by j9robinson | Dec 17, 2011
This fall, one of my tutoring students taught me a lesson about how cheating on these essays can backfire–even if you don’t get caught. He wanted to write his essay for the Common App on a trip he took to Guatamala to work with poor children. At one point,...
by j9robinson | Jun 3, 2010
Finding the Life Lesson in Your College Admission Essay A key component of a powerful personal narrative (essay) is what’s called a “universal truth.” They are also called “life lessons.” Basically, when the writer starts to...
by j9robinson | Feb 6, 2010
As promised in my last post, I will share how I start the search for essay topic ideas for my son, who is a junior in high school. The idea is to get some general ideas on our college essay radar. Just jot down areas of interests, activities, experiences,...
by j9robinson | Feb 4, 2010
I began this blog when my daughter was a junior in high school and starting her college application process. Like a lot of parents and applicants, I thought she needed some amazing experience in order to write a fabulous essay. The good news is that I was wrong! In...
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...
by j9robinson | Sep 26, 2009
Here’s a little book of essays written by graduates of Berkeley High School, which has a truly diverse student population and moves through about 700 seniors every year. (“As you will see from these stories, some live on their own, while others come from...
by j9robinson | Aug 25, 2009
From article in the New York Times: June 23, 2009, 12:22 PM As an inaugural post, Martha C. Merrill, the dean of admission and financial aid of Connecticut College, and a graduate of the class of 1984, encourages incoming high school seniors (with her Top Ten tips):...
by j9robinson | May 20, 2009
3A. ESSAY: IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE...
by j9robinson | May 19, 2009
Here’s an interesting article by the Wall Street Journal about college presidents from 10 prominent colleges and universities (Reed, Carleton, Wesleyan, U of P, Barnard, etc.) who were asked by the newspaper to answer their own college admissions essay prompts....
by j9robinson | May 8, 2009
Roy Peter Clark was a famous writing coach when newspapers started directing their reporters to tell the news through a story-telling format in the late 70s and 80s, a genre called New Journalism and made famous by Tom Wolfe. (The main difference between New...
