Are You a Hillary with your College Application Essay?

hillary

As I’ve been watching the Democratic national convention this past week, I realized how much election speeches are like college application essays.

Both are sales pitches. Both candidates and college applicants want something—badly!

Candidates want votes. You want to get admitted. (more…)

Letterman’s Top 10 Ways To Make Your College Application Essay Stand Out—and Mine

college application essay  

If you are a Letterman fan, you know that I am supposed to list these college application essay tips backwards, and end with No. 1. But I prefer chronological order. You can watch the YouTube video, where he has the young man, Kwasi Enin, who was accepted to all eight ivies this year, count them down on his show. Some media have tried to pin Kwasi’s success on his essay—but that is pure conjecture (Kwasi is amazing on many levels). Anyway, if you are college bound, you might get a kick out of watching the whole thing.

If you are shy on time, I wrote out Letterman’s list here. And then I wrote my own list below. His may be funny; but mine works!

David Letterman’s Top 10 Ways to Make Your College Application Essay Stand Out

1. In the part where it says, “Office Use Only,” write: “Accept.”

2. Personally give to dean at home in the middle of the night.

3. If you’ve been to space, mention that you’ve been to space. (more…)

How Will They Dub You?

Everyone is looking for that magic topic for their college application essay that will help them jump out from the essay pile, and shout, “Yes, that’s me!”

I’ve written a lot about how you can go about landing on that unique topic.

Here’s one way to see if you have found it or not.

In my mind, you want to be the student who writes an essay that captures something original, unexpected or poignant about yourself, which an admissions officer would then use to dub you with a related phrase.

What does that mean? (more…)