression thrashes one mercilessly against the rocks one moment, only to suffocate one with silent, infinite waves the next. I spent two years of my life lost at sea, but through the turbulent journey, I have come to…”

Comparisons to natural entities like water, fire, storms, etc., work well (if you manage to avoid clichés), but be as creative and authentic as you can be; what’s most important is that whatever comparison you draw is logical and does not seem contrived, nonsensical, or immature. Consider opening and closing your essay with 2-4 sentences relating to your conceit, and make sure the tone throughout your essay is consistent too.

Another engaging, memorable way to open an essay is with a personal anecdote, or story. Specific sensory details setting a scene immediately capture the reader’s interest and immerse them in your story. For instance, if you plan to write about how being captain of the varsity soccer team has shaped you, try opening your essay with a vivid description of your state of mind when you’re playing a game:

“As I sprint across the field, savoring the sensation of my cleats cutting through the earth beneath me, I notice a gap in the opposing team’s defense that’s practically begging me to take the shot. The raucous soundtrack of the game – parents screaming, players shouting to one another, children crying – fades into white noise as I focus solely on the black and white ball stained with bright green grass, the glaring red of the goalkeeper’s gloves. The moment I kick, time seems to slow and then stop entirely; the ball hangs suspended in the air for a brief moment, hanging high above the players’ heads like the sun, before grazing just past the tips of the goalkeeper’s fingers…”

Beginning essays with anecdotes heavy with sensory language like the one above provide you with an opportunity to display both your writing skills and your passion about a specific topic. Anecdotes can be intense, humorous, tragic, joyful – no matter what they describe, they are a guaranteed way to catch a reader’s attention and offer an alternative to beginning with a sentence like, “all my life, I’ve loved playing soccer.”

Using anecdotes becomes crucial in light of one of the paradoxical truths about writing: people are always more able to relate their own experiences to detailed and personal writing rather than universal and bland writing, despite the fact that universal writing will apply to an audience in a more literal sense.

Anaphora is the repeated use of a certain word or phrase at the beginning of separate sentences or clauses. Consider the example below:

“Today, I am immensely proud of my family’s culture. Today, I can speak publicly with my parents in our native language without fear of judgment from others.”

Anaphora is extremely effective in emphasizing a specific emotion or idea. The deliberate repetition is dramatic and emotionally moving, an obvious superior alternative to the awkwardness and dullness of rewording the same idea in different ways repeatedly in order to avoid reusing the same words. Anaphora is also useful when highlighting a transition into a new mindset or environment, as in the sample above.

Still, using anaphora can be surprisingly tricky, and picking the right moment to use it is crucial. If there hasn’t been adequate build-up to create a dense and moving point in the essay, anaphora might come off as more redundant than anything. Anaphora, as with many rhetorical devices, can be watered down through overuse. Make sure that you’re balancing original and variegated writing with this rhetorical device if you want to maximize your impact.

Allusion is a reference to something that is well known, whether that be a person, place, thing, or event. Using allusion can help you to communicate large ideas quickly:

With an uncanny genius for hope, she was the Gatsby of our school; she could look to the past, present, and future, and see only possibility. 

Allusion can help you to draw on your reader’s knowledge of popular culture, history, and more, in order to avoid long and cumbersome descriptions that would ruin your word count. In the example above, the author alludes to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s widely known novel, The Great Gatsby, in order to emphasize the point they were making. Allusion can be especially useful when you want to give the reader extra insight into your meaning without leveraging an entire anecdote. In this way, anecdote and allusion can work together to help you give meaning to primary and secondary events, characters, and insights while still maintaining certain section’s primacy within the essay.

Be careful not to use too many allusions in one essay, though, as they are designed to stretch your essay outwards towards general social and historical knowledge. While this is immensely useful, and allows you to leverage details and feelings without actually explaining them, overuse runs the risk of pulling your essay apart entirely. Allusions are strongest when they are used in tandem with anecdotes that keep your essay in intensely personal territory.

Parallelism:

Parallelism is used to bring rhythm to a sentence or highlight a certain point, accomplished by repeating similar sentence structure, sounds, meter, or meaning.

I was sweaty, I was breathless, and I was hot. The humid air weighed down on my skin and my heavy thoughts weighed down on my mind. Maybe I just didn’t have it in me to be a runner.

In this excerpt, the writer emphasizes their physical state through parallelism. Repeating “I was” highlights their exhaustion. It feels like a more dramatic sentence than “I was sweaty, breathless, and hot.” Similarly, the parallelism of the humid air and their thoughts weighing down evoke an especially uncomfortable, almost suffocating feeling for the writer’s thoughts. 

Since parallelism can make a sentence more dramatic, it can be a powerful addition to the beginning or end of your essay. You can also use it at any other point in your essay, if you want to draw attention to a particular section. 

Personification:

Personification is when you give human-like qualities to inanimate objects. This can make your writing feel more descriptive, poetic, and emotive:

The brilliant fall leaves whispered a goodbye as we left our beloved forest and treehouse for the last time. 

Leaves can’t whisper, but by giving them this human action, the writer evokes a sense of longing. The personification highlights that the forest was so meaningful to the writer that it seemed like even the trees were saying goodbye.

That being said, personification should be used judiciously and viewed with a critical eye, as the wrong comparison can easily sound cheesy. Be sure to get a second or third opinion if you’re not sure whether your personification works.

Wrapping Up

These are only a select few of the vast array of rhetorical devices that can be used to enhance an essay. Try browsing a list of devices and attempting to incorporate several into the latest draft of your personal statement. The greatest advantage of rhetorical devices is that they are incredibly effective in lending an essay a strong emotional appeal, also known as pathos. The ability to skillfully appeal to emotion in an essay while also clearly communicating your accomplishments and personality will be invaluable as you complete your applications.

Want help with your college essays to improve your admissions chances? Sign up for your free CollegeVine account and get access to our essay guides and courses. You can also get your essay peer-reviewed and improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, using metaphors in college essays.

