As high school seniors take a deep breath, open a blank document, and begin to craft their college essays, Admission Beat host Lee Coffin empowers them to ask this question: “Who do I want the admission officer to meet?” Coffin and his guests offer words of advice on contemplating audience, the art of brevity, and framing “lived experiences” as addressed in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision on race and identity as factors in admissions. Parents and peers can be helpful editors, but at the heart of every memorable essay is the writer’s authentic voice telling the story only they can tell. With guests Kathryn Bezella, Dartmouth’s new dean of undergraduate admissions, and Jacques Steinberg, former New York Times journalist and co-author of “The College Conversation,” the trio set the stage for each student to introduce themselves through all parts of the application.
As high school seniors take a deep breath, open a blank document, and begin to craft their college essays, Admission Beat host Lee Coffin empowers them to ask this question: “Who do I want the admission officer to meet?” Coffin and his guests offer words of advice on contemplating audience, the art of brevity, and framing “lived experiences” as addressed in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision on race and identity as factors in admissions. Parents and peers can be helpful editors, but at the heart of every memorable essay is the writer’s authentic voice telling the story only they can tell. With guests Kathryn Bezella, Dartmouth’s new dean of undergraduate admissions, and Jacques Steinberg, former New York Times journalist and co-author of “The College Conversation,” the trio set the stage for each student to introduce themselves through all parts of the application.
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president for admissions and financial Aid. Welcome to The Admissions Beat.
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Lee Coffin:
So seniors, parents, we are chatting with you on October 1st, and that means a month from today, the college admission process for the high school class of '25 will reach its first deadline, as some of you will be applying early somewhere and that means 30 days before that, your fingers are furiously typing as you work on essays, supplements, and the last details of the application you will file a month from now. So we thought this would be a great moment to give you some insights on the fine art of storytelling. Because as I tell applicants every year, contrary to popular opinion, the data in your file, your grades, testing when it's required, are not the only pieces of information we consider. That data is important, it helps set a foundation, but in the selective realm of college admission, data gets twinned with your narrative. And your narrative is your chance in your own words, tell us your story.
So the story might happen in the essay, which is where most people think it happens. It could happen in your teacher recommendations or your supplemental essays or your interview. The sum of the whole file is your story. So we want to help you think about storytelling. How do I introduce myself as an applicant to the colleges on my list? And so when we come back, my two guests this week will help you bring some thoughts to what do I want to say? How do I want to say it in my own words so that the person reading this file a couple of months or a few weeks from now meets you in the way you want to be met? So we'll be right back.
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Lee Coffin:
So today we welcome two guests. I'm excited to introduce my new colleague, Kathryn Bezella, who begins today as Dartmouth's assistant vice president and dean of undergraduate admissions. So Kathryn, this episode will go live about six in the morning. Your first day doesn't start until eight in the morning. So this episode predates your tenure by about two hours. But welcome to Dartmouth and welcome to Admissions Beat. So excited to have you in both of these spaces.
Kathryn Bezella:
Thank you so much. I am so excited to be here. I feel very welcomed. I can't tell you how many people have said that sentence to me,” Welcome to Dartmouth.”
Lee Coffin:
Welcome to Dartmouth and welcome to the pod. And for those of you meeting Kathryn, she comes to Hanover after a long tenure at Penn. Most recently as vice dean and director of strategy and innovation for the last couple of years. But she'd been at for almost a decade before that, she was vice president at the Curtis Institute of Music and before that director of strategy and communications at the Wharton School of Business and interim director of admission for their MBA program. So Kathryn brings a lot of interesting Philadelphia-based perspectives to her work now at Dartmouth, but generally in this conversation about storytelling. Your opposite will be someone who keeps coming back to Admissions Beat over and over and over. We welcome Jack Steinberg back for another visit. Jack, Dartmouth class of '88, a journalist, author. Jack, welcome back.
Jacques Steinberg:
So great to be here and so glad to be here with Kathryn and our producer Charlotte.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Jack coming to this is a former journalist at the New York Times, the author of a couple of books on the college admission process, The Gatekeepers and The College Conversation, which he wrote with Kathryn's former colleague Eric Furda from Penn. So another crisscross way. None of us are more than a degree separated.
So I thought it would be interesting to pair the two admission officers with journalists and to think about storytelling and narrative from a lot of perspectives. But before we get to that Kathryn, I invite all of my first time guests to share their own admissions story with our listeners. So we have high school seniors and their parents worrying about getting from here to there. And as a gesture of reassurance, all of us who are guests on this pod, were once high school seniors. So I know you have your origin story in Wisconsin. How did you get from your high school there to where you ended up? What was your story?
