What To Do When Your Teen Begs ‘Can Someone Please Read My College Essay’
9:17 PM, kitchen counter. I’m picking pepperoni grease off my laptop keyboard, half answering a last-minute email from the PTA. My oldest, Lila, a high school senior, has been camped at the other end of the counter for two hours, clicking and backspacing so loud it’s been hard to concentrate. Then she shoves her chair back so hard it scrapes the tile, and says exactly what I’ve been dreading: “Can someone please take the time to read my college essay? I’ve rewritten this opening four times and I can’t tell if it’s good or just garbage at this point.”
I immediately minimize my email, pull my chair over. “Sure, pull it up, I’ll read it right now.” I’m already gearing up to check for run-on sentences, make sure it hits all the points I’ve read admissions officers care about. She shares the doc, I start reading. The opening is: “I killed Mrs. Henderson’s hydrangea on my second week working at the town nursery.” I look up at her immediately. “Wait, you open with killing a plant? Shouldn’t you start with something that shows you’re capable? Like, what if you lead with how you organized the spring sale instead?”
Lila’s face closes, she crosses her arms, leans back. “Never mind. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have asked.” She yanks the laptop back toward her, and that’s that for 10 minutes.
Dave, my husband, who’s been loading the dishwasher, pauses, wipes his hands on his jeans, pulls out the chair next to her. “I’ll read it. But I can’t give it the time it deserves tonight. I’ve got a 7 AM staff meeting tomorrow, but I’ll read it on my lunch break, write down my thoughts, and we can talk after dinner tomorrow. Is that okay?” Lila blinks, then nods, shares the link with him, and goes back to scrolling TikTok while we clean up.
I’ve talked to a dozen other parents of seniors this fall, and almost every one of us has had this exact moment. When your kid asks for someone to read their essay, our first instinct is to jump in and fix it. We’ve got all these quiet worries: what if they mess up their one shot? What if a silly opening costs them a spot at their dream school? So we turn a request for a read-through into a full overhaul, before we even ask what they actually need.
What I’ve realized, after this night and a conversation with Lila’s college counselor last month, is that when a teen says “can someone take the time to read my college essay,” they rarely mean “can someone rewrite this for me.” Nine times out of ten, they’ve been staring at the same 650 words for so long they can’t tell if the story they’re trying to tell is actually coming through. They just want another pair of eyes that will actually pay attention, not immediately jump to changing everything.
Twenty-four hours later, Dave followed through. He read it over lunch, just like he said, and when we sat down after dinner, he pulled up the doc to show us his comments. There were only three: “This part where you came back the next spring and saw new growth on the hydrangea, after you thought you killed it? That made me feel it. Super good.” “I got a little lost here when you talk about what your manager taught you about patience—can you add one sentence to clarify what she actually said?” “This sounds exactly like you. Don’t change anything else.” That was it. No line edits, no changing the topic to something “more impressive,” no suggestions to swap out plain words for bigger ones to sound smarter.
Lila sat there for a minute, then clicked over to that one confusing paragraph, added one sentence, and closed the doc. That was the final version she submitted.
I’ve started telling this to other parents I know who are going through this, and I give them three specific small things to do when their kid asks for a read. First, before you agree to anything, ask one question: “What kind of feedback are you looking for right now?” Sometimes they do want grammar checks, sometimes they just want to know if the story lands. Asking that takes the guesswork out, and keeps you from overstepping before you even start. Second, it’s okay to say no to an on-the-spot read at 9 PM when both of you are tired and cranky. You can say, “I don’t want to rush this, I’ll give it my full attention tomorrow” and that’s not being unsupportive—it’s giving them what they actually asked for: your time, not half your attention while you check your phone. Third, if you’re the one reading, cap your feedback at three points max. One thing you loved, one thing that confused you, one note on whether it sounds like them. That’s it. Any more than that, and it starts to feel like you think their work isn’t good enough.
I saw this go wrong last year with a friend of mine. Her daughter wanted to write her essay about working the drive-thru at McDonald’s and learning how to de-escalate rude customers after a long shift. My friend talked her into rewriting it to be about her weekend volunteer work at the animal shelter, because it “looked better” on an application. Her daughter ended up with an essay that sounded nothing like her, and she still talks about how the whole application process felt like it wasn’t even hers, even though she got into a good school.
Right now, we’re waiting for admission decisions. No one knows how it’s going to go. Lila doesn’t talk about her essay much, but last week she said she’s glad she got to send the one about the hydrangea. “Even if I don’t get in, it’s still me that sent it,” she said. That’s more than any of us can ask for, I think. We can’t control the admissions decisions, but we can control whether we take the time to actually read the essay, instead of just rushing to fix it.
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