What's up, guys? I'm currently working on my college essays and I was wondering if using metaphors would be a good idea. I've got some pretty creative metaphors that I feel could help my essay stand out. Has anyone tried this before? Is it too risky or does it add that extra pizzazz? Let me know your thoughts!

Hello! Using metaphors in college essays can definitely be a creative way to make your essay stand out and showcase your unique perspective. However, it's important to strike a balance between creativity and clarity. While metaphors can enhance your writing and catch the attention of the admissions officers, you also want them to easily understand the point you are trying to convey.

So, as you work on your essay, feel free to incorporate your metaphors, but be mindful to not overuse them or make them too complex. You want to use them to enrich your essay but not overpower the main narrative. Remember that your goal is to tell an engaging story about yourself and your experiences, so if your metaphors contribute to that goal, then they can certainly be an asset in your essay.

Also, if you have time, consider having someone else read your essay—this can help you evaluate whether your metaphors might be unclear, too confusing or actually add value to your essay. Good luck with your college essays and feel free to experiment with your writing style to make your essay truly memorable!

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CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

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College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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25 Metaphors for College

Metaphors are a powerful tool for understanding and communicating complex ideas.  

They can help us to make sense of experiences and concepts that might otherwise seem abstract or difficult to grasp. 

In this blog post, we’ll be exploring a variety of metaphors for college, each of which offers a unique perspective on the college experience. 

From journeys and rollercoasters to laboratories and playgrounds, these metaphors can help us to better understand and appreciate the challenges and opportunities of college life. 

Whether you’re a current college student, a recent graduate, or just starting to think about your own college journey, we hope these metaphors will give you something to think about and maybe even inspire you to come up with your own!

Metaphors for College

• “The college experience is a journey.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to traveling on a journey, implying that it is a learning experience that involves both challenges and growth.
• “College is a rollercoaster ride.” This metaphor likens the ups and downs of college life to the ups and downs of a rollercoaster, suggesting that it can be both exciting and challenging.
• “College is a marathon, not a sprint.” This metaphor compares the process of completing college to running a marathon, implying that it requires endurance and persistence.
• “College is a battlefield.” This metaphor compares the challenges and competition of college to the challenges and competition of a battlefield, suggesting that it requires a certain level of resilience and fortitude.
• “College is a melting pot.” This metaphor compares the diverse student body of a college to a melting pot, implying that it is a place where different cultures and experiences come together and merge.
• “College is a training ground.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to preparing for a sport or other activity, implying that it is a place where students can develop skills and knowledge that will serve them in the future.
• “College is a laboratory.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to conducting scientific experiments, implying that it is a place where students can explore and test ideas.
• “College is a garden.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to tending to a garden, implying that it requires cultivation and care in order to grow and flourish.
• “College is a puzzle.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to solving a puzzle, implying that it requires problem-solving skills and patience.
• “College is a stage.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to performing on a stage, implying that it is a place where students can develop and showcase their skills and talents.
• “College is a game.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to playing a game, implying that it requires strategy and competition.
• “College is a fishbowl.” This metaphor compares the experience of attending college to living in a fishbowl, implying that it is a place where students are constantly under scrutiny and observation.
• “College is a maze.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to navigating a maze, implying that it can be confusing and require careful planning and decision-making.
• “College is a tree.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to growing a tree, implying that it requires nurturing and support in order to reach its full potential.
• “College is a bridge.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to crossing a bridge, implying that it is a transitional period that leads to new opportunities.
• “College is a ladder.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to climbing a ladder, implying that it requires hard work and effort to achieve success.
• “College is a buffet.” This metaphor compares the variety of options and experiences available in college to a buffet, implying that students have the opportunity to explore a wide range of interests and activities.
• “College is a playground.” This metaphor compares the atmosphere of college to a playground, implying that it is a place for fun and exploration.
• “College is a workshop.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to working in a workshop, implying that it is a place where students can develop and hone their skills.
• “College is a sandbox.” This metaphor compares the freedom and experimentation available in college to playing in a sandbox, implying that it is a place where students can try out new ideas and approaches.
• “College is a greenhouse.” This metaphor compares the supportive environment of college to a greenhouse, implying that it is a place where students can grow and develop in a protected environment.
• “College is a laboratory of ideas.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to exploring and testing new ideas in a laboratory, implying that it is a place where students can engage in intellectual experimentation.
• “College is a museum of knowledge.” This metaphor compares the wealth of information and learning opportunities available in college to a museum, implying that it is a place where students can discover and explore new ideas.
• “College is a construction site.” This metaphor compares the process of attending college to building a structure, implying that it requires hard work and collaboration to achieve a final goal.
• “College is a tapestry.” This metaphor compares the diverse experiences and perspectives of college to a tapestry, implying that it is a place where different threads come together to create a rich and complex whole.

In conclusion, the college experience is rich and multifaceted, and it can be difficult to capture all of its complexities in words. 

However, by using metaphors, we can gain a deeper understanding of the college journey and the many ways in which it can shape our lives. 

Whether you see college as a journey, a rollercoaster ride, or something entirely different, the metaphor you choose can reveal something about your own perspective and experience. 

Ultimately, the metaphors we use to describe college are just one way to make sense of this exciting and transformative period of life, and we hope that this blog post has given you some food for thought as you navigate your own college journey.

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The Dichotomy Between the Enemy Inside and Outside: Audre Lorde’s Heartening Adaptation of the War Metaphor and Rhetoric of Protest in The Cancer Journals

Karishma sivakumar, instructor’s introduction.

