The College Essay is mythical in status, but at the core it’s just an essay. Like any essay, it needs to say something, and preferably something interesting. As part of your college application, what it says shouldn’t be obvious, but it should make sense. You shouldn’t be repeating something elsewhere in your application, but what you say should resonate with the reader because it makes them feel like they’ve gotten to know you a little better than they would have without it. In 650 words, you need to do all of this while sounding smart, self-aware, and like someone they have to say yes to. That’s a big lift, but we’re here for you.
While you’ve been trying to come up with what to write about for your college essay, you may have considered writing about a hiccup, challenge, or failure. To be honest, failures large or small are often great starting points for a college essay because they naturally incorporate narrative and lend themselves to a narrative arc. Failures are stories, and that’s exactly what we want you to write no matter the topic — a story.
But while writing about a failure can be relatable, inspiring, and even funny, it can also come with some significant risks. If you aren’t careful, writing about failure can become melodramatic or overly-wrought. It can also be seen as asking for sympathy or vying for a “pity acceptance,” which, for the record, is not a thing.
One of the best ways of avoiding these potential traps is to focus in on the narrative arc of the essay, even if there isn’t (and especially if there isn’t) a massive triumph at the end. What did you learn from this experience? How did you grow? Instead of sitting in the moment of failure, no matter how captivating the story is, you need to go beyond it.
Below we’ve broken down 5 different ways to write about failure, and how to turn a past challenge into an acceptance-worthy essay.
5 Ways to Write About Failure
1. The Academic Failure
If you encountered a challenge in a class or with a project, that may be something you can turn into a college essay. Our first piece of advice, though, is not to write about any academic failure post-freshman year of high school. If you are going to write about an academic failure, pull from earlier in your education. This is for two reasons. First, you don’t want the reader to immediately wonder whether you are trying to make an excuse or give a ‘reason’ (aka an excuse) for something on your resume. Second, experiences further in your rearview mirror offer the opportunity for clearer understanding in retrospect. Ideally, you also won’t pick an academic failure that is the exact same subject as your prospective major or that is in your weakest academic area. It can be related to your prospective major, but it shouldn’t be the exact same. For example, it could be a failure in math if you want to major in a science field.
2. The Interpersonal Failure
People are hard, and relationships are even harder — and we’re not even talking about romantic ones! Everyone can connect to the idea of challenges and hurdles between friends, siblings, and family. Writing about an interpersonal failure can be an opportunity to show your emotional maturity and self-awareness, but only if you don’t put all the blame for a conflict on the other party. If you are writing about a failure that involved one or more other people, it’s imperative that you implicate yourself in the situation but also present yourself as part of the solution.
3. Someone Else’s Failure
Writing about someone else’s failure can seem like a safe bet. You get to reflect on a situation without being implicated, and you could even set yourself up as some sort of fixer or problem solver. The truth is, though, that this is a really hard type of essay to get right so we generally don’t recommend it. It’s easy to come off as voyeuristic or opportunistic, using someone else’s story to amp yourself up, but if you are going to write about someone else’s failure you should write about how you helped in a way that is humble and grounded.
4. Sports Failure
There is little more universal than the experience of failure on some sort of playing field. Nearly everyone has missed a goal, run the wrong way, dropped the ball, or committed a foul at precisely the wrong moment, whether it’s at an elite or pre-school level. Writing about a sports failure isn’t really about the sports, though. It’s about the people, and it’s about the physical challenge. So, if you are going to write about a sports failure, remember that only 20% or so of the essay should actually be about the sport — the rest is you.
5. Failure that Never Materialized
You can also write about failures that weren’t. These are the failures that seemed inevitable, but that didn’t actually happen. They were headed off at the last minute, near crises that you evaded through strategy, grit, resilience, or a combination therein. When writing about failures that didn’t materialize, it’s important to bring the reader inside your mind and to show them your inner process for dealing with something that felt so overwhelming, even if it didn’t come to pass.
Writing about failure offers an opportunity to reveal a bit of yourself beyond what application readers will see elsewhere in your application or supplements. As you write, remember that it’s not as much about the precise telling of the events as it is about how you reacted to, dealt with, and moved forward from them. A compelling story is great, but keep in mind that the most important character in this story is you.
If you’re struggling with your college essay, send us an email. We help exceptional students find and get into their perfect fit colleges.