Stand Out with Specific Details

Specificity is one of the magic ingredients for writing stellar college application responses. Whether you’re crafting descriptions of your activities or tackling a “Why Us?” kind of supplemental essay, specificity is the spice. The details are what illuminate your unique traits, accomplishments, and perspectives to admissions committees. Strong, specific details show readers that no one else is like you. Specificity also prevents your answers from sounding generic. 

Take for example, this made-up portion of a “Why Arthur Smith Advising” supplemental question response:

I want to take advantage of research opportunities and take interesting classes on campus. The University of Arthur Smith Advising is full of intellectually curious students.

It’s great that this student wants to research and take interesting classes! However, this statement could refer to any school as well as to any kind of class or research. Furthermore, in the second sentence, the student states a quality of the university without connecting it to themselves. Again, this kind of statement about “intellectual curiosity” could also refer to any institution of learning.

To craft a more specific first sentence, the student can reflect on these questions to improve and likely expand the answer:

·      What classes are interesting to them?

·      Most importantly, why are those classes interesting?

·      How do those classes connect to their holistic interests and goals?

In this scenario, including course names is important, but the student should also back up their examples with the why. Otherwise, the response can feel too much like a list.

So, how can the second sentence be more specific? By stating a quality of the university culture—intellectual curiosity— the student implies that they value it. The student can improve on this by explaining why it’s important to them to join an intellectually curious campus environment. They can also explain how they plan to embrace intellectual curiosity at that school. Perhaps there is a student club or group of classmates with the same interest in American history! 

Beyond this example, there are some holistic tips to follow to craft specific responses:

·      Go beyond statements and explain feelings and motivations: “I felt excited/interested/curious because…”

·      Choose nouns that are as specific as possible and descriptive adjectives.

·      Provide personal details to back up statements about interests and goals.

·      Provide qualitative examples, not only quantitative ones: Instead of “I like that 50% of students double major,” try, “Since the school values the development of multiple academic interests, I can continue to study both music and biology.”

Being specific is for long and short responses. In a long form written response like the Common App essay, you have the room to include more supporting details that craft a rich and specific narrative. For short-answer supplemental responses that are 350 words or less, you need to make each sentence count. During the revision process, it’s always easier to include more details, to exceed the word limit, and then trim the answer to focus on the most important aspects. Don’t be afraid of over-writing your first draft by even 100 words.

Finally, the activity sections of the Common App, UC application, and other systems are the place to use action words that encapsulate your roles and responsibilities efficiently and descriptively.