So before I send in my essay to my top choice school, I was wondering if any of you could give me some feedback. "Nothing in life is as scary as bearing your soul and hoping that people don’t hurt you when you are most vulnerable. What scared me the most that day, however, was the fact that the person to whom I was revealing myself was my mother. In many ways, loved ones are the most capable of causing pain. When a stranger finds fault with you, it is easy to ignore them and move on. When family is the source of criticism, however, it can seem impossible to recover, and I am very close with my family. I was dreading the moment I said the words I had been practicing so much that I had taken to dreaming them. Mom, I’m gay. I had known about it for some years by then, but was too afraid to say the words aloud. I had only said them once to a close group of friends, who were very supportive. Their reaction was what gave me the courage to tell my mother. I had heard horror stories about teenagers being kicked out of their house, being forced to live on the streets or a group home. While I knew that my mother would never do something that terrible, I was still afraid that she would reject me. I realized that my fear was completely unfounded, but that could not stop me from feeling the way I did. In December of 2008, my mother and I were looking at engagement rings on her computer because she was thinking of getting engaged. Making small talk, she asked me which one I would want to get for my wife when I was an adult. Feeling like this would be the best time to tell her that I would ever get, I managed to get the words out of my mouth. She didn’t hear me, so I had to repeat myself. “Mom, I’m not going to have a wife when I’m older. I’m gay.” I braced myself for the worst. She didn’t say anything for a few minutes. After taking a breath, she simply said, “Okay.” I was dumbfounded. I had expected there to be at least few tears. She gave me a hug, and then we continued on our conversation, and went on about our day. Since that time, I have felt as if my relationship with my mother has grown. I can be myself around her, and not have to hide anything from her. My fear that my mother would reject me once she really knew who I was was unfounded. What I didn’t understand was that she has known me all along. I now know that the surprise was mine, not hers. She has known me all along, and labels don’t matter. My being gay really did not change anything for her, and because of that it doesn’t change anything for me."
I have a question? is this the whole essay or an excerpt? Where are you applying? and what are you interested in doing with your college education? I'm asking because i recently applied to grad school and had to write an essay, mostly it was about why i wanted to go there and what i wanted to achieve with the knowledge i would get.
From someone who would read this with your application, this might seem like you're just trying to point out that you're gay and that makes you a minority. I would perhaps add a little to it and talk more about the coming out process... The fact that you have endured such inner turmoil about your sexuality but in the end it never got in the way of being yourself and accomplishing all you have accomplished. If that's true, if not, you can lie, they wont know lol. It just needs a little bit more... I dunno how many words this is or how many the college wants, but when I applied to schools they were usually like 500 word essays.
It's a wonderful coming out story! Did the college give a topic that you should write about? I'm not sure I understand why you would choose this as your college entry essay? I guess we need more information.
It asks for a moral choice/ personal struggle you have been through. I figured that this would be the best, because it was strongest in my mind.It's the whole essay, it needs to be at least 200 words. The college counseling office recommended around 450 words, and mine is 475.
I'd say this fits the bill pretty well then, but give us some more info on life after coming out... maybe you dont need to say so much as you repeat yourself a little in the last paragraph. Honestly, I wanted to read more, so well done!
It's an excellent essay. I'll give you some input from what I know of the college admissions process from knowing a couple of admissions directors and talking to them about the challenges they have in selecting applicants to offer admission. The whole essay/personal statement process is something that helps them understand who you are. If you don't have a personal interview, it is the *only* thing they have that makes you a person rather than a bunch of grades and test scores. So what I would ask is, does this essay really describe as much about you, and how you interact with others, and how you feel about difficult situations and challenging moral dilemmas or struggles as it could? When I think of "moral choice/personal struggle", for example, I don't really think about coming out, especially since, as you've said in your essay, there wasn't the enormous downside risk of, for example, being thrown out of your house or losing their support for college or somethinng like that. So really, not as much of a "moral dilemma" or "struggle" as, for example, another applicant might have written about something like finding herself pregnant, broke, and weighing the options of bringing a child into the world where she won't be able to provide well vs. giving it up for adoption vs. having an abortion, or an applicant being faced with the unthinkable decision of having to decide to "pull the plug" on a parent who is in a coma, or something like that where you are demonstrating how you are weighing the impact of the different options and how others might be affected and so forth. The essay you wrote is focused almost completely on you, and your experience, and not so much on how your revelation might affect your mom or others, and additionally, while I wouldn't at all doubt how frightening and fearful it was to be in that moment, you have to consider, especially if you are applying to a highly competitive school, what sorts of experiences and challenges your fellow applicants might be writing about. It's always a crapshoot to know what's in the minds of the members of the admission committee, but I would be willing to guess that they might want something that gives them a little more insight into how you relate to others, and how you might handle a difficult decision that could impact others. Not that your topic doesn't specifically do that, but consider that the admissions committee has probably seen 1000 essays on coming out stories, and so yours, unless it is so truly extraordinary (being Jerry Falwell's gay son or something) is not going to make you "stand out" and be so memorable that the admissions committee is going to say "Wow, that sounds like an amazing guy. We want him at *our* school!" I don't in any way mean to minimize your coming out process, or the quality of your essay, and I'm not sure that the advice I'm giving you is the right, or the best possible advice. But I do know that admissions people are always, at competitive schools, looking for exceptional people, who stand out from the crowd, will make a difference in the world, and who think and act exceptionally. And so that is what you want to try to convey in your essay. It might also help to know which school it's going to. If you don't feel like publicly sharing that info and want to PM it to me, if it's one I happen to know something about, I'll be happy to tell you what I know Edit: Please don't use my writing style as a guideline. Rereading, it's a bunch of run-on sentences and overuse of commas, but hey, I'm tired and it was sort of stream-of-consciousness.
