by j9robinson | Jun 2, 2015
or
Why Bad Writers
Write the Best
College Application Essays
If you think you can’t write, and you need to write a college application essay, this is your lucky day. There’s a higher-than-average chance you will write an awesome essay.
(If you think you can write, there’s still hope for you, too. But you might have more work to do.)
Let me start by asking you why you’re so sure that you can’t write, at least not well.
Is it because you got average to low grades in English class? Or even flunked out. (more…)
by j9robinson | May 12, 2015
How To Write a College Application Essay:
This mini, online tutorial e-course teaches you how to write a narrative-style college application in less than one hour!
Upon enrollment, you will be sent a link and personal password for complete access to this self-directed course, which includes:
- 11 short instructional videos by Writing Coach Janine Robinson of Essay Hell
- 15 downloadable handouts that include sample essays by real-life students, topic tips, StoryFinder™, sample outlines, my AnecdoteBuilder™, and more.
- Unlimited access to digital versions of all 4 Essay Hell writing guides: Escape Essay Hell!; Heavenly Essays; Writing Survival Kit and 2015-16 Prompts Primer.
- The video tutorials walk you through 10 simple steps through the brainstorming, outlining, writing and editing process, which results in a standout personal statement essay. Start anytime and work at your own pace.
- JUST ADDED! Access to 2 PowerPoints: “How to Write Supplemental Essays” and “How to Write UC Essays”
- Cost: only $99.
Who Should Take This Course?
My concentrated, on-demand course is ideal for college-bound students who need to write personal statement essays for The Common Application, as well as other core essays for universities, graduate programs (med, law, business schools), scholarships, transfers, internships and other educational institutions.
It’s also perfect for parents, teachers, high school counselors, college admissions counselors and educational consultants who work with students on these dreaded essays, and want to understand what makes them effective and help students write their own. I offer significant discounts to educators and counselors who want to purchase the course in bulk for their students.
Like Having Your Own Private Writing Coach
In this concentrated course, I literally step you through the exact approach I use with my private students–-helping brainstorm a unique topic, find your real-life stories, map out a writing plan, learn powerful literary and creative writing techniques, and finally edit and polish your “slice-of-life” essay.
Along with my short video presentations, I share the most effective tips and advice through instructive handouts and worksheets, which include sample essays from real students and the most helpful excerpts from my popular essay writing guides, published on Amazon.
The course also includes my ProblemFinder™ andAnecdoteBuilder™ handouts, which walk students through a quick-and-simple formula to identify and spin a real-life moment into an engaging anecdote.
I know how busy you are, so in this crash course you will quickly learn exactly what you need in your essay to set you apart from the pack, and then the steps (brainstorming, writing and editing) you need to take to write your own. All 10 instructional videos are well under five minutes each—so you can watch them and review all the handouts easily within several hours.
The rest of the course is the time you take to craft your outline, rough draft and final draft along the way—all at your own pace.
Bootcamp students also will have free access to the entire Essay Hell Library, which includes complete online access to my popular writing guides: Escape Essay Hell; Writing Survival Kit and Heavenly Essays. (about a $30 value in themselves).
Students will have unlimited access through the end of 2019.
Course Content
You start by learning exactly what college admissions officers want in these essays, and then launch into the 10 steps of crafting your own. During the crash course, you will:
- Identify your defining qualities and characteristics
- Find your real-life stories for a “slice-of-life” essay
- Learn what makes a hot topic and how to generate your own
- Discover the secret to a great story
- Map out your narrative-style essay
- Learn how to write the all-powerful anecdote
- Reveal your intellectual vitality, grit and life lessons
- Bump up your writing with literary writing tricks and techniques
- Craft a conclusion that is memorable
- Self-edit and polish your winning essay
You can move through these steps all in a single day, or over a week or two, or several months. It just depends on how fast you work. But by the end, you will have a killer college application essay in hand that reveals what makes you you–and will be the most potent and personal component of your college application.
Also, without even trying, you will have dramatically boosted your writing ability and learned language tools and techniques that will help you once you land in your dream college, as well as with future projects in the workplace.
by j9robinson | May 11, 2015
I’m always on the lookout for new voices in the college admissions industry who try to help students and parents and all of us keep a balanced and sane perspective on the frenzied quest for the perfect college.
Kristin White, an educational consultant who wrote It’s the Student, Not the College: The Secrets of Succeeding at Any School: Without Going Broke or Crazy, does a great job of explaining how a student’s success has little to do with where they get in, even if it’s one of the 20 prestige schools so many believe they must attend or their lives will be ruined.
I asked Kristin if she would share her opinions on how she thinks about the college application essays, and she wrote this guest post on what is behind every great and effective essay—strong writing skills.
As she explains in this piece, strong writing chops can not only help you nail your college admissions essays, they are powerful skills that will help power your college experience as well as your effectiveness in the workplace. (more…)
by j9robinson | May 22, 2013
College Admissions Essays:
The Common App. Prompt #1
My Favorite
Out of the seven prompts you can chose from to write your application essay for The Common Application, I like the first one a lot. (UPDATE: As of 2017, you can now write about any topic you want. See new prompt #7.)
