College admission essays are something that nearly every college student is familiar with.  Whether it’s describing a personal struggle or highlighting a moment of leadership, colleges use these essays to ultimately decide if a student would be a good fit for their campus.  Over these last couple decades, the genre for college essay questions and responses has progressively solidified into what it is now today.

At the basic level, the genre of a college admission essay contains about six hundred words regarding a specific example of whatever the question is asking.  In general, they contain a brief summarization of a story followed by a personal analysis about how that story connects to the question.  However, the word genre means much more than just the amount of words and the structure of the writing.  In her essay Navigating Genres, author Kerry Dirk describes an important part of genre as being the location of the writing, or taking into account the writing’s intended audience (page 255).  In this case, the intended audience of the writing would obviously be the college of that specific essay.  This is an important part of the genre because if a student has prior knowledge about the college, it shows them that the student is actually interested and not just filling out another application.  Another important factor of genre that Dirk discusses in her essay is the intended reaction of the writing’s audience (page 252).  When students are writing their essay, they are ultimately trying to prove to the college that they are responsible, smart, and would make a good fit into their campus.

Personally, when I wrote my essay for USD, I remember writing about my Eagle Scout project. In that essay, I subtly boasted about my responsibility and leadership qualities in a way that made me seem humble but also proud of what I did.  I knew that the audience of my essay was the college admission team, and so I did my best to not only answer the prompt but to prove to them that I deserved to be accepted.