“In this blog post, we will tell you how to write the best college essay introduction…” We’re diving right in with a what-not-to-do. College essays are always challenging. That’s why most of our blog is about the ins and outs of essay writing and it’s what most of our clients come to us for help with, too. You’re sitting there on your laptop, blank screen, with absolutely no idea where to start. Should you go corny? Saucy? Informative? What if it sounds bad? What if it makes me look dumb? Take a breath. Let’s figure it out together.
There are a lot of ways to start out your college essay. Now, are a lot of them bad? Yes. All the time we see kids with weak introductions, either they’re cliched and hackneyed, or they’re bland and boring, or they just don’t accurately represent what we’re about to read. But through our strategies, we can help you create an eye-catching opening that gives admissions counselors a reason to keep reading.
Strategy One: Surprise
Something we love seeing students do in essays is break form. Take this intro from one of our sample essays:
“Dear Mom,
As you know, my 17th birthday is in 6 days. I have finally decided what I want as a present: a baby hedgehog.”
This essay had it all. Humor. Heart. Form-breaking. Personality. Creativity! And you can see how from this intro alone how fun it was to read and how it got admissions officers hooked. Now, this isn’t the only way to start off with something off-kilter – if your essay is about the time you went fishing for the first time, you could open with “I just learned I’m prone to seasickness,” and launch into a grand tale about your first catch. Basically, if it’s something that would make your friends text you, “lol what?” then it’s probably a good start. There are so so so many ways to use this strategy, so lean into the unexpected parts of what you’re telling the audience.
Strategy Two: Set the Stage
Long time lurkers of the blog know we LOVE detail. We love it so much. Beautiful detail is one of our favorite parts of any essay, because it brings the reader deep into the world you’re building for them. This is one of the really powerful ways to start your essay too, because it immediately gives someone a glimpse into your world. Take this opener from an essay about a student’s daily commute:
“The Brighton Beach train station stands above a maze of old brick apartment buildings and a gray polluted ocean.”
Immediately we’ve been transported to the Brighton Beach train station. We have an image of their surroundings, we’re being clued into a bit about what the essay is all about, and mood and tone have been established. We can almost see it in our mind, or can draw a parallel to a place we’ve been before.
Strategy Three: Procrastinate
Okay, so this one is less of a tip on an actual intro, but a tip on how to write it. If you’re stuck on your introduction, simply skip it and get straight to the meat of the essay. Sometimes it’s a lot easier to write an introduction once you have your draft mostly in place, because sometimes writing is an adventure! And you may not know exactly where you want to end up. We had a student write about cooking their favorite dish with their family, but was getting stuck on the perfect intro. Once we stepped away from that part of the essay, wrote the rest of it, they were able to write a more creative and eye-catching intro than “This is my favorite thing to cook,” and instead started by instructing the reader on how to find the perfect ingredients, which in turn demonstrated their precision and attention to detail.
Remember that there are a lot of ways to write a college essay intro that aren’t covered here. You can have fun with it! Don’t feel like you need to write something deep and compelling if that’s just not your personality. This is one of the most stressful parts of the process for a lot of students, so if you have to write something fun and lighthearted to keep yourself from exploding, do it. It’s more fun for you to write and more fun for colleges to read.
If you’re still feeling a little lost on how to write a great introduction for your college essays, TKG has a team of counselors that are ready to help you.
Reach out to us today if you need one-on-one assistance with your essays.