My college essay got me in....to this It's 8AM on a Wednesday. I am 19 years old, drinking my 14th cup of weak college cafeteria coffee, staring at an ancient Greek verb. Eistha. I'm supposed to know something about this. I have clocked in exactly three hours of sleep. I know about as much as you do, reading this, right now. The verb stares back at me, equally uninformed. My life looked like this chart. My professor, Alan Boegehold (who died this week, 17 years later) is looking out at the two of us expectantly-- because, you got that right, there are only two of us in that class--, a map of Sparta under his thumb. The map is fuzzed at the edges, to appear antique. This is the battle that would change everything. If that everything means anything to you, now, thousands of years out. (But for you battle nerds, this.) Boegehold is recapping for us where all the warships are, waiting to attack a certain strait. He's so into the heated stakes, a scholar's video game. At this moment, the minor things matter the most-- is the verb in the future? Is the ship pointed a hair to the right? I'm wishing I had bought a Starbucks.The kind as black as night should be if you don't live in Brooklyn and if there is no moon. My college essay is to blame To get here-- this school, this class, this major-- I wrote a very very very (apparently) convincing personal essay for my college application essay-- BY HAND. That's right, by hand. In hand-writing. It was about a junior-year school trip to Spain, where I stayed with a family in Barcelona. On the first day there, I confused two nouns-- mariscos (seafood) and maridos (spouses, husbands)-- and so informed my host mother that I don't eat a lot of things, but I do eat maridos. Meaning, husbands. Instead of mariscos, meaning seafood. The car went silent. I have no idea how I concluded the essay, what lesson or trait my personal essay took pains to show. Maybe the importance of detail, the weight of a Continue Reading …
Destiny
Sometimes No is Yes: The Rejection
Give It Up for Rejection Raise your hand if you love rejection, y'all! How about a letter, formally letting you know you've been rejected? How about rejection from that one college you really thought was a safety, or that other one that held all your elaborate dreams in its gated grip? Seth Godin to the Rescue This week, I went on a Seth Godin blog binge. I recommend it: he takes unlikely, creative positions on the most common topics, and I needed some unlikely thinking, because changing baby diapers gets predictable. Luckily, I found Seth's very very smart, tart and brief post on how there is no sense in reading between the lines of a rejection letter because there is nothing there. Usually when we get rejected, our inner critic goes on a criticism carnival. Tears apart the language for truth. Or we snuff out its snide remarks with a vice of choice. Or we assume, dungeon door clanging shut, that the rest of our lives will have all the worth of soiled diapers. A Tale of No and Yes Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a girl-- no, not me, but related to me. She was told by her (prestigious, infamous independent) high school's headmaster, who was an Intellectual Giant and known well by adcoms, that she could piss on a piece of paper and get into her then dream school, XX College. Well, she didn't take him literally (she had common sense), but she did apply with the goal in mind that if piss alone could get her in, surely prose and a nice academic track record would more than guarantee her spot. Wrong. The rejection letter hurt worse than bladder surgery, to push the metaphor. Not only did she not get admitted to XX PISS-ME-THERE College, but she didn't get into any of the other schools on her list either-- reach or safety, realistic or aspirational. Except one. We'll call it: School WTF? A school she'd added as after-thought. A school in which she had no interest; a school which, had she had any choice, would Continue Reading …
Featured Student Writing in The Cornell Sun
His writing put the R in Rising To be fair, Jeremiah--a rising senior with emphasis on the word Rising-- didn't need a lot of help from me, his college essay writing coach at JPMorgan Chase The Fellowship Initiative (TFI) to write effective essays. Rather, confident prose seemed to rise up out of him. He was a writer, a deep and global thinker, and the kind of kid who, if it was the only quiet spot, did his homework in the bathroom. He put the self in self-motivated. And because of his circumstances at home, he did a lot of writing in the bathroom. Which might already tell you enough. Unlike many of my students, who face self-doubt, procrastination, or writer's block, he did not need that much prompting to produce his college essay -- he had a story in mind and banged out his personal statement with determination. And fancy subordinate clauses. He is the kind of kid who you can be sure will reach his goals-- ruthlessly, if he has to. And by the time he gets there, he'll have new, bigger goals that supplanted the earlier visions. His writing never shies away from these dreams. He comes from a tight family where education is central. where philosophy is part of parenting and excellence is expected, no matter what. As featured in The Cornell Sun So by qualification and persistence, he made it to Cornell University, but what happened there is the real juice I can't disclose here. I am featuring his writing, a recent article in the Cornell Sun. His article shows that strong writing and game-changing thinking go hand in hand. Such probing as you'll find in his text are what words are for, and the opportunities they create in the hands of young people. Words can lift the dust of complacency, and open the avenues of the mind and heart that can, and should, lead to critical reflection and compassionate action. Thanks for the opportunity to feature your writing, Jeremiah. He can be reached for causes big and small or to answer Continue Reading …
