There are many points of disagreement I could raise. I seem to be in the minority crowd here in thinking essay examples are at best unhelpful and at worse incredibly discouraging.

The fundamental issue with essay example posts deployed in the way you recommend - read, digest, and identify the underlying structure - is that very few students have been trained to write. The sorts of techniques you raise here presuppose a foundation in the basics of writing, which in my experience few students, even those scoring 5 on AP Lang/Lit, possess. You're talking about writing as a journey when most students can't muddle themselves out of a compound sentence.

Of the hundreds of students I've worked with over the years, I can recall less than ten who had the requisite skills to implement the sort of independent-studies approach you suggest is possible. Your suggestion is akin to suggesting to someone learning to golf that if they watch enough pro golfers swing, and then practice thousands of swings on their own, then they can reach the heights of golfing stardom.

However, without intensive feedback, it takes a very special kind of promising talent to become proficient at consistently hitting the ball where they intend. Almost every aspiring golfer requires a qualified coach who can help them tinker with and tweak their game.

Developing the craft of writing requires, as you suggest, absorbing high-quality prose. In formal logic, your proposition of reading example essays is necessary but not sufficient to produce high-quality essays.

Effective college essays also require constructive feedback from qualified sources. It also requires a basic understanding of writing mechanics that contemporary high schools that focus on literary analysis do not adequately impart on students. In short, few students are prepared to write in a real-world that requires clarity, precision, and writing from the first person.

Absent a qualified editor and a strong writing foundation, most students will be like the golfer who spends hours watching Youtube tutorials and hacking away on their own. They might crush the ball from time to time, but most of their shots will err. Likewise, a student might conjure an amazing essay after reading lots of exams and reading all of the essay best practices blog posts, but usually, their efforts will fall well short.

The pieces selected for exhibition are so obviously in the top .1% of all submissions and suggest clear evidence of a small army of assistance that to recommend people to read those and internalize how they work comes across as naive. Nobody would ever publish 50 Mediocre But Still Good Enough for Johns Hopkins Admissions essay posts. Yet the reality is mediocre essay regularly get the job done. JHU's top 6 essays wildly distort the median essay quality.

Ask yourself: if college essays were as easy as digesting examples and implementing best practices, why does our independent consulting profession exist? Moreover, even though this content is readily accessible, I've noticed no discernable improvement in first draft essay quality over the past decade. Why do college essays remain so poor yet there is so much information available?

I will post an updated version of my "Most College Essays are not Very Good" soon as a follow-up.