Kathryn Bezella:
I am from a very rural town in Wisconsin. I had two primary interests: my interest in English—I loved reading, I loved literature—and then at the time I thought I was going to be an opera singer, so I had a really serious and deep interest in music and musical education. I was a serious musician. I could tell you how to kill your father and ask your brother to go to the church in probably four languages. I sang in Russian and Italian and French and German, and my mother was wonderful. She was really my guide because in rural Wisconsin, everybody ... Wisconsin has an amazing state system. And so everyone plans to go off to Madison or to Stevens Point or Whitewater. These are great schools. But they really didn't have the things that I was looking for in terms of this combination. And so she started to help me. At the time, there wasn't websites and internet. We were sitting down and looking at books and pamphlets and brochures. And I landed with a set of schools that would allow me to do both. So places like Oberlin, places like Northwestern.
And I happened ... And I still believe when I talked to students in a lot of their college origin stories that a lot of this is chance and kismet. I happened to have a cousin who was much older than me who was pursuing her PhD at Columbia in New York City, and she told me about this little college named Barnard. And she sent me some of the information and it turned out they had a joint program with the Manhattan School of Music and then with the Juilliard School. And so it got added to my list along the way. I ended up never actually touching my feet on Barnard's campus, but did send in an application. And then in the array of results I got, I got rejections, I got wait lists, and I was admitted to Barnard after talking and exploring my options I figured somewhere in New York City, whether it was at one of the Barnard official places or not somewhere in New York City, I would be able to continue to sing with a good teacher. And so as we checked and balanced all of the different costs and distance and aspects of what was available, Barnard rose to the top and off I went.
Lee Coffin:
Wow. See, this is why I asked this question because it's so interesting. I didn't know any of that. But it's also, I'm thinking to our listeners who are kids sitting in small rural high schools without infrastructure supporting them perhaps. Here you go. Here's a story of Kathryn with a book finding her way from rural Wisconsin to the Upper West side of Manhattan, which had to be a culture shock when you actually got there.
Kathryn Bezella:
Correct. Because other than a one weekend long field trip with my choir where I got to sing at Bellevue, which is a big hospital in Manhattan. So that was really my ... I saw Bellevue and I saw our hotel and then I went home. That was pretty much my whole understanding of New York City.
Lee Coffin:
Okay. Well thank you for sharing that. And I'm listening to Kathryn it occurs to me that I have never asked Jack this same question. How did you get from the south shore of Massachusetts to college?
Jacques Steinberg:
So I appreciate the question and no, we have not talked about it on the pod. So I grew up in a town of 15,000 in southeastern Massachusetts as you noted. Somehow I knew at my public high school that half the kids did not go on to four-year college. And I had always wanted to go to Dartmouth since at least the age of 12. And the reason I know that age is because I had been fortunate to attend a very ramshackle, very simple summer camp, about an hour north of the Dartmouth campus. Piermont, New Hampshire, Camp Walt Whitman. When I was 12 at Camp Walt Whitman, a group of us in our bunk and our counselors hiked along the Appalachian Trail from camp to Dartmouth, which is one of the great signature aspects of Dartmouth, is that the Appalachian Trail quite literally runs right through campus. There's even a plaque that commemorates it.
And so for four days and three nights with backpacks and sleeping bags on our backs, we walked along the trail, and quite literally came out of the woods like an origin story. And that last day it poured rain. And all we could think about when we got to Hanover, which most of us had never been to—I had certainly never seen it—was that it would be dry and that there would be ice cream. And so we came out and walked up Wheelock Street and at a certain point turned to the right, and I saw this beautiful campus green and the red brick library and said to myself, I don't know how you get to a place like this, but I'm going to figure it out. And so my guidance counselor, however well-intentioned had said to me not to apply, that I wouldn't get in. Not don't get your hopes up. Don't even bother. That the last person from my rural public high school who had gone to Dartmouth five years earlier had been a quarterback and gently reminded me, not that I needed it, that I was no quarterback, I was the editor of the school paper. And yet I was determined and somehow got in.
Lee Coffin:
Love that. Well, and you have such complimentary stories as you answer that question. And I think to listeners, when we talk about storytelling, whether it's the essay itself or just more broadly, what are the pieces of this file that connect together and create you for the reader to meet? Everything Kathryn said and everything Jack said is evidence of the kind of information you want to bring forward. So we're going to talk about that. And so you may be well on your way to finishing your application, you may listen to this and say, "Uh-oh. I got to back up and do some of these pieces all over again." You got a month. But I want to have a conversation now about narrative and why it counts and why it matters. So Kathryn, did you think about a very practical question, why do we ask for writing? Why does writing sit in this application in such an important I think, central place?
