by j9robinson | Oct 8, 2012
College Admissions Essays How to Give Them More Punch: FOCUS! A common challenge in writing these college admissions essays is making sure they go deep enough. That doesn’t mean you have to talk about the meaning of life, and allude to Shakespeare, Greek myths...
by j9robinson | Sep 22, 2012
College Application Essays Five Places to Start After helping students discover their own unique topics over the last five or so years, I can spot a great topic the minute a student mentions one. And I suspect it’s no different for the college admissions people...
by j9robinson | Jun 13, 2012
College Admissions Essays How to Write an Anecdote For Your College Application Essay, Personal Statement or other Essays If you can write an anecdote, you can write a powerful essay. But a lot of students don’t know what an anecdote is, let alone how to write one....
by j9robinson | Jan 6, 2012
Most of you will write one or two “core” essays for your college applications. These essays will focus on revealing who you are and why you are unique. But you will also write numerous supplemental (shorter) essays. The good news is that many of these “supps” ask...
by j9robinson | Aug 11, 2011
College Admissions Essays: How to Start Your Core College Application Essay If you are writing a college admissions essay that responds to a prompt that asks you to tell about yourself, or about “a time,” or describe a quality, background, interest,...
by j9robinson | Mar 27, 2011
I haven’t posted anything in recent weeks. My role as a college essay tutor wraps up in January and February. But if you are still working on an essay or personal statement, I would read through this blog for ideas and inspiration! This spring, I have also been...
by j9robinson | Jan 17, 2011
I heard of Wordling from a gardening friend over at a totally unrelated blog, called Lost in the Landscape. (Believe it or not, I do other things than read college essays!) Wordling is a program where you can drop in some text and it creates a colorful collage of...
by j9robinson | Oct 2, 2010
College Admissions Essays: How To Fine Edit Your College Application Essay You are finally finished with your essay. It’s time to copy it into the online application and send it off. You’ve worked hard. Why not make sure it’s fabulous? Follow...
by j9robinson | Sep 16, 2010
College Application Essays How Far Out Should You Go? Interesting post on the New York Times’ blog on college admissions, called The Choice. The article was about whether to include your random interests–ranging from an obsession with Lady Gaga to riding...
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...