It took six weeks of brainstorming for a topic, writing and red-penning dozens of drafts before Greenwich High School senior Michael Drittel had a two-page essay that he was comfortable sending to his top choice of colleges.

“You only go through this process once, so there’s a lot of pressure to produce your best work,” said Michael, who applied to Stanford University. “There are so many kids applying, you fear that one line is going to make the difference.”

Michael, who wrote about how the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks opened his eyes to the wider world and led to his interest in international relations, is hardly alone in striving for perfection on the college admissions essay.

Convent of the Sacred Heart senior Lauren Manning also considered a variety of topics, from her volunteer work to her travels, before settling on a less conventional idea – a humorous piece about a pair of sparkly leggings – which she hopes will help set her apart from other applicants.

“I wanted to try something different, because how many people are going to write about that?” she said.

For students applying to college as applicant pools grow and acceptance rates decline, the pressure to produce an outstanding essay is higher than ever, admissions experts say. College officials today are putting more weight on the quality of the essay as they decide who, amid a flood of applications from candidates with equally impressive GPA’s and test scores, will get accepted.

Yet as students struggle to stand out in their writing, admissions experts say the best way to win over a reviewer is to keep the essay simple and sincere.

For educational consultant William Morse, who worked in Yale University’s admissions office from 1978 to 1982, the best essays are those that don’t aim to impress at all, but rather provide insight into the applicant’s personality.

While some writers may shy away from topics that seem cliched or mundane – for instance, a student’s love of fishing – Morse says no idea should be considered off-limits if a student can write convincingly and earnestly about it.

The mistake some make is to instead choose a grandiose topic with the very evident goal of wowing reviewers – writing a harrowing tale about hiking across the crest of Mount Kilimanjaro, for instance – without revealing much of their personality, he adds.

That can be a challenge for some students eager to put their best foot forward by showcasing their academic strengths and athletic achievements in other parts of the application, only to have to take a more measured and introspective approach to the essay, he noted.

“You are trying to get in, but you are not writing to get in,” Morse said. “The best way is to just show who you are.”

Westport-based consultant Matthew Greene agrees: Sincerity makes for the strongest college essays.

However, while he encourages students to give college officials a better sense of who they are, there are limits. Sentiments like anger, sarcasm, or even false modesty can be a turn-off for a reviewer, he said. He also cautions against using overly sophisticated vocabulary or excessive stylistic flourishes, which can often signal to reviewers that an applicant is trying too hard.

Some students “end up over-writing it so much,” Greene said. “You end up getting sentences like, ‘The plethora of activities and myriad opportunities at College A mystify my senses. Just get back to basics.”

Parents, counselors and teachers are often the first line of defense against grammar errors, mis-spellings, heavy-handed language, passive sentence construction, word repetition and other common mistakes, Greene said. They can also help prevent the all-too-common errors that crop up in supplemental essays – for instance, singing the praises of Boston University in an essay for the University of Notre Dame.

Those seeking even more help may turn to private writing coaches and online evaluation services, which usually charge a fee.

Private consultants, meanwhile, tout their ability to offer individual attention and detached criticism to struggling essay-writers in ways that, they argue, overburdened guidance counselors or emotionally-invested parents cannot.

Maxene Mulford, owner of Stamford-based Uniquely U College Essay Consultants, charges up to $225 an hour for one-on-one sessions that can include free-writing exercises and question-and-answer activities meant to tease out various essay themes.

“It’s a very exploratory, Aristotelian process,” Mulford said of her coaching technique.

While this additional guidance can be helpful, however, there can also be pitfalls to receiving too much help on the essay, be it from teachers, parents or paid consultants, said Greenwich-based educational consultant Emilie Hinman.

Reviewers often grow suspicious when they read an overly polished essay, she said, particularly if it doesn’t fit into the overall context of an application with lackluster grades, average test scores, or few examples of challenging coursework.

“Most admissions files read in a pretty cohesive, thematic way so you get a sense of what to expect from the student in the essay,” Greene said.

As a safeguard, some college officials are cross-referencing questionable essays against other writing samples by pulling up online screenshot images of a student’s handwritten work on the SAT writing section, which they can access on the College Board’s Web site.

Many schools, such as Tufts University and Middlebury College, also ask applicants to submit multiple essays as well as a graded writing sample, which can give reviewers a better sense of a student’s true strengths as a writer, Hinman said.

Like others, she believes the primary goal for essay-writers is to offer a genuine glimpse into their character – and in that process, too many cooks can spoil the broth.

“At the end of the day, the essay should really be the student’s work,” she said. “It’s their opportunity to introduce themselves to colleges and allow their personality to come through in a way that only they are capable of.”