Kathryn Bezella:
Yeah. Well, you mentioned the other part of what an application often entails, and that is a data record of evidence that is your grades, that is your testing maybe, that is your class schedule and what it is that you've taken. Those things are…my A in AP English literature looks just the same as your A in English AP literature if we're comparing them side by side. But my essay on why carving pumpkins and Halloween is my favorite time of year and your essay on carving pumpkins and why it is your favorite time of year side by side are going to be nothing like one another because that's where we start to understand motivation. It's where we start to understand insight. It's where the way that you think begins to really crystallize for us.
And that's why I disagree personally with people who say, "Don't write about your grandmother. Don't write about this topic because this topic is done to death." And I've been reminded even as I've explored New England, how many paintings of barns exist in the world. And yet everyone, because it's done by a different artist and there's a different voice and a different perspective involved, everyone does have something about it that is unique and that reflects the eye of the viewer and I think that writing is exactly the same. That writing really helps us to get inside your mind and your way of being. And that is a huge part of what draws us to bringing your voice to our campus.
Lee Coffin:
Jack as a writer, why does writing matter in college admissions?
Jacques Steinberg:
Well, the first thing I think about is audience. And a good writer thinks about their audience. And I'm in conversation now with the two great proxies of the audience for listeners, whether you're a senior or if you're a high school junior, you're not quite at that point of essay, but you're starting to maybe think about ways you might approach this. And so first piece of advice is to think about your audience and if it works for you, if you've never met a college admissions officer before, to think about Lee or to think about Kathryn as the recipient of your story. You might also assume that the person reading your story has not met you before. You may have met an admissions officer when they came to your high school and they may be one of the people who reads the essay, but in all likelihood, at least somebody is going to read it who's never met you before. And it may actually be a committee of admissions officers who's not met you before. So imagine yourself virtually sitting across the table from Kathryn or Lee or their colleagues and introducing yourself for the first time.
What story would you want them to know about you that tells them something about who you are and what you value and what makes you tick? And are there a few signal moments on that journey that made you who you are? That can sound overwhelming. You don't have to tell them your entire life story. While there's aspects of memoir here, this is not all known thought on you. But those telling details, those telling experiences, those telling examples really matter. And one of the things Lee, that I loved about Kathryn's introduction or her response to your question was, however unintentionally she modeled what makes a good college admissions essay or a good college admissions story. There were some wonderful details there that really made her come alive to folks who can't even see her. They're listening to her.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well give an example to the listener. What did you hear that paralleled a verbal essay out of Kathryn just then?
Jacques Steinberg:
Well, when you hear the words opera singer-
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Opera singer.
Jacques Steinberg:
That conjures an image. And notice the details that she said. And again, I'm going from memory, I wasn't taking notes and Kathryn, correct me if I'm wrong. You said something like four languages. There was a specificity to that. That opera can be done in many different languages. And the emotion of ... I think you said killing a parent and then going to church to then reflect on it. Again, this is all from memory, but it lingered. Students as you're listening, what are the details of your story that was vivid? And for people like Lee and Kathryn who've never met you to have an image. I got to cheat a little bit, Lee. Kathryn and I spent some time getting to know each other in a different setting before this recording. And she shared a detail that I'm going to share now, which is that when I asked her about her first job out of college, she said that she had been a singing dog. A singing dog. Which again, talk about a detail. And it also begs the question, what is she talking about? And so Kathryn, if you'll indulge the question for our listeners, tell us about how your first job was as a singing dog and in telling that story model the storytelling we're trying to imagine here.
Kathryn Bezella:
Sure. Boy, one of the ways that I also do tie this back to college and to choice in where it is that you are thinking about pursuing your college education is that you just never know what twists and turns your interests are going to take. I often ask students when I'm in front of them, raise your hand if what you want to do today is exactly the same as what you wanted to do four years ago. And very few hands usually go up because students change so much in such short periods of time. And I changed a lot in my college years. As I mentioned, I went into college thinking that opera was really my pursuit and the more that I got to learn about opera and then the more that I saw this parallel world of musical theater, the more I was drawn to musical theater, it was so much more fun to be a witch than it was to be in opera. I was cast always as young boys and so that got old pretty quick.
