710: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 9: Where I Grew Up) with Hillary Dickman

710: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 9: Where I Grew Up) with Hillary Dickman

From The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions by Ethan Sawyer

May 26, 2026 · 50 min · Season 7 · Episode 10

About this episode

Ethan Sawyer discusses personal storytelling in college essays with Hillary Dickman, exploring the admission reader's perspective.

Hi, friends, and welcome back to our series, "On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling." where we take a close look at personal essays written by real students, talking about why we love them, what makes them work, and how they came to be. In this episode, I'm joined by Hillary Dickman, Senior Assistant Director of Admission at Colorado College. In past episodes, we've really broken down these essays and gotten into the nooks and crannies of what makes them work. But in this episode, I really wanted to get a sense of how Hillary sees essays from an admission reader's perspective. We get into: What Hillary hopes to learn about a student when she sits down to read their essay What a great essay can do that the rest of the application can't How much essays matter and whether or not that's changed over the last few years. Why Colorado College does not have any AI reading essays or applications and doesn't have plans to. She gives us an inside look at what it's like having your essay read in committee by as many as 13 people, and There's a moment in the episode where she imagines that I'm the co-reader reading the application with her and gives me the notes that she…

More episodes of The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions podcast page.