Essays: Big Macs, Equations, and the Marketplace of Ideas

What are some good tips to write the perfect transfer admissions essay?

I was asked to answer this question on the website Quora.com

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I have written many words on admission essays over the years. Some of what I have shared a long while back still seems useful. For the US News, I wrote an essay about not writing a McEssay:

Ninety percent of the applications I read contain what I call McEssays – usually five-paragraph essays that consist primarily of abstractions and unsupported generalization. They are technically correct in that they are organized and have the correct sentence structure and spelling, but they are boring. Sort of like a Big Mac. I have nothing against Big Macs, but the one I eat in Charlottesville is not going to be fundamentally different from the one I eat in Paris, Peoria or Palm Springs. I am not going to rave about the quality of a particular Big Mac. The same can be said about the generic essay. If an essay starts out: “I have been a member of the band and it has taught me leadership, perseverance and hard work,” I can almost recite the rest of the essay without reading it. Each of the three middle paragraphs gives a bit of support to an abstraction, and the final paragraph restates what has already been said. A McEssay is not wrong, but it is not going to be a positive factor in the admission decision. It will not allow a student to stand out. 
 A student who uses vague abstractions poured into a preset form will end up being interpreted as a vague series of abstractions. A student who uses cliché becomes, in effect, a cliché. If we are what we eat, we are also what we write. 

I think what I have said above applies for first year students or transfer students. On the other hand, I have come rethink some of what I have said back then (and somewhat recently too) about the best  approach to essays.




Here is a recent attempt to encourage essays which both show and tell:

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The following essay was written in response to a request to write an answer to the question: "What do admission officers REALLY want to see in an admission essay?"

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I wish I could answer this question in a few sound bite sized nuggets so that anyone reading them would come away with useful information. Actually, that’s not true. I think there are far too many nuggets of wisdom out there about essays. The problem is that if people examine them closely they often discover that verbal nuggets are often clichés.  While something like  ‘all that glitters is not gold’ may initially sound bright it also sounds dim too.

After 3 decades of reading essays and writing about them in places like the US News, I’ve discovered a few things that have made me question my ‘’wisdom’. But I do have a formula.

E= wr2.   Like E = mc2, there is a lot that goes on inside the letters and numbers. But essays are not in the same category as paradigm-shifting discoveries in physics. Still, there is a lot more to the reaction than we often think about. Let me see if I can offer a bit of elucidation of and as my proof.




E, of course stands for the Essay. Like Einstein’s E it contains energy. Or if it doesn’t, then the writer’s sunk. The energy is what goes in on the part of both reader and the writer. Both must be willing and able-- in this interaction everything in the universe of admission essays depends. Without a positive reaction nothing good happens. It is, however, the variables on the other side of the equation that matter (pun intended): both have to come into play (and work).

W, the writer, the matter at hand, has a job to do: become a subset of one. Sound hard? It should, but not for the reasons most think. Most approach the topics put out by the Common Ap or the schools themselves as Everests. They think that they have to have scaled the highest peaks or have figured out the secrets to eternal inflation in astrophysics. They think, in other words, they have to tell a tale never told that will, by its genius or world-class recognition, stand out. A lucky few have such stories. Most don’t.

But everyone can become a subset of one. All it takes is the ability to put into telling detail a story that shows something personal. The essay asked for after all is called a personal statement for a reason. And anyone who’s lived has compelling details and words to share. One of the best student essays I’ve read in a while extolled the virtues of the small. The small means the acts that add up not to a formula but a story that no one else has because each of us generates billions of thoughts and details none of the rest of us have had or will have without the help of others’ words.

Each of us lives in a world that’s infinite. The job for students is to take a few of those neural pathways and shape them into words that follow a path, sometimes clear, sometimes meandering, but always well-written. I don’t think any topic automatically leads to pure gold or that weigh in at heavy lead (there are a few that might call for serous alchemy though: the student who wrote about the advantages of sniffing glue—a real essay submitted to a highly selective school—had set himself a rather difficult task). On the other hand, I’ve talked with thousands of students and it does not take all that long to hear words that have the fire of healthy passion. Transmuting the heat of passion into effective prose takes work, but it’s a lot easier than trying to do some sort of magic or transubstantiation. Focus, vision, revision and reading the words aloud to someone else who knows about writing all help. All of this takes time and it does take effort, but practice makes writing a craft rather than a special talent. It can be learned but it needs to be earned too. Forget the tricks; forgo the self-imposed limitations of thinking that only the dramatic stands out. It does sometimes seem miraculous that sentences on a page can sing, but I’ve read thousands and not just from the Masters of poetry and prose, but from students who creatively carried out a controlled experiment with nouns, verbs and others parts of speech. It’s not quite a science a signs but it’s not a dark art either.