So when I first graduated, I was really trying to find a path for myself within the big bad world of New York City auditions. And one of the things that people do is they do these huge children theater productions. That's how you get an equity card. And so I was cast as Martha, the talking dog, woman one Reading Rainbow the Musical. I was in a van with everybody who also knew every word to Rent. So the first week was amazing. I was living what I thought was my dream. And then somewhere around week four, it really lost some of its magic. And by week 24, I think I was really, really tired of eating fast food on the road and being in a van with six other performers all the time. But it taught me so much. Children do not allow you to fake it. And so if you try to do something that's funny or silly and then you're just in an empty way reproducing it all the time, kids will not laugh. I learned a lot about teamwork. I learned a lot about working hard. I learned a lot about both what I did want to do and what I didn't want to do. And so that was the story of my big debut as Martha the talking dog.
Lee Coffin:
Kathryn, I was listening to you retell the story of Martha, one of the things that jumped out at me, just again for listeners, these little nuggets that help us meet you. You used the phrase, I was in a van with other kids who knew all the songs from Rent and I thought I was that kid. And those were the kind of descriptors ... We spent time talking about theater and Jack being an editor, you might be an athlete, you might be an activist, you might be a Republican in a family of Democrats, you might be the opposite. There's so many different ways we all inhabit ourselves. Don't presume you have nothing to say. Something as simple as I was in a van with other kids who knew all the words to every song in Rent. You can write an essay from that.
Lee Coffin:
And the opportunity to bring narrative into your application is an open one. There's not a right answer, there's not a wrong answer. There's not a topic that's off limits. Kathryn mentioned earlier sometimes there's this myth that you shouldn't write about X, Y, and Z. You shouldn't write about any topic that is going to go down the path everybody else is on. If you write an essay that sounds very ... If Jack and Kathryn and I each wrote the same answer to the same question and it said the same thing, that's not very illuminating. It doesn't help us ultimately make decisions. To Kathryn's earlier example about carving the pumpkin, if you can bring a different degree of perspective to the pumpkin story, do it. But that narrative piece, I think swirls around three words. Who am I?
And for those of you with writer's block right now, write that down. Who am I? And then come up with your list. What makes you happy? What brings you joy? What are you good at? What do you hope to be? Who are you in your family, in your community, in your school, in your church, on your team? Everybody can't be out front. Going back to Kathryn's example of being on stage, someone's got to be the stage manager. Someone's going to build the sets. Those are all important. So who are you? Don't make it up. Be authentic. And then look at the application holistically and say, which piece invites me to tell this story in that space? Kathryn, what as you think beyond the essay, help our listeners think about the full application as a storytelling platform.
Kathryn Bezella:
Each part of the application really when you begin to deconstruct it and think about the place that it can hold in your storytelling, there are some kids who choose to use the whole application to double down, triple down on one aspect of their life. Growing up with music was such a big part of my life that I could have handled the application in that way and had a musical teacher write me a letter of recommendation, had my activities list really focused on that piece of my world, written my essay about it. That's not what I decided to do. But certainly music was that important to me that that would've been one approach. But another approach is to think about each part of the application can be an opportunity for you to introduce a different part of your story. And so maybe by having my math teacher write me a letter of recommendation and talk about even perhaps the connection between math and music, but also just my skill and my presence in the classroom in that way. Well, wow, that's a new dimension.
And so yes, my essay was music, but this was an entirely new perspective. I did do other activities outside of the world of music. And so really making sure that in my activities area, the dimensions of my narrative outside of music were also on display so that the admissions officer could say to themselves, oh, okay, I'm not just bringing someone who's going to be alone in a practice room singing by themselves. I'm bringing someone who's going to be part of a community and how has this person already demonstrated that? So there are different ways to do it. There no one way, there's no right or wrong way. But I think it is important for you to imagine, as you said Lee, the different areas of your life that take up your time, your emotional energy, your physical time, and start to make a list about some of those things. And then think about, okay, so how do I want to bring that heart of me into this application in some way?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And I think another way to think about who am I, think about it from the college side is we're sketching out a community. We want people to be filling lots of different roles and voices. So a political science class needs to have, I hope, the full rainbow of views in it for a lively discussion. An economics class is better when there are people from lots of different backgrounds who you can think about whatever topic is being discussed from different points of view. Jack, what have you noticed as you've covered higher ed for all these years around narrative and the way these campuses come together around the stories people have told?
