Many of my college app tutoring clients report a similar struggle when it comes to filling out their Common App. Does any of this sound familiar to you?:
They carefully enter in all of the information requested by the App, such as a detailed activities list.
They put their nose to the grindstone and draft the Personal Statement they’ll send to every Common App school.
Then, when they’re already feeling beat from months of college app work, they have the unpleasant realization that they still need to write a slew of supplemental essays….and they lose steam.
To make matters worse, while some of these extra essays can be lightly edited and reused to apply to a few different schools—like a “community” essay or an “activity” essay—there’s one frequent-flier topic that can’t be just tweaked, then copy-pasted into each college’s Common App portal. You guessed it: the “why this school?" prompt. For obvious reasons, this essay needs to be crafted uniquely for each individual school.
Though you can’t write a universal response to this question, I DO have a universal method for writing the thing. And as I love to do on my blog (and for my clients), I’ve broken this college process hack down into clear, actionable steps for you.
Article Contents
1. Watch this post as a video instead
2. Step-by-step breakdown to writing the school-specific college essay
a. Figure out what you're looking for in a college
b. Research the college(s) you're writing this essay for
c. Real talk: is this college a good fit for you?
3. What if I realize I don't like a college I’m applying to?
4. Conclusion
Video version of this post:
How do you write the school-specific college essay?
Step 1: Figure out what you're looking for in a college
This should be self-evident, but I’ve found that quite a few students try to jump into this particular essay without having done much reflection on the meta-questions that inform it. Before you can convincingly explain why you are a perfect match for College X, you need to know what you want to get out of college in the first place! For example:
What might your main career interests be?
Is there a subject(s) you’d be excited to study or major in?
Which extracurriculars do you KNOW you’’ll want to do in college? Any particular arts or sports programs? Pre-professional programs? Volunteer opportunities?
Are there specific parts of student life that you want to participate in? (Think: Greek life, co-ops, activism, foreign language housing, a particular personality trait/set of values the students share, etc.)
Once you have a rough sense of the kind of things you want out of your college experience, it’s time to…
Step 2: research the college(s) you're writing about in this essay
Now, you’re going to head to the college or university’s website—NOT the College Board or the Fiske Guide or College Confidential. These are good places to find useful information ABOUT a given college, but what you want right now is the school’s official website itself. You need to carefully review the pages of each school’s site, reading about and seeing the institution in its own words. This is not just a quick skim: this research stage should take you a couple of hours per college, maybe a bit more.
These sites can be confusing to navigate at times, so seek out these specific tabs or pages for the gold nuggets of info you need:
An "Academics" or "Academic Life" Home Page
These pages will tell you: Is there a core curriculum that all students must follow? How many and what type of classes does it consist of? Would you be able to take all of the courses YOU want to take if you also must fulfill those requirements? If you are applying to a particular college at a larger university, would you be able to take classes in a different college or department?
Pages for Department(s) of Interest or Residential College(s)
These pages will tell you: Does the college offer the major(s) you want to study? What are the requirements of that major? Check out the titles of the classes you’d actually take: do you like what you see? Jot down the names of a few of the classes and professors that excite you. Does this school offer internship programs to help you gain experience in your field(s) of choice? Take note of those, too.
Student Life
Read through the school’s list of extracurriculars, scanning for your favorites. Click on them to read further. Not seeing what you want? See if there’s a process in place to start your own club! Have you visited the campus? What type of people do you want to spend four years around? What are the characteristics/impressions you’ve gotten of the students at College X?
Keep your eyes peeled, too, for any miscellaneous aspects of a given college that are relatively unusual. These could be monthly symposium series, Jan(uary) terms, final projects that all seniors complete, the fact that the school requires no core curriculum, etc. Colleges put great effort and thought into coming up with and maintaining these unique elements, and by showing off that you’re aware of and excited about those elements, you send the signal that you get what makes that school special.
Finally, you’re ready to determine….
Step 3: Is the college a good fit for you?
Sure, “college match-making” sounds like something out of a dating app, but it’s also a crucial step in your drafting process for this essay—and in the admissions process as a whole.
