The match has to be right Successful supplemental essays for college admission, just like successful dating and mating, but you're not there yet, are all about the suitability of the particular match made. After much skepticism and playing hard-to-get, I was matched with my amazing husband online--score! A good algorithm found the overlap in our particulars. By contrast, I've read about 600 mediocre supplemental essays in the past month that demo a weak match at best. A primer on better verbal flirting with educational institutions in these important supplemental essays is clearly needed for college applicants who are eager to be passionately and appropriately paired. False starts can be fixed Not the writer's fault: these essays, like dating, can be full of false starts. But here's how intentionally approaching the supplemental essays like you would online dating helps you produce convincing writing and persuade the target schools you're a good match. (And those of you more interested in dating than writing, remember this supplemental fact: wherever you enroll, you'll likely wind up in romantic relationships too...so consider the pool you enter!) Continue Reading …
Solutions
Help, I can’t focus on my college essay!
Why Can't I Focus? Heat's on, application season is coming in like a tidal wave, and you can't focus on your essays. In fact, facing your essays is like facing yourself in the mirror with a bad haircut-- you'd rather look in any other direction. Yet it's practically a commandment: To write requires focus. To write something as important as your college essay requires focus on yourself, the most elusive subject of them all. And it can make you feel like you have an irredeemably bad haircut. Crap! What are you to do? The more you try to focus, the less you can, like trying to untangle a thin chain. And the more you tell yourself you just need to read or do one more thing before you get down to business, the less likely it is the writing is going to happen. Why are we wired this way? Can we do anything about it? 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 …
To read sample college essays, or not to read?
Models of college essay successes? When you're writing your college essay, you're often advised to read the sample college essays of previous applicants-- the ones that got the students admitted, the ones that didn't. From the successful ones, you get some ideas of what to do. From the flops, you learn what not to do. Sounds easy enough. After all, you want to get into your top college choice, and these writers did-- or didn't. But the reality is a little trickier and more nuanced-- and as awake people, it's our job to pay attention to nuance. Continue Reading …
Which Common App prompt should I answer?
I can't pick! College Application season is all about picking-- not apples, not your nose, not lottery numbers, no: on top of picking schools and hoping they pick you, some students stress about picking which Common App prompt to answer. Unless you like having extra things to stress out about (and far be it from us to take that from you), let's clear that up right now. It's actually simple-- write your essay, then select the Common App prompt you think it matches most closely. Continue Reading …
Say what you mean & mean what you say
Ever read something so convoluted that you can't even get the gist of what the writer is trying to say-- never mind the point of their words? The destination for a personal essay like that in the hands of an admissions team is... the recycle bin or garbage-- whichever is closer. I see this a lot in college essays, where students are so convinced their admissions audience needs them to sound a certain way-- over-educated, with a bloated vocabulary and complex syntax-- that they don't think about how their audience actually prefers them to be: natural, relaxed, and forthright. A telltale (but not the only) sign that you are reading or writing a convoluted, pretentious (yep!) essay is when a deluge of SAT words adroitly manifests in the plethora of language the text pitches aberrantly at the reader's perusal. If you know what I mean. No, forget that. We all know that writing is always "prepared" speech. It is not simply spontaneous expression, as the squeals of someone opening the front door to win a Publishers Clearing House check the size of Clifford the Dog (does that actually happen to anyone?). But still, there is a range worth respecting: I can write more or less like I speak, when I am actually paying attention to my words and thoughts. OR I can write like a rambling drunk person (that's not the kind of natural we mean, either). OR I can write so that even I find the text indecipherable. That last option does not make me sound smarter, nor like the kind of person you'd want to hang out with. There is a simple solution to overwriting your college essay that works wonders. Ask yourself (or your student), "What are you really saying?" If you don't know, then neither does your reader, nor will the reader ever. It is not the reader's job to untangle the writer's messes meant to impress. But if you know, and can say earnestly, "I'm trying to talk about how bad it felt to fail the declamation contest when I was assumed to be champion," the just Continue Reading …