Burned in Essay Hell

college application essay

Image by Jim Cooke Via Gawker

 

I don’t know how I missed this. In April, a batch of nearly 70 college application essays written by the incoming class of 2017 at Columbia University were made public. It was quite the scandal. Many of the students who shared their essays among their peers, not expecting they would be shared with the world, felt they were being mocked and ridiculed. Some bloggers did have a grand time poking fun of their topics and language.

The exposed Google folder is no longer available, but you can still read various blog posts that quote from some of the essays. I actually liked many of the topics and snippets of writing (in the Wordle image above). It showed the vast range of subjects you can write about and various approaches. To me, they can help spark ideas for your own essays, and see how you are not alone in your struggle to dig deep into your self and recent past for meaningful stories to share with strangers who will decide your future.

Here’s what J.K. Trotter wrote about the uproar on The Atlantic Wire: (more…)

Hot Strategies for All Five of the New Common Application Prompts

College Application Essays

Which Prompt Will You Pick?

 

UPDATE: Most of this information is still helpful and relevant. However, please see the changes in the NEW Common Application Prompts for 2015-16

If you are ready to brainstorm ideas for your Common Application essays, here’s a great place to start. I’ve written posts on each of the 5 new prompts–including how to focus your answer, to find unique angles and twists,  to structure your essay, to tell a story with an anecdote, and topics to avoid, on and on.

Here are the new prompts for the 2013 Common Application essays
(click each prompt to find my post on how to respond to it!):

 

  1. Some students have a background or story or interest or talent that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
  2. The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?
  3. Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
  4. Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma-anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
  5. Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

Check out my posts on how to answer the two prompts for the University of California essays.

If you find these helpful, but still need more help in the actual writing of your narrative-style essay, consider buying a copy of my new book: Escape Essay Hell! You can order off my blog here or it’s now also available on Amazon via Kindle. luck!

Should You Choose Prompt 5 for Your Common App Essay? Maybe…

PLEASE NOTE! This prompt has changed for 2017-18. This post is now obsolete, although you can still find helpful general information on how to think about prompts and write your essays. 

The revised prompt 5 is: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. [Revised]

I will be writing a new post on how to address this revised prompt in upcoming weeks…stay tuned.

College Application Essays

Watch Out for Boy Scouts and Bar Mitzvahs in Prompt 5!

 

I’ve been dragging my heels about writing on this last option of the new Common Application prompts.

It’s not the worst one (I’m saving Prompt 3 for last), but I think you could easily ensnare yourself on this essay option:

Prompt 5: Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

The biggest pitfall could be if you choose a common accomplishment or event that could address this prompt, but not necessarily result in an interesting essay.

For example, some classic “transitions” into adulthood are graduations, birthdays (your big 16 or your quinceanera) or advancements within other groups, such as Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, your church or volunteer organizations.

These are wonderful achievements, but they don’t necessarily translate into compelling essay topics.

Would you want to read about someone’s Eagle Scout project or their Bat Mitzvah?

Giant yawn!

 To find an interesting mini-story (also called an anecdote) about “a time” that marked your transition into the adult world, I would start trolling your past for any type of problems you have faced in recent years.

If you confronted and dealt with a difficult problem, chances are you grew up a little bit when you wrestled with it. Read more about how problems come in many shapes and sizes.

Look for an incident, issue or experience where you faced a challenge, an obstacle or something that was difficult to deal with, and share how you handled it, and what you learned from it.

While expressing what you learned from that experience, just make sure to link the lessons you learned to the idea of growing up, of maturing, of becoming more like an adult.

What qualities did you develop?

For example, did you start being more responsible?

Insightful?

Empathetic?

Self-disciplined?

Examine yourself to see if you changed in anyway from before the problem to after–and develop the idea of personal growth.

That way it will be clear that you addressed the prompt.

If you don’t want to focus on past problems, see if you have any smaller examples that could illustrate the process of growing up–and then use that simple example to expand into the large life lessons.

For instance, maybe your grandmother always made tortillas, and then when she passed away, you set out to learn how to make them yourself.

You could start your essay by describing a moment you watched your grandmother make them, or describe the steps you took to figure out how to make them yourself, and then talk about the larger lesson of learning from others, valuing the past or growing more aware of what really matters.

(Actually, even this example does involve a “problem”: You didn’t know how to make tortillas!)

This example would fall under the idea in the prompt of relaying a life transition involving a “culture,” and if you are fortunate enough to have a rich cultural heritage, I would definitely explore stories within that world.

