By Robin Rivers, Founder of The Academy of Creative Writing www.academycreativewriting.com
As a university admissions essay coach, I am most often asked one question:
“What makes a winning admissions essay?”
I always reply with the same answer — grilled cheese.
Whenever I say that, people cringe and look at me like I just spoke an alien language to them. However, I can assure you that grilled cheese is the glue of a great essay. Let me explain:
Last year, in the midst of a bustling admissions season, a young man came to me stumped by an admissions essay prompt required for more than a handful of Top 30 university applications.
The prompt simply read, “What is important to you?”
The mind-boggling simplicity of such a question meant one thing, and he knew it. An answer constructed without a deeper investigation of the meaning of “important” would surely earn him a letter of decline from his top-choice university.
I agreed. Most students approach this seemingly straightforward prompt with one approach— sameness. They assume that a university is looking for certain responses such as family, strong study habits, honesty, or a devotion to making the world a better place. Those are lovely. Please, keep right on considering such elements of life a priority, just not in this or any other university admissions essay.
We sat down and brainstormed about moments in life that shaped him. Mom returning to work made the top of the list and I asked what he had to tackle then that changed things. His response, “Making dinner.”
Grilled cheese was the first thing he ever cooked. At first, he did it because hunger trumped experience and it seemed easy enough. However, it became his creativity, his independence, and then morphed into what he called, “The Grilled Cheese Mentality.”
He connected those qualities within himself to experience in the real world such as his study of guitar, his teaching of coding to kids when he was a junior in high school, and volunteer work delivering food to people in need. All of these also shaped him, but they began with that simple act of making a grilled cheese sandwich. It showed growth, an understanding of how that is shaped by personal experiences, and how it all connects to the student an admissions team can expect to walk onto campus if they accept him.
Indeed, it is grilled cheese for which they are looking.
Why? Because it is unique and so unusual that admissions teams will always remember my young friend as “the grilled cheese guy.”
That’s the magic.
This essay, 300 words long, is truly the best essay I have ever had the pleasure of guiding a student through the process of writing for one reason—I will never forget how well it told the journey of this young man from high school boy to university student.
It is your goal to tell your stories with that sort of impact, to give admissions teams your own sort of grilled cheese moment.
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