Yes, I promise, you can write your college essay topic about your grandmother, or your torn ACL. I know you heard opposite advice basically everywhere. So let me explain what I mean. I have read (and been moved to tears and laughed my water out my nose because of) college essays about grandmothers torn ACL’s You just can’t write about it in the same way everyone else does. This means: It’s not really “about” your grandmother. It’s not really “about” your torn ACL. So what is your college essay about then? It’s about the way you approach your topic. It’s about what your topic shows us about you. Continue Reading …
Stories
Listening to Teens
I love listening to teenagers. The more you listen, the more they tell you. And if you're only pretending you're listening, or listening with an agenda, they know it. In a recent session, a student showed me that if I really listened, we could travel into a different eco-system, where caring for each other was part of the ecology. Out of your element, or in it? A student was telling me about his love of scuba diving. Newly certified, on one of his first group dives, he was daunted by the oxygen tank, and the thought of bumping loose a cartridge. How to parcel out the air? His nervousness made him a conservative in what he would explore. (The analogies to COVID life loom). But he was also, I think, awed by the power of being in a completely different element, the underwater ocean, that wasn't really meant for us. Not in a sustained way beyond the doing the crawl or getting rolled by a hook-shaped wave. The Sharks and the goofballs came On his wreck dive with his family (also a pandemic analogy, there?), a family of sharks--and I swear he called them nar-sharks, to which fact my five year old exclaimed LIKE NARWAL NARWAL SHARKS??-- swam by. A small flock. Other goofballs on the dive went out of their way to take a selfie of themselves with the shark pod with a long selfie stick camera. Scrambling around for the money shot. Grinning, peace signs, oxygen burbles. They were posing with their stupid selfie stick IN FRONT OF A FAMILY OF SHARKS, he said, like zero common sense. I mean, sure, try to get your picture, but stop behaving like such an idiot. His dad taught him to hang back, to see if you could get a photo without disrupting the balance and bothering the sharks. Because: BOTHERING SHARKS. Be humble, he said. These are sharks. They just want to hang out with their families. As I listened to him, he relaxed and grew funnier. Once I had given him his writing prompts for the week and we hung up, all I could think about was goofballs who Continue Reading …
Good news on Winning College Essay–Julian Jimenez, Princeton
Julian Jimenez's winning college essay begins, "Here comes Satanás... Behold his fiery, mischievous, defiant glory." I know: a risk. Just the kind that apparently makes admissions teams sit up and then salute. I had worked closely with Julian on his main college essay and supplements--if they don't take him, they're confused, I'd think. In admissions, though, criteria are complex. Excellent writing stands out, but it doesn't stand alone. Though the tone was often playful, I knew he wasn't playing. So when I saw his long list of impressive acceptances in the email, I was not surprised, but my heart did crack open. You'll remember my name Julian was dubbed "Satanas" as a child; Satan may have a really bad reputation in many circles, but we know what that figure does well is convince others to do things. In this case, his power of language (y'all are going to know my name!) held sway over admissions officers. They remembered his name and they put it on their BRING IT list. Committed to Princeton Julian wrote: "I'm proud to tell you that I have committed to Princeton! I actually got into roughly 90% of my top choices including Dartmouth, Columbia, USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Swarthmore, University of Notre Dame, UCSD and UCSB , and a few others." Now, if you follow my admissions essay work, you know I am not an Ivy Preacher nor swayed by school branding that's not backed up by substance and stellar education. Any school must be a potential a fit for that applicant. (Because, no, the Illustrious Ivies are not a fit for all, nor is their egregious price tag). But in this case, the enormity of the nations top schools saying YES YES YES CHOOSE US speaks volumes about Julian's renovation of his entire life, and his family's life and prospects. His was the kind of family this country claims currently to not want within our borders. Voice to and through the struggle Most of us have no idea what some students struggle through to get even a decent Continue Reading …
Julian Jimenez, Winning College Admissions Essay
