"Lateral moves" in the college essay/application revision process

Written by Andy Simpson, CEG Editorial Director

Considering how much pressure students can feel during the college application process, it’s not surprising that some can get a little… obsessive, say… over making tiny changes, wanting every word to be juuuust so, thinking that that’s what the Admissions Officers reading the essay care about.

But here’s the thing: They really don’t care as much as you think they do.

That’s right. AOs don’t care whether you use a fancy, shiny word like “plethora” instead of “many” (In fact, plenty of AOs would just prefer “many.” Source: many AOs).

The problem is, these kinds of changes (like changing “many” to “plethora”) almost always come with a cost—namely, time you could better spend on other essays (or just enjoying other parts of your life).

So we want to talk you through how to understand what we call “lateral moves”—changes to essays that have essentially no impact (except burning up time).

What do we mean by “lateral moves”?

We kinda covered it up top, but in case:

By “lateral moves” we mean changes to an essay that have essentially zero impact on how the essay is read in the admissions process.

To understand why some changes are “lateral moves” and are not worth your time (unless you have literally absolutely nothing else to do and senior year is super easy and you enjoy changing essays more than doing other things—obviously, in that case, you do you), it’s useful to understand how AOs read college essays and applications.

So here’s a basic picture of how that works.

(Or if you just want to see some lateral moves, so you can avoid them, scroll down.)

How admissions officers read college essays

I’m going to talk you through an overview of how admissions generally works, which should help you understand why some things are not really worth spending much (or any) time on when you’re doing things like revising essays.

Here’s how the admissions process generally works at most selective colleges.

At selective colleges, AOs are

  • Assessing past performance AND predicting future potential

  • Looking for students who meet institutional needs, priorities and enrollment goals sent down “from the top” (by the college’s leadership)

  • Typically manage a geographic territory and/or academic program

  • Experts in the various grading scales, contexts, and environments that students come from (school profiles are their best friends!)

  • Not just admitting students that they “like” (their opinions are taken into account, but they are held to rating scales and “checks and balances”)

  • Reading applications incredibly quickly (somewhere between 5-15 minutes)

That last point is important, hence bolded, and directly impacts why some things are “lateral moves”:

They will read dozens of applications in a day. In the first round, they are often right at the edge of skimming, if not actually skimming. (Friends who have worked as AOs in highly selective schools have told us they were often skimming in the first round of reads.)

Most colleges have multiple rounds of reads. Here’s an example of how many selective colleges move through applications (using a process called Committee Based Evaluation, aka CBE):

1. First Round Reads

Two AOs read/comment on the same file together and mutually agree on a preliminary decision: admit, waitlist, or deny.

One acts as the “driver,” focusing primarily on academics and recommendations, and is responsible for knowing the applicant’s regional/state and school context.

The “passenger” identifies noteworthy elements of the applicant’s personal side, and focuses on family context, activities, the personal statement, and supplemental essays.

In this round, readers are often skimming essays. (This fact will inform our discussion later of why some changes in your application are “lateral moves.”)

2. Committee Prep + Application Write Ups

After first round reads are complete, AOs often run data reports on the files that they marked as preliminary admits or waitlists, making cuts due to imbalances or institutional preferences and priorities.

The AOs then create write-ups with notes (how long these are in length will vary), arguing why the student should be admitted.
In these write-ups, a student’s main Common App essay is often distilled to a few core takeaways or potentially notable quotes/key insights, like this:

Or here’s another example, this one of what a Yale AO actually wrote about a student’s essays during the evaluation process:

“Nice SAs—voice comes through throughout. [Essay 1 is about] assuming responsibility at home when mom fell behind on rent; using fam’s financial problems as opportunity for personal growth. [Essay 2 is about] appreciating diversity in her community and high school.”

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 

  • Your personal statement IS an impactful component of the application process. 

AND 

  • Many tweaks/changes that students spend time making are unlikely to actually impact that process—especially when most AOs will write a few sentences about your essays in their write up

3. Full Committee Round

AOs come together and read their notes/write-ups, advocating for students on their list. (As in, they are arguing for why students SHOULD be admitted—more on this below.)

Usually, the class is still too large to admit after this round, and there may be certain imbalances, e.g., “not enough rural students.”