 

One last way to think about this prompt is to try to find any times you were surprised by an event, activity or experience where you suddenly had to express more “mature” qualities, or make more “adult-like” decisions–and what you learned from that.

If you can find a twist to your response–something that we wouldn’t necessarily think would be a transition into adulthood that turned out to be one–all the better!

So now that I have thought more about this prompt, I’m liking it more than when I first read it. As long as you can try to find smaller, more unique or unexpected examples of these life transitions, I bet you can write some terrific essays!

Also, here’s my recent post on how to respond to Prompt 2 of the Common Application and how to respond to Prompt 1.

Also, I just published an ebook that is a step-by-step guide to writing a college admissions essay. If want help  focusing your topic, and finding and telling a compelling anecdote, this guide works perfectly with this prompt (as well as Prompts 1 and 2.). It costs <$10 and you can order using the button below.

 

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Add to Cart

 

 

 

 


Oprah and Prompt 2 of The Common Application

college application essay

 

Yesterday, I wrote about how you can answer Prompt #2 of The Common Application and write about recovering from a failure.

Coincidentally, our favorite motivator Oprah Winfrey stood up in front of the graduating class at Harvard University just last weekend and talked about the same topic.

As you see, failing has an upside.

If you decide to “recount an incident or time” when you experienced failure for your college application essay, I presented some ideas in my last post on how to find a compelling story.

I advised you to think in broad terms about failure, and how almost any problem you have faced could fall into that category.

But once you recount a story about a time you “failed” in some way in your essay, you will also need to address the second part of the prompt: How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?

Telling an engaging story at the beginning is important for a standout essay because it serves to grab your reader and hook their attention at the start.

But the second part of the essay, where you explain what that experience meant to you, is equally important. This is where you can show admissions officers how you think, what you care about and how you learn. (more…)

The Beauty of Failure: How to Answer Prompt 2 of The Common Application

College Application Essays: Tell a Story to Answer Prompt 2

When Messing Up is a Good Thing

 

I almost like Prompt #2 as much as Prompt #1 of the new essay questions for The Common Application: The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn.

This essay prompt is music to my storytelling ears!

Why? Because first it literally asks you to tell a story (“recount an incident or time”) in your essay, which I think creates the most engaging and meaningful essays!

And secondly, it wants you to tell a story about a time you “failed.”

I know you might think the last thing you want to tell your college about is a time you screwed up, but it’s actually perfect.

I’ve talked many times in this blog how problems make the best stories.

Well, a failure is a type of problem, and a terrific one at that.

Problems (including failures) are naturally interesting to read about—who doesn’t love a juicy problem?

It’s much more fun to read about things that go wrong than when they go smoothly.

Think about the news, or your favorite movie or T.V. show! (more…)

Five Golden Writing Nuggets

College Application Essays: Best Writing Advice

Five Hot Tips to Use on Your Essay

 

It’s hard to find good advice on writing. Here are five of my favorite tips from the best of the best:

 

Anne Lamott

1. If you are just starting to write your college application essay, take writer Anne Lamott’s advice and give yourself permission to write a “shitty first draft.” This is how all writers work–and you should, too. Just get a loose plan, and then write. Get it all out. Don’t worry about finding the exact right words, or the correct spelling, or landing your commas in the right place. Just let it rip. You can go back later and worry about those details. (This doesn’t mean that you try to write a shitty rough draft; it just means that if your rough draft is shitty, that’s okay. You can edit it later.)

If you are one of those straight A, honors and AP class types, she’s probably talking to YOU:

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.

― Anne LamottBird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Gary Provost via Punctuation.com

 

2.  So you have pounded out a rough draft, and you are trying to make your essay more engaging and readable. The easiest way to pick up the tempo is to go back and vary the length of your sentences. And include lots of short ones. Read this amazing paragraph by writing instructor Gary Provost to quickly see how this works:

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

–Gary Provost

 

 

Mark Twain

3.  Here’s another way to clean up your essay and make it stronger. This advice is as brilliant as it is simple. I’m still learning to trim my adjectives, too. It’s hard to resist them. You think they make your nouns stronger, better, more accurate. But not always. Take it from the man who knows how to grab and punch you with his words. Here’s a sentence overdosing on adjectives: When I was in my darkened, unkept bedroom, I took my small, fluffy striped pillow and threw it out the square,screened-in window. The idea is if you take out a few of these adjectives, the others have more impact.

When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them–then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.