When he sent the final draft of his winning college admissions essay to me, Julian confirmed my sense that good things are possible. I never know if the draft I give a standing ovation is definitely the one the student has submitted (2AM last minute changes are not unthinkable). But I was glad to see this one was. Natural Talent Julian has natural writing talent which sometimes makes it even harder for a student to figure out what belongs in their admissions essays, because so much of draft is already of strong quality. Julian faced this in his capacity to entertain the reader and find dark humor in his experience. Where to stop? What needed to be said, versus just sounded good on the page? Ultimately, he was able to cut based on what aspect of his present self he most wanted to highlight and explain. I hope you enjoy his essay as much as I (and seemingly everyone on the admissions committees) did. Julian wrote: I'm proud to tell you that I have committed to Princeton! I actually got into roughly 90% of my top choices including Dartmouth, Columbia, USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Swarthmore, University of Notre Dame, UCSD and UCSB , and a few others. Julian Jimenez, Personal statement (Princeton Class of 2024) Here comes Satanás. Behold his fiery, mischievous, defiant glory. Watch him terrorize the innocent victims...of his first grade classroom. Bored, he pinballs around the room, stopping only to implement his conniving get-out-of-school-quick strategy: rubbing his eyes bloodshot, then duping the school nurse into believing he has pink eye. Every day, after his parents spoke to another irritated teacher, he was met with a disappointed, "Aquí viene Satanás!" (Here comes Satan!) Was it his fault, though? I was born to 16-year-old parents, kicked out of their homes for having me. My first memory consists of my mother silently sobbing while pushing my stroller along dark sidewalks late at night. I wondered why she Continue Reading …
Mix It Up
My son Ro, who is four, just started in a soccer league. Four year-olds don't know attention is a thing that can have a span-- their coaches have to mix it up to keep them engaged. When their sweet Coach N explained, "Now I am a shark, and you are fish crossing my ocean, and if your ball gets away from you, I'll eat you!," they took him very seriously. They didn't want to get eaten on the first day of practice. Who does? Also four year-olds excel at being literal. When It Comes to Sports, Love (and Writing), Mix It Up! The lead coach, who has been coordinating community soccer leagues since I was four, watched from the sidelines, and played rapturously with my 1 year-old. He was chatty, and did not stop talking if you were within reaching distance. At the end of the clinic, while he watched Ro eat peanut butter and honey, he waxed on about the league he started in New Jersey for Orthodox Jewish (OJ) kids on Sundays. They couldn't play on Saturday, regular Soccer Day, because of observing the Sabbath. Turned out local Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) kids also couldn't play on Saturdays because THEY also observe the Sabbath. So eventually some SDA kids migrated onto the OJ team. Then parents showed up to watch. Turned out a number of the parents were widowed or otherwise single (the divorce scene is opaque). Slowly, mutual romantic interests developed--"mixing" between the adults. The kids didn't get eaten by sharks, made goals and dirtied knees across religious lines, and god didn't smite anyone. Meanwhile, the parents flirted and paired off. A Good Story is Still Good the Millionth Time! I could tell the coach had told this story a million times before. But Ro didn't mind, because he was eating ALL the peanut butter and honey and admiring his shin guards. And Aria didn't mind, because she was busy trying to pick up the cones that marked the sidelines and cigarette butts on the astroturf (really?). And I generally like people telling stories Continue Reading …
Before you write that essay about your hike…
Every year, I have students bring me that essay --the incredibly heartfelt one-- about their trip into the woods, or up a mountain. Some of these students are accomplished hikers, some total, struggling newbies. 97% of the time there are blisters in these essays. It's hard to explain to the writer that this rubs a blister in the admissions readers. But I have to try. Here's why: what you experience on the mountain top or in the mosquito-thick woods is likely very similar to what every other person who ever hiked experienced: irritation, discomfort, transcendence, appreciation, disappointment. Often, you leave with gratitude, renewed perspective. It's also very likely those two last mental states are quite short lived. That essay doesn't translate to real life! Say: until someone double-crosses you at school, or you drink soured milk your sibling put back in the fridge, or you can't get a new bus pass and you have to walk somewhere in the sheeting urban rain, or...the list of irritating things in everyday, non-hiking life that ask you to face your inner self goes on and on. Where are the woods then? Where are all those blisters and mosquitos and the high cloud vista of the craggy peaks? Admissions offers have heard that essay too many times The admissions readers have heard your story 10000000 times, maybe literally. They know you mean it-- but everyone does. They also know, because they have lived a little longer than you-- that those take-aways are often temporary. So they are looking for something more. Sorry to say: Not the cliched journey with its predictable life-lesson. So what are you to do, if that essay is burning a hole in your mind, feels like THE ONE? Find a unique angle on that essay You need to dig much, much deeper into your experience. Beyond even those aggravating, debilitating blisters that dominated your psyche at the time. Last year, I worked with a student whose essay took a long time to find itself, but when it Continue Reading …