by j9robinson | Jun 19, 2013
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...
by j9robinson | Jan 21, 2013
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...
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 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...
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 | Nov 4, 2011
College Admissions Essays: Don’t Try to Impress! I just read an interesting article in the New York Times about how high school students are seeking out exotic trips, usually to foreign countries, mainly so they will have an intriguing topic for their college...
by j9robinson | Aug 11, 2011
College Admissions Essays: How to Start Your Core College Application Essay If you are writing a college admissions essay that responds to a prompt that asks you to tell about yourself, or about “a time,” or describe a quality, background, interest,...
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...
