C’Mon Man! — Essay Edition
I Admit It! This blog series has likely worn out its welcome so this will be the final C’Mon Man! blog, and it deals with everyone’s favorite: the essay. Now, there are no shortage of Admit It! blogs on essays (everything from great and not-so-great opening lines to tricks of the trade) so I’ll try to make this one short and sweet. Think of it as a bit of a blooper real for the essays we reviewed this past cycle.
An essay that focuses on your blankie
- C’Mon Man! This topic is a bit on the immature side and is not likely to portray you in the best of lights.
Opening your essay with, and I quote, “I was raised in a loving hoe.”
- PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD! Notice the bold and the shouty capitals. C’Mon Man! We have definitely discussed the importance of proofreading before. If a first impression is everything, this isn’t a good one to make.
A two-page essay with no paragraphing
- This one’s for your English teachers, C’Mon Man! We know you were taught about paragraphs. They’re kind of important. It’s so important, not only to proofread, but also to print preview your application online so you can see how it will look when submitted to us. After all, the essay is used in part to assess whether you’re ready for college-level writing. Plus, our eyes kind of hurt when we read essays that are page or multiple-pages-long paragraphs.
A one-paragraph essay
- No we’re not repeating ourselves. Now we’re talking about essays that are actually only a few sentences long. We don’t think a good essay needs to be 500 words but it probably needs to be more than 50. C’Mon Man! Effort, or lack thereof, can definitely be discerned in cases such as this.
Essays are only one part of our process, but they are an important part. It’s your voice, it’s your story, it’s you. Give them the consideration they deserve. After all, you don’t want your essay to be in next year’s blooper real.
Wendy Livingston ’03, M.Ed. ‘09
Senior Assistant Dean of Admission
Comments are closed on posts older than one year, but we still want to hear from you. If you have a comment or question for us, please email admission@wm.edu.
Is that blooper “real” reference a test? Say yes or my faith will be shattered.
@sue corbett, you get an A. Way to find our little plant. All you essay writers looking for a proof reader, look no farther than @sue corbett!
Hello, my name is Zoe and I’m applying early to William and Mary this up coming year. I just had a few questions after reading some of your Admit It! blogs. They have been so helpful to me when it came to getting me thinking about how to even start my essay and supplement. I know after reading your blogs that you want to see something that is not on our application and that is unique, but one topic that I really want to talk about I touched on in my interview, so now I’m unsure if it would be too repetitive. I also wanted my essay and supplement to kind of relate to the same general topic but I’m unsure if that too is too much on one subject. I just don’t want to be too repetitive. Would it also be ok if I run my topic by you? I have two that are tied in my head as essay topics.
@Zoe, it’s okay to mention something more than once in an application. What we try to discourage is for example writing your short-answer essay about the same thing you write about in your long essay or writing on the same topic for both your Common App essay and the W&M Supplement.
You’re welcome to run a topic by us. Without seeing the full essay it might be tough for us to make a recommendation but we can do our best.
I’m currently a junior, so this may be a bit premature but is a poem a good idea for a college essay? I was just wondering if that is something you guys see pretty frequently because I was thinking it is a good way to be insightful, clever, and maybe a little symbolic. Plus I’ve never met anybody who doesn’t love a good pun or two.
@Hunter Hale, if good, poems can definitely show off a students wit and creativiity. Generally those are more often used as a response to our optional additional submission prompt. Not sure a poem will fit well as your personal statement in the Common Application given the new questions for next year and also because we definitely want to see your writing abilities. While those can be assessed without sticking to the traditional five-paragraph format, poems can make it hard to assess sentence structure, paragraph transitions, etc.