college essay about being gay

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Good College Essays About Being Gay: A Deep Dive into Authenticity and Identity

Understanding the importance of college essays.

College essays are an essential aspect of the college application process, providing a platform for students to showcase their personality, experiences, and achievements. It is an opportunity for students to present themselves beyond their grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities. The college essay offers a glimpse into the student’s life, values, and aspirations. It is a chance to set oneself apart from the thousands of other applicants vying for admission.

The Stigma Surrounding LGBTQ+ Students

The LGBTQ+ community has faced social stigmas for centuries. While significant progress has been made towards acceptance, it remains a difficult topic to navigate. Despite the increasing visibility and acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals, the process of coming out and being true to oneself can be challenging, particularly for young people. College essays provide an opportunity to share the LGBTQ+ experience with those who may not understand it, thus increasing awareness and promoting acceptance.

Authenticity is Key

The most important aspect of writing a college essay is being authentic. Authenticity is essential because it not only reflects the student’s true self, but it also helps the admissions committee get a sense of who the student is beyond their application. It is crucial to avoid presenting a false image of oneself in the essay, as it can lead to disappointment and rejection if the student does not live up to that image in real life. Students should focus on writing honestly and passionately about their experiences, values, and aspirations.

Tips for Authentic Writing

• Write from the heart and tell your story.
• Avoid trying to fit into a mold or writing what you think the admissions committee wants to hear.
• Be specific and detailed in your writing to help the reader visualize your experiences.
• Use vivid language to convey your emotions and feelings.
• Show, don’t tell. Use anecdotes to illustrate your points.

Writing about Being Gay

Writing a college essay about being gay can be a daunting task. It requires a delicate balance between authenticity, vulnerability, and advocacy. It can be challenging to navigate the complexities of being LGBTQ+ and the impact it has on one’s personal and social life. However, it is an opportunity to provide a unique perspective on the LGBTQ+ experience and to promote understanding and acceptance.

Dos and Don’ts

• Do write about your experiences and how they have shaped you.
• Do share your feelings and emotions about your sexuality.
• Do advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and promote acceptance.
• Don’t write about being gay as if it is a choice or a phase.
• Don’t focus solely on the negative aspects of being gay.
• Don’t use offensive language or make derogatory remarks about others.

Conclusion: Embracing Your Identity

In conclusion, writing a good college essay about being gay requires authenticity, vulnerability, and advocacy. It is an opportunity to showcase one’s true self and provide a unique perspective on the LGBTQ+ experience. Writing about being gay can be challenging, but it is also a chance to promote understanding and acceptance. Embracing one’s identity and sharing it with others can be a transformative experience for both the writer and the reader.

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My sexual orientation isn't important to colleges

By RUDY MALCOM | March 1, 2018

 GUILLAUME PAUMIER/CC BY 2.0

Malcom is grateful that he didn’t talk about being gay on his common app.

A friend told me recently that someone she knew was applying to transfer out of Hopkins. “Even if I absolutely fucking hated it here, I don’t think I’d ever transfer,” I said to her. “I refuse to relive the stress of the college admissions process ever again.”

Notwithstanding the chronic disappointment of searching for an empty cubicle on C-level on a Sunday night to be met only with seats saved by crusty JanSport backpacks, fortunately I am truly enjoying being a student at Hopkins. Never would I ever shed my elite azure wings and vacate the Hopkins nest. Forever a Blue Jay, man.

Admittedly, however, it ruffled those very feathers slightly when I saw on Facebook in early December that someone from my high school had been accepted Early Decision to the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), from where I had first been deferred and now (thankfully) rejected. But during my senior year, when even being asked for a pen (Penn, get it?) was distressing, I wondered: Would I have gotten into Penn had I responded differently to “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it” on the Common App? Specifically, would I have gotten into Penn had my essay been about being gay? 

A New York Times article from 2013 found that many LGBTQ students believed that coming out in their essays could bolster their likelihood of admissions, while others thought doing so could have the opposite or no effect.

I was the last person I knew to start my Common App essay. I procrastinated it like no other assignment (except maybe the orientation Common Read), because the topic I had chosen was not the one I really wanted to write about. In a passcode-locked app on my phone, I had compiled phrases that began to describe how the metaphorical closet felt. 

I wanted desperately to put pen (ha) to paper and explain how I felt like a formaldehyde-preserved frog — puffed up on the outside, trapped in a disguise, not fully alive. I had spent more than one English class curriculum reading about superficiality from the slave-owning, pseudo-pious aristocrats of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to phonies in The Catcher in the Rye . Nevertheless, I felt as though I was the character I had learned to hate. I was hiding my sexuality behind a perhaps paper-thin veneer of straightness. I was fake.

