Stellar college application essays share one thing in common: they transform vivid and specific experiences, often mundane ones, into meaningful sites of personal introspection. In other words, they make a life experience tangible for the reader while also saying or showing why that experience is significant to the applicant’s personal growth. But what artistic or literary forms are used to accomplish this goal?
The answer is simple. These essays add a metaphorical dimension to life experiences, thus elevating the ordinary to the extraordinary. A metaphor is a literary, rhetorical construct that explicitly likens one image, object, person or concept to another that would not usually be considered comparable outside the context of the story. This is done to make a point, to strengthen the message, to entertain the reader.
For instance, cutting your hand on a broken dish while doing your chores is not a significant event in itself, even if it caused you pain and required stitches. In fact, from the perspective of the reader it is utterly boring and unworthy of their time. But what if you play the guitar and experienced anxiety about how the injury might effect your band practice. Perhaps in nervously addressing your concerns to the emergency room physician she responded by reassuring you that none of the nerves of the brachial plexus were damaged. This, in turn, inspired your curiosity about neuroscience and desire to pursue a career in medicine. In this scenario, the broken dish stands as a metaphor for a turning point in your life, a moment that led you away from your adolescent household chores to a consideration of your professional future and contribution to society.
This scenario, like many life experiences, possesses the potential for several levels of metaphorical meaning, not just one monolithic (a good metaphor for a singular, solid thing!) reading. Some of the objects or images in the story that could be invested with meaning during the essay writing process are: the dish, the cut, the sutures, the guitar and the act of washing. In addition to forging connections to broad themes, each of these objects might also be seen in parallel to other objects, images or concepts within the narrative. You might want to forge an association between nerve fibers and guitar strings or between your arm and the neck of the guitar. Certainly the broken dish will come to represent a “break” from adolescence to mature adulthood. You get the idea.
The hard part is mining the treasure trove of life experiences to isolate metaphor-worthy events. This takes real effort and a willingness to take some creative license in the writing process to ensure you craft engaging narrative for the reader. If you do not recall every minute detail of an event, fill in the gaps by inventing those details essential to the flow of the narrative, within reason, of course. If in rereading your anecdote, the passage rings true, in all likelihood your reader will find it compelling. On the other hand, if it sounds implausible, chances are you went too far in embellishing your story and you will risk sacrificing your credibility as an author and possibly as an applicant. When in doubt, remember that in the personal essay true life and narrative reflection must run parallel courses, but they are not the same. All experienced and sophisticate readers will grant the author some license for making creative decisions, even in a work of autobiographical non-fiction such as the personal essay.
The biggest and most important creative decision you will make is in assigning meaning to a specific life experience, whether it be cutting your hand, getting a flat tire, falling off a horse or some other occurrence with narrative potential. Metaphorical meaning is most easily understood by the reader when it is invested in a tangible object or event that you can describe in vivid detail.