The Best Way to Start & End a College Essay in 2024
- Kevin Zhen
- Aug 20, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 22, 2024
Every year, two of the biggest issues that I see in college essays are weak hooks and poor conclusions.
What really breaks my heart is not just the fact that these two issues are so prevalent—more than half of the essays that we read and edited had these problems—but also the fact that when the hook or conclusion is done poorly, it’s just done really, really poorly.
That’s the bad news! The good news is that bad endings and bad hooks are actually pretty easy to fix!
Hooks
Let’s start with hooks. Why are they important? Well because college admission officers spend no more than 10 minutes on your entire application, which translates to around just five minutes on all of your essays.
If you don’t capture their attention or at the very least pique their curiosity, chances are they’re going to skim through your application file even faster.
Now, one of my favorite ways to grab a reader’s attention in any story is by starting with conflict! I’m going to give you a few examples of a conflict hook, each of which gets better and better as I list them out.
Example 1: When I ran for student council president, my sister laughed at me and told me I had no shot.
Example 2: My dad calls it the deep fryer. I call it the Singer.
Example 3: The challenge with building an igloo is that if you don’t finish by 4 PM, your risk of hypothermia increases exponentially.
Why is conflict #3 so powerful? What does it have which the other two lack?
Well, first of all, it’s a way more original scenario. (And before you ask, “Who actually gets stuck building igloos?” know that one of my Yale friends actually wrote her essay about that.) Secondly, what makes this hook so interesting is that there are some real stakes—hypothermia could actually kill you! Last but not least, it evokes sensory details, immediately helping you show instead of tell. Already you can picture an igloo and imagine the prospect of hypothermia seeping into your bones (not cute).
Whenever crafting a hook, always ask yourself, “How can I raise the stakes?” and “What are some of the more uncomfortable, unusual situations that I’ve been put in?”
Try writing out three or four of the most intense problems you’ve ever faced and then consider which one of these could actually be a genuine Common App essay.
It’s worth mentioning here that there are loads of different kinds of conflicts: character vs self, character vs character, and character vs environment. Your story could feature one, two, or even all three.
An example of character vs self would be writing about a time when you had a significant change to your own personal ideology or philosophy.
Character vs character could feature a physical conflict, a social one, or even an intellectual one like that time when you debated with your cousin about why string theory is just plain wrong.
Similarly, character vs environment could be a physical one just like the igloo example I just mentioned, or it could be social or even economic. An example of this would be writing about a time when you stood up to bullying or when you advocated for more club funding as a student council representative. The possibilities are truly endless!
My second tip is to begin your essay with mystery. Pose a question that has to be answered. Let’s take a look at a few examples, some of which I just made up on the spot and some of which are from real essays:
The best teacher I ever had couldn’t even speak.
Want to know the secret to perfect fried rice?
My pet turtle is the reason I flunked my AP Physics exam.
As you can see, you can begin with a question or just pose one that’s answered later on in the story. Is it simple? Yes. Is it effective? Absolutely!
Conclusions
Moving on to the conclusion—those darn final paragraphs of your Common App essay. My qualm with the dozens of conclusions I read last year is that they were so incredibly cliché, or they just regurgitated and repeated what the author had already stated earlier in their story.
To avoid that, we’re going to ask ourselves and answer two questions: “So what?” and “What can I contribute to campus?”
Allow me to illustrate this with, you guessed it, another example. Let’s say that you’ve decided to write your essay about serving as part of the prom committee and organizing a bake sale fundraiser for prom tickets. Now, a lot of students might think that the “so what” of a fundraiser is to raise funds. But what if we presented this bake sale as something more? What if we presented it as a reflection of our own values? Check this out…
These bake sales are so important to me because I believe in human connection. While it certainly would have been less effort to solicit email or online donations, the process of showing up in person to sports events and club activities, then serving my classmates cookies and muffins that I baked myself, that feeling of being present in the moment, those little interactions—that means the world to me. In both big ways and small, I resolve to show up, be seen, and connect. That’s the kind of person that I hope to be, and that’s what I hope to bring to a college campus.
This concept of the contribution to campus is a critical one. To be completely frank and honest, I had no idea that this was a major factor when I applied to colleges. My own Common App essay failed to address this point, but every year I’ve noticed that the kids who hit this contribution to campus nail on the head just do so, so well when it comes to college acceptances in December, March, and April!
Keep in mind that your contribution to campus can be either tangible or intangible. It can be something concrete like the fact that you’re really good at 3D printing and you plan on creating a bunch of cool gadgets for you and your roommates, or it can be something more intangible like hanging on to your childlike sense of wonder and curiosity.
That’s it for today, folks! I hope you enjoyed today’s article. Stop reading, start writing, and let us know if we can help with anything. We are here for you. Thanks for reading, and catch you at the next one.
Your virtual big brother,
Kevin Zhen
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