Prompt No. 1 is trying to “prompt” you to find and share a story that will reveal an important part of what makes you unique and special.
These are called personal essays, and they are what my entire blog is trying to help you learn to write!
In a nutshell, you write these types of essays in the first-person (I, me, you…point of view) and use a “write-like-you-talk” casual style.
Narrative-style (storytelling) essays are natural “grabbers” because you use mini-stories from real life, also called anecdotes, for your introduction to illustrate a larger point.
Related: How to Write an Anecdote: Part One
The structure can be as elaborate as you want, but in general, you “show” the reader your point with an anecdote at the beginning, and then “tell” or explain what it means in the second part. (Here’s a quickie guide to help you Write a College Application Essay in 3 Steps.)
(Those stiff, 5-paragraph essays from high school English class are history!)
Narrative, slice-of-life essays are ideal for almost any type of admissions essay. But some college application essay prompts are trickier than others to figure out how to answer the question by telling a story.
Others, however, are easier and actually ask for a story. Like Prompt No. 1. (and No. 2 and 4). (more…)
by j9robinson | May 17, 2013
College Application Essays
“Meant to Inspire”
All Students Showed an “Appetite for Risk”
Earlier this year, a business writer for The New York Times invited students to share their college admissions essays on the topic of money, class, working and the economy.
Today, reporter Ron Lieber published his follow-up article, where he shared his reaction and thoughts on the effectiveness of those essays.
He also had Harry Bauld, who wrote the classic guide on how to write these essays (On Writing the College Application Essay), read them and give his opinions as well.
I hope you take the time to read this article all the way through. Lieber said he and Bauld “meant to inspire” students shooting for college in 2014 by sharing their four favorite essays.
Here are the main points they liked about them:
- “They took brave and counterintuitive positions” on their topics
- They all “talking openly” about issues that are “emotionally complex and often outright taboo.”
- They had “an appetite for risk” (one student wrote about the application process itself, a topic that is usually discouraged.)
- They were bold (with their ideas, language and opinions)
- They kept their edges (meaning, they didn’t allow parents or counselors or editors to over-edit their pieces and retained their unique, though sometimes rough, teenage voices.)
Click HERE to read all four essays. (more…)
by j9robinson | Nov 27, 2012
UPDATE: as of March 23, 2016 The University of California announced NEW essay prompts for 2016-17. Read about how to answer them HERE.
This post is now outdated. The information is no longer relevant!!
College Admissions Essay:
How to Nail Prompt #2 for UC Essays
If you want to be a freshman or transfer student at one of the University of California schools, you will need to answer this question to write one of their two required personal statement essays, also known as Prompt #2:
“Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?”
In essence, they want you to write a personal statement.
A personal statement is an essay that shows the reader what makes you tick, what you care about, what sets you apart from the crowd.
Yes, it’s pretty wide open. Almost any topic can work—it’s all about what you have to say about it.
This entire blog has advice on how to write these.
But I’m going to map out a specific plan that should help you target this exact prompt. (more…)
by j9robinson | Oct 19, 2012
College Admissions Essays:
Finding topics in unlikely places
I would never have believed that writing about the Twilight series could be a super essay topic–not in a million years. But below, I’m going to share how one of my brightest students landed on Edward Cullen as the perfect topic during one of my recent “Jumpstart” tutoring sessions. And how it’s going to be a brilliant essay!
As a little background, this particular student is fierce. She’s a top student, loves chemistry and also is an accomplished dancer. Her first college admissions essay (she needs to write 2 for the University of California app.) is going to show how she is a problem solver. But what about that second essay? I believe if you are writing more than one essay for an application,they should complement each other–that is, balance each other out.
This is when I really push for the idea of a “mundane” topic, one that is everyday, and often would be the last topic in the world you would even consider writing about.
EXAMPLES: The kid who realized he had leadership skills the night he had to wash dishes at his dad’s restaurant. The girl who starred in her school musicals but wrote about her passion for karaoke. The tiny dancer who came to terms with her size 9 feet. The football tackle who loved to bake cakes for his teammates. Notice that on the surface, none of these topics sounds “impressive.” But trust me, they end up as the most interesting and memorable essays–exactly what you want! The other quality all these topics share is they have an “unexpected” quality–you wouldn’t expect a football player to love baking, or a dancer to have big feet or to find a leader behind a stack of dirty dishes. (What’s something about you that no one would believe?)
Here’s how our conversation went as we brainstormed a mundane–and unexpected–college essay topic:
(more…)
by j9robinson | Sep 4, 2010
Use the “Find Help By Topic” index (over to the top right) to find the posts that will help you the most. Some are about finding topics (Do you know the secret of using a “mundane” topic, yet?). Others have great writing advice for once you start your rough draft (The Ladder of Abstraction can help you structure your personal narrative!). A few are about polishing your essay. And there are many more in between.
If you have the time, I would actually recommend starting at the very end of this blog and scroll and skim through them, the older posts. Some of my best stuff is way down there.
