Essay Intensive

attitude

The real secret value hiding in your college application

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Best chance at college application success = Give your perspective a tune-up! Adjusting how you see the enormous, time-consuming college application process-- from writing your name on a million forms to submitting your last supplemental essay-- will add positive value as fast as neurons can fire. Which is pretty fast.  Here's why we're all about doing this. The status quo when our Hero begins to question things: For too many students, the college application process is something to just "get through." Does this sound like you? Do you see its value only as a means to a coveted end-- Higher Ed, baby!? Well, guess what? For too many adults, life is a string of things you just have to "get through."  It's a means to an end, too. What end? Don't ask. Ugh! Junior year, standardized tests are you regular weekend dates, and college applications (and all that writing) loom. By the end of the summer before senior year, you're feeling dread, mixed with some anticipation. Senior year fall, you're clobbered.  And, then, finally, after some sucky months, you've submitted everything, and you get temporary relief.  That is, until you near the deadline for results, when you're an anxious mess again, your self-worth trashed if you don't get the acceptance letters you wanted or expected.  Sounds like the opposite of fun, no? Our hero is feeling a little defeated in advance. His wings are wet.  Her magic sandals have broken straps. And what if the results aren't what you hoped for, since we all know it's a big gamble? Since you really can't control the outcome? Isn't there a better way to go through this rite of passage than as a stress-ball? Don't you want even more value out of your college application? Our hero gets a hunch: For a happier you, redefine the work ahead YEP! A happier you-- a more functional, present and energetic you-- will be the result of challenging this paradigm.  Start right now.  Right.  Now. Most students view their college application and  Continue Reading …

How to start your best college essay? Mind your Mind

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Your essay is mental Your college essay starts in your mind and with your mind. It seems like your college essay begins on the blank page, I know.  But all words have a murky pre-history in the mind.  So it's important to know what our minds are really like, what conditions in there are shaping, selecting, and producing those critical words.  If we're serious about writing with the "sincerity" and "honesty" colleges hope to detect, then we better know what drives us.  And the biggest threat to progress is not examining our minds for the problems they make. So when you-- the writer, the student-- mind your mind, you increase the possibilities for great outcomes in your college essays, and (since real life matters) in the world.  Better word and better world.  This is why our college essay projects at Essay Intensive begin with the state of your mind and end with the transformation of your life.  If you agree that it could be cool to give this essay bigger context, meaning and impact, read on.  If not, you know, go have a snack and get on to writing! Dr. King did it Dr. King knew how to write what was on his mind, but not without looking skillfully at what was in it first. Along with many other unsung civil rights activists, Martin Luther King Jr worked (himself to death) for a better word and world.  As is true for of your best personal writing, language was his power tool-- the familiar language of the people, but used in new, stimulating, and even acrobatic ways.  To change what people do, you have to change how they think. And how they feel.  Direct them towards positive possibilities, even (especially) in dire circumstances.    This doesn't take SAT words.  It takes something much more basic. A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us in "The Letter from Birmingham Jail"; this unrelenting honesty and urgency of the letter is admirable.  Every year, reading it with my 7th graders, I cry. I ask them  Continue Reading …