EssayNarwhal: Why a Narwhal?
Why a narwhal, and what does the sea unicorn have to do with college essays?
by Albert Leo
For our first blog post, I wanted to dive into a common problem amongst students: How do you show off something unique about yourself?
Teens in their formative years are often socialized to blend in with their peers rather than stand out. For me, that meant I HAD to have a pair of Nike sneakers because everyone else had them. Unfortunately, being like everyone else isn’t going to distinguish yourself from the thousands of other students applying to college.
When brainstorming the branding for this blog, the IvyBoost team thought of some initial ideas to represent our expertise in college essay writing. We thought of owls, maybe to give off a feeling of intelligence, or maybe we would be the Essay Genius. Those weren’t bad, but perhaps familiar though.
I settled on narwhals. They’re adaptive animals that symbolize uniqueness because of their similarity to unicorns. However, unlike unicorns, they’re actually real!
That’s the crux of finding what makes you unique. You don’t have to have devised a new treatment for cancer or get a perfect GPA. Students often want to project themselves being the perfect and hardworking student. The truth is every applicant is a student. But every student can find what makes them unique and this should require deep reflection before you write your essay. I want students to embrace their inner weirdness. You don’t have to belong in House Gryffindor, and you don’t even have to play quidditch because that’s what the cool kids do.
Maybe you like animals, but you might be the weird cat lady that slowly blinks with felines to bond with them. A lot of people like tech, but maybe you’re the one spending their weekends teaching technically challenged seniors how to organize files or how to use WhatsApp so they can talk to their grandchildren. Maybe a lot of people like videogames, but maybe you’re the one that codes an unorthodox game mode to make your friends laugh. You don’t have to find that unicorn uniqueness, just some spark within you that differentiates you in some manner.
Sometimes you have to reject your first impulse. So many students often say they took piano, or were part of a sports team, or they volunteered for community service…but so have so many other students.
Sometimes those essay topics are great if you put your own unique spin on that subject (we’ll no doubt touch upon this in later blog posts). But often, if you delve beyond the surface of the ocean, you’ll find your inner narwhal.