A couple of months after my deferral from Penn, I went to an interview for a different university. My interviewer asked me if I had any new information to add to my application. Without knowing how she would react, I told her that I had come out, just days before, as gay to my parents. Would divulging this secret, by means of some sort of affirmative action, secure my admission to the Ivy League? Luckily she happened to be a marriage and family therapist and not one of the conversion variety. She congratulated me and then asked me how being gay had affected my academics.

I had never considered this. I stammered out something about how concealing my being gay had been stressful and made it hard to concentrate. Was this true? Once while taking a calculus test (yes, my STEM friends, I once knew integration by parts and u-substitution), I was indeed preoccupied, not directly by being gay but by my anguish over someone who perhaps served as a symbol for all my internalized homophobia. Someone manipulative and toxic with whom I had been close friends. Someone who frequently called me a faggot (only because he “wanted me to be one,” he once said).

I am glad that I didn’t write my essay about pining after a self-identifying straight male, even if he did send me a whole rainbow of mixed signals. College applicants should use their essays to demonstrate their maturity, not to write hackneyed sob stories indicating that they possess the emotional intelligence of a seventh grader with an unrequited crush. Only in hindsight have I learned anything valuable from the experience with him. 

When I wrote my Common App essay, I had not yet achieved self-acceptance for being gay. But what if I had? Naturally, I turned to College Confidential .

One user wrote that they didn’t “see how your sexuality is relevant to college admission.” Another found that “the coming out essay is overdone and a yawner for admissions.” Someone else asked “why just being gay makes you a better candidate than someone else” and said that they “would be more impressed by accomplishments, creativity, community service, internships and the like.” 

A different person advised that “it’s not enough to say you felt ostracized, confused, abandoned, self-pitying or suicidal... How did you overcome those feelings/fears and become a better person despite everything that has happened to you?” Someone added to this sentiment by saying “you want to show how you’ve made a difference, rather than wallowing in self-pity.” I would not have been able to do so.

I am grateful that homophonic writing implements — not homophobic parents — caused me suffering my senior year of high school and that the most difficult part of being gay was liking a selfish guy with a fragile masculinity. At the time, I had experienced no personal growth; I had only endured.

As one last College Confidential user put it, at the end of the day, “a good essay is a good essay, whether or not one mentions being gay.” Wow, that sentence rhymed. I suppose I’ve just unconsciously expressed an aspect of my identity. Here I am coming out to you in this article (though not for my first time in The News-Letter ) as... Writing Sems.

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https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/reflections-growing-gay-and-solace-science

Taking Measure

Just a Standard Blog

Reflections on Growing Up Gay and the Solace of Science

Typical day in my lab. 

I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the mid-’70s into a blue-collar family. My father was a carpenter and my mother was a homemaker. My family was of modest means, but we always had enough food to eat and always had a roof over our heads.

On the occasional summer weekend, my parents would scrape enough money together for us to go on a road trip to a neighboring lake town, memories I cherish to this day. My early childhood years were mostly those of a typical happy-go-lucky boy. I was usually in good spirits and I had everything that I needed. Despite that, I didn’t really fit in with my “peer” group of pre-teen boys. I didn’t like sports, I didn’t particularly care for outdoor activities, and most of my friends were girls. The few male friends I did have as a child, I would learn later in life were also gay (more on that later).

Throughout my childhood, this lack of fitting in persisted. I just didn’t want to do what other boys wanted to do. And I didn’t have this peculiar attraction to girls that other boys had. I recognized that it is was only peculiar to me. I understood what the attraction was, and I looked for it within myself. I looked a lot, but couldn’t find it.

The only place I found peace and solace was in studying, so that is what I did and did it pretty intensely. I used those pursuits to distract myself from all the pain associated with not fitting into the pre-made social machinery around me. I didn’t have to go to the weekend school dance, because I was too busy studying for the chemistry exam on the following Monday. This paid other dividends with my peers at school. Since I worked so hard to fully understand the materials, it became easy for me to explain them to other students who needed help. I had found a way to be accepted by my peers; I could be the best nerd in the class!

In high school, I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to the University of Tulsa that covered most of my tuition costs and ultimately resulted in a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. During my undergraduate days, I reunited with some of my elementary school friends and they introduced me to the local gay scene. There were a handful of gay bars that we would frequent, and for the first time in my life, I found a community where I was accepted and not judged. I was finally ready to come out to the world in general, and I didn’t care anymore who knew I was gay. (Before this time, I held this secret very tightly—only my closest friends knew and they were sworn to secrecy.)

After earning my degree, I was not ready to get a “real” job, since the only options that seemed available to me were entry-level corporate engineering jobs in the petrochemical industry. Sure the pay was good, but the work was not that interesting. So, I ended up applying to graduate programs across the country, ultimately deciding to attend Northwestern University. I earned a Ph.D. in the early 2000s, and that led to a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and ultimately a staff position, where I now have an amazing career and work life.

