How to Craft Your College App Headshot
How can you stand out in a crowd and make an impression that is memorable? Find a way to work in a physical description of yourself, in the manner of a character introduction in a screenplay. Choose two or three physical characteristics and drop these details in as you show yourself engaged in some character-defining activity. Think of Mia Wallace's black bob in Pulp Fiction as she moves to the music, wearing a long white shirt and cropped black pants, watching herself in a dresser mirror.
This type of character introduction, rich in visual detail, isn't just for screenplays; the technique shows up in personal essays, too. In her personal essay about work, "My Summer of Scooping Ice Cream," Shonda Rimes begins like so: "I was not a tall girl. At sixteen, I was barely five feet three inches. That did not work in my favor at the Baskin-Robbins in Park Forest, Illinois." She describes how hard it was to reach the farthest tubs of ice cream, and how sometimes she slipped and landed one hand in the Cookies n' Cream and one hand in the Rocky Road, elbow deep. She doesn't drop the detail of her height gratuitously; it is relevant to how hard it was for her to do her job.
The next physical detail is revealed when Rimes says, "You have not fully lived on this earth until you have tried to wash Pink Bubblegum ice cream out of your cornrows." Now we know, or at least surmise, that this author is Black (which is, indeed, the case). There is nothing ham-handed about the presentation of this detail. The cornrows stand for Blackness, and the cornrows are an important detail within the story about working at Baskin-Robbins because the cornrows made it extra hard to wash the ice cream out of her hair after work. We are barely two paragraphs into the essay, and already we know that the author is short, female, 16 years old, and Black. If you take the trouble to include even this much physical description, your essay will be much more memorable. Almost no one does this in their college admissions essay, and you should!
When I applied to college, applicants were required to attach a headshot-type photograph to their paper application to help admissions officers remember the individual applicants. This practice was rightly discontinued because, of course, your appearance has nothing to do with your academic qualifications, and the practice may well have led to discriminatory selections based on race, ethnicity, or other physical characteristics. Be forewarned, therefore, but I stand firm in my opinion that you should include a physical description. As the main character in your personal essay, you deserve a proper introduction. I'm only asking for two or three details, and you get to choose the details. My point is that any physical details will humanize you on the page, and these details will make you more memorable.