WR 120: (In)visible Scars: Writing About Illness explores a range of nonfiction texts (memoir, manifesto, and more) in which authors grapple with the challenge of finding the words to express the experience of mental and physical illness. Students examine how writers’ choices communicate different perspectives on sickness and health, as well as consider how writing itself may serve as a vehicle for recovery. In our second module, we focus specifically on breast cancer narratives, using Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor as a foundational text. Karishma Sivakumar’s essay contrasting Sontag’s argument surrounding use of the “war metaphor” in cancer discourse with Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals is a masterclass on how to put a range of sources “in conversation” with one another. Her ability to acknowledge and respond to vastly different viewpoints resulted in a thoughtful analysis of how Lorde employs the war metaphor to empower breast cancer “warriors” and protest against sexist societal attitudes regarding the bodies of post-mastectomy women. Although Karishma’s initial draft of this essay was already strong, she embraced the revision process as an opportunity to craft a final version that was even more nuanced. I particularly admire that she didn’t shy away from tackling counterarguments and instead pushed herself to dig in where she could anticipate possible objections, seeking out precise evidence to support her ideas. Likewise, my favorite aspect of this essay is that there are multiple points where Karishma lingered on her discussion of a particular idea, deepening her analysis by incorporating examples of Lorde’s rhetorical choices rather than moving on quickly to a new subject. Her efforts produced an astute, insightful, and thought-provoking reading of Lorde’s narrative. Bravo, Karishma! 

Arielle Kaplan

From the writer.

In composing this piece, I was inspired by the struggles Audre Lorde voiced in her narrative, The Cancer Journals . I aimed to create a conversation between Lorde’s personal experience with breast cancer, laid bare in her work, and prominent concepts in current breast cancer discourse, detailed in two other sources. Drawing comparisons and contrasts between these three sources, I gained an understanding of how Lorde’s distinction between two enemies in relaying her breast cancer journey strengthened her goal to motivate breast cancer survivors and post-mastectomy women to break their silence and take action against cancer propagators––both overt and covert. Drafting the essay, I initially struggled to design an introductory paragraph that condensed my significance and claim while still preserving all the nuances of my argument. While revising, however, I allowed myself to break free of that standard five-paragraph mold and split the introductory paragraph in two to better construct the ‘why’ behind my argument and reflect on my original significance. Later on, in my conclusion, I decided then to further expand upon the significance of Lorde’s rhetorical choices, discussing the implications for the genre of writing about illness as a whole. The project was challenging as I had never envisioned a dialogue between this many works before but also incredibly rewarding. I am deeply appreciative of the precious insight that I gained into the lives of those facing breast cancer through this project and through activist Audre Lorde. 

The Dichotomy Between the Enemy Inside and Outside: Audre Lorde’s Heartening Adaptation of the War Metaphor and Rhetoric of Protest in  The Cancer Journals

In her book Illness as Metaphor , Susan Sontag, a critical essayist/novelist best known for her analysis of modern culture, asserts that cancer has been “encumbered by the trappings of metaphor” and the most “controlling metaphors in descriptions of cancer are…drawn…from the language of warfare” (5, 64). She believes these war metaphors should be withdrawn from cancer discourse because they negatively impact the psyche and self-image of cancer patients. Contrastingly, in respect to Audre Lorde’s narrative, The Cancer Journals , Lorde––a Black lesbian poet diagnosed with breast cancer––frequently embraces this war metaphor to discover resilience as she refers to fighting an “enemy within” and an “enemy outside” (10). Sontag’s discussion of the internal harm stemming from the war metaphor’s adoption diverges, however, from Lorde’s uplifting usage of the metaphor in that Lorde states her fight is “the war against despair” within herself as opposed to simply a war against cancer. Regarding the external war that Lorde fights, Lorde resolves to “[transform her] silence into language and action” against the “structures within our lives that support the Cancer Establishment,” mirroring the “rhetoric of protest” that Kristen Garrison, a scholar of rhetoric and disability studies, establishes as a narrator’s redirection of anger from cancer to a “more culpable enemy” in her article “The Personal is Rhetorical: War, Protest, and Peace in Breast Cancer Narratives” (14, 51, 14).

Subsequently, the distinction that Lorde makes between her two enemies yields two mutually reinforcing rhetorical impacts. First, she enhances her relatability with her readers by detailing her inner despair––a feeling even those without breast cancer can understand––and presenting moments when she felt condemned by prosthesis promoters. Second, she models how to defy silence in spite of fear by disclosing how she personally surmounted her fear and leveraged her anger. Fundamentally, both of these impacts coincide to strengthen her stated purpose of encouraging women who have faced breast cancer to take action against the “Cancer Establishment.” 

Throughout her narrative, Lorde continuously refers to despair as an enemy that she is battling within herself such as when she affirms, “Faith is…the name of the war against despair, the battle I fight daily” and when she asks, “[H]ow do I fight the despair…which is my greatest internal enemy?” (5, 10). By perceiving despair as the enemy that she’s facing inside rather than her cancer, Lorde notably deviates from the demoralizing usage of the war metaphor that Sontag describes in her article. For instance, Sontag attests: 

Punitive notions of disease…are particularly active with cancer. There is the ‘fight’ or ‘crusade’ against cancer; cancer is the ‘killer’ disease; people who have cancer are ‘cancer victims.’ Ostensibly, the illness is the culprit. But it is also the cancer patient who is made culpable. Widely believed psychological theories of disease assign to the luckless ill the ultimate responsibility both for falling ill and for getting well. And conventions of treating cancer as no mere disease but a demonic enemy make cancer not just a lethal disease but a shameful one (57). 

Expanding upon specific examples in which the war metaphor induces negative emotions such as guilt, stress, and shame in cancer patients, Sontag builds a firm case against this language. However, Lorde displays more explicit antagonism towards the despair that grew from her diagnosis and mastectomy than towards the disease of cancer itself. Indeed, differentiating between despair and cancer helps Lorde find hope and strength in her recovery since despair, in her view, is a manageable enemy that can be pragmatically overcome by “the real power of healing love” (32). Cancer, on the other hand, is not as feasible an enemy to beat, considering it has no definitive remedy. 