Throughout my grade-school, undergraduate and graduate education, I would hear the occasional off-color “gay” comment from peers and I had more or less grown to accept it as an unfortunate fact of life. Now, as I approach the 20th year of my career at NIST, I cannot imagine my sexuality being any part of how my peers evaluate me or my abilities; to them it is only as important as the color of the (very little) hair on my head or the color of the pigments in the irises of my eyes. That is to say, it is something that is a part of me, but it is not what defines my abilities.

It is a true asset to NIST that everybody is appreciated and acknowledged for the skills and integrity they bring to their work, while the other qualities that describe them as a person only serve to enhance their contribution to the community. We still have a long way to go in completely accepting everybody. But that little boy born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 44 years ago, would never have imagined that our society would have progressed so much toward fully accepting the beautiful diversity that makes up our world.

About the author

Wyatt Vreeland

Wyatt Vreeland graduated  magna cum laude  from the University of Tulsa in May of 1997. In 1997 he began his doctoral studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. During his time at...

Thanks for sharing your story, Wyatt.

Beautifully written. So glad to call you my friend.

Thank you for helping make NIST (and the world) a better place and for sharing parts of your journey with us. They're lucky to have you.

Thank you, Wyatt!

Your story is an inspiration. I am so glad you have found a true home and inclusive community at NIST, where pursuit of excellence is our shared commitment.

Walt Copan NIST Director

This is a great story. Thank you for sharing it. It makes me think back of my high school days in the 1970s when people even suspected of being gay were treated unkindly. Now I wish I would have done more at the time in their defense. I've lost track of them but hope they have found the support you have including at NIST.

Thanks so much for sharing your story! I am very grateful to be your colleague and friend.

That was nice. Proud of you Wyatt!

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Essay on being gay?

<p>But what do you consider it when a gay person talks about having a same-sex partner?</p>

<p>I had not previously noted Amber’s excellent post. It’s not a matter of “going there”; it’s more accurately a matter of discussing where you already are. Which is what I do all the time, Riprorin, when as a straight man I talk about my wife and kids.</p>

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Do gays have a boost in admission?

If I am gay/lesbian, how much of a boost will I have in college admissions to elite schools?

What about if I write an essay about it vs if I don’t? Thank you!

Earn karma by helping others:

Hi there! This is a good question, and one that others have answered well below, so I won't repeat them too much.

There is no formal affirmative action or race-conscious admissions equivalent for admissions relating to sexual orientation, so there isn't a tangible "boost" to report on here. However, many schools are interested in maintaining and expanding the diversity of their classes in all aspects in order to foster inclusive environments where students will interact with and learn from people with all different backgrounds and perspectives. With this in mind, there may be a benefit to discussing your relationship with your sexual orientation on your application.

Note that I said "your relationship with your sexual orientation" and not just "your sexual orientation" -- your application (especially your essays) must be about you, not the broader meaning of queerness, the issues and discrimination affecting the LGBTQ+ community, or some other broad ideal. Essays in particular are a great place to showcase your personality and your identity (one Common App question even asks about an aspect of your identity or background without which your application would be incomplete, for example), but it must be done in such a way that the reader learns something about you beyond your sexual orientation. The thesis of the essay cannot be that you are gay or lesbian but rather that you are resilient or compassionate or eager to learn or thoughtful as seen through the lens of your experiences. As others have noted, you will want to focus on a distinctly "you" aspect of your experience as a queer person -- there are certainly some overdone essay tropes that it could be easy to fall into, so you'll want to avoid those.

One last note echoes something others have mentioned already: assessing the fit of your discussion of queerness with the values of the schools to which you are applying. For instance, if your essays recount your bitter relationship with religion and scorn for the Church because of discrimination you faced at the hands of religious people or organizations, they will not resonate with admissions officers at schools with religion at the center of their missions. This is not to say that you would not thrive, be supported by, or do well at a religious school; it is merely to say that you should avoid criticizing values they hold dear as part of your admissions narrative.

To sum up, being queer is not in and of itself a benefit for admissions, but like any other aspect of who a person is, it can be part of a compelling story worth telling. Wherever you end up and whatever you end up writing about, I hope that you continue to be proud of who you are. Best of luck!

Hi! May I ask you a question regarding this?

It's hard to tell. I think it comes down to who is reading your application. I think Elite schools, especially some Ivys are pro-LGBTQ applicants but others perhaps can't give them the environment they're seeking. For instance, I would think it would be challenging to be at Dartmouth or Cornell because 1/2 of the social life revolves around CIS White Greek Life (frats and sororities).

https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2020/01/coming-out-and-being-out-lgbtqia-students-at-dartmouth

But if you are attending Columbia, then you are in the middle of the most exciting city in the world where you can find support systems both on campus and off. The Columbia queer alliance is the oldest LGBTQ club in America (1966 founded).

