Oh, hello there: you’re looking to write a winning college essay about cheerleading that doesn’t sound cliche, right?
Like many athletes, cheerleaders struggle with writing essays that don’t sound like a carbon copy of what others wrote. And hey, that’s fair. It’s not easy to write unique college essays that stand out from the rest!
Now, don’t let this sway you from writing about cheerleading.
Let’s make one thing clear: cheerleading is actually a fantastic college essay topic. It’s full of fantastic metaphors, great potential details, and amazing ways to show your personal characteristics and qualities.
So, long story short. Yes, you can and probably should write your college essay about cheerleading.
The real question you should be asking is “How can I write a solid college essay about cheerleading that isn’t cliche and doesn’t suck?”
And, we’ll show you how to do exactly that! There’s a lot to unpack here. So, grab a notebook and pen —you’re going to be taking some notes! And, if at any point throughout this guide you have any further questions, feel free to ask us for a free consultation!
Alright, without further ado let’s get to the guide!
Table of Contents
- How to Write Your College Essay About Cheerleading
- Example College Essay About Cheerleading That Worked
How to Write Your College Essay About Cheerleading
We’ve compiled 5 important points.
Think of these as the 5 pillars that constitute a winning cheerleading college essay. If you can follow these 5 points, you’ll more than likely have a successful college essay about cheerleading that helps you stand out.
We also based these 5 points on the steps we take when we’re working with our private clients during college consulting sessions.
Note: it’s not mandatory to have all 5 of these points; rather, they should serve as a guideline for crafting a successful college cheerleading essay.
1. Pay Close Attention to the Nuances in Emotions.
This is perhaps one of the most important steps in this article. If you can pay close attention to the nuances in emotions, you can write just about any college essay that blows the rest of the competition out of the waters.
Now, what do we mean by nuances in emotions?
Paying attention to nuances in emotions means looking at moments filled with complex emotions. Often, these include emotions that are difficult to articulate because they’re subtle or hard to describe.
Additionally, these emotions can be a mix of emotions that contradict one another like anger and joy, sadness and happiness, excitement and fear, and grief and freedom.
Here’s an example. Men who get catcalled can have a mix of emotions. On one hand, men seldom get any attention from the opposite gender; so, they think they would appreciate the sentiment. However, catcalls may feel like a severe breach of boundaries that said men may not be familiar with. They would be left with a conflicting feeling of both heightened ego and unfamiliar “ickiness.”
Here’s another example. Let’s say that you’re accepted into the cheer team. But, throughout your experience, you’ve known what it’s like to be ostracized due to the team’s toxic environment and cattiness. However, over time, as you’ve gained experience and become captain, you gained the respect of your peers. On the one hand, you can be happy with the respect you’ve earned. On the other, it’s hard to recognize that said respect was conditional and therefore unempathetic. You may be conflicted internally with said experience and it may shape your relationship with your cheer team.
2. It’s the Small Things That Count Most.
One of the best things you can do when writing your college essay about cheerleading is to pay attention to the small stuff.
That is, zoom in on the details that seem benign and inconspicuous. More often than not, it’s these small details in stories that students miss. Said details carry with them a lot of meaning. They can demonstrate a lot about your character, and ultimately make your essay more profound and in-depth.
Some examples of small details can included but are not limited to…
- The look you remember your parents gave when you were performing.
- The walk home after a game.
- The fear you felt practicing tumbles.
- Being told by others that your experiences aren’t profound.
- Waking up early in the morning for practice, and feeling your body yearn to crawl back to the warmth of the bed.
These small details seem random and ultimately unnecessary. But, they often have a lot of potential within them that lets you funnel into greater themes. Harkon back to the first point: paying close attention to the nuance in emotions. Chances are, these inconspicuous moments in time have complicated emotions that need to be addressed.
For instance, you may notice your parents’ neutral look during your performance made you feel uneasy and ultimately unsupported despite your accomplishments. Yet, you’ve learned to pursue your own success without the glowing approval of others.
Another example: The fear of tumbling during cheer practice has shown you that no matter how great and well-versed your muscles are, you are ultimately human, and susceptible to fear. So, you’ve learned to accept fear.