Supplementing her unique adaptation of the war metaphor, Lorde engages similes and refers to life experiences emotionally analogous to her mastectomy to promote her readers’ understanding of her despair. As an example, in her journal entries following her mastectomy, she writes, “Sometimes despair sweeps across my consciousness like luna winds across a barren moonscape” and “I feel despair like a pale cloud waiting to consume me…swallow me into immobility…I need to remind myself of the joy, the lightness, the laughter so vital to my living and my health” (3, 4). These vivid comparisons that Lorde crafts for her despair—“luna winds” and a “pale cloud”—illustrate how lonely, pained, and paralyzed she is in her sadness as well as her dire need for happiness, thereby helping her readers envision the effects of despair on her spirit. While those without cancer can never truly comprehend the physical pain and symptoms of the disease, the emotional impact of cancer is one that Lorde can attempt to communicate through her writing. Additionally, she remarks how a conversation with a friend provided her with insight into her emotions after her mastectomy: “[F]or six months after her mother died, she [Lorde’s friend] felt she couldn’t think or remember, and I was struck by the similarity of the sensations” (33). By referencing the death of one’s mother, a broad life event that has a comparable psychological impact to her mastectomy, she advances her relatability with her readers. She allows those without experience with breast cancer to gain a gateway into understanding her internal enemy––despair––and the amnesia-like mental shutdown associated with the disease’s treatment. 

While Lorde consistently establishes despair to be her “enemy within,” some, nevertheless, may still argue that there are moments when Lorde contradicts herself and implicitly invokes the war metaphor in a manner that depicts cancer as the enemy just like Sontag characterizes. For example, Lorde recounts, “[A]s I waited almost four weeks for my first biopsy, I had grown angry at my right breast because I felt as if it had in some unexpected way betrayed me, as if it…had turned against me by creating this tumor which might be malignant” (26). Seemingly, she assigns blame to herself and to her body for falling sick––echoing Sontag’s previous remark that cancer patients who accept the war metaphor often feel “culpable” and internalize many negative emotions. Even so, while Lorde does develop negative emotions such as anger in applying the war metaphor, her mindset towards her traitorous breast and cancer as her inner enemy eventually evolves, prompting her anger to disappear. Lorde conveys this shift in thinking best when she reveals, “But on the day before my mastectomy I wrote in my journal…The anger that I felt for my right breast last year has faded, and I’m glad because I have had this extra year…This year between was like a hiatus, an interregnum in a battle within which I could so easily be a casualty, since I certainly was a warrior” (26-27). In calling herself a “warrior” and rejecting the idea of being solely a “casualty” of cancer, Lorde discloses yet another instance when she elicits the war metaphor in a positive way to cultivate strength, contrasting Sontag’s harmful view of the metaphor. 

However, Lorde’s anger does not simply vanish. At the start of her narrative’s introduction, she professes, “I am a post-mastectomy woman who believes our feelings need voice in order to be recognized, respected, and of use. I do not wish my anger and pain and fear about cancer to fossilize into yet another silence” (1). Further, at the introduction’s end, she expresses how she wishes to use these negative emotions to achieve her goals: “I have found that battling despair does not mean…ignoring the strength and barbarity of the forces aligned against us…It means, for me, recognizing the enemy outside and the enemy within, and knowing that my work is part of a continuum of women’s work, of reclaiming this earth and our power” (10). Lorde realizes that her anger and her war against despair––her “enemy within”––can be channeled into efforts of generating change against the “barbarity of the forces” (her external enemies) that endanger her and others like her. This refocusing of her anger reflects Garrison’s analysis of the “rhetoric of protest.” 

Coined by Garrison in her article, the “rhetoric of protest” is showcased across Lorde’s narrative. Garrison defines the “rhetoric of protest” in the context of an essay written by Barbara Ehrenreich, another breast cancer survivor. She delineates how Ehrenreich “[follows] the script” of the war metaphor and “yet [diverges]” (Garrison 13). While Ehrenreich does see the value in the war metaphor, she eventually “redirects” her anger from cancer to “the corporate interests [that] pollute the environment” because, to her, these entities are a “more culpable enemy” (Garrison 13-14). Similar to Garrison’s description of Ehrenreich, Lorde also only partially “follows the script” of the war metaphor described by Sontag because her mentality shifts from funneling her anger towards herself to finding the power in her anger to combat an exterior, “more culpable enemy.” Although, who exactly is Lorde’s “enemy outside”? According to Garrison, Ehrenreich’s war was against “corporate interests.” Is the war the same for Lorde? As a matter of fact, there is a similarity. In her protest, Lorde declares, “I have been to war, and still am. So has every woman who had had one or both breasts amputated because of the cancer…I may be a casualty in a cosmic war against radiation, animal fat, air pollution, McDonald’s hamburgers and Red Dye No. 2, but the fight is still going on, and I am still a part of it” (53). Lorde, like Ehrenreich, thus addresses pollution and corporations such as McDonald’s while also emphasizing many other environmental contributors of cancer as parts of what she later terms the “Cancer Establishment” (51). 

Moreover, Lorde exhibits her rationale for her protest against the “Cancer Establishment”––for refusing to stay silent when confronted with fear––when she contends all women who experienced cancer have fears that keep them silent, but “we still will be no less afraid” if “[w]e..sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, [and] while our earth is poisoned” (14-15). In highlighting how breast cancer survivors’ fears engender silence that is both ineffective in diminishing their fears and worthless in the fight to save people’s lives from the “poison” of the “Cancer Establishment,” Lorde accentuates her call to action. Many women with cancer are afraid to voice their struggles. They are afraid that they will be judged for their opinions in regards to their bodies because of the pervasive, patriarchal societal view of a woman’s beauty as paramount to their identity and success. However, unlike these women, Lorde is willing to push past her fears and be vocal about her emotions. She wishes her “words to serve as encouragement for other women to speak and to act out of [their] experiences with cancer” in order to quell the threat of the “Cancer Establishment” (2). To that end, Lorde candidly shares her own fear and reflects upon how she has overcome it by reorienting both it and her anger towards taking action: “I am often afraid to this day, but even more so angry at having to be afraid…I find…[that I should not] turn away from fear, but [use it] as fuel to help me along the way… If I can remember to make the jump from impotence to action, then working uses the fear as it drains it off, and I find myself furiously empowered” (46-47). In divulging her personal experience with fear, she inspires other women with cancer to emulate her, overcome their own fears, and break their silence in opposition to the “Cancer Establishment.”

