Tue, October 8, 2024

Why Voice Matters—and How to Harness It for College Admissions Essays

by Ashleigh Bell Pedersen Writer, Coach, Tutor 

My sixth-grade English teacher was the first person to teach me about voice.

Mrs. B was stern and soft-spoken, a devotee of sentence diagramming and grammar rules. She also possessed a subtle classroom magic, and her lessons and encouragement still inform my life, nearly 30 years later, as an author and writing coach.

One afternoon all those years ago, Mrs. B asked us to describe in our journal a moment of solitude. I wrote about lying awake at night, watching the shadows of tree branches play across the bunched floral curtains of my childhood bedroom. I wrote that our family dog often slept in my bed, pressed against my legs; I wrote about the softness of his Spaniel ears, the matted knots my fingers would sometimes discover in the darkness.

This, Mrs. B later noted at the top of the page, has VOICE. 

In personal writing, voice is connected in part to the details of our lived experiences. Writers can establish voice through subtle layers of sense memory (Mrs. B’s soft-spoken tone; the feel of my dog’s matted fur) and clear point of view (my affection for Mrs. B and the impression she made on me). It can be tempting to think that describing broader thoughts or feelings will make our ideas more accessible and universal—but it’s actually voice, with its specificity of detail, that beckons readers to meet us in our memories. Then, they follow along as we weave together our insights and revelations.

As Mrs. B taught me, voice is also the quality that makes our writing unique: the details of our lives are so specific, our stories can only belong to us.

Beyond Mrs. B’s classroom, however, I’ve found that voice is often overlooked. Middle and high school writing lessons tend to focus on building arguments, employing evidence, and organizing ideas. In addition to these important skills, however, we all need voice to more powerfully communicate in so many different contexts of our lives—from resumes to business pitches, cover letters to love letters. Moreover, in the 6+1 Traits of Writing, author Ruth Culham names voice—which she defines in part as “the personal stamp of the writer”—as one of the six main characteristics of writing. Understanding how to create voice is a critical tool in any student’s toolbox. For high school seniors in particular, voice becomes absolutely essential in writing a unique, authentic, and powerful college admissions essay.

When students first begin working with me, they often feel confused about what exactly colleges “want” from these admissions essays. The essay prompts rarely ask about accomplishments, impressive extracurriculars, or examples illustrating strength of character—the obvious list of what students expect will help set them apart from other applicants. Instead, the prompts are either bafflingly specific, or maddeningly broad. Take the University of Chicago’s oddball question: What advice would a wisdom tooth have?; or the wide-open prompt on the Common App: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it…please share your story.

No matter how widely varying, however, most prompts are asking students for two main components: (1) personal narrative (or more simply: storytelling), and (2) meaningful reflection. Voice is the vehicle writers use to share their stories, and to explain the meaning of these stories in the bigger picture of their lives.

Given the personal details that voice requires, students often express worry about writing something too personal—and it’s a valid concern. A too-personal essay likely means it’s lacking meaningful reflection. Absent of reflection, simply writing about our lives and emotions is too personal—more like a long-winded diary entry than an essay.

Students also express concern that their lives, personalities, triumphs, or struggles aren’t original. Once, in response to a prompt asking about a time students faced a challenge or setback and what they learned from it, one of my coaching students told me that she felt pulled to write about her experience navigating anxiety. She was worried, however, that the topic was too common—something half the teenagers in the country would be writing about, too. 

Absent of voice, the topic of anxiety likely is too common for an admissions essay. I like to remind my students, though, that love and heartbreak are common topics—yet how many new songs are written about them? How many Taylor Swift tunes might we count as favorites, each evoking new layers of feeling? It’s voice that unlocks originality, and voice that evokes response.

After brainstorming, drafting, and determined revising, this same student completed a gorgeous, thought-provoking essay about surfing on a New York beach. She described the moment a powerful wave sent her churning underwater—and as I read, I could smell the salt air, see the choppy green water, feel its rushing strength. She then reflected on how this terrifying moment reoriented her perspective of herself as only a small part of a larger world; how it taught her to let go of things beyond her control; how, in effect, it offered a means of navigating anxiety.

With authentic voice, almost any topic can feel surprising and unique.

Even after we read example admissions essays and explore the importance of storytelling and reflection, students often feel so much pressure that they feel stuck before they begin. Voice can help create a more accessible starting point.

In loose, chatty brainstorming sessions, I often ask students to begin with a moment (a memory, an image) connected to the topic of their essay, and to remember this moment using their five senses. What sights stand out in their mind? What smells, tastes, and physical sensations? This exercise almost always provides a doorway into what will become a first draft.

From there, students organize and reorganize; expand on ideas and cut back on others; get more detailed and add broad-scope reflection. Often in this process, students discover surprise insights and revelation along the way. That sense of discovery lends itself to the authenticity of the essay—as the most powerful reflection occurs not before an essay has been written, not from an idea a parent or teacher or writing coach comes up with, but through writing and revising.

Only when I wrote about the specific memory of that journal entry in Mrs. B’s class, of her note at the top—now this has VOICE—and my affection for her as a teacher, did I discover the meaning of that experience. She taught me something I hadn’t previously understood: my voice mattered.

It’s no exaggeration to say that because of Mrs. B, I followed and achieved my dream of becoming a writer. As I work with students on admissions essays each fall, I’m often reminded that by its nature, writing tends to teach and reinforce that same lesson on voice that Mrs. B first taught me. When students embrace the dedicated writing and revising process that the strongest personal essays demand, a wonderful thing happens: they create the evidence that their voices matter, too.

Ashleigh Bell Pedersen writes from Brooklyn, New York, while coaching and tutoring students of all ages in the art of self-expression.

This article appeared in the 2024 issue of the Parents League Review. Get the current issue of the Review free with a family membership. Or purchase it separately.