Essay Modalities Overview

September 15, 2024 :: admisdev

Schindler’s List, The Sound of Music, and Jojo Rabbit all deal with the same ‘topic’: World War II. But the styles and feels and experiences of watching those movies couldn’t be different. The same – often overlooked – principle applies to college application essays. Students (and parents) focus on essay topics and neglect the equally important consideration: ‘essay genre’ or what we call Essay Modalities.

Choosing an essay topic is one part of the process, but incomplete without attention to its partner: modality, and therefore execution style. The right essay modality can take an otherwise stale, predictable topic, and turn it into something glorious. The right ideation about Essay Modality can also help you unearth newer topics you’d never even considered.

There are five main modalities that all college application essay fall into:

Modality 1: The Personal Story Essay

• Explained: A time you struggled and found a way out either by yourself, or through someone else’s influence; a time you endured something painful, arduous, challenging, life-altering. A time you learned something profound.
• Our Hot Take: Great choice if you have the ability to take us on a journey, walk us through complex thoughts and emotions and lay your soul BARE on the page.

Modality 2: The Goals / Aspirations Essay → This is What Inspires Me…

• Explained: Something that defines WHY you’re motivated; not so much the WHAT you want to do in life, but WHY; what fascinates you? What angers you? What enthralls you? What makes you curious? Why? If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be and why? (If other applicants might name this, skip it and come up with something cooler.).
• Our Hot Take: Avoid if you can, UNLESS what motivates you is so interesting and personal and unique that it’s worth telling the world about, and says something intriguing about you, or, serves as a vehicle to highlight another theme.

Modality 3: The ‘My (Unique) Take on a Thing’ Essay

• Explained: Whereas most people believe THIS, I see it differently. This is a soapbox opportunity. Your ability to spout beliefs, attitudes, fix the world, have a hilarious and controversial take on something. It’s a chance to express an opinion that makes us “feel like we’ve known you for years… instantly.”
• Our Hot Take: Another great one since it affords the reader a DIRECT LINE into your quirkiness, your innermost thoughts, your YOU-EST you you can be! 

Modality 4: The ‘Amazing Achievements’ Essay

• Explained: Think achievements that either (a) few others have achieved, or where (b) there’s something so profoundly unusual about your version of it, it’s worth knowing about. (PROCEED WITH CAUTION.).
• Our Hot Take: Avoid this at all costs, UNLESS your achievement is unbelievably surprising in some way (you achieved a normal thing under utterly abnormal circumstances, or you achieved something utterly impossible/rare).

Modality 5: The Wildcard Essay

• Explained: Totally creative, wacky, impossible to define, different every single time. A normal take told in an absolutely NOT NORMAL way. Or an utterly NOT NORMAL take told through a conventional essay/blog-style format. Something that doesn’t have any rules whatsoever. Not for the timid.
• Our Hot Take: Attempt this only if the execution WORKS. 7 out of 10 great attempts at this one will fail, and that’s okay. It takes discipline to know when NOT to pursue it. Try it, but be comfortable if we recommend that you go a different route. If you can pull it off, hard recommend!

If the Essay Topic is the What, the Essay Modality is the How. In some ways, the ‘modality’ you employ is as important a decision as ‘what’ you write about to begin with. Amateurs consider only ‘subject.’ Admissionado considers both. These concepts must be considered together, and carefully. You have an interesting needle to thread. 

Avoid combinations that:

• Don’t bring out the best version of your most authentic (and impressive) self
• Are overdone, and elicit groans from the reader therefore… 
• … Reaffirm something the Adcom has already ‘gotten’ from the rest of your application, leaving other gaps and vulnerabilities unaddressed

Pursue combinations that instead:

• Might help distinguish you from your direct competitors (‘create space’)
• Gives you the best chance to surprise the reader somehow
• Counteract potential vulnerabilities in your overall profile

Here are just two examples of what you might encounter as a ‘decision tree’ moment, when engaging with Topic + Modality approach to application essay writing:

Example 1: “I could write about the time my mom broke her femur, and I had to learn how to help my dad manage the house affairs. I could do this as a Personal Story (Modality 1), just tell the story straight. Or, I can set this up as an Achievement Story (Modality 4) by making it a story about whether or not we would be able to pay our mortgage and risk losing our house, and what I needed to learn (e.g. bookkeeping/Quickbooks) to help make that possible.” [In this case, whereas the Admissions Committee has read thousands of versions of the Modality 1 approach of this particular story, it might actually be a unique opportunity to opt for Modality 4, which we usually recommend avoiding, because it highlights an unusual achievement that is so rich with grit and resilience and life lessons that are rarely seen in most applicant essays about achievements which focus on awards and such. This could be an interesting window into the mind of this student, for them to choose to make this a story about personal achievement.]

Example 2: “I could write about my 1st Place win at the State Robotics Competition, but since this wasn’t a national-level distinction, rather than do this as an Achievement Story (Modality 4) I might be able to do it as a Personal Story (Modality 1) and have the main focus be on how I lost one of my best friends through a huge error in judgment on my part, and what I learned about communication, and integrity.” [In this example, the typical instinct is to focus on the 1st Place win, but sometimes the decision to feature something like this exposes a lack of awareness of what the competitive field is like, and therefore what the Adcom readers are used to reading about; instead, it may be possible to make the point that you won the 1st Place at this event, but glancingly, by instead, turning it into a more human story about friendship, and attentiveness to how others perceive things, and so on; executed in this manner, the reader sees *that* you took first at this competition, but that by focusing elsewhere, it actually suggests humility, and that you’re not so proud of yourself that this is the only thing you took away from this experience; these subtle decisions can have huge impact.]

Make sure the combination of Topic + Modality is the most interesting combination possible, and then once you’re aligned with your consultant, rock and roll and get ready to start the ridiculously exciting (sometimes nerve-wracking) drafting process…