Free Writing Resources for DACA Students!
How to Get Free Writing Resources
If You Are A DACA Student
I’m disgusted by our current presidents attempt to take away DACA, which allows students who immigrated illegally as children to the U.S. with their parents to obtain 2-year visas allowing them to stay here (and attend school and get jobs) legally.
Don’t understand what’s going on with DACA? Check out this article and helpful video.
I believe our DACA students are some of our brightest and more promising students. Many are already teachers in schools around our country.
If you are a DACA students and would like access to my online college application writing course, and/or my writing guides, please send me an email. My email address: EssayHell@gmail.com.
In the email, explain briefly your situation (where you are attending high school and how you are a DACA student), and I will send you these resources completely free of charge. Any information you share with me will remain confidential.
I wish all DACA students and all Dreamers the best of luck and encourage them to continue their schooling and efforts to attend college and beyond. I’m sure this is a frightening time for many of you, but know there are many of us in this country who are doing whatever we can to support and protect you!
Janine Robinson
Essay Hell
Hot College App Essay Tips from a Harvard Sophomore
I recently received an email from a student named Daniel Ryu, who is a sophomore at Harvard University. Daniel said he was stressed out his senior year of high school during the application process and had found my blog helpful. He offered to share what worked for him. No matter where you are aiming to get in, I would listen closely to what Daniel has to say. Obviously, it worked!
Here’s Daniel’s guest post:
4 Tips for the College Essay
So you’re a high school senior or maybe even a junior; the thought of applying to college has been on your mind for some time. It seems that every moment of your high school career has been building up to this point. Your GPA is mostly set and you are already involved in all the clubs and extracurriculars that you will ever join, at least in high school. There is now one thing that stands in your way. The college essay. read more…
Dumpster Words for College Application Essays
A couple weeks ago, I shared on LinkedIn a New York Times column about “annoying, overused and abused” words from 2013, and asked a group of college admissions experts for the most common offenders they found in college application essays.
The idea is that when you are editing a draft of your essay that you can try to spot words that don’t work, whether they were over-used, inaccurate, unnecessary, redundant or even not a word. And improve your essay.
When you first sit down to pound out your first draft, however, don’t even worry about what words you use. Just get it all out. This list is mainly for the process of self-editing, when you re-read your work and make changes to improve the clarity, flow and meaning. read more…
Help for College Transfer Students
Unlike incoming freshman, transfer students typically are older, usually have a couple years of college and are expected to navigate this process largely on their own.
But that doesn’t make it any easier—especially writing the college application transfer essays.
In high school, most students are automatically matched up with counselors or their parents hire private college admissions counselors to help them through the process. For transfer students, it’s often up to you to seek help.
According to the National Association of College Admission Counseling, about one-third of college students will change schools—from both community colleges into four year schools, or from one four-year school to a different one.
That’s a lot of students out there trying to figure it all out. So at least you aren’t alone! read more…
How to Find Your Essay Voice
Many students have trouble finding their “voice” while writing college application essays.
One of the biggest problems I see is that students want to sound smart and impressive, and they often lose their natural story-telling voice by forcing in big words and long, formal sentences.
Most students understand the narrative voice when they read it, but have a hard time capturing their own.
I always advise students to “write like they talk,” but this can be hard to do.
Here’s a technique I use to help them capture their natural language to use in their essays.
This is hard to do alone, but if you can rope someone else into helping you—a friend, teacher, college counselor, tutor, parent, etc.—it can be so helpful. read more…
How to Write Your Transfer Essay for the Common App
When my son wanted to transfer from his small liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest into a larger university to pursue chemical engineering, I offered to help him with his college application transfer essay.
I thought it would be a good opportunity to share my approach to writing the main Transfer Essay required by schools that use The Common Application.
My son, though with great reluctance, agreed to be my guinea pig.
I wanted to walk through the steps and chronicled the brainstorming/planning process: read more…
They Know When You’ve Been Naughty! Write Your Own Essays.
