Nearly twenty years into a career as a writer and teacher of writing I can tell you exactly one thing: Writing sucks. It’s like a boxing match where every time you land a punch you also take one in the gut. And here’s some more bad news: writing an essay in promotion of yourself (like you have to do for the Common App) is the single worst version of writing that exists. It’s not your imagination. It’s unnatural, it’s confusing, it’s often very boring (which, by the way, does not mean that you are boring). But now that we’ve got all that out of the way there’s some good news: it will suck a thousand percent less if you attend to it early, and getting it done now will make your entire application process smoother. Let’s break down why.
- The prompts don’t change very often. Since the 2019-2020 academic year, only one of the seven prompts has been rewritten (#4, if you’re curious), and you can actually make the case that a lot of the prompts are just nuanced versions of one another (tell me: is there really a healthy distinction to be made between prompts 1, 2, and 5?). While some of your supplemental essays will require you to drill down into narrower subject matter (more on that later), the Common App prompts are designed to be evergreen and aimed at the entire potential undergraduate population, so even if you’re just beginning your junior year there’s no reason to not at least start thinking about this now.
- Figuring out what you don’t want to say is as important as figuring out what you do want to say. Every once in a while inspiration strikes while you’re at the keyboard, and a paragraph or two will appear before you as if by magic, fully formed and without any possibility of improvement. But the other 99% of the time the writing process is synonymous with the editing process, which is to say that you need to write your way through a lot of stuff you’re not going to use before you hit gold and arrive at the final version of your essay. This is a process of advance and retreat that takes time and that will occasionally feel interminable, but one that I assure you gets easier and faster the more you do it.
- Common App drafts you don’t use can later form the basis for your supplementals. Here’s a Common App prompt and a supplemental prompt from a major program side by side:
Common App: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
Supplemental: Tell us about a time you encountered a perspective different from your own. What did you learn—about yourself, the other person, or the world?
Now, let’s say when you first try writing your Common App essay it’s in response to the first above prompt, but for one reason or another it just doesn’t come together, and you wind up going in another direction (this happens a lot). Then, later in your process, you come upon that supplemental prompt, which for argument’s sake let’s say is mandatory (as is often the case). Forward thinker that you are, you saved and clearly labeled all your unused Common App material, and therefore have the bones of a totally applicable and great response to this question. The lesson is: save everything!
- The sooner you start the less likely you’ll be to use ChatGPT. Look––the Devil comes to tempt all of us at some point. That’s his job. They say it’s how Robert Johnson learned to play the blues. Our devil is ChatGPT and all comparable large language models. They offer perhaps the single most tantalizing prospect an exhausted high schooler can imagine: NO MORE WRITING! Don’t get me wrong, LLMs are marvels of technology with many potentially great applications, but replacing your voice on the page is not one of them. This could change in the future. LLMs may go from predictive to independently imaginative, but we’re not there yet, and while I don’t consider myself a luddite I do firmly believe that whatever a machine has to say will never be as interesting as what a person has to say, even on the longest timeline. On a more brass tacks note, there are technologies firmly in place on the other side of your application process to root out essays not written by human beings. Always remember that the people reading your application are also reading dozens, maybe hundreds of other applications a day, and are looking for any reason to quickly dismiss somebody just to lighten their load. Don’t give them this reason.
You’ve got bigger fish to fry––finish your essays and you can focus on your audition process.
If you’re working with MTCA, and looking at audition-based programs, you’re an anomaly in the college application process. You’re being assessed primarily on your merits as a performer, which means you need to reserve as much time and energy as you can for auditions and tapes (to say nothing of travel). So take it from me (and, if I may be so bold, the other stellar MTCA essay coaches) and just get your Common App essay done. I know how daunting it can feel, but if you commit to the process you can go from scattered initial notes to a functional first draft to a polished 650 words in far less time than you think, and then be free to throw yourself back into doing what you really love.
About the Author
Raf Carillo
Raf (rhymes with graph) is an author, copywriter, and teacher. He received his BA in English from Skidmore College and an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Virginia. He has published short stories in the Beloit Fiction Journal and the Sycamore Review, book and film culture essays on LitHub and Flavorwire, and was the winner of the 2023 Masters Review Novel Excerpt Contest, judged by Matthew Salesses.
As a branding professional he has crafted strategy and written ad copy for national campaigns on behalf of Walmart, Bombas, Lids, and Joe & The Juice, to name just a few. He has also blogged for a wide range of companies, covering everything from fast food to file encryption to sports to EV charging.
Raf taught Fiction and Composition workshops while pursuing his MFA, and in the years since has been a writing tutor for students at every level, from middle school all the way through college, providing hands-on guidance and support for school assignments, personal essays, application materials, and everything in between.