That’s because the “why this school?” essay is just as much about why THIS school would be good for YOU as it is about why YOU would be a great addition to the campus. It’s not a one-way street. This isn’t a question of a given student being “impressive enough” or “not impressive enough” to get in—it’s about both of you being a great fit for the other. And if there isn’t enough genuine shared ground between your desires and what the college offers…then there’s a good chance that a) you wouldn’t have much to contribute to their particular campus and b) you’d be unhappy there, anyway. And this sad combo could lead to something that colleges try very, very hard to avoid: you deciding to transfer away from their school after freshman year!
That doesn’t benefit anyone involved.
So, after your custom, thorough research (at least a couple hours of it), ask yourself: are you still psyched (indeed, more psyched than before) about spending four years at College X? After all, if you’ve figured out how to get all your academic and personal needs met, then the school probably IS a good match for you. Now, you just need to DO THE THING and SHOW THEM what a stellar fit you’d actually be! Use your essay to paint a portrait of where you’d fit into their campus: which department, which clubs, which teams. Help the admissions officer who'll be reading your essay envision you on the main quad!
At the same time, resist the urge to come off as over-confident. In dating, you’ll just irritate the person you’re talking to if you just assume they automatically like you and can’t wait to go out with you. By the same token, when it comes to the “why this school?” essay, don’t assume your acceptance letter is basically in the mail already! What this means in practice is that you should:
Avoid grammatical constructions that imply that you’ll definitely be on campus in the near future: “When I” or “I can’t wait to” or “I’m excited to.” They make you sound presumptuous.
Instead, use the conditional or subjunctive tense of your verbs: “Were I to be accepted,” “I could/would,” “I’m excited by the prospect of….”, etc. These phrases strike the right balance of modesty and hope.
Also, here’s what NOT to include: a discussion of the city College X is located in, declarations that College X is the “best,” discussions of how well-known/famous it is or how impressive its name is. That’s like telling Timothée Chalamet you want to date him because he’s a famous actor, instead of because he’s funny/caring/intelligent/etc. (no clue if that’s even true! Chalamet-heads, please feel free to fill me in on the Ivy Lounge Facebook page). The point is, customization goes a long way, whereas descriptions that could fit many schools make an admissions officer doubt whether you actually understand the college you’re applying to.
Step 4: How to organize the tailored college essay
Is this starting to sound like a LOT of info to wrangle into ~200-400 words…again and again, for most or all of the schools you’re applying to? Well, the good news is there’s a pretty straightforward way you can structure this essay. You’ve only really got two sections to draft per school:
Academics/Career: This section/paragraph focuses on your hopes and dreams for your future career and the collegiate area of study that could get you there. What does College X offer (department, requirements, classes, career opportunities) that you love? “If I were to attend _____, I’d be excited to study/take/participate in _____.” “I’d see myself _____.”
Extracurriculars/Personal": This (usually shorter) section/paragraph focuses on your passions and interests, and shows the admissions officers what College X currently offers that excites you. “I’m excited by the prospect of _____.” “I see myself living in ______, doing _____.”
Whether you choose to organize your essay in this way or some other way, think about being specific, enthusiastic, and most of all, authentic. You want to be you—you just want to also show the school you're writing about that who YOU really are lines up organically with who THEY really are.
What if I realize I don't like a college I'm applying to?
By the time you’ve done the mental and emotional work of plotting out your hypothetical life at College X, you might decide you don’t like it and can’t see yourself there at all! And that’s OK. If that’s the case, better to figured that out now, in your senior year of HS, than to figure it out after wasting a year on that college campus, right?
Far more often, when I start a “Why this School” essay with a student, they begin to realize how they would in fact be living their best life there if they were admitted! And if you can show that genuine thrill in your essay, your reader will see it, too.
Conclusion
I really hope this breakdown has made one of the trickier college essay seem more doable and less scary. This is a great first step! But if you’d like customized, expert help with your essays, check out my essay-specific packages here. Or shoot me an email with any questions.