It’s almost Christmas Eve, just hours away in California. And we are coming upon another deadline–The Common Application–in January. If you are applying to colleges via the Common App, and you have yet to write your college application essays, I imagine you are starting to feel the heat of essay hell.
No use kicking yourself for waiting so long. I’m sure you have some good excuses. What does worry me, however, are students who might start to consider taking a “short cut.” Such as hiring one of those ubiquitous “Write Your Essay For You” online businesses that sell essays, or even worse, copying someone else’s. No matter how panicked you might feel at this point, it’s simply not worth it. For several reasons: read more…
Believe in the Right Fit
The winter flurry of letters is landing in mail boxes around the globe this time of year. I just heard from three ecstatic students who learned last week they were accepted into their dream schools–one was Harvard, another Wellesley, and a third Middlebury. I felt excited and proud for them. But I will feel equally excited for my students who will soon learn they will be attending schools in our University of California system, whether it’s Berkeley, UCI or Santa Cruz, or other state universities such as UW, Boulder and U. of O, and especially those getting into the small liberal arts colleges no one has ever heard of, but are true gems.
And I also can’t help think about those who are getting those awful cryptic rejections in the mail at the same time. They can really sting.
But if you are still waiting to learn where you will be attending college (or are still working on your college application and essays), just know that you will land in the place that is right for you. It may not be that dream school, or the one you couldn’t wait to tell your friends about getting into. But chances are you will attend a school that you will end up absolutely loving. It’s all about finding the right match–kind of like shoes, if they don’t fit right, they will hurt your feet. read more…
“Enrich Our Diverse and Inclusive Community.” Say what?
Stumped by the University of Colorado Supp? Me, too!
I’ve had quite a few students this “season” who were flummoxed by the supplement for the University of Colorado. It kind of threw me a bit as well. But behind all that blah, blah, blah, I believe it was just another way of asking: Why Our College? or more specifically, Why YOU At Our College?
This is a common theme of many of the supplemental college application essays. And even though most students are pretty fried after writing their core essays, they shouldn’t overlook these supps and just give back a bunch of blah, blah, blah. It can be challenging, but it’s worth the time to find some tangible, specific and personal details to give your answer meaning and interest. I’ve bolded some key words in the official prompt to get you thinking of ways to respond: read more…
Essay Contest! Winners Will Be In My Book!
You Already Wrote It.
Why Not Submit it?
Enter Your College Application Essay
in Essay Hell’s Heavenly Essays Contest!
One of the first things I advise students to do when they start working on their college application essay is read sample essays. There’s no better way to get topic ideas and learn how to write in a narrative style than by reading what other students have written. I usually direct them to a couple of my favorite collections of sample essays.
But after working with hundreds of students on these essays since 2008, I realized I have a source of wonderful samples. You guys! Many of you wrote your essays using my advice and guidance to find and tell your stories. And I know first-hand how terrific most of them are. It seems a shame that only a few people ever got to read them.
Cash Prizes! Become a Published Author! Help Other Students!
So…I’m starting to collect the best essays and publish them in a book this spring. It will be called Heavenly Essays: Sample College Application Essays That Rose to the Top. Do you like that? (I’m always open to suggestions!) Each essay will include a brief analysis of what I think worked, and why, at the end. read more…
Don’t Let UC Deadline Ruin Your Turkey Day!
If you are applying to the University of California schools, you have until the end of this month. As busy seniors, some of you might have waited to write your essays over Thanksgiving, when you have some days off and can catch up. Yes, it would be better if you already had them in, but there is still time.
The key, however, is to not let this last minute deadline dash ruin your Thanksgiving. The holiday comes late this year–Nov. 27–so it’s closer to the Nov. 30th deadline than ever. So yes, you are really cutting it close. If you don’t have a plan, it could hang over your head the entire holiday weekend. read more…
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