Throughout high school, American students are taught to write essays reflecting and analyzing the content they are learning. Essay-writing often intends to develop a thesis with supporting evidence. Beyond the high school setting, students are faced with the task of writing a college application essay. The Common Application essay is a widely-used format for this application essay. The essay is an opportunity for students to distinguish themselves from competing applicants through another form rather than grades or test scores.
Dr. Arthur Smith, former assistant director in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Cornell University and currently a college advisor for Arthur Smith Advising, is familiar with the likability traits that colleges look for. The first crucial trait is empathy and compassion. A second trait, according to Dr. Smith, is “genuine curiosity about the world around you, taking the initiative to solve problems, and then the resilience to get through tough times.”
Indeed, the Common Application essay prompts tend to urge students to reveal their personal experiences, describing obstacles, to then demonstrate their capacity to overcome them. Consider, for instance, two of the 2023-24 Common Application essay prompts: “The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?” and “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.”
These prompts have led many students to share traumatic experiences in their essays. Tina Yong, a student at the University of British Columbia, recently gave a Ted Talk about these essays. In her talk, The Rise of the “Trauma Essay” in College Applications, Yong characterized the recurring theme of these essays: “A bad thing happened to me, but it made me a good person.”
To write about trauma, a student will have to confront and relive the trauma. This is often extremely painful to navigate. Confrontation of one’s trauma is most likely to be truly healing if it is done with the support of a trauma-informed professional. In other terms, a possible life-changing essay may not be the most appropriate place for applicants to “trauma dump.”
Illustrating their trauma may gain the reader’s empathy for the student. However, the student must go beyond gaining empathy to paint themselves as a qualified applicant. The student must demonstrate their ability to overcome said traumatic experience and explain how they have grown from it. This implies that the applicant has healed from their trauma, undermining a sometimes lifelong and lengthy healing process. Few students, at the ripe ages of seventeen or eighteen, will have been able to heal and grow from their trauma, not suffer from long-term effects, and, on top of that, find the strength to write about it in an application essay.
Additionally, the “trauma essay” prompts students to demonstrate how their experiences have made them resilient. However, research shows that trauma does not make individuals stronger and instead makes them more vulnerable to mental health disorders. For instance, a study led by Brown University researchers concluded that individuals who had experienced prior stressors were more likely to develop mental health disorders following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti than those who had not. Although those healing from trauma may develop coping mechanisms making them more apt to confront difficult situations, simply suffering from trauma does not equip one to face tougher circumstances. The expectation to be resilient because one has lived through trauma can be harmful to students and trauma survivors and may lead them to think they should have developed strength from the experience. By attempting to fit the cultural myth that trauma survivors should be resilient, individuals may practice avoidance and denial, which can cause even more suffering.
In response to deeply personal essays and painstakingly compiled applications, students receive an acceptance, a rejection, or a deferral from a faceless stranger. For students who have poured hours into essay writing, specifically sharing their vulnerabilities, such a response is blind to their trauma and could obstruct their healing process. If students are accepted, they may hold on to the belief that their trauma is what makes them valuable. On the flip side, if rejected, they may question their trauma and its validity. Ultimately, this response is far from therapeutic.
Moreover, trauma is diverse, and while some topics may be easier to turn into a learning experience, others can be riskier to address. “You want to be sensitive to your audience,” said Dr. Smith. Indeed, admission officers are human first, and some topics may be difficult to digest. If the essay needs a trigger warning, the applicant can lose readers, who may feel reluctant to dive into such difficult topics. According to Dr. Smith, one question to consider when choosing a topic is: “Is this something that would upset somebody because of their own lived experience?”
In addition, applicants with disabilities may feel compelled to share their unique experiences as they are forced to navigate a largely non-disabled world, yet they may also feel obligated to consider the risk of appearing as too much of a liability for the college. In Performing the Rhetorical Freak Show: Disability, Student Writing, and College Admissions, Amy Vidali, Associate Teaching Professor of Humanities at the University of California Santa Cruz, says that college essay-writing requires students with disabilities to “simultaneously ‘come out’ as disabled and ‘pass’ as able-bodied.” Students are urged to “perform” their disability, yet pretend that they succeed while living with it or have completely overcome it.
Furthermore, in an essay in The New York Times, Elijah Megginson shares that counselors and advisors often encourage young people of color to sell their traumatic experiences through the college admission essay. However, advisors and counselors are not required to be trauma-trained. When students are led to perceive trauma as something valuable to sell, it undermines their individual experiences. When urged to write about traumatic experiences, students may feel that their own mental well-being is not considered because the focus is turning the story into something that makes them a “good applicant.”
In the June 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, race was removed as a factor in the college admissions process. With the essay being one of the only areas where college applicants can mention race, this ruling may also lead to more “trauma essays” written by students of color. However, writing about traumatic experiences on race can be emotionally overwhelming for the applicant. “It was my authentic experience, but I felt that trauma overwhelmed my drafts. I didn’t want to be a victim anymore,” Megginson told The New York Times.
Although the college admission essay is highly valued due to its creativity factor, separating itself from numbers on a report card, the “trauma essay” may not be the most efficient way students can present themselves to colleges. Dr. Smith emphasizes the need for essays to be memorable. However, that can be accomplished in ways other than the description of trauma. It is important that students display their attributes and interests rather than grasping onto traumatic experiences. Nevertheless, that may be difficult to achieve when confronted with college prompts.
The essay prompts can be the motivating factor for students to discuss their trauma. Some universities, like the University of Chicago and Chapman University, have opted for obscure supplemental essay prompts, such as “What advice would a wisdom tooth have?” perhaps diverting students from writing about traumatic experiences.
Although the essays provide students an opportunity to explain circumstances and systemic barriers that colleges may want to consider in their decision, the use of experienced trauma to achieve this objective is harmful to a healing process.