Reading Between the Lines of the College Essay Prompt

by Whitney PosadaPhoto of Whitney Posada

Whitney is a Psychology major who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Whitney enjoys translating her thoughts into her writing and working through the writing process to overcome boundaries and convey her message properly. While writing this paper she reflected on her own experiences, just one year before, as she sat down to write her college admissions essay. She says that while writing her admission essay there were “overwhelming emotions and confusion that I felt at that moment” and that her “anxiety could have been relieved if I had read James Warren’s essay back then.” Whitney says that her family has the greatest impact on her life and that they inspire her to move forward. She is the oldest of four siblings, and is the first in her family to attend college. Whitney also says that making her Salvadorian family proud “is something that pushes me to do my best on a daily basis.”


The college essay is one of the multiple elements that make up the college application process; it is known as the part where students can show colleges a different, less academic side of themself, that is not technically shown by the other parts of your application. The prompts allow students to speak about different topics they might experience throughout their lifetime, such as the influence a person has had on their life, failures they have learned from, personal growth, challenging a belief, or if none of the specific prompts satisfy them, they may write about the topic of their choice.

College essays can be stressful and intimidating, but also mysterious for the rising senior. Students do not know how much weight the college essay carries, and this can either cause students to stress about the essay or feel confident about their application based solely on their stats. I know I definitely leaned towards feeling stressed and intimidated when it came time to write my essay, but it could have gone differently had I known more regarding the college essay.

In his essay, “The Rhetoric of College Application Essays: Removing Obstacles for Low Income and Minority Students,” James Warren tackles an issue he finds in the college application process, specifically what he considers “misleading” college application essay prompts, which he argues fail to actually ask what graders are truly looking for, and therefore create a disadvantage for low-income and minority students.

Warren’s curiosity regarding the college essay prompt leads him to the few research studies surrounding the topic of the college application essay. Warren investigates the studies Early and DeCosta Smith, Paley and Vidali conducted, and although he does give some praise to them each for conducting vital research which has contributed to the academic conversation about the college essay, he finds flaws in all three studies. He points out Paley and Vidali’s participant pool seems to be already marked for success and that the results of Early and DeCosta Smith’s study are slightly mitigated because their essay evaluators have no experience grading as college admissions counselors (45). Warren’s question is whether rhetorical awareness, or the cognizance of what your purpose is and who your audience is, which is implicit in college application essay prompts, affects students’ writing. Being that neither of these three studies fully satisfied the factors and outcomes he was looking for and answered his question, Warren decides to conduct a research study of his own, focusing on tying up the loose ends he found in other studies and conducting a better experiment that could answer his question and lead to expanding the academic conversation.

Warren conducted his experiment in a “low performing, urban high school” in Dallas, TX (46). The participant pool consisted of four classrooms: two classes were the control group, and the other two classes were the experimental group. Both groups consisted of high school seniors preparing to write their college application essays. As per usual, both groups of students were taught the assigned unit on the college essay which is included in their curriculum. This consisted of two weeks’ worth of information meant to guide and inform the students on the college essay. The experimental group, however, would replace four class days of the assigned instruction with seminars conducted by Warren himself.

These four class days were crucial to Warren’s experiment because these instruction days would emphasize the importance of rhetorical awareness, or being cognizant of your purpose and audience. Rhetorical awareness focuses on knowing your purpose, knowing why you are writing and what you are trying to convey through your writing; and knowing your audience, who they are and what they are expecting. Warren emphasizes that one of the key factors, if not the most important factor when writing the college application essay is being rhetorically aware. It is knowing who is going to read your essay, what the reader is expecting or looking for, and knowing how to write an efficient essay that conveys a mix of what you are trying to say and what the reader is looking for.

