J.R. Moehringer’s College Essay Mistakes (and Lessons for Students Today)
J. R. Moehringer is an accomplished American writer. He’s won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and ghostwrote best-selling memoirs for Andre Agassi and Prince Harry. Suffice it to say, Moehringer knows how to tell a great story.
But he wasn’t always great–or even particularly good.
At 17, he was determined to use his college essay to show Yale University’s admissions officers just how smart he was. He loved big, fancy words. As he wrote in his memoir: “I’d developed a philosophy on big words that was no different than my philosophy on cologne. The more the better.”
Here are two gems from his early drafts:
“Try as I might, I feel unable to truly convey the emphatic pangs of hungry ignorance that attend this my seventeenth year, for I feel that my audience is well fed.”
“I have ambition, in the sense that one would describe the man who wished to outrun a speeding train as ambitious. And the behemoth bearing down on me? Ignorance!”
(To be clear, these are not examples to follow when writing a college essay.)
A Mother’s Brutal Feedback
It led to big fights with his mother. Moehringer’s mother was his toughest critic–and she didn’t hold back.
“You sound insane,” she told him after reading his first draft.
“Worse than the last,” she said the next time.
Looking back, Moehringer recalled in an NPR Fresh Air interview that their back-and-forth over his essay became “one of the biggest arguments we've ever had.”
Listen to Moehringer share his college essay story in this excerpt from the interview:
The Breakthrough
Eventually, she got through to him.
Once tempers cooled, she gave him two pieces of advice.
Tell the truth.
Speak from the heart.
Exasperated, Moehringer dashed off a new draft – a “slapdash essay.” It was a simple, straightforward description of his part-time job at a bookstore.
From the interview:
“I just wrote about how these guys gave me books and talked to me about books and how much I looked up to them and how they'd opened the world to me. And I couldn't wait to kind of extend that experience to college, just, you know, read more books with smart people.
This time, his mother’s verdict was different: “Perfect.”
The Takeaway for Students (and Parents)
For parents locked in editing battles with their 17-year-olds, take heart–Moehringer eventually appreciated his mother’s tough love.
I think another parent would have said, well, you know, he obviously thinks this is great. And so I don't want to break his little heart.
…
She just stood there and bore the brunt of my hubris and my yelling and my sticking out my bottom lip and has done it since more times than I care to count.
…
It's because of her that I kept going back into my bedroom and toning it down, dialing it down…And I do think that that is a big part of why I got into Yale from a really bad public school.
So, what’s the lesson for students writing their college essays?
Don’t try to impress with big words. Don’t force yourself to sound like someone you’re not.
Strip it down. Be honest. Speak in your own voice.
That’s when the most impactful and authentic story will emerge.
