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Regarding college essays:
Okay, I have an opinion that might not be the best opinion, but I feel like it's the right opinion xD
If you do your own research, you'll find plenty of articles, books, reviews etc on how to write the perfect college essay. It doesn't hurt to browse these, but for the love of god please do not conform to them. If you read through them, they all seem to be pretty similarly written, kind of humorous, high register, and friendly. While it's good to be like that in general, please don't do that on purpose.
To me, they don't stick out and they're very cookie cutter. They're not bad though, and often enough, they're extremely successful in getting into college, which is why my advice might not make a lot of sense. But if you're applying to a college that has a lower acceptance rate than most, it's important to have something that is completely YOU and not just humorous, intellectual, or friendly (even though you may be all three of those things).
This can be a long process, so while I was trying to figure out what to write about in my college essays, I kept a journal. I would write in it as often as I could, and not a daily record of what I had done, but whatever thoughts came into my head. I had a really hard time getting out of the "research paper" style, so writing a stream of consciousness really helped figure out what my own voice sounded like. I feel like that's the most important thing. It can be a process of understanding the type of person you are and what you want to tell people. If you want to go into illustrating, you could jot down some thoughts that suddenly spring up about drawing and how it makes you feel (sounds lame but it can work) and get your emotion onto the page in a really raw form.
Once you've been writing often, an essay itself might come more naturally. Though of course, if you do a stream of consciousness sort of thing in a journal, you'll have to increase its readability in an essay by giving things a little more sense and coherence.
Now I really wish I could give you an example and say I got into Yale or Princeton, but to be honest, I didn't. I applied to Yale with an essay I felt really fantastic about by using this method, and they may not have liked it, but I think it might've been more likely that I didn't have perfect grades and test scores. If I did get in, my advice would be pretty spot on, but with all college essays, it's more or less a shot in the dark.
And if you're not applying to any big-name schools, I would still suggest that you try to do well with the essays. In illustration I assume your portfolio will be the most important, but sometimes passion can only be seen through words.
Just like you might try so many different things with art, do that with writing as well so you can discover what you want people to know and not just tell them what you think they want to know. The essays are about you, not them, even though it may seem like that.
This is really just my personal opinion though and I've given it a lot of thought, so hopefully it might be a little thing you'll consider c:
I wish you all the luck in the world!