In addition to directing her anger at the “Cancer Establishment” itself, Lorde also specifically targets post-mastectomy prosthesis promoters who discreetly support it. She believes that their “emphasis upon wearing a prosthesis is a way of avoiding having women come to terms with their own pain and loss, and thereby, with their own strength,” and that prostheses impede women from “[challenging] those structures…that support the Cancer Establishment” (41, 51). Subsequently, in her protest, Lorde utilizes rhetorical questions to substantiate the detrimental effects of prostheses in preventing post-mastectomy women from recognizing and building their own strength. For example, she attests, “what would happen if an army of one-breasted women descended upon Congress and demanded that the use of carcinogenic, fat-stored hormones in beef-feed be outlawed?” and “why hasn’t the American Cancer Society publicized the connections between animal fat and breast cancer for our daughters the way it has publicized the connection between cigarette smoke and lung cancer?” (9, 51). By impassionately posing these questions to her readers, she underscores both the power that unsilenced post-mastectomy women can have in combating carcinogen propagators as well as the lack of power they can have in carcinogen-related research media resulting from the silencing of their voices. She demonstrates the persuasive force that post-mastectomy women can become if they unapologetically expose and vocalize their hardships. 

Furthermore, Lorde’s protest of prosthesis resembles Garrison’s commentary on Ehrenreich’s “rhetoric of protest.” In her essay, Ehrenreich “criticizes ‘the mainstream of breast cancer culture’ for its lack of anger” (Garrison 87). Similarly, Lorde criticizes ‘breast cancer culture’ for its “lack of anger” towards prosthesis supporters in particular. Displaying her reasoning behind this criticism, Lorde integrates personal moments in her narrative when she felt angry at advocates for prosthesis. One such moment is when Lorde relays her feelings following a hospital visit from a woman with the American Cancer Society’s Reach for Recovery Program two days after her mastectomy: “[E]very attempt I made to examine or question the possibility of a real integration of this experience into the totality of my life and my loving and my work, was ignored by this woman…I felt outraged and insulted” (49). After her surgery, Lorde tries to let go of her pre-mastectomy life and accept her new reality as well as any possible insight that comes with that. Nonetheless, the Reach for Recovery woman does not even grant her that respect. She does not allow her that time to heal and potentially embrace her changed body and life, inciting Lorde’s anger towards her and other breast prosthesis advocates like her. Another instance when Lorde airs her anger is when she narrates a conversation she had following her mastectomy with a nurse at her doctor’s office who tells her she’s hurting the “morale of the office” by not wearing a prosthesis (52). Lorde details her reaction, stating, “I could hardly believe my ears! I was too outraged to speak then, but this was to be only the first such assault on my right to define and claim my own body” (52). Once more, a supporter of prostheses––a medical professional who is reputedly supposed to refrain from dictating a patient’s private decisions––angers Lorde to the degree to which she feels “assaulted.” Markedly, this nurse induces Lorde to invoke the language of the war metaphor. Except, this time, it is neither the “Cancer Establishment” nor even her despair that Lorde feels is her enemy here; instead, it is her nurse––one of the very people who is meant to be her greatest ally. As a result, the war metaphor contributes to Lorde’s gain in strength by helping her perceive her anger, which she later siphons into silence-breaking action. By establishing her personal reasons for her criticism and anger towards prosthesis promoters, Lorde also enriches her relatability with women like her who have experienced cancer. These women can potentially discern a connection between Lorde’s experiences and sentiments with prostheses and their own, allowing them to view Lorde as a model for them to respect and follow. Accordingly, she rouses these women to voice the moments when they similarly felt attacked, to express their anger, and to transform their emotions into action. In essence, Lorde bolsters her purpose to rally others like her to join the fight against their common external enemy, the “Cancer Establishment” and its supporters. 

Lorde thus identifies both despair and the “Cancer Establishment” along with its supporters, respectively, as her enemy inside and outside throughout The Cancer Journals. In finding the strength to battle these enemies, Lorde embraces the war metaphor––which Sontag characterizes as threatening to a breast cancer patient’s spirit––in an upbeat manner. While there are times when Lorde adopts the war metaphor in the unhealthy way that Sontag describes, developing negative emotions such as anger, her mindset regarding cancer as her inner enemy eventually grows, inducing her anger to vanish. In respect to conveying her “war against despair,” she employs figurative language and refers to life experiences comparable to her mastectomy to increase her readers’ understanding of her despair. In terms of Lorde’s war against the “Cancer Establishment,” she emulates Garrison’s description of the “rhetoric of protest” by channeling her anger towards efforts to oppose the Establishment and its covert supporters. Lorde best exemplifies this rhetoric when she reveals how she overcame her fear to reject silence, and recounts moments in her life when she felt ill-treated by advocates of prostheses. Incorporating these moments, she helps uplift women like her by relating that they are not alone in their anger and experiences. 

In turn, both the war metaphor and the rhetoric of protest produce heartening effects. While Lorde invokes the war metaphor to energize herself, she elicits the rhetoric of protest to inspire her readers like her to act. Consequently, Lorde’s solicitation of these prominent concepts in cancer discourse proves to be an effective rhetorical strategy in confronting her two enemies. They advance her relatability on an emotional level and help her model to her readers how to defy silence in spite of fear, strengthening her purpose of motivating women with breast cancer to break their silence and take action against the “Cancer Establishment.” In achieving this purpose, it is worth noting that Lorde recognizes if more of these women can overcome their fears to present their stories, then they will become advocates not just for themselves but for everyone who is affected by the Establishment’s proliferation of carcinogens. She also recognizes the radical nature of her entreaty in that narrators in the genre of writing about cancer do not all call upon their readers to act against an entity as intimidating as the “Cancer Establishment.” As a result, when Lorde does so, she acknowledges the adversity associated with speaking out and diligently works to bolster her readers’ sense of self-efficacy. Ultimately, the distinction that Lorde constructs between her two enemies influences her genre at large by shedding light upon the trailblazing power that breast cancer survivors and post-mastectomy women possess.

