Beyond Words: Crafting College Essays for Elite Admissions with Ben Urwand

I think that the goal of people applying to college or anyone writing any kind of essay is to get some attention and tell some interesting story. Learning how to tell your own story and apply to college is an art and it requires you to work out a way to make an impression and get people's attention. And so that's what I help students do today. Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. From toddler tantrums to teenage eye rolls, this podcast is your go-to for updated and old school tips and tools that are going to help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. I'm your host, Jackie Finneman, a 30-year counselor turned parenting coach, and I've got a lot to share, including hundreds of resources that you have access to right from your home and strategies that are going to boost your confidence and energize you. We're going to turn your parenting problems into no problem,

one episode at a time. Today, we're going to talk about writing an original winning essay to get into your dream school. I'm super happy to have you on the show. Welcome, Ben.

Thank you. It's great to be here. You received your PhD in history from UC Berkeley, and then in 2011, you were elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows. And then in 2013, with Harvard University Press, you published The Collaboration, Hollywood's Pact with Hitler.

That book attracted international attention because you identified a subject that was little known, which was Hollywood's business with Nazi Germany in the 1930s. And it gained notoriety because you found a distinctive way to express that. So super intriguing. And then you realized through all that work that your specific talent lie in breaking through the noise and making an impression and helping other people to do the same. So you began working with students on their college admission essays in 2016. And to date, you've helped hundreds of students obtain admission to elite colleges. You founded Real College Essays, helping senior high students really make an impression with their Common App essay. So let's start there. Tell us about that.

Really what I do today when I help students who are applying to college, it's helping them uncover their story and give them the confidence to write their story in an application. Writing college essays has just become a much more focused on aspect of the application. I think with SATs going optional for many schools, colleges really have to, they can look at your GPA. And of course, your GPA is going to count for a lot, but it's really hard for them to work out how certain GPAs connect to other GPAs because each school has its own system.

And so if you're not taking the SAT, the one thing that's a constant is the essay. so this question of you know how challenges that you've overcome that is the classic question that people will answer is something that you know they're going to look at from other students for all sorts of students and and they're going to be assessing students on that basis so it's it's the point in common so everyone is focusing on the essay suddenly and it's become something that there's just in the past it wasn't as much of a focus but in the past few years i've noticed that the business has really just been growing. I love what you say on your website, realcollegesays.com. You can research the school and you can kind of, you know, look into what they're looking for in a student and whatever, and you can write your essay around that, but really it's just going to look like everybody else's if you do it that way, right?

Right. I mean, I think the mistake that people make when they apply to college is, and try to write the essay is they start googling other essays that worked and so they will it used to be collections of books that had essays that got people into Harvard or Yale or Princeton and now it's just obviously you can google it and you're going to find examples of essays and this is very stressful for teenage students because they read these essays and they think that these essays are what they need to do to get into college now for a start that's not true because often the essays that people put up, it's not the essay that got the student into college.

It was their GPA and SAT and extracurriculars list. And the essay just happens to be what they submitted because often the essays that are held up as these great essays, they're not all that great. And so that's already confusing for students, but then they will try to copy these essays and write what they think they should be writing. And usually what they end up writing is something kind of gimmicky, kind of highly flown, often a bit cutesy, and not really what the Common App question is asking, which is a pretty honest question about your life and your experience. So students will sort of copy this style, and they'll also get very, very stressed looking at all of these essays. And none of that is helpful, because what the questions, if you look at the common app or the prompts for most schools, what they're asking you are usually very honest questions about your life and experience. And if you try to sort of trick the system or come up with something really clever or come up with a hack or find out what colleges want to hear,

then you'll just look like you're trying to write what you should be writing when really they're just asking you an honest question. So what I try to do is I try to connect with students try to get the narrative out of them, work out what their actual experience has been, what makes them a bit different from other students. And I talk to them and I try to give them the confidence to write about that honestly and clearly when it comes to writing their essay. Much more authentic approach than trying to find out what they want to hear, which doesn't work. Which brings me to my question, how do you pick a topic? Maybe what's the best way to start to get your ideas down to think about what you're even going to say?

Yeah, it's a great question. So just so everyone understands when you apply to college, there is, there's like a common app main essay. The common app is the, is the way most people are going to apply to most colleges. There are some exceptions, but the common app will ask one personal question and you'll have a choice. It's a, you have, there are seven possibilities. You can pick one.

