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 | 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...
by j9robinson | Dec 17, 2011
This fall, one of my tutoring students taught me a lesson about how cheating on these essays can backfire–even if you don’t get caught. He wanted to write his essay for the Common App on a trip he took to Guatamala to work with poor children. At one point,...
by j9robinson | Jan 17, 2011
I heard of Wordling from a gardening friend over at a totally unrelated blog, called Lost in the Landscape. (Believe it or not, I do other things than read college essays!) Wordling is a program where you can drop in some text and it creates a colorful collage of...
by j9robinson | Jan 17, 2011
Yesterday, my son sent in the last of his college applications (just hours before many of the Common App Deadlines, might I add). YEA!!! I’m not sure which of us is more relieved. He is the youngest of my two children (my daughter is a sophomore in college), so...
by j9robinson | Sep 27, 2010
College Admissions Essay Title or No Title? I like titles. But they need to be good. A title should be short and witty. Not cutesy. The tone of the title and essay should match. The best ones don’t give away too much about the essay, and only hint at what’s to...
by j9robinson | Sep 20, 2010
UPDATE: The University of California announced NEW essay prompts for 2016-17. Read about how to answer them HERE. This post is now outdated. The information is no longer relevant!! College Admissions Essays How to Answer Prompt #1 for the College Application...
by j9robinson | Sep 20, 2010
College Application Essays: They Are Easier Than You Think! A friend just told me his daughter was not going to apply to the UC (University of California) schools because she would need to write two college admissions essays. Instead, she was going to stick to the Cal...