That leads to the shaping round:

4. “Shaping” Round

Some students who made it through as potential “admits” get “shaped out” until the admissions office has their target number of admits (which is determined by things like how many students they think will actually accept an acceptance, aka “yield”).

What AOs are looking for in your essay

Here’s the primary lens AOs are applying to your essay: 

What life experiences and values/qualities/skills can I suss out most prevalently in this essay?

Or here’s a direct quote from Tom Campbell, who used to work in Pomona’s admissions office (and now works with us):

“I think it’s also valuable to remind the student that the admission reader isn’t really reading their essay with the lens/expectation (and, frankly, desire) for “beautiful writing.” Students who veer too heavily towards the artistry of essay writing often make the narrative too complex to immediately grasp for an AO who needs to get the big core insights, examples, etc when they’re quickly going through that statement. Beauty is not (necessarily) their hope.”

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

  • Function of a personal statement: to show a reader your college-ready values, insights, skills, qualities, experiences, and world view/perspective

  • Readers are NOT analyzing or “grading” your essay like an English class paper.

What AOs aren’t really paying much attention to (or aren’t at all), but many students and parents think they are

  • Changes in phrasing that don’t actually impact the experiences/values/qualities/skills AOs can understand

That last bullet is a complex/subtle one: AOs generally don’t care much about how “beautiful” the writing is—again, because primarily what they are doing is looking for content that helps them build a case for your admission to their school.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to build clear, effective essays that communicate your authentic voice. You should definitely do that.

But it does mean that it’s really easy for students to spend a lot of time (that they probably don’t have / could better spend elsewhere) trying to make their essay sound “beautiful” in ways that don’t actually help strengthen their application.


One thing that’s possibly at the core of many misunderstandings: AOs aren’t functioning as proofreaders. They aren’t looking to ding you.

Examples of lateral moves

Here’s a simple example, to illustrate the category of things we’re talking about here:

I once had a student ask “Should I use ‘utilized’ or ‘harnessed’ here?” He said he had spent fifteen minutes going back and forth, and couldn’t decide.

I told him either works. Because the difference between “utilized” and “harnessed” is not one that an Admissions Officer will even notice.

Here are some other examples, adapted/anonymized, of changes we’ve seen students spend too much time on.

Lateral moves in paragraphs in an essay:

Here’s a student’s draft of a body paragraph:

At EnviroJam, I learned to network. In reaching out to nonprofits and activists, I looked for ways to collaborate by bringing their initiatives to my own community. My experiences at the conference taught me that, to make a lasting impact, students need to build multi-generational teams, strengthening innovation with experience and authority. On campus, I want to continue building bridges.

And here are changes the student made:

At EnviroJam, I networked with nonprofits and activists. After hearing one founder speak, I reached out, and we formed an organizational partnership. My experiences at the conference taught me that, to make a lasting impact, students need to build multi-generational teams, strengthening innovation with experience and authority. I want to continue building.

The subtle wording differences between the two responses above will not impact how your file is read.

Lateral moves in Activities List descriptions/Additional Info entries:

Research Project: Carbon emissions of local lumber plant (10)

- Found correlation between emissions pollution and local health outcomes, prompting environmental action through my nonprofit and clubs

- Submitting paper to Journal of Earth and Space Science

- Presenter, The Carbon Conference

- State winner, Oslo Environmental Prize    

Changes made:

Research Project: Carbon emissions of local lumber plant (10)

- Found abnormal CO2 concentrations in Flathead Valley, prompting environmental action through my nonprofit and clubs

- Submitting paper to Journal of Earth and Space Science

- Presenter, The Carbon Conference

- Won the Oslo Environmental Prize 

How much does an AO care about changes like these?

Zero.

How do I know that?

I asked them.

In fact, here’s a quote from Tom again, who used to work in Pomona’s admissions office: 

“Unless a student has literally nothing else to work on, changes like these are not a good use of time.”

How to avoid wasting your time making lateral moves

To avoid wasting time making lateral moves, use an AO’s lens as your lens:

Again, here’s the primary lens AOs are applying to your essay: 

What life experiences and values/qualities/skills can I suss out most prevalently in this essay?

Are you making changes that make it clearer/easier for them to see the values/insights/skills/qualities/experiences you bring to a campus, by, say 


Cool, those changes are very likely worth your time.

Are you tweaking words ‘cause you think you’ll “sound smarter”?