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. This notion of who am I, if that's daunting, it can seem so big, and yet it's ultimately crucial, maybe two bullet points. What experience and experiences and viewpoints and lenses would I bring to your campus? And what do I hope to take advantage of while I'm there? What do I want to learn? What activities do I want to get involved in? So what am I bringing and what might I partake of? If those are your goals, how can you put a human face on that? Again, coming back to some of the modeling, some of the examples that were given earlier, it's not enough just to have these flowery resonant details. You have to tie them back to the who am I, what would I bring, what would I take advantage of? To come back to Kathryn's story about the talking dog, the singing dog, you set the scene Kathryn just as a student writing an essay might, and you helped us imagine. But to me, the key moment of the story was when you said the expressions, what it taught me and what I learned. And so for listeners, there's great lessons in that. Ultimately don't go off too far with your visual storytelling before you come back to the objective, the goal of what you want to get across.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I think that's a really good point, Jack, around gleaning from these essays, what did someone learn? What will someone contribute? What's the voice you might represent on a campus? Which brings me a voice that's represented campus. So this year we just welcomed the first class to enroll at college after the Supreme Court removed race as one factor among many. And the Supreme Court in the words of the Chief Justice said, "A student may introduce his or her life experience as an element of that storytelling." So let's talk a little bit about life experience as we move into this second admission cycle. And Kathryn, I'm curious at Penn how you saw that play through the files you all considered a year ago, and what we learned this year by way of helping students from diverse backgrounds understand here's the opportunity, you can introduce this as part of your story. What’s the lesson for the high school seniors this year?
Kathryn Bezella:
Well, I think backing up a little bit, it is likely to me that anything that is worthy of writing down for a college application for an essay is probably something ... It's an experience, it's a memory, it's an activity that truly has stayed with you. It's something that ... I've studied formal writing a lot with a lot of teachers, and when you're reading a story or when you're looking at writing, there's heat. They'll describe it as like heat or a real magnetism to what it is that's being described. And that's because it is important to the writer. And I think that also holds true of college essays. The reason you are picking a topic or choosing a memory to mine, setting a specific scene is because it has heat for you. It has a draw, it has an importance, a residue in your life, in your experience. And of course, identity. Identity and context. I'm the only student of color in otherwise all white high school. I am the only girl on my debate team. I am the first person of this identity who has held this leadership position. I am part of a community where we really celebrate an aspect of my race, my ethnicity, my religion, my experience. These are all going to be natural places where there's heat, where there is that magnetism that has shaped you in some way.
And so essays exist. We have many topics at Dartmouth that still invite you and give you space to describe that and explain that dimension of yourself to the reader. And so in spite of the supreme Court's decision, I really hope that applicants still understand that the applications we built are built to create space for you to share those dimensions of yourself. That hasn't changed. And that's exactly what we hope you will do. If there is a part of your identity that you feel needs to come out because it's shaped your context, it's shaped who you are, it's shaped how you move in the world, then we really try to make room for that to be expressed.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I think there was some confusion a year ago that not only could the college not consider it, the applicant should not introduce the information. And immediately I said, "No, no. You have full agency to tell your story however you choose to." I had some very poignant conversations with applicants of color a year ago who said, "It's part of my identity. It's not how I want to tell my story." And my answer back was, "Then you don't need to. But then that part of your story will not be part of your application because there's no other direct way where it will be included in the way we meet you. So if you feel that is something powerful and germane to the way we imagine you as part of our campus, this is a moment where you can say, 'What is my story as framed by a diverse lived experience?'" In all the ways Kathryn just enumerated them. It is certainly race and ethnicity, but it is religion and geography and socioeconomic status and first-generation college or legacy or international. There's so many ways life experience can be framed. And on our application at Dartmouth there's ... I've used this question for many years at Tufts and now at Dartmouth. There is a Quaker saying, “Let your life speak.” And I think that will be on my tombstone someday.
But to me, the spirit of “let your life speak” is to ponder the ways in which your life informs your purpose, your presence, your participation. All these P's I'm popping out. But how is your life speaking through your activities, through your ambitions, through what you'd like to study? Whether you answer that question directly or say, "Hey, I like that Dartmouth question. I'm not applying to Dartmouth." You can still use that concept, let your life speak when you write your Common App essay that goes everywhere. Jack, just on the topic of post-affirmative action as you've studied this as a journalist, as a broad citizen of academia, what's your takeaway that students might learn around narrative this year?
