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 | Sep 13, 2012
College Application Essays How to Stay On Top of the Heap For some reason, “top students”–aka high achievers, go-getters, A-types, test-takers, straight-A students, you know who you are!–often have the hardest time writing these essays. At...
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 | Jun 12, 2012
College Admissions Essays How to Write About Your Sport–Or Think Again If you are a serious athlete, and intend to play your sport in college, it’s hard to pick a topic for your college application essay that’s not related to your sport. Chances...
by j9robinson | Jun 7, 2012
College Admissions Essays How to Find “The Unexpected” in Your College Application Essay or Personal Narrative One way to add snap, crackle and pop to your college application essay is to give it a little twist. What’s a twist? It can be many things,...
by j9robinson | Jun 6, 2012
The college admissions season never really ends. I’m not a big one for starting too early. Parents who start talking colleges with their kids in junior high and even the start of high school kind of bug me. I understand that it’s valuable for students to...
by j9robinson | Jan 19, 2012
What’s an Activity Sheet? Well, on The Common Application, you are given the opportunity to include “Additional Information” about yourself in the form of an Activity Sheet. This is in addition to the activity listing, where you have a dozen spaces...
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 | Dec 28, 2011
So you have a rough draft for one of your college essays. You answered the prompt, read it many times and believe it’s a solid piece of writing. And you may be right. But even a solid essay can have one fatal flaw–-it’s boring. The last thing you want is for the...
