How to Format a College Essay: Advice on Style & Templates

A successful college essay relies more on storytelling technique and strategy than the structured formatting that we expect from academic writing. When writing your essay, the main thing to bear in mind is what college admissions officers are looking for. 

They are not looking for formally structured essays that are written with properly structured thesis statements and supporting paragraphs, as one would expect in a five-paragraph essay. They also aren’t looking for perfect punctuation, appropriate font size, and indentation, and proper consideration of academic style guides. 

Instead, they are looking for someone who is a right fit for the school and who can properly represent their school and its values in the outside world. To convince them that you are that person, the focus should be on telling a story of growth and learning with you at the center. 

In other words, you have to make yourself the protagonist or hero of your own story and make yourself look like someone intelligent, open-minded, well-rounded, and capable of learning and expansion. In this article, we briefly touch upon stylistic considerations when formatting your essay and also provide guidelines on how to tell a compelling story with your essay.

Formatting guidelines for your essay 

Formatting a college essay can refer to either one of two things. It could mean 1. The physical formatting of words on a page and 2.The way you organize information in your essay. Here, we begin with No. 1: The physical formatting of words on a page. 

Questions that students normally have are things like: 

• Should I title my college essay?

• Should I indent or use paragraph breaks in my college essay?

• How many words should my college essay be?

• Etc. 

The table below lists these questions and provides quick answers:

Common Questions on Formatting	Answer
How many words should my college essay have?	A college essay is typically 500 to 650 words, unless you are told otherwise
Should my essay have a title?	There is no requirement for your essay to have a title
Should I indent or use paragraph breaks?	Indentation is typically used, as is the case in academic essays in college settings. However, paragraph breaks are also OK. Just be consistent.
How many paragraphs should I include?	This should be totally reliant on the internal logic of the essay you are writing.
Can I use contractions?	Yes, unlike a formal academic essay, personal statements should be informal and conversational.
Can I use quotations?	Quotations are OK. However, considering the limited word count and the fact that admissions officers are interested in what you have to say, it’s not ideal.
What font size and spacing should I use?	The point is consistency. Any traditional, easy-to-read font can be used.

You should remember that a college essay or personal statement is a kind of hybrid form of writing. Its writing style is supposed to be informal, but it is written in the context of college, where academic writing style is expected. This is why it’s OK to use things like contractions. You don’t have to worry about following punctuation rules to the T and following academic style guides like APA or MLA rigorously. This is not a test about how well you follow the guidelines of academic writing. Instead, it’s about telling a story of yourself and winning college admissions over with it.

Nonetheless, in terms of formatting, it would be better to use typical formatting, such as what we associate with a common style guide like APA, such as Times New Roman, 12pt and paragraph indentation of 0.5 inches. 

You should also avoid formatting such as italics and bolding, especially if you are required to copy and paste your text into a box in the system of the university you are applying to. Such formatting may well be lost. Lastly, it is more effective to get your point across without resorting to formatting such as bolding or italics. 

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What template should you follow when writing your college essay? 

Well, the thing is, there is no template to follow when writing your college essay or personal statement. College essay prompts are deliberately written to encourage students to express themselves creatively. This means you need to rely on storytelling tropes or techniques. 

This may be confusing and overwhelming for many students. How do you write when you have no properly written guidelines on what to include or what to exclude? You should remember, regardless of the prompt that you are responding to, the main topic of any college essay is yourself. 

You should be the hero of your own story, and when writing that story, you should always bear at the back of your mind what college admission officers are looking for. And what exactly is that? 

College admission officers are looking for:

• Someone who is creative and intelligent 

• Someone who shows that they are personally and academically prepared for college life

• Someone who is well-rounded and who demonstrates the capacity and yearning for growth. 

Your college essay is your opportunity to show all of these things. And you do so through storytelling techniques. These qualities are rarely stated explicitly in successful college essays. Instead, they exist as subtext and are simply implied by the kind of details you highlight and what you leave out in the story. 

For example, the ability to craft a compelling essay with a compelling hook illustrates that you are intelligent and creative. Showing your passionate interests in non-academic fields shows that you are well-rounded and capable of balancing academic life with interesting hobbies. 

Now the capacity for learning, growth, and expansion is part literal and part storytelling technique. You should include in your essay narratives that show how you can learn from your mistakes and overcome challenges and shortcomings. If you did not recognize it already, this is the template for creative storytelling that centers on a transformative character arc.

Let’s look at one example. The following college essay was written by a student Katy who attended Hamilton University and is included on the Hamilton University website:

I have never felt such palpable emotion, such profound grief emanating from a space, as I did while hiking through the forest fire scorch in Philmont, New Mexico. A universe had once existed under the protection of these Ponderosa Pine, now black and crusted, turning brittle in the wind. It was a landscape that didn’t sing its laments, but whispered of its loss through every pile of scalded timber and skinny, wavering shadow cast by the hollow towers of ash.

This is poignant storytelling. It begins with the vivid description of a specific setting: a scorched forest in Philmont, New Mexico. She brings the natural setting to life using a literary device known as pathetic fallacy, where you attribute human emotions to nature. But it is not simply a picturesque description. It has depth and meaning when you go on to read the remainder of the story. Katy later sees another patch of forest that was burned 10 years earlier and sees signs of impressive recovery and growth:

This forest, differing from the field of burnt pines we had seen prior, had burned several decades ago. The fire had cleared everything and had left its signature singed onto the bottom 10 feet of every tree. The forest floor was clean. Wild grasses with accents of purple and blue flowers blanketed the ground below the pines like snow, which had fallen while the world was asleep, completely untouched and extending to infinity. Above the burnt limbs of the trees, thick bundles of green needles soared into the sky.

She is juxtaposing these two scenes to make a point. Katy links the contrast between the two forests as a metaphor and symbol for her own growth and development as an individual. She is the first female Boy Scout in her town and doesn’t feel that she has what it takes to be an amazing leader. However, her time as a scout gives her new confidence and a deeper sense of self. 

As she explains, “Though scars remain from my experience, new change and strength have flourished out of the damage.” In this brief essay, she begins with a scene that symbolizes her fear and anxiety over not being a good enough leader. The student then explains how her experience and achievements as a Boy Scout have allowed her to grow and become resilient. This represents the kind of character arc we discussed earlier: writing a story that shows how you grow and transform for the better. 

The point is not to write a pretty story. It is to demonstrate how your perspective and even self has shifted or grown and expanded from experience. It shows college admissions officers that you have dedication and discipline to complete your college program and can actually benefit holistically from the college experience. Admittedly, this is not easy to pull off, which means that you need to start early when writing your essay, rely on studying several college essay examples, and ruthlessly revise and rewrite by yourself or with the help of others, such as your school teachers, who are willing to help.

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Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2026, January 08). How to Format a College Essay: Advice on Style & Templates. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/how-to-format-a-college-essay