Works Cited

Garrison, Kristen. “The Personal Is Rhetorical: War, Protest, and Peace in Breast Cancer Narratives.” Disability Studies Quarterly , vol. 27, no. 4, Sept. 2007,  doi:10.18061/dsq.v27i4.52. 

Lorde, Audre, and Tracy K. Smith. The Cancer Journals . Penguin Books, 2020.

Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988.

Karishma Sivakumar  is a first-year student studying Neuroscience within the College of Arts & Sciences at Boston University, with specific interests in medicine and public health. Her fascination with the dynamics between patients and healthcare professionals first evolved from assisting her mother at her medical practice back home in Arizona. Believing in the invaluable impact of compassionate communication on patients’ well-being, she promotes the usage of uplifting language in present illness discourse. She recognizes its profound ability to empower individuals navigating through illness and also those apprehensive to vocalize and transform their hardships into silence-breaking activism. Karishma is grateful to her WR 120 professor, Arielle Kaplan, who, through her unwavering support, has bolstered her confidence in her writing and encouraged her to embrace and experiment with new creative choices.

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2024 NFL Draft takeaways: Best, worst and most interesting pick for each AFC team

Here's how each afc team fared in the 2024 nfl draft.

After months (and likely years) of putting together their big boards, front offices across the country are now starting to put the 2024 NFL Draft in the rearview mirror. The three-day spectacle came to a close on Saturday and an injection of youth is now entering the league. For some clubs, they are hoping this young core can be the foundation they can rest their franchise on. For others, they could be looking to this class to be the final piece that pushes them over the top in their hunt for a Lombardi Trophy in 2024. 

While we are less than a week removed from the draft kicking off and we've yet to see any of these draftees play with their respective teams, we're going to dive into each AFC team and highlight their best, worst and most interesting selection. The best and worst selections are based off the highest and lowest grades given out by our CBS Sports NFL Draft analysts: Pete Prisco, Josh Edwards and Chris Trapasso. Grades for each team's picks  can be found here . 

Baltimore Ravens

Best pick (A+):  OT Roger Rosengarten , Washington (Round 2, Pick 62) 

Quick-setting OT with the athletic chops to get in the face of EDGEs in a hurry. Has to clean up footwork out pulls but has the natural gifts to eventually excel there. Plays very aggressively, which leads to some off-balanced reps. Has to get a touch stronger. I like the OL investment. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C+) : WR Devontez Walker , UNC (Round 4, Pick 113)

Good-sized, well-proportioned downfield burner. Will take the lid off many defenses. Stiffness in his routes and didn't run many in college. Will track it beautifully over his shoulder but not a confident rebounder. Doesn't appear to be a natural hands catcher. Minimal YAC. Niche option that fits what this offense needs. (Chris Trapasso) 

Most interesting pick (B+) : EDGE Adisa Isaac , Penn State (Round 3, Pick 93)

Baltimore bolstered its outside linebacker room with an athletic freak in Isaac. The Penn State product is a bit raw, but has elite traits that should develop nicely under John Harbaugh. 

Buffalo Bills

Best pick (A) :  LB Javon Solomon , Troy (Round 5, Pick 168)

Burst, bend, speed predicated outside EDGE. Small frame but serious length. Unique build. Doesn't get engulfed by bigger blockers as much as expected because of his speed-to-power conversion. Hand work is good, not amazing and can flatten to the QB. Motor hums on every play. Bills needed this type of quick winner on the outside. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : WR Keon Coleman , Florida State (Round 2, Pick 33)

"X" receiver for a WR-needy team. Plays faster than his combine speed but doesn't separate consistently and isn't as good of a contested-catch wideout as his size and highlight-reel would indicate. Young though. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (C-) : WR Keon Coleman, Florida State (Round 2, Pick 33)

We'll double-dip here with Coleman because it was fascinating how he ultimately was the pick for Buffalo. The team traded down from the No. 28 overall pick and allowed the Chiefs to trade Xavier Worthy . Then, they traded down again from No. 32 to allow the Panthers to select Xavier Legette . Those receivers will specifically be linked to the Bills and Coleman throughout his tenure. In any event, he has an opportunity to adopt a ton of targets left by Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis . 

Cincinnati Bengals

Best pick (A) : EDGE Cedric Johnson , Ole Miss (Round 6, Pick 214)

Stocky defensive end with dynamic flashes. Love his swipe move, just wished he utilized it more frequently. Powerful player who has to be coached up on how to utilize his length better to keep blockers off him. Ascending rusher. I like this pick. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (B) : TE Erick All , Iowa (Round 4, Pick 115)

Experienced three-down TE with receiving confidence and production. Has the athleticism to get open on occasion in the NFL and has a flair for the spectacular grab in traffic. Route-running intricacies are a part of what he brings to the field and is a solid albeit unspectacular blocker. Doesn't have serious seam-stretching speed. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (A) : WR Jermaine Burton , Alabama (Round 3, Pick 80)

This pick is fascinating due to the current wide receiver room in Cincinnati, specifically as it relates to Tee Higgins ' trade request. By the Bengals using a Day 2 pick on a receiver, it won't slow down any speculation that they could move off Higgins over the course of the summer. 

Cleveland Browns

Best pick (A+) : DL Michael Hall Jr. , Ohio State (Round 2, Pick 54)

Tremendous selection. Awesome value meets serious need. Young, high-level productivity and athleticism. Hand work is well beyond his years. Could improve beating blocks vs. the run but he holds up well there for an interior rusher. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : IOL Zak Zinter , Michigan (Round 3, Pick 85)

Majorly experienced, linear run-game specialist who's best getting downhill where his lateral limitations aren't exposed. Powerful but could sink his pad level more frequently in the NFL . Disallows him from sitting into his anchor in pass pro. Has to improve on pass plays but brings it for the run. Coming off late-season knee-ligament tear. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (A) : WR Jamari Thrash , Louisville (Round 5, Pick 156)

Cleveland made a big splash in the wide receiver room earlier this offseason by trading for Jerry Jeudy , but don't sleep on Thrash producing in this offense in 2024. He's praised for his quickness and route-running ability. 

