Let’s be real for a second. If you’ve spent more than five minutes on "College Admissions TikTok" or scrolled through the depths of r/ApplyingToCollege, you’ve probably seen it. You’ve seen the viral clips of a student reading a personal statement where they painstakingly avoid a specific letter—usually "s"—to prove some sort of intellectual point. The i hate the letter s college essay has become a legendary trope in the admissions world, right up there with the "Costco essay" or the "pizza delivery essay." But here is the thing: what worked for one person in 2017 might be the very reason your application gets tossed in the "maybe" pile today.
Admissions officers are exhausted. Honestly, they’ve seen the gimmick before.
When we talk about the i hate the letter s college essay, we are usually referring to a very specific type of writing known as a lipogram. A lipogram is a text where the writer deliberately excludes a particular letter of the alphabet. It’s a feat of linguistic gymnastics. It’s hard. It’s impressive. But is it a good way to tell a university who you are? That is where things get messy.
The Viral Origin of the Letter S Gimmick
Most people trace the obsession with this specific prompt back to a few high-profile success stories. A few years ago, a student gained significant media attention for writing an essay that avoided the letter "s" entirely because it reminded them of their stutter or a personal challenge with speech. It was brilliant because the form of the essay matched the content. The constraint wasn't just a party trick; it was a metaphor for the student’s lived experience.
That is the nuance most applicants miss.
They see the headline "Student gets into Ivy League with essay that doesn't use the letter S" and they think the "not using the letter" part was the magic spell. It wasn't. The magic was the vulnerability. If you're just doing it to look smart, you're basically just handing an admissions officer a crossword puzzle they didn't ask to solve. They have 15,000 other essays to read. They don't want to spend twenty minutes verifying that you didn't accidentally slip a "super" or "sometimes" into your third paragraph.
Why Gimmick Essays Are Riskier Than Ever
College admissions in 2026 is a weird landscape. With the rise of AI-generated content, admissions offices at schools like Stanford, Yale, and UChicago are looking for "radical authenticity." They want to hear a human voice. Ironically, when you write an i hate the letter s college essay, you often end up sounding like a robot or a Victorian-era poet because you have to use such bizarre synonyms to avoid common words.
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Think about it.
If you can’t use the letter "s," you can’t use the word "is." You can't use "was." You can't use "students," "school," "science," or "success." You end up writing sentences like, "I felt great joy when my teacher gave me a high mark." Nobody talks like that. It feels performative.
Experts like Rick Clark, the Assistant Vice Provost at Georgia Tech, often emphasize that the best essays are the ones where the reader can hear the student’s actual voice. If your voice is buried under a pile of thesaurus-hunted words just to avoid a letter, you’ve lost the plot. The i hate the letter s college essay becomes a barrier between you and the reader rather than a bridge.
The Problem of Accessibility and Clarity
Let's talk about the actual reading process. Admissions officers spend, on average, about four to eight minutes on an entire application. That includes your transcript, your letters of rec, and your essays. If they have to squint to understand what you’re trying to say because your sentence structure is mangled by your self-imposed constraints, they might just move on.
- It creates cognitive load.
- It distracts from your actual accomplishments.
- It can come off as arrogant rather than creative.
When Does the "I Hate the Letter S" Concept Actually Work?
It works when the constraint is the only way to tell that specific story.
If you grew up with a speech impediment that made the "s" sound a source of trauma or growth, then avoiding it in your writing is a powerful stylistic choice. It shows, rather than tells, the reader what your world feels like. But if you're just a kid who likes Scrabble and wants to look clever, it usually falls flat.
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I remember talking to a former admissions reader from a top-tier liberal arts college who told me they once read an essay where a student avoided the letter "e." It was almost unreadable. The student was so focused on the technical challenge that they forgot to include a personality. By the end of the essay, the reader knew the student was good at word games, but they had no idea if the student would be a good roommate or a contributing member of a seminar class.
The Semantic Shift: Finding Your Own "S"
If you are drawn to the i hate the letter s college essay, you probably have a creative spark. That’s good! Don't smother that. But instead of copying a gimmick that has already gone viral, you need to find your own version of that creativity.
What is your "letter s"?
Maybe it’s not a letter you hate. Maybe it’s a specific perspective you have on a mundane object. Maybe it’s a way of looking at the world that is uniquely yours. The goal of the Common App personal statement is to provide a "window into your soul"—as cliché as that sounds.
Practical Steps for Brainstorming Better Than a Gimmick
Stop looking at what went viral three years ago. If it's on TikTok, it's already "old" to an admissions officer. They see the trends before we do.
- Audit your motivations. Are you choosing a gimmick because you’re afraid your actual life story isn't "interesting" enough? Most students feel this way. But some of the best essays are about incredibly small moments—making a sandwich, walking a dog, or a specific conversation in a car.
- Write the "normal" version first. If you’re dead set on a lipogram or a restricted writing style, write the essay naturally first. What are the core truths? If those truths disappear when you remove the letter "s," then the essay didn't have enough substance to begin with.
- Read it aloud. This is the ultimate test. If you read your i hate the letter s college essay out loud and you sound like you’re choking on a dictionary, scrap it. You should sound like a teenager—a smart, thoughtful teenager, but a teenager nonetheless.
The Final Verdict on the Letter S
The i hate the letter s college essay is a high-risk, high-reward strategy that mostly results in "high risk" these days. In a sea of 50,000 applications, being "the kid who didn't use the letter s" might make you memorable, but you want to be remembered for your character, not your gimmick.
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Focus on the "why" behind your choices.
Universities aren't looking for the best writers in the world; they are looking for the best thinkers who will fit into their specific campus culture. If your essay proves you can follow a self-imposed rule but doesn't prove you can think critically about the world, it hasn't done its job.
What to Do Right Now
If you have already started writing an essay with a heavy gimmick, take a step back. Open a blank document. Write one paragraph about why that gimmick matters to you without using the gimmick itself. If you can’t justify it in plain English, it’s time to pivot.
Look into your own life for the things that feel "un-googleable." Your specific relationship with your hometown, a hobby that you do when no one is watching, or a failure that actually hurt—those are the things that stick. Avoid the "s" if you must, but don't avoid the "you."
Spend tonight looking at your draft and highlighting every time you used a word you wouldn't normally say in real life. If the page is covered in highlights, you’ve sacrificed your voice for a trick. Delete the constraints. Write the truth. That is what actually gets you in.