#YOLO and The 2013-14 Essay Supplements

Students must write one core college admissions essay if they are applying to a college or colleges that use The Common Application. But most schools also require additional essays, called supplements. The supp prompts for this year are starting to trickle out, and...

Open Up: How to Connect with Emotion and Pathos

One of the best ways to connect with your reader in your college application essay is through emotion. In my new book, Escape Essay Hell!, I share writing techniques and devices you can use to bring pathos to your essay, and forge a bond with your reader. (With my...

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...

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...

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...

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...