What do college applicants desperate to impress admissions officers have in common with entrepreneurs desperate to win clients? Both make the same mistake. They oversell.
Every year at Ivy Coach, our college admissions counseling firm, we encounter a subset of students who come to us for PostMortems after being rejected by their dream colleges, having succumbed to the irresistible urge to turn their Personal Statement into a sales pitch.
They’ve earned straight A’s, founded clubs, conducted research and won competitions. And they can’t resist cramming every last achievement into their Personal Statement, as though an exhaustive list of accomplishments will convince an admissions officer to admit them.
We practically have to hit them over the head. Stop selling! That’s what they’re doing, of course. They’re begging an admissions officer: Admit me! Admit me! Look at everything I’ve accomplished! And you know what? It makes them profoundly unlikable. The same mistake is made every day by entrepreneurs who can’t resist selling themselves.
At Ivy Coach, we teach students that the best college admissions essays don’t recount achievements. Awards, honors and accomplishments should never be fodder for an admissions essay. After all, the application’s activities section already serves that purpose. Instead, the most compelling essays tell one small story. Rather than recounting how a student overcame adversity to become student body president or came from behind to win a conference championship, that story should reveal how they hope to shape the world in a singular, often small way.
” And when an admissions officer finishes reading an application , they should feel they’ve met someone who will contribute to their campus community through that distinctive lens.
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