And then each school you apply to will have supplemental essays and they'll ask you to write you know anywhere between zero and three essays or four essays that the school is interested in and they're going to be a bit more focused but the common app essay goes to every single school so it's kind of the most important in the sense that every school is going to be reading this essay and there are a range of questions most students pick between two or three of them um one is you know if there's something interesting about your story please share that story with us here, very general. Another is a lot of students have encountered setbacks, obstacles. If you have, what was your experience, reflect on it, and what did you learn from the experience? Those are the two big ones. There are a few others, but if you think about those questions, they're very honest,

they're very straightforward. They're just like, tell us something about yourself that's important. It can be something negative, it can be something that was really difficult for you, or it can just be something about you. Tell your story. So this is all a very long-winded way of getting to your question, which is, well, how do you write that kind of story? Like, how do you respond to that kind of prompt? And the answer is, when I work with students, a lot of back and forth, a lot of dialogue, a lot of questions. I really try to get them talking long before they put pen to paper.

Because if you start trying to answer the question, well, tell us a story about your life. And you're like, well, I better start typing as quickly as possible. I guarantee you, you're not going to write a good essay. You're only going to write a good essay if you spend some time reflecting on your life and on your experience.

And I think ideally, if you do that one-on-one with someone who you trust, that will lead you to come up with something. But you need to be patient and you need to take time and you need to really be open to writing about something a bit different, a bit weird. It's okay. You know, in fact, it's better if you could come up with something that other people haven't written about, that's going to be better in the long run because an admissions committee and admissions officer is going to look at it and say, well, maybe I'm going to pay attention to this one because it's different from everything else.

Right. It's going to stand out even the, even the title of it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So what I'll say to students when they're saying, you know, where are we going to start is, well, first, have you had a setback? Have you had an obstacle in your life? And about 35%, 40% will say yes. And I'll go down that path with those students. And usually that's what they'll end up writing about.

the other 60% will say you know honestly my life has been pretty normal I haven't had it come from a family that's intact and we don't have any major problems and I'll say well that's great that means you shouldn't answer that question because you can't pretend you have to be honest so you haven't had any major setback what else is different about you or interesting about you And that'll open up a different kind of conversation.

Either way, there'll be a lot of back and forth, a lot of dialogue. The student will start to open up and will come to a topic. But it takes some time and it takes patience. Yeah.

Speaking of that, how much time should a student dedicate to the college essay? When do you even begin to write it? and then when our due dates and some of the semantics of that? Well, the first big due date is November 1.

That's when early action, early decision is. There are some exceptions to this, but November 1 is the first big deadline. November 30 is when the University of California has its deadline. And then early January, January 1 or early January is when the regular decision deadline is.

so every year I get people applying you know right writing to me just before the deadline that's a very bad idea um it's just incredibly stressful for students to have to come up with something just before the deadline but a lot do um I recommend you get started I don't think you know you don't want to be crazy about this you don't want to be like overthinking it for months and months. But if you start in the summer, I think that's good because you're not just going to have to write this essay. You're going to have to write essays for every single school you apply to in addition to this essay. That's a lot of essays and you have to get into the groove of writing. And if you start doing it earlier, you'll get pretty good at writing these essays as time goes on and there'll be an accelerating effect. So I've noticed that the students I meet with once a week, starting in the summer, even if it's late in the summer, are so much calmer by the time it comes to submit than the students who come to me later on. The common app has 650 words. That's your limit. However, that doesn't make it any easier. In fact, I would suggest that if they said it was a thousand words or a thousand five hundred words, that might be easier for most students. But learning how to tell a story that captures someone's attention and keep their attention, say everything you need to say within the space of 650 words, that involves cutting a

lot of stuff. It involves being concise. It involves making the most of every word. And that's harder than unlimited space to just say whatever you want to say.

It makes a lot of sense that go ahead and write a bunch of stuff and then take out what you need or funnel it down, I guess. I do that all the time with students because a lot of people are very nervous about writing. I mean, I think most people are, but many students, especially when so much is at stake and you have to write about yourself for the first time in your life, because no one has written this kind of essay before when they come to me.

And so I will never say, even if we've spoken for a while and we have some topic and they're like, okay, I'm going to write about this. I will never say to them, okay, go and write the essay, because that's very intimidating. I'll say, go and write as much as you want, get as much as you want on the page. I'll give them questions and I'll say, treat it more like journaling. Treat it as a fun exercise to just get your ideas on the page. Don't worry about this being the big common app essay. Just write some stuff down. Sometimes for some students, I'll say, I want it to be bad. And they'll say, oh, what a relief. And they'll just write stuff.

