A few posts ago, I laid out why your college application need an Organizing Principle. In my over a dozen years of experience helping high schoolers get into the colleges of their dreams, I’ve discovered a paradox:
Most students’ applications lack an Organizing Principle (when they first write them).
Yet an Organizing Principle is often exactly what you need to get from “rejected” or “wait list” to “accepted”!
As my first article in this series notes, what I call an Organizing Principle is the common theme, motivation, or philosophy that unites MOST (or even all) of your probably-diverse activities and interests. This helps you come across to your app’s reader as the genuine human being you really are—and not as a phony, status-obsessed kid who’s warped their application (and high school life!) just to “look perfect” to an admissions committee.
Yet finding your Organizing Principle can be tricky. That’s because we’re searching for qualities that are so intuitive, so deep-set, to who you are as a person that they ironically might be hard for you to notice!
Let’s say you were a goose (yup, you read that correctly). When it came time to write your main Common App essay, you’d need to brainstorm what makes you “unique.” And besides the fact that you’re the first goose ever to APPLY TO A HUMAN UNIVERSITY, you might not know what to write. You’d talk about how your beak is slightly more yellow than your goose friends’ beaks, how you love being part of the “team” of geese that flies South for the winter, or something else equally safe—and dull.
However, it might take a handy friend who’s got some distance from you and your application—say, a turtle—to point out to you that: 1) you HAVE WINGS to begin with, and that that’s interesting because 2) YOU LOVE TO FLY, which not all animals do.
So, that said, finding your Organizing Principle is one of the hardest things to do for yourself. It often takes a neutral observer (yours truly, for instance) to be the land-dwelling turtle who can tell you that the fact that you move by flying all day is, in fact, unique and interesting to an outside party—and exactly what you should make sure to emphasize in your essay! Being that neutral observer for my clients is one of the most crucial contributions I make to their application packages (after helping them achieve the test scores they need to get into that top-tier school and ensuring that they, and their parents, make it through the application process with sanity intact!).
But some of the strategies I use to help my clients find their Organizing Principles don’t need a third party/turtle friend at all—you can try them solo, anywhere and any time! So here’s my take-home method for finding your application’s throughline.
Step 1: Reflect upon who you are.
Ask yourself the following questions and WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING that comes to mind! You’re just brainstorming here, so don’t worry about writing in full or polished sentences unless that’s helpful to you.
A) My strongest academic subject is:
B) Here's an example of my ”academic success,” however I define it:
C) Here are my extracurricular interests:
D) Here’s how I’ve spent my last three summers:
E) The college major(s)/future career(s) I might be interested in are:
F) I get excited about:
G) My friends say the best thing about me is:
H) A unique accomplishment (however you define “accomplishment”) of mine is:
I) I’m proud of myself when I:
J) I really care about:
K) In college, I really want to:
L) I chose the activities I’m involved in because:
M) In the future, I hope to:
Step 2: Find the pattern!
Now, look back at your answers to those questions and jot down ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING that comes to mind about what they have in common! Here are some patterns to look out for:
A) Which words/topics make an appearance more than once?
B) What overarching categories emerge, if any?
C) Which personality traits seem to come up multiple times?
Step 3: Name that theme.
Now, if you had to crystallize this entire brainstorming sesh into FIVE KEY THEMES, QUALITIES or SELLING POINTS that define you, what would they be?
Quality 1:
Quality 2:
Quality 3:
Quality 4:
Quality 5:
Step 4: Underline the top two Themes / Qualities / Selling Points that most accurately capture your personality/your motivations/your way of thinking.
Review the list of qualities you’ve just made. Which two strike you as the most important? Which are the most frequently-occurring and most powerful patterns, tying together the most aspects of who you are? If you had to pick just two items to sum yourself up to a total stranger, which would you choose?
Step 5: Congratulations! You’ve just found your Organizing Principle—and the topic(s) you need to focus on in your Common App essay!
Now that you’re equipped with this new self-knowledge, you should also look through your Common App and make sure that your Organizing Principle shows up clearly and often. Where and how can you emphasize this theme in order to let your mature self-awareness and authentic self shine through?
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And psssst….if you’d still like some outside guidance to help you identify what the “flying” to your “goose” is, you can contact me here. Good luck!
