Dear Alan Gelb,
For the past few weeks I have been reading your book, Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Steps. In the introduction you give the reader a layout of the 10 "easy" steps that you say will get him into the college of his dreams. I'm stuck on step three. I was coasting pretty easily through steps one and two, which set the background for the essay, and I was feeling pretty good about the process when I hit the third step, in which you ask me to pick my topic. The list of brainstorming questions included begs the most cliché answers, and unfortunately my life is not a trove of cliché memories.
There is no way around this list of questions, and by the end of the chapter I was still miles away from a topic, and have been since then. I feel as if your book is tailored to those kids who live through the craziest experiences, ones that change their lives. Would you be happy if I wrote about that time I visited the smallest town in some remote South American country and befriended a native girl whose life of extreme poverty and hunger changed the way I thought about the world forever? Or maybe your job would be accomplished if those questions made me remember the time I visited my grandmother at her deathbed in some ridiculously sanitized hospital and she gave me her watch that she always wore that was probably made at the turn of the 20th century and told me to never take life for granted and then died in my arms? Which brings me to another point of interest.
Unlike Lisa or Rebecca or Joey who all have life changing experiences to write about, I am somewhat normal. I don't go on trips to third-world countries, and I've never witnessed death firsthand. How do I write an essay about my perfectly normal life and get into college when I am up against kids who bleed their heart out on the page and send admissions officers running for the nearest tissue box, crying for the latest girl who claims to have seen the pains of the modern world on last summer's trip to the Sahara?
I don't stand a chance.
The college admissions essay is one of the most clichéd assignments I've ever had to complete in all my years of schooling, and yet it still gives me trouble. After all the years I've spent in school I should be brilliant at writing clichéd essays, however, I still can't bring myself to really even write them at all.
I am amazed that one of the defining factors in my admission to college will be how well I can write 500 words droning on about specific experiences in my life where I displayed strong responsibility, or about people who have had significant influence on my life. I thought the college essay challenged kids to show their smartest and best side. I thought it was the creative part of the application, but I was wrong. I thought my essay would help propel me from just a number to a real-life applicant, but if colleges favor formulaic melodramas, I guess I don't have much hope.
Sincerely,
Daniel Komanoff
P.S. I don't mean to offend anyone who has actually seen death. I am just a little fed up with essay-writing right now.