And usually then they'll come to me with stuff that's actually gold because the pressure is off. and yeah, there might be way too much text, but it's always easier to cut text when you have text. You know, if you were my student, for example, I would say, you know, tell me everything, get it all on the page. There's nothing wrong with that. And then we'll start cutting and we'll, I'll say, well, is this really necessary? Is that really necessary? And what do you think your main point is here? And what part of that experience was really important? You know, you've told me this detail and this detail and this detail, but what part was really hurtful or fun or exciting or damaging or, and by asking those kinds of questions and validating the student's experience will always work out what the most important thing is. It just might take some time. So what happens though, when you get stuck, you know, you're all, oh, I've got,

I know what I'm going to write about. I know. And then you start writing and you're like, oh, wait, that's all there wasn't enough yeah I mean that's a good question I don't really believe in writer's block um that's a whole philosophy but let's but breaking it down just for students I think people need encouragement they I think they often will get nervous like for example if you're getting nervous and feel overwhelmed how could you possibly be expected to write something down so that's a good time for me to start asking questions or to engage in a different way some students I mean I have so many different exercises I've developed for this but one example is a student who just shuts down won't write anything down but can talk a lot but when I say start writing something you know we could sit there for hours and nothing would get written so what I'll do is I'll say okay I'm going to set a timer for four minutes I want you to just write whatever comes into your head for four minutes and after four minutes you have to stop and we'll set the timer. And a lot of the time, they'll just start writing. And then I will usually just let,

I'll pretend that it's only four minutes, but they'll just be writing. And at that point, I'll stop the timer. I won't even tell them and they'll just be writing something. So that's the kind of exercise that I use. There are others. You can always get people to start writing. I have never had a student where they literally couldn't write anymore. I've never seen that happen. I think if you just keep engaging with someone, they will eventually start writing. I would imagine this would be a good practice to just sort of get used to and just essays in your, you know, sophomore, junior, senior year of high school, just writing in general, this would be a good practice.

I think it would. I think unfortunately the education system doesn't promote that kind of thing. But I will say when you go to college, you're going to be writing a lot of essays. And if this provides really good practice for college. If you work with someone for several months in a row on these essays, then when you get to college and have to write essays in midterms and every semester, every year, you will have training to do that. You will be much more confident to do that.

And so it's not just about getting into college. It's about developing those writing skills that you're going to need to use for all the courses you take in college. And yeah, of course, if we had a system where people were trained to do this kind of thing earlier in high school, then yeah, it would benefit them in high school. But what I usually find is that students don't have that kind of training. They don't tend to write regularly in the way. Interestingly, I'm from Australia originally. And we had to write, it was called composition. Every single week, we had to write something all through middle school, even before middle school. But it's different in the United States. I just, I really like this for even starting as early as high school. How early do you start working with a student? So we really start, at least right now, we start with seniors, with high school seniors applying to college. Occasionally, I've met with juniors who are applying for summer programs, 99% of students that I meet, at least in high school, are seniors.

Then there are also college students who we meet with, but that's different. There are transfers, there are people trying to write better essays in college. I think that's the problem. It hits everyone like a ton of bricks. As a senior, suddenly they realize, oh my God, I have to write a set of college essays and I have no training for this whatsoever. And so we really try to address that. But there isn't as much call for it before. Take that into account and really know that students have no practice doing this and try to train them in doing that. So you start with the Common App and then depending on the goal of the students, the program they're working to get in, you help them with the other essays as well? Yes, we do. The other essays usually don't take as long.

the common app we like to linger over and really for two reasons i mean one it's harder it asks you a question about your personality and your experience as opposed to the supplemental essays are a bit more straightforward really working out what your story is that takes some time so we we take time over that respect the question and then um the second reason is it goes to every single school you apply to so the supplementals are just going to go to one school or another. If you don't do one great supplemental, it's fine. You know, it's not going to be the end of the world. You'll do other good ones, but the common app, every single school is reading it.

So you really want to come up with something good. You don't want to write the common app in a few days. You want to take your time with it, spend time thinking about it, craft it, you know, get out all your ideas, edit it down. So that, that normally takes, it depends. Some students are faster than others, but I recommend spending four, five, six weeks on that meeting once a week.

Going to be my next question when they do begin to work with you, how often, how long of a period of time? Give us how it all works. And I get that question a lot from parents. I will say everyone is different and there's dramatic variation between students. So some students do it in a few weeks, but that's very, you know, a week or two, but that's very unusual. Most students, there's a sort of sweet spot between four or five, six weeks, I think, to get the common app. That's meeting once a week.

And I think it's better to meet, you know, weekly rather than to try and cram in a bunch of sessions in a few days, because I'll give homework each week. And each week when the student comes back me, they'll be that much closer to having a good common app essay. And by the way, they always do their homework because they know that this counts. This is something they have to do and that is going to determine if they get into college. So I never have problems with students not doing what I tell them to do. And so each week I'll set them homework and I'll tell them to work on it each day a little bit, not all at once the day before. That approach is really good. It leads to the essay being something of quality rather than something rushed. Well, you're just making it intriguing and interesting and exciting actually versus daunting. Yeah, it's an opportunity.

