To Disclose or Not Disclose
To Disclose or Not Disclose
How much should a student reveal in their college admissions essay?
College application season is open once again, which means a whole new crop of students is starting at the (rather boring, IMHO) essay prompts on the Common Application (or the more interesting and challenging prompts for schools like the University of Chicago) and asking themselves that time honored question: what the heck am I going to write about?
I spend a fair bit of time talking to high school students and lurking around some of the college search threads on places like Reddit. One of the recurring questions I get asked and I see students asking is “Do I have to disclose my disability/sexual orientation/gender identity/traumatic experience/thing I got in trouble for/big mistake I made? Should I disclose those things?”
For some students there is the worry that if they don’t disclose something like a disability, they’ll get in trouble later on or have their admissions revoked. For others there is sometimes a vibe to these questions that students worry that they haven’t survived some big trauma or don’t have an “interesting” personal identity, they won’t have anything to write about.
Thankfully, neither of those things is true, for reasons we’ll get into
First however, two quick reminders:
Most colleges admit most of their applicants most of the time. It is entirely possible to apply to many good schools (including plenty of flagship publics) and not have to write an essay at all. It’s also likely that at many schools that require essays, the essay is less important to a students admissions chances than their high school GPA and transcript will be. Essays matter more as schools get more selective in their decision making but the GPA is still kind (for example, an essay makes a difference when a school is deciding between two students who both have a 4.0 GPA. If they are highly selective, an AMAZING essay is unlikely to make a student with a 3.5 GPA a strong candidate (unless they are rich, of course. That always helps).
Please, please, please don’t use generative AI to write the essay. Essays need to represent the student’s voice and perspective and admissions essays generated by things like ChatGPT are painfully boring to read. Also, it’s academic dishonesty and is that the way we want students to start their college careers? No.
Okay, onwards!
On Essays and Choosing a Topic
One of the chief misconceptions that I think many high school students have is that they have to have some kind of big story or “hook” in their admissions essay. They believe that admissions officers are looking for epic stories of survival or overcoming great obstacles. They think that trauma is inherently interesting and that admissions essays that talk about pain and overcoming adversity are better than ones about finding joy or moments from an ordinary life.
This isn’t true, necessarily, but it also isn’t entirely student’s fault that they believe this, especially given that Common App #2 basically asks for this kind of response: “The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?”
(Side note: essay prompt #2 is generally one of the more popular prompts every year, so I usually advise students I work with to pick a prompt other than #2 or #5 to give their essay readers a chance to get a break from the two most popular topics)
There are a few main problems I have with the “write about your adversity, the sadder the better” school of thought.
One is that nobody owes an admissions committee access to their trauma and students should never feel pressured to disclose a part of their identity that makes them feel vulnerable or that they are still coming to terms with. I often worry that a student will disclose something really tender (like that they are questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation) and then not get admitted (probably for reasons that had NOTHING to do with that) and then wonder if they were rejected for being trans or queer or disabled or poor or the child of an immigrant. It always sucks to not get in, it sucks more to not get in after revealing your biggest vulnerability to a stranger.
It’s also worth noting that admissions folks generally read a lot of essays about students grappling with sexual orientation, disabilities, gender identity, and things like that, so what feels like a really unique thing to the student living it, isn’t necessarily distinctive to the reader. The good news is that this means they are unlikely to be shocked by something a student discloses (though students may not realize that going into the process), the bad news is that the student isn’t likely to stand out just because they wrote about being queer, for example.
I should also note here that just having a marginalized identity or having survived trauma isn’t, on its own, necessarily a great essay topic if the student doesn’t also write about it in a compelling way. The biggest secret or saddest story doesn’t win… the story that is told the best does.
The truth is that most 17 year olds don’t have epic survival stories (this a good thing!) Most of them are in the same developmental phase, trying to figure out who they are in the world and what the most salient parts of their identity are. This is also a good thing! But this also means that they tend to gravitate toward writing about the same kinds of stories, in the same kinds of ways. For the standard identity disclosure essay or Common App #2, it ends up looking a lot like this:
I had a thing about me that made me feel different, I was ashamed of that difference, something happened that helped me understand that difference, I came to realize that my difference made me better/stronger or I overcame that difference and learned an important life lesson along the way.
I have read that essay so many times. So has everyone else who has done admissions work, I’d imagine. These essay can be meaningful for a student to write and they may be about something that is very important to them… but that doesn’t mean it is the best topic for an essay or the thing that a student is most equipped to write well about yet.
More students should go smaller in their choice of topic, instead of trying to tell the story of their life in 600 words or less.
Some of my favorite essays (and ones that I remember, years later) were about small topics: a girl who discovered her mother’s love of Steely Dan while on a road trip and it helped her see her mother differently, the boy who played with Lego for “longer, a lot longer, than it was cool” and how it helped him realize he wanted to be an engineer, a missing pencil and how it inspired an interest in superstition.
A small story, well told, can be even more compelling than something that requires high levels of personal disclosure.
Are There Times When a Student MUST Disclose Something Personal in Their Essay?
Sometimes students worry that they HAVE TO disclose things about themselves. I see this most frequently with students who have a disability and wonder if they have to reveal it in the admissions process to get admitted or to get services/supports on campus. Students who’ve been suspended or had some academic difficulty might wonder this as well.
Most of the time, the answer is “no”, they don’t have to disclose that about themselves unless the college specifically asks a question on the application about something like an academic suspension (or, in some states, a criminal conviction). Some students may want to use their essay to explain a blip on their transcript, but they generally don’t have to.
Students with disabilities don’t have to disclose that in their essays and it shouldn’t be counted against them if they do. The chief exception to this could be if the nature of a student’s disability would make it impossible for them to succeed in a particular academic program (for example, a blind student who is applying to a nursing program), so that disclosure might impact program admissions.
Can Disclosing Personal Info Work Against a Student?
Some students wonder if an admissions counselor/committee might hold their story or disclosed identity against them in the process. They might wonder if there is risk to revealing that they are queer or trans, for example. This is unlikely, in most scenarios, but not impossible.
Personal disclosure can work against a student if they write about something in a way that raises red flags for the admissions team about the student potentially being a threat to themselves or others. For example, an essay about suicidal ideation and extreme mental health challenges might raise concerns about whether the campus has enough resources to properly support that applicant.
For most schools, especially public institutions, denying admissions based on a student’s identity in a protected class or historically excluded population isn’t allowed, so students are likely “safe” to reveal personal information. Is there a chance that an admissions person might have implicit bias? Of course, but they are generally trained to try to think about students holistically and the essay is just one piece of that puzzle.
For other schools, this could be a more valid concern. A religiously affiliated college, for example, may choose to deny an applicant who reveals they are an atheist or gender non-conforming. In that scenario, however, I’d encourage the student to consider if that is likely to be a campus environment that is welcoming, affirming, and supportive of students like them. If not, why give them your money?
The Bottom Line
Students don’t have to have survived trauma or wrestled with demons or have a painful or deeply personal story to tell to have the best chance at writing a solid essay. The most important thing is that they have a voice, that they are demonstrating curiosity (about themselves, about the world, about a subject that intrigues them), and, keeping it real here, that they are familiar with the rules of grammar, spelling, and usage.
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A request: If there are topics you’d like to see covered here, please feel free to let me know in the comments. I’d love to tackle the things you’re worried or wondering about!