How to Answer Prompt #1 of the New Common Application

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...

Common App Prompt 4: When Your Problem is a Good Thing!

How to Answer Prompt 4 for the Common App for your College Application Essay Prompt 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...

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...

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...

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...

Does Your CommonApp Essay Topic Fly?

  College Admissions Essays and Personal Statements: How to Make Your Topic Fly The New York Times sponsors a blog exclusively for college-bound students. It’s called The Choice. Just last month, a student shared the topic she chose for her Common...