Write About Something That Made You ‘Feel Deeply’

The essay rules may be changing on the Common Application, but that doesn’t change some basic rules about creative writing.

Anxious college applicants who are worried about their essay topics might feel relieved to know that Michael Winerip, our New York Times colleague, has written a piece on Booming in which he shares college essay advice that he’s given to his neighbors:

They come to me browbeaten and defeated. They ask if it really is true what the 19-year-old campus tour guide told them — that most people have a first draft by eighth grade. They are convinced their child’s future depends on this. They have blown up the essay until it’s as big as the complete works of Leo Tolstoy.

So much worry for 250 to 500 words about something important that has happened to them.

Mr. Winerip’s piece may have come just in time; at least some of the advice he describes seems universal enough to apply to any essay prompt. He encourages writers to learn more from failure than success and to be honest about who they are. One student who was “terrific” at partying, Mr. Winerip writes, wrote an essay about his knack for organizing social events. He was accepted into the college of his choice.

Whatever the topic, there is a universal truth that makes an essay effective: a willingness to “let the inner out,” Mr. Winerip writes.

“The single most important advice I give them,” Mr. Winerip writes, “is to write about something that happened to them that made them feel deeply.”