So, you’re an Asian American student who placed First Violin in your school’s orchestra. How nice! You now have many experiences to write about when you start writing your college essay about music.
Or, maybe not.
Perhaps you’ve struggled being tucked away at the back of the orchestra. You like music; but, you never quite had enough time to practice to truly actualize your skill. Or, you get to play in the middle and be one of many in the orchestra.
Maybe you don’t play the violin at all. Maybe you play the flute.
Regardless, this guide is going to cover everything you need to know to properly write your college essay about music.
There’s a lot to know, especially since music is quite a common topic to write about in college essays. In this guide, we’ll cover some crucial details on using music as your topic, then we’ll show you how to write it. Lastly, we’ll show you an example college essay about music.
Without further ado, let’s get right to it!
Table of Contents
- Can You Write Your College Essay About Music? Is it too Cliché?
- How to Write Your College Essay About Music.
- Example College Essay About Music.
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Can You Write Your College Essay About Music? Is it too Cliché?
Yes. You can write your college essay about music. Yes, it can be cliché.
Yes, you can make it unique and not cliché.
This is the real challenge of writing your college essay about music. It’s not about whether you can or cannot. It’s about how you can use the unique experiences you’ve had with music to create a profound essay that stands out amongst the rest of the admissions pool.
On one hand, many qualified individuals will write essays about music. On the other hand, there is a lot of versatility to the topic of music. There’s the unique kind of instrument you play, how it makes you feel, how music has helped you grow over time, your relationship with music outside of academics, the spiritual side to music, the psychological benefits of music, and many more things you can write about.
So, the goal is to make a plan on how you can write a college essay about music that stands out and is not cliché. There are many things you can do to make your essay more special and unique.
We’ll be covering this more in-depth in the next section below.
How to Write Your College Essay About Music.
What is the Actual Value?
You don’t have to be a musician to write about music in your college essay.
Music in and of itself is just one topic. They don’t have to be the core focus either. In fact, you can actually use music as a funnel into another topic. So, for example, you may be a creative person who likes to play the piano. However, the main topic of the essay may not be music; instead, it could be the way that learning the piano shaped your relationship with extracurriculars and how you view the arts as a person who identifies as a pro-STEM major student.
You can choose many different directions with music as the background of your topic. However, the crucial element to writing your college essay about music is the value.
The value of the music can come from many directions.
Perhaps music was valuable to you because it demonstrates beauty in a way that is transcendent and meaningful to you. Maybe msuic brings the kind of calm and comfort that you need to handle the difficulties of life. Or, music ushers in the creativity in your mind needed to enable you to think more profoundly.
Whatsoever your topic, it is crucial to write about music in your essay in a manner that demonstrates what the value of music is.
We come across many essays that simply assume the value of music is in the beauty and art of it. However, it needs to be implied where the value is so that admissions officers know what you truly care about in it.
Don’t Just Talk About the Competitions.
In the college admissions process, everyone loves their competitions.
Hey, that’s fair. Who wouldn’t feel deep, strong emotional experiences due to challenges and anxieties from high-pressure competitions?
It’s okay to talk about musical competitions in your college essay. However, you should also note the numbers game. Remember: many other students are going to write about competitions. So, if you’re writing your college essay about music competitions, consider writing also about other elements that make it unique.
Despite the fact that you may have gone through a similar experience as someone else who also competed in a music competition, your experience is unique. The way you experienced your story is different from what other people have. So, understand and deconstruct the elements of your experience with music competitions and capitalize on that in your essay.
More often than not, there is more to the competition than just the competition itself. There’s the fear. There’s the satisfaction that comes with winning from your victory. There’s the guilt of having to overcome defeat. There’s the stage fright. Then, there’s all the infinite possibilities that stem from those.
Remember that if you’re writing your college essay about music, you need to make sure your essays can stand out from the rest of the pool of applicants with similar topics about competitions. So, clarify some of the details that are unique to your experience.
Writing Imagery + How NOT to Write Imagery.
The (topic) (verb) as the (topic) (verb).
It is becoming increasingly common for students to write with imagery using this format of description.
While it’s not always bad, it’s certainly becoming so oversaturated in the college essay pool that admissions officers are becoming numb to hearing this structure of writing. This is probably becoming a much more common structure for students to use because they saw this structure often in example essays that worked for elite institutions.
Here’s an example of this format of writing manifesting itself.
“The curtains rose as my fingers rested on the cello.”
Notice how despite this sentence having nothing truly wrong with it, it’s indicative of a lot of other students’ work. This is such a common structure that you should avoid doing this in your introduction unless absolutely necessary. So, how should imagery look like?
One of the things we recommend students do when writing deep imagery in their college essays is to map out exactly what they were thinking and feeling in that particular instance. Instead of focusing on what happened, focus on what you were feeling. What you’ll realize is that your reaction and your emotions can have a lot to reveal about yourself. So, instead of something like this…
“As everyone stared at me, I could feel the uncomfortable beads of sweat on my forehead roll down my cheek and then my chin.”
