How to Write a College Essay: Structure That Works
"It's good. What is it about?"
A senior has written a draft about his three years on the school's stage crew. Every sentence in it is true, and everything is in the order it happened. He joined in 10th grade, learned the sound board and then the light board, worked on six shows, and was made crew chief.
His mother reads it and says, "It's good." After a moment she adds, "What is it about?" He does not have an answer.
The night that mattered most to him is in the draft. During the spring musical the light board froze in the middle of the second act, and he ran the rest of the show by hand. It gets one sentence, in the fourth paragraph, between two other shows.
Why the essay needs a shape
The stage crew draft has good material and no shape. It gives every event the same amount of space, so the reader cannot tell which one matters.
No admissions office asks for a particular format, and the five-paragraph essay taught in school is not required here. What they describe does depend on structure, though.
- Hamilton College tells applicants to "be a good storyteller", and reminds them that in sharing something about themselves they do not need to share everything.
- Yale says the goal is writing that is thoughtful and reflective, which means the essay needs room for what the student thinks, and not only for what happened.
- Johns Hopkins publishes essays it admired, and they do not share one format. One recent essay moves back and forth between two places the writer has lived. Another starts with cleaning out a closet and turns into a reflection on memory.
So there is no single correct format. There are a few parts every strong essay has, and a few good ways to arrange them.
The four questions every essay answers
A reader who finishes a strong essay can answer four questions about it. Each question is one part of the essay. Here they are, with the stage crew story as the example.
| The reader's question | What this part does | In the stage crew essay |
|---|---|---|
| Where are we? | Puts the reader in one specific moment | The lighting booth at the back of the auditorium, during the second act of the spring musical |
| What went wrong, or what was hard? | Gives the reader a reason to keep reading | The light board froze with eleven lighting changes still to come |
| What did you do? | Shows the student making choices | He ran every remaining change by hand, reading from a paper list he had written the week before, although nobody had asked him to |
| What is different now? | Shows what the student understood, and what he does because of it | He realized he likes being the person who prepares for things going wrong. This year he trained two younger students on the board, and gave each of them a paper list |
The first two questions set the story up. The last two are about the student, and they are what the admissions reader is looking for.
That gives a useful rule of thumb for space. The first two parts together should take up less than half of the essay, and the last two should get the rest. The stage crew draft does the opposite. It spends nearly all of its words on what happened, across six shows, and one sentence on the night that showed who he is.
Notice also what the table leaves out. The sound board, five of the six shows and the crew chief title are not in it. They are all true, and they are already in the activities section of his application. The essay does not need them.
Three ways to arrange the same story
The four parts do not have to appear in the order of the table. Here are three arrangements that work, each shown with the stage crew story.
1. Straight through
The story is told in the order it happened. He joins the crew, learns the light board, and writes the paper list. Then comes the night the board freezes, what he did, and what is different now.
This is the easiest arrangement to write and to follow. Its risk is a slow beginning, because the most interesting moment arrives halfway through. It works when the reader needs the background to understand why the key moment matters.
2. Start at the key moment, then go back
The essay opens in the booth, with the board already frozen. After a few sentences it goes back to explain how he came to have a paper list in his pocket. Then it returns to that night and carries on to what changed afterwards.
This arrangement gives the reader a reason to keep going from the first line. It works when the story has one moment that matters far more than the rest. The risk is confusing the reader, so the step back in time should be short and clearly marked.
3. Several short scenes with one thing in common
The essay is built from three or four small moments from different parts of his life. The paper list in the lighting booth is one. The printed directions he keeps in the car in case the phone loses signal are another. The second alarm he sets on the morning of every exam is a third. A final paragraph says what they share.
This arrangement works when no single event is dramatic enough to carry a whole essay, but a habit or a trait shows up again and again. The risk is that the scenes feel like a list, so each one has to show the same quality from a new angle.
| Arrangement | Works best when | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Straight through | The background is needed to understand the key moment | A slow beginning |
| Start at the key moment, then go back | One moment matters far more than the rest | A confusing jump in time |
| Several short scenes | The point is a habit or trait that shows up in many places | Scenes that read like a list |
If you are not sure which one fits, tell your story out loud three times, once in each order, in about a minute each. One of them will usually feel more natural to tell, and that is the one to write.
How Pursiva helps with structure
It is hard to see the shape of your own draft, because you already know the whole story. Pursiva's Essay coach reads the draft the way a new reader would. It tells the student which of the four questions the draft answers well and which it skips, where the essay spends most of its space, and where a reader would lose the thread. It asks which moment mattered most, and why, so the student can decide where the essay should begin.
The coach also knows the student's theme and the rest of the application. It can point out when an essay is repeating the activities list, as the first stage crew draft did, and when it adds something the colleges would not learn anywhere else.
The decisions stay with the student. The coach does not write an outline, a paragraph or a sentence.
The senior with the stage crew draft did not need new material. He needed to open in the lighting booth, drop five of the six shows, and use the space for what he does differently now. His mother's question then has an answer: the essay is about a person who prepares for the moment things go wrong.
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