Guide to College Admissions Leadership Essays By Sarah O’Neill Chester County Supreme Editing

 Describe a time where you demonstrated leadership.

Colleges want to cultivate leadership skills in their students, and they’re looking to admit students who take initiative in the classroom and beyond. Think about times in your life where you’ve solved a problem, led a team or guided others.

Example Prompts

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time. — University of California

Describe how your experiences, perspectives, talents, and/or your involvement
in leadership activities (at your school, job, community, or within your family) will help you to make an impact both in and out of the classroom while enrolled at UT. — UT Austin

What They’re Actually Asking

● What do you believe are the most important qualities in a leader? How do you demonstrate those qualities?
● Do you work well in a team?
● How do you overcome challenges?
● How do you learn from challenges?

Example Essay

With a score of 2:5, the curtain came down on another defeat. The moment I heard the referee say it was over, I threw my fencing helmet heavily on the ground. My teammates surrounded me. None of us were prepared to lose the first match of the season to a not-so-strong opponent.
Out of the six teams from our school, the only team that lost was ours — the
women’s epee. On the bus ride back, I didn’t say a word, slow to accept this humiliating defeat; our team didn’t lose because of our strength, but because we couldn’t enter a state of focus.

The whole team was immersed in my bad mood. The next day, our loss still echoing in my mind, I made my way to the men’s sabre competition. They lost 4:5, but when the players walked off the field, the atmosphere was joyful. Everyone kept repeating, “We almost made it,” “You were great,” and “Well done!” I was moved, realizing that encouragement could have such an overwhelming effect.

As the team captain, I spent hours teaching new members the ropes. I put
thought into how I assigned my team members to groups for competitions. I encouraged teammates during practice, and caught up with them after class to remind them of game times. But I realized that what I was missing as a captain was the ability to stay positive, even when I felt defeated.

Later in the tournament, I walked up to the teammate who was preparing to go on the field, handed her the epee, and said to her, “You can do it.” All the teammates gathered together to loudly give her encouragement.
The moment the referee said 5:3, joy surrounded everyone around me — and I finally understood my responsibility and role as a captain.

What Should I Write About?

Think about times you really contributed.
Your leadership role doesn’t need to be a high-level elected position. (For example, “I look after my grandmother every Wednesday” can demonstrate leadership qualities.) However, your contributions should be significant.
Did you carefully observe your robotics club’s inefficient new member training process, and implement new and improved training policies? Did you spend days researching public speaking techniques to improve your team’s chances at an entrepreneurship competition? Think about the results of your leadership. What has improved as a result of your involvement?

Build a story.

For this prompt, it may be tempting to just list off everything you’ve accomplished in a particular leadership position, resume-style. Though it’s great to list your accomplishments in your essay, remember that you can offload some of that to your Activities section to give yourself more space for storytelling. Remember to structure your essay around an interesting story of some kind. What’s a memorable moment
behind your leadership experience?

Brainstorming

1. What qualities make a good leader? I’ve started you off with 2 examples, but I want you to come up with at least 5 more. Think about the leaders that you’ve admired in the past: what makes them so good at their job?

- good at communicating with others
- willing to learn new things

2. When and how have you demonstrated leadership in your life? Do you lead a club? Do you act as a mentor to others on your sports team? You don’t need to have an official leadership position in order to demonstrate leadership. Shoot for 5 examples.

- Playing first stand in my youth orchestra section
- Working with kids as a summer camp counselor
- At school — a lot of my classmates are hesitant to speak up in class so I
usually go first, and then encourage other people to speak up
- I’m the captain of my school’s volleyball team
- Setting a good example for my siblings

3. Pick your favorite example from the above list. List everything you can
remember doing as a leader. If you had any failures, what did you learn, and how would you improve your actions next time?

captain of my volleyball team

Things I do regularly:
- teach new members
- show up to every practice (setting a good example)
- lead warm-ups twice a week
- encourage teammates during tournaments
- keep track of how my teammates can improve and give advice
- communicate with my coach
- remind everyone of upcoming match dates

Important moments I remember:
- when I was elected captain by my team — by a huge margin! — I was
unsure about my ability to lead, but I had some good conversations with
my teammates afterwards where they pointed out different times I’d been
a leader already
- being overly helpful and nitpicky during my first month as captain, learning that my teammates were already thinking about how to improve and that I could be more hands-off and trust them more
- having to communicate with Yvette and explain our coach’s decision to
bench her for an important game even though she was a senior
- learning about the different ways I could strategize and contribute from
the sidelines when I sprained my ankle
- winning our regional tournament!

4. Pick one of those important moments you remember. How does that moment demonstrate the qualities that make a good leader?

learning to be more hands-off with teammates

- demonstrates my tendency to pay attention and be helpful (even if I took it too far)
- shows that I now trust my teammates and have better knowledge of how
to encourage their growth — I also improved my teaching methods
- the experience taught me to delegate teaching roles to other people in a
strategic way

5. Think about the overall impact of your leadership. How have you made your group or community better than it was before?

- taught new skills, helped new members (especially Tara) grow more
confident
- led team to a regional tournament win AND national quarterfinals!
- helped recruit 4 new first-year students to the team

Example Outline

Part 1: Introduce your leadership role. (Alternatively, if you have the space, you can also open at the beginning of a scene — your important moment from brainstorming step 4 — to draw readers into the story! See the example essay on page 2 of this guide for one example.)

Directing the play “The Love Letter” for my school’s Chinese Drama Club was the first time I was a formal leader of a big event.

Part 2: What are some of the things you did in your time as a leader? See
brainstorming step 3.

Inspired by my teacher’s guidance to the cast to work as “we,” not “I”, I led
efforts to design the poster, distribute design work, devise lighting, and plan team-building games. Even more went into organizing rehearsals, such as setting up the schedule and gathering my group members. Compelled to inspire our best work and strengthen communication, I arranged conversations before and after every rehearsal, in which everyone sat closely in a circle, talking about their feelings,
reflecting on what went well and what needed improvement, and encouraging each other. Sometimes, I invited peers outside of the group to provide feedback, as it was important to respond to criticism. We named the conversations “Circussion,” which proved to be a huge success and eventually became our club tradition.

Part 3: Segue into your important moment from brainstorming step 4. What happened? What actions did you take? However, as performance day closed in, one actor said he couldn’t attend the play. We didn’t have an alternate for his role, and it was nearly impossible to find another actor. Staying calm, I thought of ways to find back the lost “we” and
encouraged everyone to stay motivated. “I will fix it. Trust me,” I said in
Circussion. When I spoke to the student alone, it turned out he was
overwhelmed by college applications and unable to handle rehearsals. After explaining the situation to the group, we stood in his shoes and attempted to come up with a remedy. Together, we decided to let someone read his lines in his absence and send him the Circussion notes. I also worked with him whenever he had time, informing him of the updates.

Part 4: Conclude your story and reflect on the impacts of your leadership. See brainstorming step 5.

In the end, the play worked out and was more influential than we expected,
making headlines on the school’s social media. We were invited to have another two rounds of performances during the Chinese Spring Festival celebration. From the memorable directing experience, I concluded that a leader should plead for and value collaboration and communication to guide a group to achieve a joint goal, strengthening “we,” not “I”.

Thank you for reading!

Sarah O’Neill Chester County Teacher Supreme Editing Coatesville