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cqa/connect.html

With regards to other top schools, I think it would be hard to be an "out" LGBTQ student at Notre Dame, Georgetown, and Boston College since they are all Jesuit Catholic Institutions. And anywhere in the South, like Wash U, Vanderbilt, Duke, UVA, seems more problematic than USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford. Being a queer student at a top Liberal Arts college like Swarthmore, Williams, Amherst, Pomona seems easy. But once you get into remote places like Bowdoin, Colgate, Washington & Lee, not so much.

To answer your question, I don't think you get a real tangible bump if you are queer. I think you get a huge bump if you are BIPOC Black or Latina, or a huge bump if you are some famous activist with 100,000 Youtube subscribers. So if you are a BIPOC Queer Activist, that sounds to me like a big bump. But if you are Basic White Girl Queer from an upper-middle-class suburb and have no real spikes, your queerness is not that attractive to the Circus of cohorts they are building for their Freshman class.

Even southern colleges are very liberal. Vanderbuilt is in Nashville and that is a liberal part of Tennesse. So no, I don't think they have problems with homosexuals in top southern colleges. Maybe in lower tier southern colleges, but top 20 schools select their student body from a very diverse and multitude of places, so many students won't even be from the south.

For admissions I only have my opinion but I would discourage writing your essay about it unless it plays a role in something bigger. I feel like I can't find the words to explain today but here it goes my best attempt. I apologize if I just confuse you more.

I went to a workshop for writing your essay and they worded it like this "the daily vs. the dramatic." They said the essay should tell them something you think is important they would not of known otherwise, the catch is not directly. The counselor gave the example of writing about their keychain. To them the simple keychain is meaningful because it symbolizes people trusted them enough to carry a bunch of important keys. This indirectly tells the reader that the student is someone trustworthy and that they value making meaningful relationships as trust is something that needs to be earned and takes time. This goes back to the daily vs. dramatic because schools want to know what you would be like on a random day at their school. Of course that is not to discredit something very difficult like coming out or the shock of the pandemic but in reality it is not as unique as people think. The exception would be this. If you still feel strongly about writing your essay on it you probably have a good reason that would push your essay outside of what they usually see with the topic.

I know some schools, especially elite ones, have quotas they have to meet regarding race ratios. I have never heard if being in the LBGTQ+ community helps your chances. I think it can be seen as a way to add diversity but if i'm being honest I think a lot of people would have thrown a fit if they did.

I hope I can give you some answers, I'll try to check back to see if you want me to try and elaborate.

No, you don't. I don't think it's allowed to actually ask for sexual orientation in applications so they probably wouldn't even know unless you write an essay about being gay. If you write an essay about it then it really depends on the topic. For example if the topic is just about you being gay and having a crush on someone you're probably not gonna get noticed because there's no big deal about your essay I don't see any change and I don't really see any one's personality because most people have crushes and stuff like that. But if you're talking about how your life was derailed after you came out or you lost friends or your social life changed after coming out then you should definitely write an essay about you being gay if it had a big effect on you. And to be honest it probably will have a slight increase because they will be aware of you being gay and college is one diversity.

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Should college essays touch on race? Some say affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice

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When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.

Then she deleted it all.

“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education , it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.

Supreme Court strikes down race-based affirmative action in college admissions

In another major reversal, the Supreme Court forbids the use of race as an admissions factor at colleges and universities.

June 29, 2023

Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.

In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.

This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action. The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.

Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”

Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds.

Post-affirmative action, Asian American families are more stressed than ever about college admissions

Parents who didn’t grow up in the American system, and who may have moved to the U.S. in large part for their children’s education, feel desperate and in-the-dark. Some shell out tens of thousands of dollars for consultants as early as junior high.

Nov. 26, 2023

When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, his first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child. Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.

“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “I wrestled with that a lot.”

Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.

Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and being made fun of for listening to “white people music.”

Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Ore., had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.

‘We’re really worried’: What do colleges do now after affirmative action ruling?

The Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action has triggered angst on campuses about how to promote diversity without considering race in admissions decisions.

But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word Is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.

As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word Is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.

“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” wrote Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane in New Orleans because of the region’s diversity.

Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at public universities she was applying to.

Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.

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It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.

“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”

The first drafts of her essay didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said. Her final essay describes how she came to embrace her natural hair. She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro.

Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.

“Criticism will persist,” she wrote “but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”

Collin Binkley, Annie Ma and Noreen Nasir write for the Associated Press. Binkley and Nasir reported from Chicago and Ma from Portland, Ore.

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