And so Warren taught rhetorical awareness to the experimental group who focused on using it to plan their college application essays. They then wrote their college application essays having rhetorical awareness in mind, had them peer-reviewed and then received further feedback from Warren on the strengths and weaknesses of their drafts. After the experimental groups did their final revision, both groups’ essays were then assessed and compared by two college admissions officers from the University of Texas- Austin. The essays were rated on a 4 point scale (48). The results showed that the students belonging to the experimental group who received the four-day training from Warren averaged better scores (2.43) than the control group (1.98) (49).

For clarification, all the students participating in this experiment responded to the following prompt: “Write an essay in which you tell us about someone who has made an impact on your life and explain how and why this person is important to you” (46). Warren consulted with one of the admissions counselors to have a breakdown of the students’ results, including what the students did well and what was ineffective in their writing. During this sit down, the admissions counselor confirmed Warren’s initial suspicion that “the college essay is a persuasive argument masquerading as personal narrative” (49), meaning that colleges are not looking for you to write a story about your life, but rather prove that you have what it takes to attend their institution. The admissions counselor admits to being trained to look for “effective rhetoric, reasoning, [and] argumentation,” and shows Warren examples of where students excelled and failed to provide the rhetoric they were looking for. For example, some students wrote detailed essays about their loved ones and their importance to their lives, but as the college admissions advisor emphasized, “[the essay] had better be about the impact and not the person making the impact” (50) meaning that even though they are asking to write about someone else who has impacted your life, the main focus of the essay should still be you and should show how you are qualified for college.

Based on the results of this study Warren suggests that there is a positive correlation between students instructed on the rhetorical situation with regards to the college essay and the “score” given to their essay after having learned these writing techniques. Warren states that those students who simply followed the instructions of the prompt, without knowing the true intentions behind the prompt did not write essays that included the skills or characteristics the admissions counselor was looking for.

Warren’s essay gives me a different perspective on the college application essay than I had during my senior year in high school. As Warren claims, “most prompts ask applicants for personal narratives, but the essays actually function as arguments that make a case for the applicant’s potential as a college student” (44). When I selected my prompt, I did believe that the essay was an opportunity for colleges to know me outside of the academic field, to know a personal side of me that has impacted my life and who I am today. What I was unable to understand, probably because of the lack of instruction, was the “academic game” behind the prompt. Although the prompt I chose said, “Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others,” I didn’t understand that the underlying purpose, or the academic game, was to demonstrate how I was qualified to attend the universities I was applying to.

In my college essay, I wrote about the moment when I saw my father get taken away from me for deportation and the impact his deportation had on me as a young girl. I focused on how I learned to cherish his words of advice as a way of holding on to him, but not how this experience made me a good fit for college. I wrote about the lessons my father taught me before he left and how his words gave me motivation, but not about how I used those lessons and that those lessons will translate to my success in college. I thought I had written a beautiful, heartfelt essay that would touch the admissions counselors’ hearts, and I was probably right about that. But Warren’s essay enabled me to see the flaw of my college application essay: I wrote a narrative and failed to make an argument. I see my essay as a mix of two students of the control group of Warren’s experiment: Morgan and Peter, who used their essays to talk about their grandfather and mother, respectively.

When writing my essay, I spent the first half page describing the morning of my father’s deportation and the last few moments I had with him, which although are very dear to me, do not help colleges understand why I am a good match for their school. This is similar to Morgan’s essay where he describes miniscule details of his grandfather who is the main subject of his essay. Although the counselor applauds how vivid the description was, he states “I don’t care what he looks like. Make an argument that he impacted you”(49). If I reflect on my essay from the perspective of that same counselor, I think they would say, “It does not matter how the morning before your dad got deported went, focus on his actual deportation and how his absence impacted you.” I then go on to describe how my father is this selfless person who has always put myself before him, how he has worked sedulously to give me a better future than he could ever have. But as the admissions counselor says regarding Peter’s essay, a student who wrote about his mother, “the writer doesn’t say enough about himself” and instead focuses too much on his mother and forgets that this essay is about him, not his mother. I think the counselor would say, “The sacrifices your dad made are touching, but what kind of person are you as a result of his sacrifices?”