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. And it's complicated if there's a listener, you heard lately say for decades the Supreme Court had permitted admissions officers like the two of you and colleagues to consider race as one factor among many was the phrase Lee used among all the other things that were discussed. And in its decision last summer, the court significantly limited your ability as admissions officers to consider race as one factor among many. And yet, Lee, you mentioned Justice Roberts, the Supreme Court's Chief Justice who said in the same decision that “nothing prohibits” ... The Justice's two words. Students from discussing race among the many things that make their identity. And nothing prohibits you and colleagues from considering that. And I just want to say that that's confusing, and yet it's also an opening to students.
So one of the things that more than a few counselors, high school counselors shared with me early on was that there were students who actually thought truly it would be against the law. It would be illegal for them to talk to people like you, admissions officers in their essays elsewhere in their applications about their racial or ethnic identity or background. And so just to be clear, it's not illegal to talk about it. It's not illegal for you all to consider it. What the justices did say was that it has to be tied to something larger, as was said earlier .how would you bring that identity to our campus? How does it shape how you things? So it's just seeing that as just a part of your story. And also, if it's not something that you want to talk about, if it's not something that's there, if it doesn't tie into your identity, that's okay too, right?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, it goes back to the three words I told them to write down. Who am I? And if your answer to who am I is, I'm a Latina from South Texas, who ... Then there it is. Your essay starts to ... If it's I am a lumberjack and the woods of Northern Maine, then that's your life experience. Go. Boom. Yeah. So the who am I grounds you in this question and letting your life come forward means you've written a rich set of documents. But as we're talking about writing, I think people focus a lot on the personal statement, on the Common App, on the Coalition app, on the QuestBridge app. It's in 600 words or less and 500 words or less. So I have two-parter, just a quick one, Kathryn. Why is there a word limit
Kathryn Bezella:
So that you don't do what I did when I was 17 and doing this, which is just dump every award related to speech and debate and getting a certificate from my piano teacher and winning the science fair in eighth grade. We want you to have the discipline of thinking critically about your own experiences and trying to edit something down so that it can be powerful, but also succinct. And similarly with your activities with all of the other places in the application where you find word limits or character limits, we want you to be somewhat strategic in thinking not about everything that you have ever done, but really the things that stand out as most important to you and most reflective perhaps of the kinds of experiences that you'll be bringing to our communities.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. The word limit comes back to audience again. Here again, Lee and Kathryn in the course of the coming year, just as a ballpark range for listeners, how many applications might you or a colleague consider read in the course of the coming year?
Lee Coffin:
A thousand.
Kathryn Bezella:
Yeah. Easily.
Lee Coffin:
As a direct reader in some way.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. And so we as writers have a very narrow interval to sort of get your attention to direct your attention and not overstay our welcome, mindful of the fact that you are the ultimate distracted audience. And so I think that word limit is being considerate of your audience.
Lee Coffin:
That's true. I think there's also a hidden life skill here. I don't think a lot of applicants think about applying to college as a teachable moment, but it is. You are practicing the art of telling your story that you're going to do when you apply for a job. You have a resume and a cover letter, and you shouldn't send a four-page cover letter when you're applying for a job. You learn the art of self-introduction through this. But you also learn the art of brevity. But there's also for many colleges a companion to the application. So if you're on the Common or the Coalition, most of us have a supplement. And I think the supplement gets overlooked as an opportunity for storytelling. I think a lot of students get into them days or minutes before the deadline. Kathryn, why is there a supplement and what's the value of it?
Kathryn Bezella:
Yeah. So the supplements that each of our institutions create are really meant to be that connection between what our institution represents, the flavor of our campus, our world, and you, the applicant. And so the supplemental question is really a bridge between these two entities. Who we are is reflected in the question, and then why you would want to be part of our community is reflected in some way in the answer. So it's actually a very personal part of the application process that's really meant to capture that potential of chemistry between these two entities.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I love the word “flavor.” One of the things I often ponder on this one is it's universal versus local. If that's helpful framing. You've got a Common App, hundreds of places accepting it. You're doing one document that has to fit into all of those very different campuses, and then the supplement brings it to a local. It's a couple of questions that tailor your candidacy to the specific place. And the difference between a long form, maybe 650 words doesn't sound very long. It's long enough. A question on our supplement, which might say in 250 words or less, I've stopped referring to them as supplemental essays because 250 words or less as a paragraph. So another way of answering the why's or word count is it's a signal from the institution that this is not meant to be a long-form piece of writing. It's something short, it's got a specific purpose. And we have a question about why Dartmouth is basically the question, and it's 100 words. And I've had students say, "I can't answer that in a hundred words." And it's like, yes, you can. Get to it. What is it about this place that resonates?