Denver Broncos

Best pick (A+) : CB Kris Abrams-Draine , Missouri (Round 5, Pick 145) 

Ultra-pesky inside-outside CB who rocked in the SEC for multiple years. Not incredibly fast nor length with size. Awesome tackling reliability. Routinely finds and makes plays on the football underneath and at intermediate level. Has plus long speed. Spectacular value here. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : QB Bo Nix , Oregon (Round 1, Pick 12)

I don't love Nix, but I get the pick. Desperation forces teams to pick quarterbacks earlier than they should. Sean Payton obviously sees Drew Brees in him, but this is way early. Why not trade down and get him later? (Pete Prisco)

Most interesting pick (A+) : Troy Franklin , Oregon (Round 4, Pick 102) 

Denver needed to replenish its wide receiver room and land a speedster in Franklin. He already has a rapport with Nix as they both come out of Oregon, so it'll be fascinating to see if that can translate at the next level and allow Franklin to make an early impact for Sean Payton. 

Houston Texans

Best pick (A) : S Calen Bullock , USC (Round 3, Pick 78)

Uniquely shaped, spindly safety who has the best pure free safety range in the class. Won't provide much as a run-support player but does give it his all. Quickly IDs routes. Can be fun playmaker at next level if his size doesn't hold him back. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (D+) : RB Jawhar Jordan , Louisville (Round 6, Pick 205)

Tiny RB who plays bigger and doesn't have elite speed nor elusiveness. Even with tinier frame, he sheds tacklers with decent regularity. Even at this late, this feels early. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B+) : TE Cade Stover , Ohio State (Round 4, Pick 123)

Stover has familiarity with C.J. Stroud as they two played together at Ohio State. In 2022, Stoud and Stover connected for 36 catches, 406 yards and five touchdowns. The 6-foot-4, 255 pounder followed that up with a 2023 season where he caught 41 balls for 576 yards and five scores. Dalton Schultz is the TE1 in this offense at the moment and signed through 2026, but Stover could be a factor in short time.

Indianapolis Colts

Best pick (A): WR Adonai Mitchell , Texas (Round 2, Pick 52)

Love this pick for Colts. Exactly the type they like. Size/speed/athleticism specimen. So fluid running routes. Just can have long stretches where he goes invisible. Very minimal YAC. An outside wideout who can win at second and third levels for Anthony Richardson . (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C) : EDGE Jonah Laulu , Oklahoma (Round 7, Pick 234) 

Tall, somewhat sleek interior rusher with great length. Can occasionally win with first-step quicks but not a trademark, and he leans into offensive lineman, which can make him susceptible to beaten controlled. Pass-rush plans have to evolve. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B-) : EDGE Laiatu Latu , UCLA (Round 1, Pick 15)

Indy took the first defensive player at the 2024 NFL Draft in Latu. He absolutely fills a need and there was some pre-draft steam that he gained as the first defensive player to come off the board, but it'll be interesting to see how his career compares with Dallas Turner and Jared Verse , who could've gone off at that spot as well.

Jacksonville Jaguars

Best pick (B+) : OT Javon Foster , Missouri (Round 4, Pick 114) 

College OT who has the frame to stay there but maybe not the overall athletic profile. Power and quick-setting skills shine. Can win ugly and importantly shows recovery skill. This is a smart investment. Just gets the job done on a routine basis. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (D+) : DL Jordan Jefferson , LSU (Round 4, Pick 116) 

Classic wide-bodied DT who thrives against the run. Thick frame. Block-shedding skills are well-developed but has no pass-rush plans. Active on passing downs just rarely gets home. Length is a plus and he's an above-average athlete for a future NT. Not a bad player just limited and this feels early. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B+) : WR Brian Thomas Jr. , LSU (Round 1, Pick 23) 

Thomas Jr. seemed to be in a tier of his own in this draft class. He was looking up to the likes of Marvin Harrison Jr. , Malik Nabers and Rome Odunze , but a tick above the next group. Now that he joins Trevor Lawrence in Jacksonville, I think there's an outside chance that he could be of the bigger impact receivers in this draft, including the Big 3 who went above him.

Kansas City Chiefs

Best pick (A+) : S Jaden Hicks , Washington State (Round 4, Pick 133)

Large, intimidating safety who comes with the full skill set. Can cover tight ends. Deliver big hits over the middle. Make plays on the football with decent regularity. And he tackles well. Awesome addition to Chiefs secondary. Best closer to the line of scrimmage. My top safety in this class. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (B) : OT Kingsley Suamataia , BYU (Round 2, Pick 64)

Boom-or-burst prospect. 2022 was outstanding 2023 was not on film. Burst and especially lateral sliding ability are there. Has hard time locking onto EDGEs and securing them. Slips out of many blocks against the run. Hand work in pass pro can be outstanding at times. Raw but talented. NFL OT frame. Need filled. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (A) : WR Xavier Worthy, Texas (Round 1, Pick 28)

It still boggles my mind that the Bills decided to trade with Kansas City and allow them to move up to get a burner like Worthy. He's drawn comparisons to DeSean Jackson and Andy Reid knows exactly how to utilize that type of talent. It could be a special duo between Worthy and Patrick Mahomes .

Las Vegas Raiders

Best pick (A): IOL Jackson Powers-Johnson , Oregon (Round 2, Pick 44)

Instant starter inside. Guard size with mobile center feet. Shorter arms and some rawness in pass pro. But upside is through the roof. All-Pro caliber in that regard. Smart pick here. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C) : TE Brock Bowers , Georgia (Round 1, Pick 13)

He's a heck of a player, but didn't they draft Michael Mayer last year and signed Harrison Bryant this year? They have other needs. Don't really like this pick that much. It's not like he's a good blocker for their run game. Strange pick with other needs. (Pete Prisco)

Most interesting pick (A-) : RB Dylan Laube , New Hampshire (Round 6, Pick 208)

UNH isn't exactly a breeding ground for NFL talent, but Laube is a fascinating prospect. He's stellar receiving back and has good lateral quickness to evade defenders.

