In Defense of the College Essay

Students dread the application essay. Critics think it’s an exercise in fakery. Here’s why it’s worth preserving — and how to save it.

This article originally appeared in The Boston Globe on April 22, 2025.

It’s college admissions season, and the process is once again under fire. Several weeks ago, a high school student by the name of Zach Yadegari went viral on X after posting a college essay that got him denied from every single elite college that he applied to.

As a college counselor who routinely reviews college applications, I immediately sensed that there must have been something wrong with his essay. As it turned out, I was correct. The essay was notable not only for how much it focused on Yadegari’s extensive accomplishments but also for its complete lack of self-awareness. Yadegari did not send colleges an essay focusing on a deeply personal aspect of his teenage years. He sent them a supercilious overview of his achievements:

By age 7, I was coding. By 10, I was giving lessons for $30/hour. By 12, I published my first app on the App Store. By 14, my online gaming website was earning $60,000 annually. And by 16, I had a six-figure exit. YouTube was my personal tutor, teaching me everything from programming to filing my LLC’s.

Commenters were quick to disparage Yadegari’s writing, sparking a national conversation about the purpose of the college essay and the absurdity of an exercise that asks students to “disguise [their accomplishments] as modesty,” as

Rob Henderson

wrote on his Substack. Analyzing Yadegari’s essay, Henderson claimed that Yadegari’s college applications flopped because he did not speak the language of “the elites,” where “overt pride in your accomplishments is frowned upon.” Other commenters on X praised the essay and criticized college admissions officers for seeking personal statements that demonstrate “unearned confidence rooted in being ‘oppressed.’”

Writing on his Substack,

Yascha Mounk

ripped into the exercise of the college essay on the grounds that Yadegari, who has a 4.0 GPA, scored a 34 out of 36 on the ACT, and founded a successful startup, should have been worthy of an elite college acceptance. But what Mounk overlooks is that because so many other students secure near-perfect SAT scores and pursue every opportunity under the sun, these accomplishments are not nearly enough to stand out. That is where, in a perfect world, the college essay comes in, granting students the opportunity to tell admissions officers something unique about themselves beyond their high school resumes.

But because we have created a system that values doing over thinking, many students struggle with the reflective aspect of the essay, becoming so hyper-focused on touting their accomplishments that they forget the things that make them fundamentally human. And that is, presumably, why the college essay has recently come under fire: We are all thinking about it — and, indeed, about the entire application process — incorrectly.

Mounk’s position, for instance, is the same as that of many of the X commenters, decrying the college essay system as unfair and claiming that the admissions process “encourages the whole elite stratum of society … to conceive of themselves in terms of the hardships they have supposedly suffered.” Given this thesis, it makes sense that Mounk would come to Yadegari’s defense — the student wrote an essay about his accomplishments rather than about the obstacles he had to overcome. But Mounk misidentifies the point of the college essay — it has never been about writing a so-called sob story, nor should it be. In fact, I agree with Mounk’s assessment of the absurdity of asking students to produce melodramatic slop. I urge my own students never to tell a sob story if they can help it, for such essays always backfire.

It is unlikely that Yadegari was rejected from the most prestigious schools because he leaned into his accomplishments instead of painting himself as a victim — or failed to learn the language of the elites for that matter. Rather, Yadegari was probably rejected because, in his essay at least, his personality does not come across very favorably. At one point he even rips into the sort of institution he is attempting to appeal to:

“So you’re not going, right?” VCs, founders, mentors—nearly everyone reinforced the same narrative: I didn’t need college.

These are the musings of an 18-year-old who comes off as arrogant and pretentious, bragging about earnings and connections without giving colleges the least bit of an idea about who he is — or, at least, about the hard work he put into his achievements.

I am not sure how we arrived at the notion that a college essay needs to present either a resume of accomplishments or the outline of a bad telenovela, but neither of these is desirable. The Common App essay prompts guide students to reflect on idiosyncratic elements of their lives, asking pointed questions about identity, talents, and interests rather than about awards or accomplishments. We would do well to take these prompts at face value.

There are, after all, only a finite number of prestigious extracurricular activities that students can pursue at age 17 — from research with an MIT professor to an internship at KPMG — but no one student will have the same lived experience as another.

In fact, when I work with students, I don’t start by launching into what makes a good college essay. I start by presenting them with the personal essay as an art form — I might have them read David Sedaris or George Orwell — and then zero in on the college essay once they understand how to put together a successful piece of writing. For many students, these exercises might be the first time in their lives that they interact with the concept of the personal essay, a form of writing that has fallen by the wayside in a society that increasingly devalues personal inquiry. So it is no wonder that students like Yadegari approach the essay as a resume rather than as a moment of introspection. I hope to at least move students away from thinking in terms of “what a college is looking for” and toward tapping into their authentic stories as they demonstrate their readiness for higher-level thinking.

Some of my most talented students have taken time to reflect on the mundane — such as a student who gained admission to Cornell by writing about her pet turtle — or tap into the fantastical, such as a student who ended up at Penn after telling admissions officers about her desire to become a Disney princess. These students, of course, also boast stellar accomplishments and strong academic credentials, but what helped them secure admission was the imagination, creativity, and authenticity displayed in their essays.

In a sea of rigged activities, grade inflation, and near-perfect SAT scores, the college essay is the only component of the college application process that cannot be gamed or bought. It’s true that students can resort to AI tools or hire a college counselor to help them polish their essays, but no amount of heavy edits can bring out a student’s authentic voice — and no counselor or ChatGPT model will ever be able to identify the facets of the student’s experience that have led them to become the individual they are today.

In a society that continually assaults the importance of the humanities, where many students will no longer be able to pass a single class without AI, we need the college essay more than ever.

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