This is also a great way of preventing your essay from being cliche.
As you zero in on your experiences, you’ll find that the nitty-gritty details are what sets your experience apart from the rest of the admissions pool. Many cheerleaders have won competitions. And, many of them felt fear while doing great moves. But, it’s the little details that carry the unique experiences. You can’t write a unique college essay about cheerleading without atomizing at the micro-level!
3. Don’t Be Afraid to Write With an Unconventional Voice.
If you want to write a college essay that truly stands out, an unconventional voice is your best friend.
This means you shouldn’t write your college essay like you would any other essay. Throw out the 5 paragraph format. Say goodbye to thesis statements.
Instead, start changing your syntax. Be fluid in your sentence structure and don’t be afraid to use lesser-used punctuation such as semicolons, colons, and em dashes. Additionally, mix up the length of your sentences by making some short and others longer. Diversify the length of your paragraphs as well.
And, if you’re brave enough, don’t be afraid to write with a stream-of-consciousness voice. remember: college admissions essays are often written in a narrative format. So, a stream-of-consciousness format can be a fantastic way of standing out from the rest of the applicants.
Some fantastic examples of stream-of-consciousness writing can be found in the works of Virginia Woolf and Leo Tolstoy.
By writing in a more unconventional and unique manner, you don’t just set yourself apart from the rest of the admissions pool. You also get the “full range” of the English language to articulate your thoughts, emotions, and feelings.
4. Imagery is Your Friend.
Make no mistake: any college essay about cheerleading is going to be filled with action, emotion, anticipation, and of course the ensuing adrenaline throughout. That’s why imagery is going to be your friend.
To truly encapsulate the emotions running through one’s mind during cheer, it’s important to ensure admissions officers who are unfamiliar with cheer can empathize.
This demands in-depth imagery.
You can achieve this through strong diction, powerful metaphors, and even changing the tone and pace of your writing.
Often, we find that the best imagery in essays involves focusing more on the way things feel rather than what is happening at a literal level. It doesn’t mean you can’t mention the smiles on your friends’ faces or the way your peers looked standing atop one another. But, just don’t forget to mention the emotional elements; and, get very deep into it!
Here’s an example.
Bad imagery: “Practice starts at the end of school. We all gather together to meet outside the gym; then, we congregate at the field where we do drills. And, it’s both very exciting and intimidating. After all, I’ll be throwing myself into the air. “
Good imagery: “The final period is the best and worst of times, the most exciting and dreadful. For, it’s the end of academic brain training where I sit still for forever and a half and the beginning of cheer: the totally sensible sport of launching oneself into the air. Every day after school is a defiance of gravity, a mockery of physics, and a testament to human hubris. ‘Yeah, it’s nonsensical to do this; but, it’s cool…’ quoth probably some archaic founder of cheer as a sport. And hey, hypothetical ancestor to cheer: you’re not wrong!”
In the first example, the writer only says what is happening from a surface level. However, in the second, we can truly see the writer’s feelings about the absurdity of cheer, yet their subtle appreciation of said absurdity.
5. Remember to Connect Important Themes and Motifs.
Between the subtext of every essay is a set of themes and motifs. These themes help admissions officers infer more about you as a person.
For instance, your experience as a cheerleader may cover the overall theme of the difficulty of leadership. Or, it may cover the challenges that come with overcoming fear. Regardless, these themes are intertwined in every experience. And, it’s up to you to find these themes and draw them out from your story.
This lets admissions officers make deeper inferences about you when they’re reading about your cheerleading experience. It’s also one of the best ways to actually demonstrate growth over time.
Here’s an example: you may start out your essay by talking about how hard it was to fit in with your cheerleading team. But, as you get to know everyone over time, you realize that as friendly as you hope to be as a fellow cheerleader, you can’t force certain people to like you. The experience teaches you that not every story has a happy ending; and, you can be at peace with the knowledge that not every team member will like you, and it’s within their right.
