1.6 - TWO APPROACHES TO STRUCTURING A COLLEGE ESSAY

This lesson covers... two basic structures for your personal statement.
By the end you should... feel like you’re at the start of a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
Time 3 minutes
College Essay Essentials This isn’t covered in my book in quite this way; it’s an update!
To set up how to think of structure, I ask students two questions: “Have you faced significant challenges?” and “Do you want to write about them?” I ask the second question in part to set up a clarification: many students are under the misimpression that their personal statement is supposed to focus on challenges. And they feel understandably worried if they don’t feel like they have challenges to write about, or that they may not want to write about the challenges they’ve faced. Either way, they don’t have to write about challenges. Many of the best essays I’ve seen don’t. I love clearing that up for them.

Tips for leading this exercise:

  • I love to ask these two questions live and have students raise their hands in response. In addition...

  • I’ll ask any parents/teachers/counselors present to raise their hands too. Why? In order to a) show that these are questions anyone can relate to and to help combat “adult-ism” (the artificial separation that sometimes exists and creates separation between kids and adults), b) increase buy-in from the whole room, c) it’s another opportunity for folks to be vulnerable. And, as I mentioned, vulnerability begets vulnerability.
  • Their answers can shape how I apportion time later:

    • Then I transition by saying: Next we’re going to examine ways to think about Narrative and Montage Structure in greater detail.

    TWO APPROACHES TO STRUCTURE

    I think there are two basic structural approaches every student can use to write their college essays: Montage Structure and Narrative Structure. We’ll explore them in detail in a bit, but to figure out which approach you might want to take...

    First, ask yourself two questions: 

    1. Have you faced significant challenges?

    2. Do you want to write about them?

    Feel free to ask these two questions aloud to the group. It’s up to you if you want to ask for a show of hands, but as I mentioned above, asking the students and then others in the room (their counselors, etc) can build a nice space. Once you’ve asked, make sure that the following point is very clear:

    To clarify: You can write a great essay whether you've been through challenges or not.

    The next part can be skipped, if short on time, or distilled to this:

    “Besides telling a great story, the key to a great essay lies in finding the right structure. Next, you’ll learn two structures you can use.”

    The question is: How?

    The answer: Find the right structure. 

    If you answered yes to both, Narrative Structure may work well for you.

    If no to either, Montage Structure offers a great approach. 

    You can think of Narrative Structure as classic Hollywood movie structure, focusing on a challenge that fundamentally changed your life.

    Montage presents a series of experiences that are thematically linked, allowing you to present multiple sides of yourself that wouldn’t all fit into a single narrative arc.

    I’d like to stress that neither structure is inherently better than the other. I’ve seen incredible essays using both structures. I say this because I don’t want you to  feel like you need to write about challenges to write an outstanding college essay. You don’t.

    And please note that ”significance” is obviously on a spectrum. We’ll talk about this in greater detail soon, but keep in mind that the more significant the challenge, the easier it will be to write about it well. 

    With that in mind, what follows are some strategies that have helped some of my students craft compelling essays.