You get this…
“I could feel my heartbeat pulsing through my legs. They couldn’t move. Yet, it pulsed. It pulsed deeply, such that it resonated throughout my body and sent waves of shocking terror into my soul. Fear. It was fear. I knew it; yet, I couldn’t admit it —not with a million eyes staring daggers into me.”
Make Sure Admissions Officers Can Infer the Value You Have to the School.
At the end of the day, the college admissions process is about screening students for their fit for the institution.
Is this student capable of succeeding at school? Will they be a good fit for our campus’ social scene? Can they contribute to our clubs or sports? What impact will they have on the entrepreneurship culture? Will they be a net positive to the community?
Of course, this is not something you are required to answer directly in the essay itself. The admissions officers more than likely will be capable of inferring how you will fit in their school.
Let’s say you’re writing about how music provided a way to express your creative side in a manner that was therapeutic. You managed to use music as a way of destressing from the work that you’ve gone through in both school and your many extracurriculars. If you expanded your love for music and managed to create your own custom music to share with others —an online study playlist for instance— then admissions officers can infer that you’re someone who shares the positive force of music. You can be a great addition to the campus, especially if you’re applying for competitive schools in very difficult majors.
Be sure to check the content of your essay. Ask a tutor, college advisor, your school counselor, or a professional college admissions essay editor for help. Ask if they read your
Example College Essay About Music.
How to Really Play the Cello
“Violence.
The cello is capable of many melodic, well, melodies. And, as a student amongst a sea of many hundreds and thousands of other cellists, I’m no stranger to the quintessential cello experience. Suzuki book. Page 1. Again. And again. And again.
It’s hard to tell. After a million “my fingers grazed over the strings gently as I played”, it starts to get torturous. It’s a pathology; no, a sin, to make music boring. Music is a divine gift; and, in our divine arrogance, we’ve standardized and thereby bastardized the beauty of music.
I was sick of it: what my school has done with music.
I was sick of the rising curtains and the expectations and the pretentious sanctimonious holier-than-thou attitude so brutally shoved down my throat that so often constitutes the lifeblood of modern high school orchestra. I was sick of having to play the “right way”. I was sick of the awards. I was disgusted by the tailor at the Men’s Warehouse shooting my mother and I an aristocratic half smile as he got my measurements for the suit I’d wear at the concert because every fiber of fabric had to be “just right”.
Yet, at the back of my mind, I knew the competitive culture and elitism and taboos of cello rules couldn’t hold me back. At the back of my mind, I knew there were greater things to do with the instrument that just haven’t been done yet, nor accepted. It’s not like I wanted it; instead, it’s something I knew had to be done for the sake of true music.
That’s the beauty of music. You can’t just force it to be what you want it to be. You can’t impose your own oppressive opinions into it. It just is. Neither society nor I can choose music to be anything. It chooses itself. It chooses me. And, if I were not to play music in service to it, it would be blasphemy to true music.
So, what did my heart, no, my soul, say about music? What should the cello sound like? There was only one answer.
It was violence.
It cannot be any other way. Others would refute it. Even I would think it insane. But, that’s not my decision to make. The cello decides, not me. And, every other day I played the cello, I knew it had to manifest violently.
So, that’s what I did. I followed my soul knowing how cringey it would sound. I played the cello simply, brutally, violently. The music that came out was pure annihilation. It was… kind of mediocre.
Yet, funnily enough, over time I’ve developed my own style of music that incorporates the cello and other string instruments that I think work well with violent sounding music. Over the past few months of my senior year, I’ve strayed from the conventional competition-hungry cookie-cutter orchestral music I’ve practiced for awards. Instead, I started to develop my own music and publish it on Soundcloud. I’ve used the electric guitar, the bass, the violin, the cello, the drums, my dad’s lawnmower (yeah, I know, trust me), and a whole cacophony of other instruments.
It was liberating. It was freeing. It opened up a new world of artistic vision to me that I never knew existed, but I knew had to manifest for me.
The child of these efforts manifested as my own genre of violent orchestral rock music. Strangely enough, this has led me to a path I never thought I’d take. I realize that I want to use my music to empower future video game developers and help them harness strong and exciting action music in a way that defies conventional video game music.
It’s brutal. It’s unconventional. It’s… weird. But, It’s beautiful. Ultimately, it’s just the way it is, and that’s what makes it music.”
Example College Essay About Music
If you are still struggling with writing your college essay about music, feel free to seek help from our professional college admissions essay editors. Schedule a free 30-minute phone consultation with us, and we’ll get to you as soon as possible to help layout the best way to write your college essay about music. We’ll also show you how to structure your essay and frame your topic in a way that stands out from the rest of the highly-competitive admissions pool.