Prisha Mehta began writing with The Writers Circle in the second grade and moved, over the years, from student to teen Summer Intensive intern to program coordinator and now instructor. This stunning young writer and accomplished Yale grad will share their expertise in two college essay writing workshops for high school students this summer.
Here, Prisha offers advice that any writer can use on making those all-important essays memorable.
Tell me about your journey with The Writers Circle?
It’s been incredible!… I credit TWC with so much of my development as a writer, as a teacher, and as a human being. I can’t believe how lucky I was to get to join this community at such a young age. I mean, how many elementary school bookworms get to start participating in real-life, weekly, kid-friendly writing workshops at eight years old? Huge shout out to Judith Lindbergh and Michelle Cameron for the amazing spaces they’ve created over the years.
What do you enjoy about essay writing?
Essay writing is a lot more creative than a lot of people expect. With the word counts, it can almost feel like a form of writing-with-constraints, like a six-word story or a haiku.
Students don’t always get exposed to creative writing in high school, so when they face down their college essays, many find themselves suddenly needing to think about things like imagery, voice, and storytelling for the first time. For some kids, it’s a whole new way of considering language, and it can be overwhelming. I think having someone to guide them through the process can be incredibly helpful, and I love being able to show up for my students during that pivotal juncture.
College essays are a part of my job where I feel I can make a real, tangible difference in a student’s academic journey. Writing a good personal statement can help a kid find their way to a place where they’ll thrive—and be well-resourced to chase their passions for chemistry, history, English, or music. And the writing skills they pick up as they work with me (framing, specificity, drafting and re-drafting) often end up helping them later in their lives, too, on graduate school applications, job apps, cover letters, and the like.
What makes a college essay memorable?
What makes any personal essay memorable: when it gives you an authentic, specific, and well-articulated window into its author’s world. A good essay seeks to make a genuine connection with its audience. Admissions officers want to understand you: how you think, how you feel, how you move through the world, what matters to you, what you find funny and fascinating and astonishing.
Generally, the more specific you get—both in your content and in your language—the more you’ll pull your reader in. You want to be as clear, as vivid, and as vibrant as you can.
What helps a student’s essay stand out in the admissions process?
Above all, authenticity and specificity. Admissions officers read thousands of these, and they know the ring of truth when they hear it. The best way to win them over is to really let them into your life—your real life, not just the version of it that you think they want.
You should write an essay that no one but you could have written. If you don’t think you have anything like that to write about, I promise, you do—it’s just a matter of asking yourself the right questions. I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t have an interesting story to tell.
What advice do you have for students who don’t know what to write about?
My advice to any stumped students out there: start by making a list of things that you care about. Not just things you theoretically care about—things you would talk a parent’s ear off about, or would stay up until 2 AM researching. These can be academic topics (the more niche the better!), hobbies, or experiences from your life.
Robert Frost famously said, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader,” and it’s the same principle here—if your college essay doesn’t matter to you, it won’t matter to the admissions officer, either. Write about something that excites you, moves you, or thrills you—even if it’s slightly unexpected or odd, or if it doesn’t quite fit your idea of what a college essay “should” look like.
How do you help students tap into their authentic voices?
Many of the students I work with are used to very formal, academic modes of writing—critical essays, lab reports, document-based questions, that kind of thing. College essays are much more conversational and fluid. It’s not that kids don’t know how to use language in these more narrative ways—they do it all the time, every day, when they tell stories to their friends at lunch or vent about their math homework or recount the events of third period over text to their brother. It’s just that they need to give themselves permission to apply that skill set to an academic context.
Everyone has an authentic voice—it’s just a matter of getting yours from your head onto the page. And a lot of that is in how you frame the task to yourself. Sometimes, it’s helpful to speak your first draft into a voice memo on your phone, to say it out loud to your sister while she transcribes, or to write it in a text message to your best friend. Once you have that, put the transcript into Google Docs or Word and start revising.
What advice do you wish you knew before writing your own college essay?
Before you make it good, make it exist! I was a perfectionist in high school, so that was hard for me when I was working on my own personal statement. These days, though, I live by that motto. First drafts are supposed to be messy. That’s why they’re first drafts. Write them today, and then come back to them tomorrow and make them better.
Also, break up the revision process into manageable chunks. Don’t try to do everything in one session. Instead, set realistic goals: “Today, I’m going to focus on how I want to structure my paragraphs.” Then, the next day: “Today, I’m going to make sure that all my sentences are as specific and compelling as possible on the level of the line.” And so on.
How many drafts does a great essay usually take?
I think five, at least! But don’t be intimidated by that—a draft doesn’t always entail rewriting everything on the page. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right? Each time you revise your essay, you want to focus your attention on something specific that needs improving—working your way from big things (like essay topic, paragraph structure, and framing) down to smaller things (like line-level specificity, grammar, and word count). It’s easier to consider one thing at a time than to try to tackle everything at once!
Anything else you want to share?
If you want to know more, join the college essay writing workshop I’m teaching this July at Drew University or the online session in August. And if you like creative writing, I can’t recommend TWC’s year-round youth workshops enough.
Also, to any rising high school seniors out there: Good luck! You got this! 🙂
Prisha Mehta is a writer from northern New Jersey, and they love teaching, writing, and teaching people to write! A graduate of Yale University’s English, Creative Writing, and Education programs, they are the recipient of both the the John Hubbard Curtis Prize for an Outstanding Creative Writing Portfolio and the Jonathan Edwards Creative Writing Prize. Among other literary magazines, their work has appeared in The Baltimore Review and Mud Season Review. Prisha loves teaching short/flash fiction, speculative fiction, and personal essay. They also love working with soon-to-be college students on their personal statements, helping them build up the foundational writing skills that will make their essays feel genuine, lively, and memorable. When they’re not writing, you might find them reading, cooking, needle-felting, or designing tabletop games.
