Showing Change in a College Essay
by Michelle
An ugly duckling turns into a swan. An acorn becomes a beautiful oak tree. A timid fish becomes a brave adventurer (okay, that last one is from Finding Nemo).
As an Essay Narwhal, you understand that college application essays present a great opportunity to share a story about yourself. But not just any story though. Your application essays are a great chance to show to colleges how exactly you have changed throughout high school.
Showing your changes in terms of character growth also connects back to those values which some of our previous blog posts have emphasized, like in ‘Learning from Conflict’.
How can you show your changes in character through your college essay?
1. Show change through taking a different action
This technique may be something you recognize from studying on character development and analysis in your English classes. A simple way to use this would be to put yourself in two similar situations and contrast your actions. In the first one, perhaps you didn’t handle the problem so well. In the second, you do a lot better.
If you’ve ever read the story The Wizard of Oz, you may know how the Cowardly Lion at the beginning was so afraid of everything that he even hid himself away when he heard Dorothy’s tiny dog, Toto, bark at him. As the story goes on however, the Cowardly Lion eventually jumps out and puts himself in real danger to try to protect his friends.
His differing actions in the latter situation shows change and his values (bravery, friendship).
2. Show change through more nuanced thoughts/emotional state
Showing character growth in this method can be a little more subtle. This works best with essays that relate to thinking more philosophically, or slowly shifting your viewpoints on a certain idea, social/civic issue, or worldview.
Focusing on this type of change in a college essay is a good way to show colleges your thinking process and how you grapple with complex, deep ideas.
Maybe you have a story about how you were inspired to get into a scientific field by a certain scientist, but were also disappointed when you found out about their bad interpersonal relationships and how they treated their colleagues. Would that knowledge tell you something about the kind of scientist you want to become in contrast?
Or maybe there was a social issue you once had a very black-and-white view on, but as you read up more on it, your understanding of different factors and solutions related to it expanded.
3. Show change by describing new and better circumstances
This tip focuses more on contrasting a before-and-after scenes in your essay, in a way that shows the results of your values or positive character development.
At the beginning of an essay, perhaps a student is shown as more isolated and listens to a lot of rock music by themselves during lunch. At the end of the essay, they might contrast that with a scene where they were part of a loud and energetic breakdance performance with a team to raise money for arts funding for a town.
With these different ways to show changes, Essay Narwhals can discuss the best method with their essay mentor to show how they’ve grown from an awkward whale calf to a more graceful, mature self.