In your college essay, include the present
There's more to the story of You Sometimes, you can get so focused on "telling your story" in your college essay that you forget to include a strong portrait of the current you, your present self, with your present aspirations. So don't be surprised when we pitch "meditation"; it's the amp to your music, optimizing everything you do and bringing out your best, now. Which is exactly what you want to show schools. Take a big breath. Who's breathing? Sounds like a ridiculous question, yup. But-- it's You. Yes, YOU! This you is the person colleges are saying YES to. The one they want to meet and to know. When colleges accept you, they are banking on your future, not your past. Right now is the path to the future What you are doing with your time, energy, and enthusiasm right now is a better predictor of what you will be doing in one, two, or ten years (when your alma mater can brag that you are its graduate) than any story you might tell. Why? Because it's what all that story stuff has led to, the young adult person choosing a direction (or many) in the world. So your core stories are still key, are still your power vehicle for showing your strongest personal qualities and what has shaped you...but don't drop the potato there. In your essay, point toward the future, and be real What are you up to right now? What matters to you, what are you committed to, what are your short and long terms aspiration? (We all know those can change: that's fine.) These questions help you define your present and point towards your future. Plus, it's great for self-knowledge Asking these question leads to greater self-knowledge-- something colleges look for in applicants. But it's not a service you can pay someone else for, Kaplan doesn't have bubble sheets to help you get there; it's DIY, develop-it-yourself, through introspection, and it's a premium quality of good leaders. Not sure how to get started on self-knowledge quest? We recommend basic meditation, Continue Reading …
Is your heart in your college essay?
College application season means advice and anxiety come at you from all corners. It's easy to lose heart. Are you able to spend time wondering (not worrying, but wondering) about the future, or are your days too crammed with test prep, school projects, responsibilities at home? Are you trying to crunch a bunch of facts and make them add up to your "dream school" or "reach school" or "safety school"? (Or you trying to visualize the next chapter of your life based on what attracts you, what challenges you, what pushes you, what makes you feel at ease?) Are you trying to declare that you already know what you want to study, so that you can go ahead and be convincing and study it? Hold on. You know that deflated feeling when your crush likes someone else? You know that deflated feeling when you are hungry and stuck on a subway? You know that deflated feeling when your parents want you to talk to a distant elderly relative about how school is going? That's the feeling that happens to us when we don't listen to our hearts. Luckily we can always reboot. Continue Reading …
Coming & Going, A Lizard Death
Today, to mix it up, I wrote my own personal essay-- no more than 650 words (the magic number). You can decide if this passes muster as a personal statement. While you read, play the all-powerful admissions officer, not the humble applicant. What, if anything, do you learn about the essay's writer? What, if you had to guess, might the writer be like to hang out with? And so on... * This morning, my husband John went to feed our two adult bearded dragons, and the big, beefy lizard, Drako, the one I called "fat old man"-- though he was really only a middle-aged lizard, if that-- the one who lazed around with his belly spreading out over his driftwood-- was dead. (Please hang in there, ye non-empathetic to the reptilian plight). LIke we say of dead people (some of them), he "looked asleep", but a little too stiff. There is something in our veins that recognizes our fate in that "little too stiff", no matter the creature. I admit I recoiled from his frozen body even as my heart leapt forward like a hopeful medic. The weight of any death, however reptilean, conjures every death I have been through-- every death, even that of our little plants that inexplicably and stubbornly failed to thrive, giving me the existential middle finger. Because John had to run to work, and because we did not know the cause of death, and because there was a second bearded dragon in the tank to worry about, John picked up Drako and put him hastily in our oversized planter, where our corn plant faltered and grew asymmetrically. In that dirt was the long-since-decomposed body of another baby beardie, the runt of our clutch. We'd introduced the fertile and lithe Sunny to Drako's tank last fall. After some awkward co-habitation, Drako had found (from his deep biological recesses) his ne'er-before-aired male swag and done the species-typical head-bobbing dominance dance atop her. He looked smug, not knowing Sunny was already pregnant from another male. Lizards don't make a Continue Reading …