R, the reader, is harder to define. Readers come from all races, ages, and academic backgrounds. Anyone who says they can tell how an unknown set of readers will respond to a set of words hasn’t done much research. I have done my share. I’ve posted essays on my blog and shared them with parents, students and educators. In some cases the responses have been anything from ‘good, not great’ to ‘publishable’. I am not saying that there isn’t a way to judge whether an essay is great or just pretty good but part of the formula are the experiences and predilections of the readers. (Saying relativism is true is itself a logical contradiction.) Those trained to read and write can and indeed do evaluate words that connect, and give off sparks of life. I do think most admission readers know when an essay is bad, but making subtle distinctions between the best and the good is not nearly as predictable as most books about writing college essays would have students and parents think. I’ve heard too many readers disagree about essays to make me think anyone ‘knows’ what will always work. Some readers have been shaped by the words of Toni Morrison, others by David foster Wallace, others have not read much fiction or poetry or creative non-fiction at all but may have been moved by the beautiful prose of Darwin or the King James Bible.  We are all tissues of quotations and rhythms and sounds of words getting under our skin, or whispering indiscrete bon mots into our ears, or come flashily dressed as a provocative sight for rich or poor eyes alike.

“De gustibus non est disputandum”, therefore, just doesn’t do it. There are certain essays that sing and some that sink, but all are, nevertheless, subject to the subject’s reading and writing training. And the best training is the act of reading and admission officers read more words in a year than most do in a lifetime.  The audience reading essays for selective schools are a mixed bunch so there simply isn’t a formula or what will move them to fight for a student or an essay, but there are foundations on which to build: essays are sentences that live and love together. They often give rise to families that grow and become part of a common tribe, blood ties that stand together and support one another.




The 2 in my formula is not squared; instead, it's a reminder that essays dance in a delicate dialectic.   An essay should not be a solipsistic exercise--even soliloquies are meant to be heard. The reader and writer need to cohabit in space to create a reaction that makes being come into being in between two beings: 2 becomes 3 (for those who choose to follow Hegel’s logic of dialectical moment).  The paradox of words bends space and time but that is what the universe does too. Einstein got that part right (and lots else too).

Philosophy and physics and formulas that aren’t.  That’s what I have to share. For some this might leave you without a clue. For others it may, or at least this is my hope, do what Horace, the Latin poet, says good writing should do: ‘dulce and utile’:  please and instruct. My guess is that some won’t like it much, but some others might. And that would prove my point about writing for an all encompassing unified Reader who has never existed. I have tried to show and tell how words don’t always work equally for different readers. But I also tried to share an approach to a topic that’s been written about countless times with a story told as an allegory in the form of a formula. In my article on essays written for the US News I encouraged students to take a risk. This entry is, in part, my attempt to follow my own advice.





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But I am not done. The two pieces above address essays that fall under the rubric: personal essay. Personal essays ask you to talk about yourself and to convince readers your voice will add to class.

On the other hand, some of the questions that admission offices ask transfer students to answer fall into a different category altogether .The approach you take to these essays should be far different. For example, U Cal asks for the personal essay from transfer students but also asks this one as well:

What is your intended major? Discuss how your interest in the subject developed and describe any experience you have had in the field – such as volunteer work, internships and employment, participation in student organizations and activities – and what you have gained from your involvement.

Many other schools ask transfer students to answer similar prompts. For this kind of question, you should do a lot of research on the academic program(s) you have an interest in. The more detail you can provide both about your previous experience and about what the school offers the better your chances that schools know you are interested in what your experience will be at the school rather than moving up to a school that has a better reputation.

Few students transfer to schools with lower rankings. Some transfer to schools with similar rankings. Most apply for transfer to schools that have higher rankings. Even though this is true you do not want to say you want to attend the school because of its reputation. Instead, you want to name names:

 “I want to take Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand seminar because I have read his book, corresponded with him via email, and have plans to be a part of his undergraduate research team to explore the pluses and minuses of the free market in third world countries.”

This would convince any reader you have detailed knowledge of the faculty, research options etc. In other words, this essay should be more filled with details about your experiences in life and in school and, in addition, your knowledge of the school. Your "voice" doesn't matter nearly as much as it would for the personal essay. It shouldn't be  “just the facts, ma’am” writing, but it shouldn't be spinning off into poetic prose either (unless, perhaps, you are applying to a creative writing program). Clear, concise prose works best on these kinds of answers.

Finally, you should excise the word perfect from anything to do with essays. There may be, in the world of Platonic Ideals, a perfect essay or a perfect student, but in the real world there are neither.

I hope this helps.