How about getting help? So you're writing your essays, so we're a month out from the first deadline. Maybe you're a little panicked about how am I going to get this done? And you invite others or maybe other technologies if you get my drift into this proposition. So what do you think? Is it okay to have a parent, a sibling, a teacher help?
Kathryn Bezella:
I would say one caution about help and especially help of the kind you just described, parents, siblings, people who know you really well is you have to remember that since the admissions officer doesn't know you well, they can't intuit or read into what you're offering. So when you make this broad reference to X, they can't say, "Oh, I think that's about the time when we went to Maine and we picked those blueberries and I get it." Because they're not inserting their own knowledge of you into their editing process or their reading process. So I think you have to be cautious because no one who's close to you will read what you're offering in the same way as we will, because we can't insert those memories. We can't insert that meaning in between the lines per se. So that's one piece of advice I always offer students is to be really thoughtful. If you're going to invite other readers, be thoughtful about their pre-existing knowledge of you.
Jacques Steinberg:
I think Lee, I think you used the word earlier, “voice.” And that's your voice. And you as a 17 or 18-year-old, no one else can replicate that voice. And just to go there in terms of the AI, no artificial entity can quite replicate you. And I know that you all as professional readers, you and colleagues have a great ear for voice and for authentic voice. And I have a feeling that you can tell when that voice is machine generated or parents who are listening when it's a 45-year-old or 50-year-old voice, Lee and Kathryn and colleagues are pretty good ad hearing that. That being said, every writer benefits from a good editor. And I would suggest that listeners who are students consider showing that essay to someone in their life. And it might be a parent, it might be a sibling, it might be a friend. In my case it was a beloved English teacher to give you feedback and make sure you give good prompts to that listener. You're not looking for a wholesale rewrite. You want this to come through authentically as you, but ask them some questions. How is the length? How inviting are those first few sentences? Does it pull you in? Do the details work? Is there something that's confusing? Are the sentences too long? And let them give you feedback and then incorporate that feedback and make it your own. Or in some cases, not if it doesn't speak to you. But as admissions officers, are you also okay with an applicant showing their essay to someone else before they show it to you?
Kathryn Bezella:
Yeah. I agree. As a writer myself, having an audience, having someone who can tell you, these are my three takeaways from what I've written. These are the three adjectives that I would now use to describe you based on this essay. This image was confusing to me. The way that this paragraph ... All of these things can be incredibly helpful for you to ensure that you have the clarity and the accuracy that you're seeking. And by accuracy, I don't mean should it be a semicolon or an M dash. I mean accuracy of this conveys something essential of how I think and of my experience. And you are picking that up as a reader accurately, and therefore I can feel proud of this. I can feel as though it signifies something that's meaningful as I send it off to the admissions officers.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And I think for parents listing who might be the reader, I think that tip Kathryn just gave is a really important one. What are the key takeaways? Because one of the things we do as readers is we read these essays and then we distill 650 words down into a shorthand description of what did the student talk about? How well was it described? What did we learn? And if the takeaways are not what the student wanted to be taken away, then the essay didn't meet its purpose. I had a friend's daughter ask me to read her essay a bit ago, and I said, "Here's what I learned. Here's what I now know about you." And she said, "Oh. That's not what I wanted you to know." And I said, "Ah. Then the essay as written needs to shift a little bit because the admission officer in me would've written that down and what I'm hearing you say is that's not what I wanted you to write down." Another tool I've advised over the years is what's the headline on this essay? What headline would someone put? This is the high school journalist. What's the distilled version of this?
Kathryn Bezella:
The town crier.
Lee Coffin:
The town crier. What's the-
Kathryn Bezella:
The town crier.
Lee Coffin:
Read all about it. Exactly. And the word that Jack was pointing to a voice that starts to sound less like a high school senior and more like an adult. I had a counselor friend refer to it as the essay has been “adultified.” I remembered that descriptor because I've seen a lot of adultified essays that aren't wrong, but you've lost something in translation and you want to preserve the quality of writing. Because one of the things people often ponder is the essay, is it content or is it quality? And candidly, if an applicant has wandered into the selective part of college admissions, the quality is usually not what we're spending a lot of time dissecting. It's very rare to read and essay and thought, oh my God, this is terrible. But we're really focusing on the content and trying to step away with that aha. I now know who I've got in addition to the data. So before we wrap, I want to give both of you a chance to give a tip. So we're a month out to the students who are sitting at their laptops typing away. Kathryn, what's your wisdom for our friends in the class 2025?