― Mark Twain

 

Stephen King

4. Another type of word to avoid over using is the adverb. Those are words that mainly describe verbs, and usually end in -ly. Quickly, happily, stupidly, normally, angrily, etc. The idea is that we usually don’t need them to make our point. Here’s what horror writer Stephen King has to say about them:

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.

–Stephen King

If you want to read King’s entire diatribe about them, click this link. The idea is that when you proofread something you wrote, look for these and take them out if you use them too often.

Nora Roberts

5. Finally, if you want one of the best tips to writing–including your college application essay–try this one. Nora Roberts, a popular novelist, was asked about her key to success during an interview for a profile in The New Yorker magazine. Her answer? Ass in the chairThat’s right. Just sit down and write something. You don’t have to spend hours. Just start and write for fifteen minutes. Then come back the next day for a half hour. Before you know it, you will have a draft. It’s the same idea as putting on your running shorts to go for a run. Just do it.

If you want help starting your college admissions essay, try my Jumpstart Guide.

 

 

College Essay Help from The Best: The New York Times

 

Mentor Essays for The Common App

And Other College Application Essays

 

If you are one of those students who understands how important these college admissions essays can be to landing in the school of your dreams, the New York Times just published a dream article just for you. The newspaper publishes a blog, called The Choice, that posts articles exclusively about the college admissions process. Last month, they published this massive article about how teachers can help students use the newspaper to find inspiration for their Common App essays. It’s like your own private, free, college essay tutor from the most respected publication in the world! It’s literally packed with great advice, instruction and sample essays.

Here are the “mentor essays” the newspaper shared to help with the new Common App prompts:

* Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

  • It’s O.K. to Put Yourself First: An essay in which a writer meditates on the impact of a serious illness on her life and family.
  • My Son and the City: A woman moves to New York City with her son, who has serious medical challenges and developmental disabilities–and, she writes, “in a place famous for its anonymous crowds, [he] has been learning about people.” (more…)

The New Common App Prompts: The Good, Bad and the Ugly

 

College Application Essays

How To Answer the New Common App Questions

The best news about his year’s Common Application (2015-16) is that you can still write about almost any topic you want—these prompts are very open-ended. And they also added a new prompt (#4) that is perfect for helping you tell a great story!

Because the prompts present such broad questions, it’s up to you to focus the point of your essay. If you try to answer one of these questions with a broad, general essay, it  will end up dull, cliche and in the reject pile.

  

 

Here’s my attack plan for you. First, read all the questions (listed below). If any of them generate an idea for you, that’s great. Go for it. If not, my advice is to stick with prompt one, two or four of the five prompts.  To me, each of those prompts is trying to help you to write a personal narrative–that is a story-like essay that shows the reader something about what makes you tick, what you care about, what sets you apart from the crowd. This blog is packed with helpful posts on exactly how to find a relevant story, such as How to Write an Anecdote, and tell it in a compelling way. (more…)

Find Your Defining Qualities

No matter what the prompt asks for, almost any effective college essay should showcase one or several of what I call your “defining qualities.”

If the prompt asks you to write a personal statement (for The Common App), tell about yourself or wants to know why you are a fit for their university, you will need a clear idea of the core qualities or characteristics that make you who you are—that “define” you.

Once you know those, you can write an essay that helps the reader understand how you are that way, and why it matters.

Of course, along the way, you will also mention your related interests, passions, idiosyncrasies, talents, experiences, accomplishments and even your endearing flaws.

(If you are confused at this point, you might want to check out my Quickie Jumpstart Guide to better understand the role these “defining qualities” play in a college admissions essay or personal statement.) (more…)

Where’s Waldo? and Creativity in College Essays

 

College Admissions Essays

It’s Official: Get Creative!

Colleges tell students that they want their essays to show them what sets them apart from the pack and what makes them unique. Yet most of the college application essay prompts do a poor job of helping students find topics that help them reveal their true personalities and character. The Los Angeles Times just wrote an article about how some colleges are finally crafting prompts that do a better job of encouraging students to feel comfortable taking a risk and showing their idiosyncrasies and quirks, rather than showcasing only their accomplishments and hardships. The main point of the article: Get creative!

This is an exciting trend, in my opinion, one I’ve encouraged for years now. My advice is to try to write about these more creative topics even when answering prompts that still aren’t creative. (Such as the list of Common App prompts, especially now that there will not be the Topic of Choice option.) I have lots of tips and advice all over my blog on how to find these types of topics.  The point is that college admissions folks are starting to change their prompts because they are sick of reading about the same topics where students recount mission trips and sports victories. Take a risk. Get creative. Tell a story. Write about something mundane, rather than impressive. (more…)