Go Green with Your College Application Essays: Recycle!

If you are applying to multiple colleges this fall, you will need to write multiple essays for the different applications. The Common Application helps you consolidate many of your applications and only requires one main essay. But if you are applying to public...

CBS Digs Essay Hell’s Topic Tips!

  College Application Essays Tips for Finding Topics That CBS Finds Worth Repeating A couple days ago, Lynn O’Shaughnessy, a journalist who covers college admissions issues for CBS, featured this blog in her column for MoneyWatch. How cool is that? She...

Become a Storyteller in Under Five Minutes

College Application Essays A Mini-Lesson from a Storytelling Pro   I found this brilliant little example of how to understand what makes up a good story today in a column written by the talented sportswriter and journalist named Tommy Tomlinson. If you are...

Burned in Essay Hell

  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...

No Tuxedo Talk! How to Find Your College App. Essay Voice

College Application Essays Write Like You Talk The voice and tone of narrative essays usually is “looser” or more “casual” than the typical academic essay. To do that, however, you often have to break the rules. Bend them gently and stay consistent. But if it sounds...

What Do Admissions Officers Really Really Want?

College Application Essays Hot Writing Tips from The Other Side!   If you haven’t noticed, I have a lot of opinions about what makes a great college application essay. But who am I? I’ve never been an admissions officer, so how do I know what they...

Should You Take the Challenge of Prompt 3 of New Common App?

  College Application Essays: How to Answer Prompt 3 of the Common App. Who or What Have You Confronted Lately?   When you read the five options for your Common Application essay, one prompt probably will appeal to you first off. Others you will skim and...

How to Find and Write Anecdotes

College Application Essays In Search of an Anecdote Just yesterday, one of my tutoring students, a high school junior, wanted help on her English assignment: To write a practice college application essay. One tip from her teacher was to tell a story. (I first...

The BIG Difference Between a Story and an Anecdote

College Application Essays: What They Mean When They Ask for a Story Most students have never written narrative essays, which are so different from most essays taught in English classes. The classic 5-paragraph essay has a formal style, uses the third person, includes...