Probably not worth your time.

In fact, please be wary of changes that can make your writing sound “overproduced”—meaning you’re trying to “sound smarter” to impress a reader. It doesn’t sound genuine.

(In case you missed it above, here’s that Princeton study on word choice and reader’s perceptions.)

To illustrate some of the above bullets: 

One student we worked with had a great super essay about a transformative experience at a veterinary clinic. It worked really nicely for prompts that focused in some way on "lightbulb moment” academic experiences.

But Boston College’s prompt at the time was “Socrates stated that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Discuss a time when reflection, prayer, or introspection led to clarity or understanding of an issue that is important to you.”

So she needed to take the time to make meaningful edits that made the essay more about reflection and introspection (which the initial version did not have), change/tweak details so they specifically illustrated that reflective process, and modify transitions between paragraphs so the connection was clear, because that’s what BC was directly asking for.

Side note: education quality vs “prestige”

It feels important to note that students and families often confuse the quality of a school with the prestige of a school.

(I think confusing the two can be at the root of why some students/families fall into some of the misunderstandings above, or why students can end up obsessing over tweaks that don’t actually impact their admission.)

For example, we’ve known students and parents who seem to think that if the kid doesn’t attend a top-10 school according to [whatever college ranking system here], they have failed and that their life is doomed. 

Which seems extreme.

And it’s completely understandable to a degree why that happens:

  • In some countries, college rankings directly impact things like what jobs you may be eligible for. 

  • And with things like law or business schools in the US and certain firms, that first bullet can still be the case, and undergraduate degrees from some colleges definitely make it easier to get into some grad schools or companies.

  • Also, in simple terms, we’re pretty biologically programmed to care about what the people around us think, and to worry about things like social prestige. (That doesn’t make it good for us—evolution doesn’t care about your individual happiness.)

And there is evidence that attending an elite college correlates with a stronger chance of earning in the top 1%, if that’s your goal. (But a heads up that SAT/ACT scores also correlate strongly there.) 

But to make sure it’s clear:

  • 0.5% of high school graduates enroll in the most selective colleges (e.g. Stanford, MIT, etc)

  • At many of those colleges, something like 80% of applicants are academically admissible (meaning, there just is not space for many thousands of qualified applicants)

  • You can get a high quality education and pursue the things you want in life at many, many colleges

It seems to my mind likely not worth your mental health and/or sense of well being or personal value to place much emphasis on being one of those 0.5%—that doesn’t mean don’t apply. 

Go for it, if it’s something you want.

Just understand that at that point, whether you get in will often rely (sometimes heavily) on things like institutional priorities (for a guide to how institutional priorities impact admissions choices, check out this guide), which are fundamentally out of your control. 

Tying your sense of self-worth to things that are fundamentally out of your control seems like a terrible idea.

There’s a reason the above is a core idea of things like Buddhism, or Stoicism, or the Christian “serenity prayer”—tying self worth to things you have no control over is just a recipe for increasing your own suffering. 

It’d be like thinking you are worth more or less as a person depending on whether the Red Sox win the World Series this year, or something else equally out of your control.

That would be kinda crazy of you. (Yes, people do it. But it seems clearly to be a bad idea.)

To make sure it’s clear, that doesn’t mean you should’t work hard to control the things you can control, like building an application you feel demonstrates who you are and the great qualities you bring to a college and community—definitely do those things.

But don’t then make the mistake of thinking that whether or not you get in has any bearing on your worth as a human being.

It doesn’t.

Key takeaways

If you’re walking away from this article with anything, I’d hope it’s some combo of the following:

  • Some changes are very valuable in your college essays. Others aren’t.

  • Whether changes are valuable to make is greatly shaped by how admissions officers read essays and applications.

  • You have limited time.

  • Try to spend that time focusing on changes that help your reader build a stronger case for your application by helping them more thoroughly understand your values, insights, skills, qualities, experiences, and world view.

  • Don’t attach your sense of self worth to whether you are accepted at a specific college.

Take care, have fun, dive in.

 

Andrew Simpson, CEG’s Editorial Director, has worked as an educator, consultant, and curriculum writer for the past 20 years, and earned degrees from Stanford in Political Science and Drama. He feels most at home on mountain tops and in oceans.

Top Values:  Insight/Growth | Truth | Integrity