Every year, I end up reading a lot of strong applications.

Good grades. Challenging courses. Solid activities. Students who have clearly put in the work over the course of high school.

And then I get to the essay.

A lot of them are fine. Well written. Thoughtful. Easy to follow.

They just don’t stand out.

This is something I see pretty consistently with students in Brookfield, Shorewood, Oconomowoc, and the surrounding communities. The students are capable. The writing is not the issue.

The issue is that the essay doesn’t really add anything new.

What tends to happen is that strong students approach the essay the same way they’ve approached everything else. They try to do it the “right” way. They choose a topic that sounds appropriate. They write something that is polished and safe.

The result is an essay that checks the box, but doesn’t give the reader much of a reason to remember it.

Sometimes it ends up reading like a summary of activities. You can see the effort and the accomplishments, but you already knew most of that from the rest of the application.

Other times it focuses on a challenge, but stays very focused on what happened rather than how the student thinks about it now. You understand the situation, but you don’t really learn much about the student beyond that.

And then there are essays that are just very general. They talk about growth, hard work, or lessons learned, but in a way that could apply to almost anyone.

None of these are bad essays.

They just don’t do much.

The part that gets missed is what the essay is actually for.

The transcript tells me how a student performed. The activity list tells me what they did. The essay is one of the few places where I get to understand how they think.

That’s what I’m looking for.

How do they approach something when it’s not going well? What do they notice that someone else might not? How do they make decisions? What do they care about, and why?

Those are the things that make an essay feel specific to a student.

The students who write stronger essays are not necessarily better writers.

They’re the ones who are willing to move past the idea of writing something that sounds “right” and spend more time figuring out what is actually true for them.

That usually leads to something that feels more specific, and more memorable.

If you have a current senior in Waukesha, Germantown, Oak Creek, or nearby communities, and the essay feels like it’s in a decent place but not quite where you want it, this is a good time to look at it from that angle.

Is it just well written, or does it actually help someone understand the student in a way the rest of the application doesn’t?

That’s usually the difference.