This covers the themes of respect for boundaries, self-acceptance, and humility. It also demonstrates to admissions officers that while you may start out with good intentions, you learned a valuable lesson about accepting defeat when you know there’s no victory to be had.
Cheerleading is full of instances of growth. So, highlight those moments! Did your experience in cheer help share your personal character and personality? Has it contributed to a better work ethic that translated into your academics, research, and other extracurriculars?
Admissions officers don’t just want to hear about cheerleading. They want to know how it has shaped you as a person. And, they want to see how those characteristics you’ve gained can contribute to a great campus community in their school. So, give them what they want!
Example College Essay About Cheerleading That Worked
In this example cheerleading application essay, our client answered the Common App Prompt 7. The prompt was limited to 650 words.
We’ve pasted it below for your convenience.
Common App Prompt 7
“Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.”
Common App Prompt 7, Official Website
Vanderbilt Example College Essay About Cheerleading
“Yeah, yeah.
To witness cheerleading is to hear the roar of thunderous applause… or, “Even Hell’s thunder can be muted…” or, more cheering and clapping and thundering and “stuffs” that constitute most cheerleading stories. Oh, I know: it’s been said time and time again; I just had to complain —if you could tolerate my poetic candor against athletic descriptions.
Clapping and applauding and more… wait, I already said that.
Long story short: yuck!
I never quite liked talking about the loud applause and attention that came with cheer. It was always rather rowdy to me. If anything, the big events where everyone is watching in anticipation while people clap have always been so anxiety-inducing.
I know —ironic, right? I mean, why get into cheer to begin with, then?
That’s the nonsensical thing I have a hard time explaining to everyone; yet, here I am, trying to articulate it now!
It all starts with my budding anxiety and mild ADHD, the latter of which “should” have posed a threat to my academic performance yet unusually seemed to make school more enjoyable —the mind is weird that way, I don’t make the rules here.
I was first diagnosed when I was a Sophomore.
I shouldn’t’ve been too surprised. After all, big crowds give me headaches and I often find myself the wallflower of most parties. Yet, it was with one of my close friends with whom I learned something peculiar about myself. We were exploring a beach sand dune one summer when we decided to race to the top.
“…sure?” I said.
And, I felt an explosion of fire in my legs. My mouth tasted metal, and my lungs were going to burst. I kicked off the ground, feeling like I was lifting concrete off my shins. It was… amazing?
Oh gosh… I’m an adrenaline junkie.
Okay, that’s the weird thing. I love, love, love exerting bursts of energy. If it doesn’t feel like my life depends on it, and if I don’t feel my body giving in to primal fury, I don’t want it. Hyperbolic? Sure. But, that’s just me. Yet, the kinds of activities involving such adrenaline often also rope in the most extroverted people I know.
Cheer. Football. Solo backpacking. Powerlifting.
Frankly, I don’t know what to feel. I suppose this is where I should have some clever quip. But, I really don’t know. I joined cheer because I love the rush, yet I’m somewhat afraid of people.
Nonetheless, these days I’ve come to appreciate extroverts and the loud applauding and crowd forming that comes with them. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes it’s a bit much for me, and I need to take a breather. But, that’s just part of life! I can’t always have what I want; however, I might make unexpected friendships by doing what makes me uncomfortable.
Conflicted feelings about cheer. A love of the rush, and a fear of the people. So, I embrace fear.
And, isn’t that what cheerleading is all about? We suspend fear and fling ourselves in the air, in defiance of nature’s laws, in pursuit of some higher physical aesthetic performance for all to see. The suspension of fear lifts the canopy of doubt to unveil the fruits of my audacity at defying the limitations of the human body: the sound of thunderous applause flying in the air as the crowd che…
Well, you get the point.”
Example College Essay About Cheerleading, Accepted Into Vanderbilt
If you’re still struggling to write a successful college essay about cheerleading, don’t worry. We’ve come across a lot of other students who are in the same boat. Yet, there are many like you who write about cheerleading and still get accepted into some of the best schools in the nation —yes, including our own. That’s why we recommend you consider speaking with us for a free consultation! We’ll get back to you within 24 hours, and show you the best methods for writing your essay to maximize your chances of success!
