Hi! My name is Luke Peterson and I'm a senior in high school who was recently accepted to Yale, UNC (as a Morehead-Cain Scholar), UMich, and more. In this post, I'll explain the idea of "building a narrative" in college applications.
First and foremost: CONSISTENCY IS KEY! No matter what underlying narrative you want to pursue, you want your application to be coherent and build on itself. For example, you could have some of your extracurriculars relate to your supplemental essays, illustrate similar themes throughout your writings, and group similar extracurriculars together in your ec list. Admission Officers (AO) want to get to know the whole applicant, and being consistent throughout your application will help them get a clear, strong picture of who you are. This does NOT mean you should put yourself in a box—do not fall into some sort of stereotype or limit yourself because you think college admissions officers want a certain type of student. Embrace your uniqueness, just make sure your entire application isn't scattered.
Now onto actually building/choosing your narrative. Your narrative should be somewhat broad but clear enough that AOs can pick up on it. Think about the academic areas you've pursued throughout your high school experience. Have you taken a lot of STEM classes? Are you involved in politics? Do you make art? Choose some core academic interests (note that "interests" is plural—do not stick to one single core subject and obsess over it in your app) to highlight in your application and brainstorm a theme. Make sure this theme is dynamic—don't just be an engineer, relate engineering to other interests too. Some examples include: looking at injustice through a scientific and social lens (this is the narrative I centered myself around), using computer science to code cures for illnesses, understanding linguistics to create clear communication between the scientific community and everyone else, etc. You want the narrative to encompass multiple attributes and interests but still have a clear message the AO can take away.
As tricky as this sounds, this theme should not be the ONLY thing you write about. You should center a decent chunk of your Common App around this narrative, but it might be beneficial to throw in some new quirks in supplemental essays. You also want to make sure your narrative is not strictly academic. Show why your personal qualities drive you to pursue this narrative as well. After reading your entire app, an AO should be able to know your academic/career pursuits, why you wish to pursue those things, what unique qualities you have that will help you pursue those interests, and what you bring to their college community. Above all, your application should be authentically YOU.
Finally, remember that I am not an AO and these are strictly coming from my experience.
Luke, TBD ’29