The Art of Trauma Dumping

Writing about trauma for the main common app essay is like juggling nitroglycerin. Handle it wrong and you blow up your chances. Handle it right, and it detonates in exactly the way readers remember.

E was that kid—perfect grades, APs, leadership roles. But his essays? All résumé without any rhyme or reason. The essays were safe, too, without any seasoning, like bland overdone chicken.

Then we found it as soon as he was trusting enough to open up to me.

His father was an alcoholic. Emotionally abusive. A pariah in the community, a threat at home. However, E didn’t let his father’s torrential rains of abuse drown him. He built an ark of self-preservation. He wound up at a top 20 U.S. boarding school. Not for prestige. For survival.

The essay didn’t scream Look At My Scars. It said: here’s where I bled, and here’s how I stopped it.

The moment we knew it worked? His counselor needed tissues.

E was rejected by his ED of Northwestern, but an Ivy saw him for who he was—and let him in.

The lesson?

Don’t wallow in tragedy and ask for pity. Pain should be beside the point.

Use it as proof.

Admissions officers don’t want broken students. They want students who broke through. Your essay should read like a dispatch from someone who survived, not a cry from someone still sinking.

Write like a war correspondent.

Rise like someone who knows what it means to earn peace.