Don’t want to pressure you, but the clock is ticking!!
by j9robinson | Aug 14, 2010
I just read a memoir where the author shared a piece of writing advice that Toby Wolff gave her. Wolff wrote “This Boy’s Life,” one of the best memoirs out there. Anyway, memoirs are books written about yourself. In a way, college essays are like mini-memoirs. They could easily be a chapter in your own memoir, especially if you share a story in your essay.
All that said, here’s the little nugget of advice Toby Wolff gave the author, Mary Karr. (He sure looks believable to me!) It’s almost too simple to appreciate, until you try writing about yourself:
Don’t approach your history as something to be shaken for its cautionary fruit…Tell your stories, and your story will be revealed…Don’t be afraid of appearing angry, small-minded, obtuse, mean, immoral, amoral, calculating, or anything else. Take no care for your dignity. Those were hard things for me to come by, and I offer them to you for what they may be worth.
(A quote from Toby Wolff in the memoir entitled, “lit,” by Mary Karr.)
To me, the little secret in this advice is to just tell your story in a straightforward, honest way and a lot of your message or meaning or lesson will be naturally revealed. In other words, don’t try too hard to teach or preach your message.
Hope that’s not too heady. Like a lot of simple-sounding advice, it’s harder to do than you think. But worth trying.
I just found this link to a wonderful blog on college admissions sponsored by the New York Times, called “The Choice.” Here’s a post from another writer talking about how these essays are really like memoirs!
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/essay-as-memoir/#comment-58117
by j9robinson | Oct 21, 2009
A new client, who I will call Sarah, met with me for the first time to talk about topic ideas.
When I pressed her about her interests, her hobbies, her passions, she kept insisting that she was a well-rounded, strong student, but didn’t have any one thing that stood out about her.
It’s a common obstacle in writing these essays.
Students think they need to have climbed Mt. Everest or invented a better paperclip to justify a strong topic.
These students just need to slow down long enough to see what is right in front of them: the often mundane (ordinary; everyday), yet fascinating qualities, habits, goals or characteristics that make them unique.
I gave Sarah a few examples of this idea: the student who wrote about her wild red hair; the girl who liked riding the public bus system and used that to “show” her sense of adventure and openess to all types of people; the student who wrote a tribute to his TI-83+ calculator; the girl who wrote about her prowess as a karaoke queen.
After listening to these ideas, Sarah kept insisting she really didn’t have anything special to write about herself.
She thought for a few more minutes and then said quietly, “I smile a lot.”
Bingo!!
I had only spent about ten minutes with Sarah, and I had noticed she easily broke into a wide, beautiful smile.
Sarah even smiled when she talked.
It was as though she couldn’t stop herself.
“My mom says I’m always smiling,” she added, smiling.
What a perfect topic for an essay.
Sarah’s constant smiling obviously was a big part of who she is, and all she had to do was explore what this meant to her, how it affected her relationships and experiences with others, maybe develop some metaphors to her smiling and life, and she had a makings of an engaging essay.
As with Sarah, sometimes the best essay topics are so close you don’t even see them. Just keep looking!
If you still don’t believe me about the power of writing about everyday topics for college admissions essays over those you think might impress your college(s) of choice, read this comment from a veteran college admissions counselor (this was posted in the comments section in response to an article called A Few Essays That Worked in the The New York Times‘ blog on college admissions called The Choice):
“I am often asked how to compose memorable application essays out of “ordinary” teenage lives. High school seniors who haven’t won international awards or lived on houseboats or in homeless shelters can feel as if their essays have little to offer. They’re terrified that they will make the same “mistakes” that are highlighted here in “The Choice” (and no wonder … even I–an admissions professional for three decades–had a tough time differentiating between the “good” and “bad” ones!).
I always reply that, during my 15 years of reading application essays at Smith College, many of the most memorable submissions were on mundane topics. One of my all-time favorites was about a laundry mishap at a summer school. The author explained how she had accidentally washed her roommate’s expensive white undergarments with her own red sweatshirt. Of course, the essay wasn’t really just about laundry … it was more about the boundaries of friendship. Other wonderful essays I recall include a hilarious one on playing in a truly terrible school band and another called “Why I Shop at Wal-Mart.”
While there are lots of books out there that serve up samples of “successful” essays, there are two that I especially like that offer helpful suggestions on how to craft your own. “On Writing The College Application Essay: Secrets of a former Ivy League Admissions Officer,” by Harry Bauld (which I’ve recommended for eons) and a newcomer called, “Concise Advice: Jump-Starting Your College Admissions Essays,” by Robert Cronk, both lead students through the composition process and never lose sight of the fact that 17-year-olds can rarely report triumphs—or traumas—that might help their essays stand out in a crowd.
Admission officials really DO want to read about their applicants’ experiences, no matter how “typical,” and they are eager to view them through the writers’ eyes. Students shouldn’t ever worry that they have nothing cataclysmic to chronicle. After all, what could be more “ordinary” than laundry?”
— Sally Rubenstone, Senior Advisor, College Confidential