As much as I would like to, I cannot use Warren’s essay to go back into the past and rewrite my essay. As a first-generation college student, much of my journey senior year was trying to figure out how to do the whole college application process on my own. While my parents were there for moral support, there was not much advice they could give me regarding the actual “how-to” of the process: how to write the college app essay, how to apply for financial aid, how to write supplementaries, or even how to look for scholarships. I was able to seek help and find people willing to guide me through the process, yet no one taught me about this academic game that Warren speaks about in his essay. Although Warren’s essay is eye-opening and full of information, I read it too late for my benefit. Warren’s essay is limited for me in that I am unable to edit my essay and hope for a higher “score.” Had I read this last year, I would have possibly written an essay more aligned with the expectations and qualities the admissions counselors were looking for, possibly resulting in being accepted to more schools.

Although Warren’s essay is unable to help me, I can use it to help my siblings in the future. I can use Warren’s essay and apply it to my siblings’ essays when the time comes for them to apply to college. I will be able to show them Warren’s essay and help explain to them what rhetorical awareness is and the part it plays in the college application essay. I can teach them the importance of knowing your purpose and knowing who your audience is and what they are expecting. I can use the student examples in Warren’s essay to show my siblings what mistakes they should avoid making, and take it a step further by showing them the mistakes I made when I wrote my essay and explaining how I now understand what I could have improved. Basically, I can use Warren’s essay to help my siblings play the “academic game” that students who Warren calls “more traditionally qualified” and who I assume come from more affluent families than me have been playing for years (54).

Not only can I use Warren’s essay to help my siblings during their college application process, but I could spread this knowledge to someone who can make it accessible to more students. I could start by talking to previous teachers from my old high school and suggest adding the instruction on rhetorical awareness into the college essay unit, and explain the positive outcomes it would result in. This could start by simply just making each student read Warren’s essay, which would allow them to read about the mistakes other students made so they’re aware of what to avoid. By beginning to implement the instruction of the rhetorical situation into the curriculum of high school students, schools can begin to prepare students for the moment in senior year when the college essay is introduced. The earlier the rhetorical situation is introduced and implemented into the high school curriculum, the easier it will become to write college application essays.

This implementation of the rhetorical situation into high school students’ curriculum alone isn’t enough; it would not be more useful if students become familiar with the “academic game.” Although Warren’s essay has its uses when it comes to understanding the positive outcomes that result from teaching rhetorical awareness, I disagree with when he infers that colleges are purposely trying to be misleading with their prompts. Warren makes a call for action in his conclusion, stating that “unless postsecondary institutions are more transparent about the criteria they use to score college essays, they may unintentionally continue to favor applicants who are academically socialized over those of similar aptitude who are simply less familiar with academic culture”(55). Warren’s claim limits the reader into thinking that the “misleading” prompt is entirely the colleges’ fault. I think the problem is that high schools are not preparing students adequately. Colleges are not being misleading, they are simply using the academic language that is common and understood by them, which seems to be misleading for the high schooler who is not accustomed to that same system. If we began to educate students during their high school years about the academic game played in college, help them truly become rhetorically aware, and begin to learn how to write in the postsecondary level, college application essays would not appear so misleading anymore.

I think it is important that more research and studies be conducted regarding the college application essay. Warren simply sparked the conversation, but it must be continued to have a change take place. Some high schools will not add rhetorical awareness into the built-in curriculum solely based on one small study, but if more studies surged and there was more evidence to back up the effectiveness of rhetorical awareness, high schools might be more open to incorporating the idea. It is important to continue this conversation and make sure it does not die down.

Works Cited
Warren, James. “The Rhetoric of College Application Essays: Removing Obstacles for Low Income and Minority Students.” American Secondary Education, vol. 42, no. 1, 2013, pp. 43-56, www-jstor-org.ezproxy.lib.umb.edu/stable/43694176?seq=1#metadata_info_tb_contents. Accessed 20 Sep 2019.