Admissions Insight: Inside the College Application Essays

About Devery Doran

Devery Doran worked as a Senior Admissions Officer at Harvard University for four years and has read application essays at UC-Berkeley in addition to her current role as a college admissions consultant. A graduate of Harvard with a master’s degree from the University of Texas, Devery has spent her career helping diverse groups of young people unlock their potential through educational and career opportunities.

About the class

Of all the components of the college admissions process, the essays tend to be the biggest cause of stress and angst. The activity seems simple enough: choose from a variety of prompts and spend 650 words telling schools about yourself in your authentic voice. But, in practice, these are hard decisions: which prompt should you pick, which stories should you tell, what really constitutes your “authentic voice,” and how can you write an essay that admissions officers will want to read without falling into the trap of “telling them what they want to hear?”

For all of those concerns, help is on the way! Join Devery Doran, a former Ivy League Senior Admissions Officer, for an insider’s look at how admissions offices view essays, which types of essays tend to stand out (for both good and bad reasons), what you’re likely stressing way too much about, and what you should be thinking about but might not be. Get a look at these essays from the admissions office’s perspective, plus advice on how to write your essays when it’s time and how to experience school and life ahead of time to have great writing topics waiting for you.