Los Angeles Chargers

Best pick (A) : RB Kimani Vidal , Troy (Round 6, Pick 181) 

This is a future feature back. Stocky, well-built frame. Between the tackles experience and can blend slashing and multi-cut style together. Elusive, sets up blockers well and has effortless power through contact at times. Not a true burner. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C+) : DL Justin Eboigbe , Alabama (Round 4, Pick 105) 

Classic Nick Saban defensive lineman. Two-gapping extraordinaire with thick, powerful frame. Good first-step quickness but won't be a calling card to win as a pass rusher consistently in the NFL. Not a pass-rush move type. Higher floor than upside. Limited role. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (A) : WR Ladd McConkey , Georgia (Round 2, Pick 34)

After parting ways with Keenan Allen and Mike Williams this offseason, the Chargers were in desperate need of adding to their wide receiver room. That sprung them to trade up on Day 2 to add McConkey. When healthy, he's one of the top receivers in this class and should be a regular target for Justin Herbert . Health was a factor during his days at Georgia, however, which is worth monitoring at the next level. 

Miami Dolphins

Best pick (A+) : WR Malik Washington , Virginia (Round 6, Pick 184) 

Electric, short not small wideout who was the heartbeat of the Virginia offense after transferring from Northwestern. Wins underneath with explosion and powerful lower half gives him high-end contact balance. Won't be huge separator on full route tree. Leaper who can find it in the air. Good, not great speed. Niche type but a lot of fun. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : OT Patrick Paul , Houston (Round 2, Pick 55) 

Strange fit because this is one of the least mobile blockers in the class. Mike McDaniel typically prioritizes athleticism along his offensive line. Absolutely enormous with supreme length. Hand placement is very inconsistent. Gets outside the shoulder pads. Very experienced. Hits on a need. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B-) : RB Jaylen Wright , Tennessee (Round 4, Pick 120)

I'm curious to see how the backfield reps shake out in Miami. Mike McDaniel already had Raheem Mostert and De'Von Achane as a tandem before before the Wright pick, so it'll be interesting to see how much of a role the Tennessee product can carve out early on.

New England Patriots

Best pick (A+) : WR Javon Baker , UCF (Round 4, Pick 110) 

This is a future No. 1 wideout. While not a burner, he plays faster and has the complete skill set. Releases at the line are good, flexibility to get open at intermediate level, YAC prowess, and especially rebounding skills are high-end. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : IOL Caedan Wallace , Penn State (Round 3, Pick 68)

Sizable framed OT with lumbering feet. Average-at-best athlete. Plays with good calmness and accuracy at second level and has quality power but overall athletic profile was severely threatened often in college. A concern for his NFL future. New England did need to add some OL depth. Worried about his upside. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (C+) : QB Joe Milton, Tennessee (Round 6, Pick 193)

New England drafted not one, but two quarterbacks this year with Tennessee's Joe Milton coming off the board in the sixth. This likely spells the end of Bailey Zappe's time in New England. The arrival of Milton is also a savvy addition for the Patriots because it gives them another lottery ticket in hopes of finding their franchise QB and could prove to be a trade asset down the line if Drake Maye lives up to his No. 3 overall potential.

New York Jets

Best pick (B+) : RB Braelon Allen , Wisconsin (Round 4, Pick 134) 

Not a freaky specimen athletically but enormous RB with loads of experience. One of the youngest prospects in the entire class. Game is predicated on between-the-tackles vision and effortless power through contact. Not elusiveness or speed. Best pass pro RB in the class. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C) : RB Isaiah Davis, South Dakota State (Round 5, Pick 173)

Big, highly athletic feature back without serious top speed but nifty cutting skill at all levels of the field. Will make many defenders miss although could experience some growing pains making step up in competition. Serious feature back potential but another RB? (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B-) : QB Jordan Travis , Florida State (Round 5, Pick 171)

I like the idea of the Jets taking a stab at a talented QB prospect like Travis and allowing him to develop behind Rodgers. While it's unclear if he'll be their QB of the future, it's smart for them to start planning for the post-Rodgers era. 

Pittsburgh Steelers

Best pick (A) : IOL Mason McCormick, South Dakota State (Round 4, Pick 119) 

Six-year player at FCS with four full years of starting experience and it shows. Elite-level athlete with low pad level. Grip strength is tremendous. Balance could use some work. Anchor is solid but overall has to get stronger. But this is an assignment sound blocker with ideal frame and experience to thrive instantly. Love how Pittsburgh has rebuilt its OL. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (B-) : DL Logan Lee , Iowa (Round 6, Pick 178) 

Vintage Steelers pick here. High-caliber athlete who can win at any alignment up front although his productivity in college didn't match how good of an athlete he is. Could stand to add some weight at next level. Has to get stronger but can win with slippery rushes between gaps. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B-) : WR Roman Wilson , Michigan (Round 3, Pick 84)

Anytime the Steelers draft a wide receiver, you better take notice. Pittsburgh has been a factory of finding stellar receivers at the draft for quite a while and Wilson could be a solid slot option for either Russell Wilson or Justin Fields .  

Tennessee Titans

Best pick (A) : LB Jaylen Harrell , Michigan (Round 7, Pick 252) 

Old-school outside linebacker who can sink in coverage or attack the outside shoulder of the tackle. Smooth, athletic movements to comfortably do either. Shows glimpses of pass-rush promises just doesn't diversify his rushes enough. Must get stronger but does set sturdy edge. Young ascending player. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : DT T'Vondre Sweat , Texas (Round 2, Pick 38) 

Monstrous NT who finally demonstrated a glimmer of pass-rush capability with hand work as a senior. Not as good against the run or double teams as his size indicates. Probably two-down player in the NFL. Tennessee did need more size inside along the DL, but this is too early for a limited player. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (A-) : LB Cedric Gray , UNC (Round 4, Pick 106)

Gray is one of the younger linebackers in this class as he'll only turn 22 in late October. Still, he lands in Nashville as a strong prospect with back-to-back All-ACC first team selections and was a Second Team All-American a year ago. 

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