Crafting a Standout Common App Essay - Lessons and Inspiration from Dennard Dayle's The New Yorker piece "Dear [School], Here’s My Soul in Six Hundred Words or Less"

Welcome to The Thirsty Scholar newsletter—if you’re an international high school student looking to study at a top college in the US, UK, and beyond, this is exactly where you need to be!

IN THIS ISSUE

 A Note on the Common App Essay

Writing the Common App essay can feel complex, confusing and dreadful all at the same time. You’re told to be unique, yet genuine; impressive, yet relatable, and to stand out while fitting into the college’s culture. What?

It’s all too easy to fall into those well-worn and often melodramatic paths: recycling themes of overcoming adversity, waxing poetic about your grandparents, leading the team to an emphatic victory after a sporting mishap, juggling oh so many activities as only you can, going on about what a perfectionist you are as your greatest trauma, celebrating unity in diversity as one of your life’s most beautiful realizations, recounting the classic immigration tale, finding epiphanies on a mountaintop, creating an app, reaching level 8 in piano after early setbacks, studying by the lamplight…you get the drift. To be sure, these topics aren’t off-limits per se, but if you choose them, go even harder out of your way to ensure your perspective is so distinctly fresh and unique as to have never been written before.

You will do well to spare a moment and think of the poor admissions officer, half-awake at 2 am ish, sifting through hundreds of essays on “resilience” or “the lesson I learned from failing a test.” Want to wake them up? Surprise them. Be refreshingly candid, insightful, or even a touch irreverent.

The piece below by Princeton grad Dennard Dayle, featured in The New Yorker, is not your typical college essay. It’s sharp, funny, and perfectly unconventional—qualities that make it memorable. Dayle's tongue-in-cheek take exemplifies how humor, satire, and unfiltered honesty can cut through the noise.

As you string together your own Common App essay, consider this: if you’re bored writing it, chances are, they’ll be bored reading it. Step out of the cookie-cutter, middle-of-the-road mold. Use this essay as a playful nudge to shake up your approach— embrace your quirks, lean into your fiercely unique voice, and, most importantly, for God’s sake make the reader feel something - even if it’s just a chuckle or a moment of pause, emotion or curiosity.

Of course, authenticity is key; don’t try too hard or force humor that isn’t natural to you. Instead, be effortless (trust me it’ll come after a thousand rewrites) - infuse your work with your true self. If you're witty, don’t be afraid to let that shine. If you’re contemplative, be unapologetic and let that quality unfurl.

Use this piece below as inspiration: think beyond what you believe a college essay should sound like, or indeed what you should come across as to them. Self-consciousness is the worst. After all, the goal is not just to fill a word count - the Common App essay (along with the supplementary essays of course) is truly your best chance to stand out in a way that makes an admissions officer feel they’ve discovered someone special for the class they are trying to assemble – they’ve discovered you!

Dear [School], Here’s My Soul in Six Hundred Words or Less

By Dennard Dayle
The New Yorker
December 29, 2021

My greatest obstacle? After sixteen years on a dying planet, it’s definitely this essay. I’ve never felt smaller or more alone. The typos that Google Docs catches (or adds) will define the rest of my life. And Google thinks my name’s an error, so I’m not optimistic.

I’ve stared at a blank page for two weeks, after countless false starts about a made-up drug addiction and a math class I found difficult. Each felt like more of a bald lie than the last. So I’ll try honesty: this essay is killing me. Writing it is like typing on a keyboard made of knives.

When do the measurements of my worth end? I don’t have any standardized aptitude left to test. Why repeat the dance over and over again? We both know how this works. My rank’s below rich kids, and above Thomas Jefferson’s descendants.

But I’m writing anyway, because [School] has been my dream ever since Mom told me it was my dream. I was skeptical at first, since Twitter talks a lot about élite overproduction. After some digging, though, I discovered that that idea’s a scam to keep me poor. Much like [School]. It’s a bit of a lose-lose (money), so I’ve decided to keep Mom happy.

I took a campus tour to imbue my begging with a personal touch. Here are some descriptive details: the beer was cheap, the weed was expensive, and the sky was beautiful. I’ll remember that royal blue every time I think about my debt.

[School]’s work-study program presented a glimmer of hope for avoiding loan sharks. Then I learned that the student workers went on strike last year, and now they look broken. I’m already dead-eyed, so that wouldn’t be a huge change. But I’m guessing an incoming fast-food robot is cheaper, so the entire point is probably moot.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still planning on attending [School]. I’d like to understand the news and have a job adjacent to dignity. [School] holds the keys to both, and the connections to exploit them. I’ll just have to moonlight in organized crime.

I can’t say that this obstacle has taught me much. This is my third written defense of my humanity this year. And, between job hunting, dating, and safety-school applications, it won’t be my last. I just hope that kowtowing gets easier with practice. Humans are born with a lot of pride, and it takes work to bury the last scraps of it.

As for overcoming the obstacle, I haven’t. Even after I finish this essay, new prompts will haunt my siblings, neighbors, and offspring. The climate apocalypse offered humanity a rare chance to escape the admissions process. But some thoughtless engineers in Switzerland have cracked carbon capture, a half-measure allowing mankind to continue to limp along. We’re stuck.

If [School] gives me a chance, I’ll study economics. Then it’s a small step to consulting and the board of an oil company. There I will dedicate myself to finally snuffing out the light of human civilization, and take down admissions with it. With education, everything is possible.

About the Writer

Dennard Dayle is a Jamaican American author who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Princeton University and received his MFA from Columbia University. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Clarkesworld, Matchbook, the Hard Times, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His first book was the short story collection Everything Abridged. Before taking up fiction and mischief as a full-time job, he was an advertising copywriter who dangerously flirted with stand-up comedy. He teaches as an adjunct at Columbia and recently made the rash decision to take up skateboarding. (Source: Google Books)

For the link to the original piece in The New Yorker, click here