I have just started to plan out and start my college application essays for next year. I am trying to decide who I want to read them. I want to maintain my voice and style of writing, but I also want it to be good looking for colleges. Currently I am debating which of the following people should read them:
Journalism/english teacher (has proofread a lot of my stuff in the past, has been a journalism teacher for over 30 years)
step sister (working on masters in creative writing at NYU)
father (great at picking out spelling errors)
Mother (masters from columbia)
pastor (writes fantastic, scholarly sermons every Sunday, on the board of trustees at Duke)
youth pastor (also writes great sermons, went to Davidson and Emory)
In my visits to colleges, each one stressed the importance of being yourself in your application and advised me to not have that many people read your essays because they start to lose your voice. What do you guys think?
PS: Hopefully applying to Yale SCEA, UNC-CH EA, Davidson, Duke, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia and Northwestern.
Have a few people read it, but not too many. I would say choose parents first because they know you better than anyone else. Teachers are a good choice if they have read your writing before and know your voice.
You need someone who can catch the spelling errors and who can tell you to your face that it doesn’t make the sense that you seem to be trying to make. If you are aiming for tippy-top institutions, someone who has reviewed that kind of essay before and who will give you some pointers on revising for clarity but who won’t eliminate your own “voice”. Too much editing over-polishes the essays and then they look fake. You also need a reader who is distant enough from the whole process to never, ever later say to you “You didn’t get into X because your essay wasn’t good enough.”
I’d vote for your dad because of the spelling & grammar thing, but if he’s going to remember what you wrote and make you crazy about it, ask your teacher instead.
I suggest working with 2 people. One to help you with actually refining the essay, and the other to look for grammatical mistakes and spelling errors. If you have too many people edit the essay, you begin to lose your voice and what one editor likes, another may hate. I wrote my personal statement and the first teacher I showed it to loved it. He helped me edit it and make it stronger and I thought I was all set. The next teacher I showed it to hated it and wanted me to write about a completely different topic that I had no passion for whatsoever. I ignored the second teacher and stuck with the first and had my college counselor look over it for grammatical mistakes. With those two, I had great success in the admissions process.
The alma mater of the people editing it means nothing btw. It won’t help you get in anywhere. If I were you, I would go with the English teacher and your dad
I’ve been told to have anyone who is interested read your essay. I’ve also been told by the time you submit the essay you should have spent 10+ hours spent on your essay.
