A Peek into the Many Worlds of Prompt 1 of the UC Essays

UPDATE: The University of California announced NEW essay prompts for 2016-17. Read about how to answer them HERE. The following content in this post is no longer relevant and is outdated! About three years ago, I wrote a post to try to help students applying to the...

If your essay starts by relating something that happened, the reader is going to dive right into it and not stop until they are satisfied–until they know what happened.

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Should You Humblebrag in Your Essay?

  A smart dad sent me an email recently asking how college-bound students could work in related achievements and accomplishments into their personal, narrative-style essay, without sounding like they were blowing their own horn. It’s definitely a fine line....

Insider Essay Advice from Tufts

When people visit my Essay Hell web site, I can see where they come from on my Google analytics page. (I know, kind of creepy, but that’s just how it works now.) I noticed a recent spike of visitors from a blog written by an English teacher in Southern...

Work First, Surf Second: A Lesson in Mundane Topics

A student who I will call Ryan arrived for his tutoring session yesterday, and showed me what he had written for his English class. His essay started with how he worked with Habit for Humanity and a trip he took to work with Native Americans. Oh no. Not the old...

Jumping to Conclusions: How to End Your Essay

How to Conclude Your College Admissions Essays   Here’s an excerpt from my ebook guide on how to write a college application essay using a narrative, storytelling style. I pulled this from my chapter on writing conclusions. Some students find ending their essays...

Just How Creative Should You Get?

College Application Essays Yes, You Can Go Too Far   Colleges are encouraging students to get creative with their essays. This is great. However, I think students should be careful of trying too hard to showcase their creative writing skills. Rather, I believe...

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...

Grab Your Readers with An Anecdote

College Application Essays How to Write An Anecdote About Almost Anything   Before one of my college application essay writing workshops yesterday, I skimmed over some of the rough drafts the students had written last semester for their English classes. The...