I mean, I think when students discover that they have something interesting about them, they actually do want to write it down. And it is a growth process in a whole bunch of ways. Like You learn about yourself. You develop confidence in your own story. And then you develop writing skills. Those are all things that are going to serve you in life. I mean, writing skills, obviously, because you're going to have to write later in life. But just knowing who you are and what your narrative is and what your experience is. And there are people who use their Common App essay for, you know, graduate school, medical school, law school. They end up, because the story they come up with is so compelling that that is the story that they use, you know, all through their lives. Other people, of course, they develop new stories and that's, that's great too, but that self-awareness and being in touch with who you are and knowing what your experience is and being able to say, yeah, this is my experience and own it is an empowering thing to do. Yeah.

This is super cool. And I'm all about confidence. And I feel like when we're confident, we we just do better you know and so instead of the college um application and mission process being so scary and like having this solid common app essay that you are super proud of and and just feel really good about and feel solid about like i i sense that that would just help boost a new student's um excitement and energy for even applying and not and taking out some of that anxiety around applying. Yeah. And not to mention, I think if you write an essay that's authentic, that you know is your experience and you submit it, there's something really good about it. You feel good. You feel like, okay, I've been myself. I'm not pulling any tricks here. I'm putting myself out there and they can accept me or not. But if you really put effort into it, you feel good about it, that's a really good lesson to learn. And it does feel good to just be authentic when you apply for these things, rather than think, oh, how am I going to trick them into letting me in? That's a terrible mentality to apply to college with. I'm guessing the Common App is where a good majority of the weight is. Oh, yeah. It counts. I mean, if you look at the GPA, SAT, and Common App essay, and essays in general, I still think the GPA and SAT are counting for more. But the essay seems to be, I mean, it's the third part of your application. So it is

counting for something very substantial. And what I noticed is that students will prep for the SAT for six months. They'll work on their GPA for four years in high school. And then they'll write their essay in the last week. And that balance is totally off. So I'm not saying you should spend, you know, six months working on this essay. I think that would be a big mistake. I think you should dedicate, you know, a couple of months or a few months to it. I think that's a smart strategy that fits with the weighting of the different parts of the application. Just common sense, I think. But the number of students who don't, you know, who wait to the last minute, or students who come to me another weird thing that I've noticed students will come to me and they'll say I've written my essay and I'll say oh which prompt did you respond to of the common app prompt and they'll say because there's an option to make up your own and they'll say oh I didn't even know there was a prompt oh and they've written their essay so and that happens all the time like of people who come to me with an essay I'd say only about 50 have looked at the prompts. So that's kind of shocking. You want to prepare for this thing. You want to look at the prompts. Even if you make up your own prompt, you want to look at the prompts to get a sense of what they're even looking for. And the fact that 50% of people who come to me when they've already

written it without any guidance, they haven't even looked at the prompts, that shows how they're underestimating the essay. I was just going to say, it sounds like they are underestimating the weight of the essay. Why do you think that is? To be honest, I am always surprised when I happens and it happens all the time. I think people make a mistake. They hear that they say 650 words and they think, oh, that's easy. It's just 650 words. That's a big mistake.

650 words means hard and you really need to spend some time working on this. I think that would be my best guess. SAT, well, this is a test that you have to prepare for. And GPA, you obviously have to attend high school for four years and take all your classes.

But this is just a 650 what I say. I think that's the. Yeah, I'm almost envisioning somebody with like a really great GPA and a great SAT score thinking that's enough and underestimating, you know, because the weight of the other two is like I'm in, I've got this. And so they underestimate it because it's not necessarily the case.

You can have a lot of people with a great GPA and a lot of people with a great SAT. On the flip side, I'm thinking a student maybe with a lower GPA and not so good SAT score being like, okay, I've got to give it my all to this essay because this is what's going to get me in. If you have a great GPA and a great SAT, great list of extracurriculars, and you write a mediocre essay, you're going to be fine. You're going to get into a lot of schools.

You might not get into the absolute top schools. And that essay might be what makes the difference between getting into those top schools or not. You're still going to get into a lot of schools. But the essay will make the difference, you know, between really good schools and like the top schools.

If you have struggled in one area, then putting a lot of effort into your essay is going to make a big difference in your application because you have the opportunity to get admissions officers' attention. And if you write something unusual or really good, they are going to take note of that. It does make a big difference. Yeah, really great information.

parents you can go to realcollegesays.com or teens I've got actually a good teen following on the No Problem Parenting podcast believe it or not on social so teens go to realcollegesays.com thanks so much for being with me on the show Ben thanks it was a great session all right that's it for today's episode of the No Problem Parenting podcast hey thanks guys for tuning in if you found value in today's episode click the subscribe button and share it with other parents who might need a little boost. Stay connected on our socials by following at No Problem Parents for more parenting tips and get your free download of the 60 ways to respond to your kids without losing your cool. Go to noproblemparents.com. Until next time,

remember, your confidence comes from embracing both successes and setbacks. So take a deep breath, embrace the chaos, and remember, you got this. Thank you.