Kathryn Bezella:
So a great writing teacher of mine once told me one of his secrets whenever he was beginning a new piece of work was to have what he called a genius notebook that was dedicated to that particular piece of work. In this case, he was analog. So it was actually just a tiny notebook he kept in his pocket. I think these days we all have a tiny notebook in our pocket, and it's called our iPhone with the notes section. The specificity that we're describing that can sometimes really fuel a great essay when you sit down in that intense moment to write your college essay, it's gone. Whatever those details are, whatever those great little sparks of, oh, that would be an interesting essay, those are usually gone.
So I think having students during this time when they're farming their lives for this big question, who am I? Get that iPhone notes page, your genius little notebook in your pocket and on the bus at practice, when you're sitting at the bench behind the stage when you're waiting to go on whatever it is, have it accessible so that as you have those little sparks, you can quick type them out. And that way when you're sitting down, you'll have a whole list of things like, oh, last week, Saturday, I thought of that. And do I still feel like that resonates? Maybe, maybe not. But somewhere in there, I think you'll find you'll return to the sense of urgency and spark that made you write that down in the first place. So I think it's just don't put all the pressure of yourself in that one moment that's dedicated to actually writing the essay. Relieve some of that pressure. Create your little notebook page and give yourself permission to jot down those things as they come to you so that you'll have a repository when you're really mining for the good stuff.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. I want to pick up on this notion of pressure and anxiety. And as you sit down to compose that blank screen, whether it's a computer screen or it's on your phone or maybe old school, it's starting with an old-fashioned journal or a pad. Take a moment to check in with yourself on how you're feeling at that moment. If one of those feelings is anxiety and anxiety about audience, oh my God, Lee or Kathryn or fill in the blank dean is going to be reading this, one good exercise that I have as a writer is to write that first draft just for myself. To imagine no audience, no one else is going to read this but me. I can literally feel myself exhale when I do that and it flows and then come back to it and say, "Okay. How can I make this suitable for others to read?" And in all likelihood, the happy surprise will be that you've got it in relatively great shape even after that first draft, just for you as something that will really resonate with others.
Lee Coffin:
And Jack, go one step further. So your second book was a guide for parents. Give the parents some advice as they're watching the essay writing play out and they want to be helpful. What's the parent role to help child get to a first draft, a second draft, a final draft?
Jacques Steinberg:
And so I'll answer part as author of The College Conversation, but also as a parent of two children who have gone through this process. And parents, I have been you. I have stood there watching as a child work through this rite of passage exercise of writing and refining their college essays. And sometimes you do have to hold yourself back, oh my God, I know how I would write this about you. Guess what? That's not the point of the exercise. On the other hand, you've got to know your child and your relationship with your child, and whether it's best for you to be doing that, or as I mentioned earlier, someone else in their life. But it's okay for you as a parent to ask questions like the ones you've posed here. Who am I? Who are you? What would you bring? What would you hope to accomplish? And if it comes out in conversation, encourage them to write that down, to note that, to put it in their phone. You're being a sounding board without doing it for them can be incredibly helpful depending on your relationship with your child.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, and I have two quick tips. One, do not get yourself in the pretzel of wondering what the college wants you to say. This is your essay. I'm the reader. So break the fever of “this question wants me to fill in with this blank.” No, we don't. So that's one. And two, a version of Jack's first draft. I'm also a writer and I like to write things well ahead of when they're due put it down for a couple of days and then come back to it. I never was a good performer when there was a buzzer and I was racing up to the buzzer. I did one all-nighter in college and I didn't have a happy outcome. But I think that there's some wisdom in getting a draft done, setting it aside, go for a walk, go play some soccer, and a couple of days later, come back. I think you'll have a fresh set of eyes on the way the writing resonates, and you might love it, or you might say, "Try this again."
But most importantly, this idea of storytelling in your application is fun. It is your moment to tell your story however you want to, in your own words, let it flow. And you can't change your transcript. The work in progress is the work in progress. Your teachers will say what your teachers say. You'll have an interview at some point, and that's another verbal moment of telling your story in your own words in response to a back and forth. But this piece, these essays, short and long paragraphs and essays, is an opportunity for you to answer the question who am I and have us say she is blank.
So good luck as you keep typing. Kathryn, thanks for joining us on an Admissions Beat for the first of many recurring visits. And in fact, next week, Jack and I will be back for a live conversation from Los Angeles, where a group of attendees at the National Association of College Admission Counselors joined Jack and me for a roundtable discussion on all things admission. So back-to-back Jack. Until then, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.