Speaker 1: Struggling to figure out the ending to your college essay? I got you, fam. I'm Ethan, the College Essay Guy, and in this video I want to talk to you about two ways to maybe not start your college essay, two qualities that I believe are essential to an awesome ending, and then I want to share with you five different techniques that you can use at the end of your personal statement. Let's start with things that I see that don't necessarily work. The first thing that doesn't work, I think, is restating your thesis. What I mean by this is providing a nice little recap of everything that we've just read. Save it for English class. You don't need to do it in your personal statement. Number two is when you end with a quote by a famous person, especially if it's a well-known quote, and you say something like, in the words of fill in the blank, be the change you want to see in the world or something like that. Colleges want to hear from you, so save your fancy awesome quotes for your bedroom wall or something. The other one related to this is ending with something that might be in a hallmark card, and what I mean by this is some beautiful but probably cliche phrase that, again, is probably better put in like, I don't know, a flipped house or a motel bathroom. That sounds bad. I would save those quotes and those cliche phrases for somewhere else. Another thing that students sometimes do is they will refer to things from earlier in the essay that aren't actually early in the essay. So this might sound something like I'm grateful for all the lessons that these experiences have taught me, but when I think about it, I'm like, wait, which experiences are you talking about? Because I didn't really see you talking about experiences that taught you lessons. So make sure that whatever you're referring to, you've actually set up earlier. Speaking of setting things up earlier, to me, the two most essential qualities for an awesome ending, and this is Aristotle by way of David Mamet, are these two qualities. Number one, surprise, and number two, inevitability. Surprise and inevitability are the two qualities that you'll find in common with most of the movies that you love. Think about a romantic comedy, for example. When this person meets this person near the start of the movie, usually about 18 minutes in, you're like, ah, these people are probably going to end up together because, well, these were the people on the poster. But besides that, what you're looking for is to see, are they going to end up together in the way that I expected? Because usually it's not quite, right? There's usually some kind of fake ending and something happens where you think, oh wait, they're not going to end up together. And like, he's running to the airport and he gets there and her plane has already taken off. And you're like, ah, but then he turns around and guess what? She's standing right there. She didn't get on the flight. I don't even know what movie that is. I think I just made it up, but you have seen that movie, right? You're probably going to tell me in the comments what movie that actually is. What you're looking for is surprise and inevitability. And I'm going to give you some examples in just a minute. Let's talk about the five techniques that you can use for your personal statement. Number one, you can just straight up connect to your values. So below this video, you'll find a link to something called the values exercise. And I would ask you, if there are values or qualities that you feel like are really essential to your application, and you feel like maybe even you've kind of been hinting at them in your personal statement, it might not be a bad idea to make them explicit at the end of your essay. Here's what that might sound like. To me, global health is not merely a study. It's an attitude, a lens I use to look at the world. And it's a statement about my commitment to health as a fundamental quality of liberty and equity. Now, those qualities, liberty and equity were for this student, student I worked with years ago, essential to what he was bringing into the world and what he wanted to do in college, to explore how do I find ways to bring more liberty and equity into the world, and how do I do it in particular through medicine? Second idea, the bookend or callback. Now, this is going to be something that's familiar to you from like lots of standup comedians, including Dave Chappelle. Usually, they'll say something early on in their set, and then they'll make some other jokes, make some other jokes. And then at some point, like way later, they'll be like, but it's nothing like the green chair or whatever. They'll refer back to it. And you're like, oh my gosh, the thing that he referred back to way before. And then they just like drop the mic and they're done, right? You can do this in your college essay. And the simple way to do it is in your first or second paragraph, refer to something really specific, tell your story, and then at the end, refer to that thing again. Here's what that sounds like. Here's an example. Here's the start of the essay. I've been pooped on many times. That was literally the first line. I mean this in the most literal sense possible. I've been pooped on by pigeons and possums, house finches and hawks, egrets and eastern greys. Now, the essay goes on to talk about the love of animals and nature and the environment and a commitment to helping preserve the environment. And then here's the ending. The upshot is that I simply cannot walk away from injustice, however uncomfortable it is to confront it. I choose to act, taking a stand and exposing the truth in the most effective manner that I think is possible. And while I'm sure I'll be dumped on many times, both literally and metaphorically, I won't do the same to others. So quick side note, notice there are some nice values mentioned in there. But essentially the student is being like, hey, remember that thing I talked about earlier? Here it is again. And there's this really satisfying moment for you as a reader or if you're watching a movie as a viewer to have a thing called back because you're like, oh my gosh, I feel like I know you because we talked about this thing earlier and you're just doing the thing, coming back to the other thing. So really simple to do this and you don't have to wait until the essay is done to have it like perfectly structured. And quick side note, now this is a great way to do surprise and inevitability because the surprise is like, oh, the dumped on thing. I'm surprised that you talked about that, but also it's kind of inevitable because it's like, oh yeah, right. You talked about that earlier on in the essay. Anyway, third is the road forward, which is basically where you give the reader some sense of what you maybe want to do in the future and you end with some like sense of glorious possibility and probably hope. And here's what that sounds like. Just as my shy persona before debate and my extroverted character after debate are both part of who I am, the Korean civilization is also one. And just as my parents expect much from me, the first of my family to attend college, I have grand expectations for this field of study. So again, you can find all the essays linked below this video, but you get some sense of what the student's going to do in the future. It's probably going to have to do something with like international relations and probably about somehow melding their extroverted side and their introverted side in an interesting way. Why is this great? Because you're essentially inviting the reader to help you finish the story. Does that make sense? So essentially you're like, hey, it would be really cool if I could go and do this, that, and the other. And then you're kind of like sliding your essay across the desk and you'll be like, you're a move reader. Kind of cool. A fourth technique is to connect to your potential future career. Now, quick side note, you don't have to talk about your future career in your personal statement, but if you're sitting there and you're like, I have no idea what I'm going to put for the ending and you read your essay and you're like, you know what? Yeah, there are some really cool qualities that I've shown here and I am kind of interested in this career. Could it be that these qualities have in some ways been preparing you for this future career? Because if so, some of you are having aha moments right now. If so, you could be like, hey, I'm maybe interested in going into this particular career and I believe these qualities will serve me well. Now again, you don't have to do this and you can use some qualifying language. In other words, you can say, I'm not 100% certain I want to do this, but I might be interested in doing this and that could be your ending. Finally, and this is kind of an advanced technique, the why us set up. So the why us essay is one that some schools require, but not all. And they're basically asking, why do you want to attend our school? How are we a great fit? Here's what that might sound like. Retrospectively, I realized that the post, this is like a post that the student made, was my voice of dissent. Through it, I initiated a campus wide discussion and openly challenged the majority opinion of my school for the first time. As I aspire to become a civil rights attorney and the first Asian woman on the Supreme Court, I hope it doesn't take that long. I am confident that I will continue to write and speak out for justice for tomorrow. Quick side note, yes, this student is mentioning a career and yes, also mentioning some values. But what's nice about this one is that this student was applying to Michigan and she wanted to basically say at the end of her personal statement, hey, here's where I see myself going in the future. And then for her why us essay, which was a separate essay, here's how I see Michigan being essential to that journey. So if you have a school that has a why us essay, you can basically think of your ending of your personal statement as the start of your why us or why this college essay. Again, it doesn't work for all schools, but it might work for some of you. You'll find tons more resources at collegeessayguy.com, including a free guide to the personal statement. Below this video, you'll find links to all of the essays that I talked about. And oh, if you liked this video, hit me up with one of these, a ding. And if you really liked it, you can do a subscribe and then I'll let you know when new videos are out. All right. Peace.