share, reflect, stand out: strategies to write powerful college application essays
TRANSCRIPT
Share, Reflect, Stand Out: Strategies to Write Powerful College
Application Essays
Rebecca Joseph, PhD
@getmetocollege
Website/App: All College Application Essays
How Important Are Personal Statements?
What do American colleges look for?
1. Grades
2. Rigor of Coursework, School
3. Test Scores
4. Essays/Personal Statements*
5. Recommendations-Teacher and/or Counselor
6. Activities-Consistency, development, leadership, and initiative
7. Special skills, culture, connections, talents, and passions
The Power and Danger of Essays
1. Give me two reasons why admissions officers value college application essays.
2. Give me two reasons why they often dread reading the majority of them.
Essays=Opportunity
ShareReflectStand Out
Do College Admissions Essays Matter?
Essays are “not a substitute for a rigorous curriculum, good grades and evidence that you're going to do well,”
Still, the essay can make a difference.
The first challenge for the writer: picking a topic.
Any topic can work — or fail.
The biggest problem for students is starting with too wide a focus. "By the time they get to the details, they run out of space. I'm all for cutting to the chase."
So….Tip 1
Tip 1. College essays are fourth in importance behind grades, test scores, and the rigor of completed coursework in many admissions office decisions. Don’t waste this powerful opportunity to share your voice and express what you really offer to a college campus. Great life stories make you jump off the page and into your match colleges.
A New Paradigm
Tip 2. Develop an overall strategic essay writing plan. College essays should work together to help you communicate key qualities and stories not available anywhere else in your application.
Remember: The package of essays counts…not just one.It’s the message that you communicate along with the power of your stories and
your writingIt’s your ability to take the reader into, through, and beyond your stories quickly
and memorablyTell stories that belong just to you. That’s why a narrow and powerfully, personal
focus is key.
Essays = Opportunity
Take control over the highest ranked non-academic aspect of the application
Realize the package of essays counts…not just one Share their voice Empower students to take ownership of their stories Express who they really are Show (not tell) stories that belong only to them and help
them jump off the page Challenge stereotypes Reflect on their growth and development, including
accomplishments and service Seek to understand what the admission officer is looking for
What DO Admissions Officers Seek?
ContextValues Intellectual curiosity, a playful mind, or a sense of humorCommitment/Depth of Interests Interaction with and/or perception by othersSpecial talents and qualities Realistic self-appraisal
Ultimately…admissions officers want to know your…
Impact Initiative
Four Major Application Types: 1. The Common Application
Many private and some public American use the centralized Common Application with their own Writing supplements
More than 600 colleges use it. www.commonapp.org Don’t start writing any essays until you see all the essays required
for your top schools. My app-All College Application Essays has the requirements.
1. Common Application Essays
One Long/ 250-650 words –Paste in.
1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
2. The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
3. Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again.
4. Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma-anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.
5. Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
Activities: The Common Application leaves room for 10 activitiesAdditional Information: The Common Application allows you to add additional information. Accepts
up to 650 words.Supplemental EssaysThey range from one line to 500 words. Some schools have one, while other have three. They can overlap.
If it says optional, view it as mandatory.
Common Application Writing Supplements
Some long– U Penn, U Chicago (300-650 words)Some medium—Stanford Some small— Columbia, Brown
Four Major Application Types: 2. Large Public Universities
Many large and most prominent public universities have their own applications. Universities of Arizona, California, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon,
Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin—to name just some They each have different essay requirements. They each have your report activities in a different way. But there are ways to use your other essays here as well. They have their own essays. You should gather their topics
and look for ways to use your common application essay as one of your essays for the public colleges, and visa-versa.
UC California
Two essays Respond to both prompts, using a maximum of 1,000 words total. You may allocate the word count as you wish. If you choose to respond to one
prompt at greater length, we suggest your shorter answer be no less than 250 words.
Prompt #1 (freshman applicants)-[Outside-In]Describe the world you come from – for example, your
family, community or school – and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
Prompt #2 (all applicants) [Inside-Out]Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment,
contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are.
University of Texas Essay Tips
Don’t tell us what you think we want to hear. The university’s essay readers don’t have a perfect essay in mind – as a matter of fact essays that sound like all the rest of them – the essay that is expected – is more likely to be overlooked.
Be yourself. Show us what makes you unique, how you’ve dealt with issues and problems, what you think about the topic at hand. Good writing teachers tell their students to write about what they know. That’s good advice for college essays, too.
Use a natural voice and style. Although it’s always important to use proper grammar, spelling, punctuation, diction, etc., don’t write to try to impress anyone. Use words and a style that are appropriate for the topic you’re writing about, for someone your age, and for someone who’s trying to communicate clearly and logically.
Don’t be overly informal either. Your essay will be read by an adult professional. In almost all cases, you should avoid using words or phrases that you might use when texting someone or on a social networking site.
Develop your ideas. Although the length of your essay alone technically doesn’t matter, developing your ideas completely does matter. If you can do that in a single page of text, that’s good; but if it takes you three pages or so, that’s alright, too (as long as you’re not just adding words to make your essay longer). It’s not realistic to assume that you can clearly communicate your unique perspective about anything in a short paragraph or two.
Organize your thoughts. All good writing has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That doesn’t mean you should be formulaic in your writing (this isn’t a high school exit exam), but you should introduce your idea, provide interesting examples and details in support of your idea, and come to some sort of conclusion at the end.
Don’t respond to the prompt as though you’re answering a question. Again, we don’t have a perfect essay in mind. The prompt is supposed to get your mind churning, to make you want to tell us what you think about something that’s important to you. Your essay is your opportunity to do that.
Four Major Application Types: 3. Private college specific applications
Fewer and fewer major private universities are not on the common application
But there are still holdouts.Georgetown and MIT to name a view.
Make sure you don’t write unnecessary essays as Georgetown essays are like The Common Application.
Four Major Application Types:4. Other systems
Some large public systems have their own applications which do not require long, if any essays. Yet their applications for financial aid or academic support programs add in those requirements. Washington State, for example, several short essays which they share with other state systems.
The Universal Application is another system. It has fewer colleges on it than The Common Application.
Develop A Master Chart
Tip 3. Keep a chart of all essays required by each college, including short responses and optional essays. View each essay or short response as a chance to tell a new story and to share your core qualities.
I recommend three sheets. 1. Major deadlines and needs. Break it down by the four
application types 2. Core essays-Color code all the similar or overlapping essays. 3. Supplemental essays. Each college has extra requirements
on the common application. Again color code similar types: Why are you a good match for us? How will you add to the diversity of our campus?
Write the Fewest Yet Most Effective Essays…
Tip 4. Find patterns
between colleges essay requirements.
Use essays more than once.
UC 1 or 2=Common App =Scholarship Essay
Where to Begin: Brainstorm
Individual and Collaborative
Let’s Go Back In Time…
What core qualities do you have to offer a college. Brainstorm:
List five of your activities, academic talents and passions, or other interesting family or community stories.12345
Thinking of you the first list, come up with at least five adjectives to describe what you offer a match college Examples…empathetic, resilient, determined, collaborative, creative, insightful, analytic, etc.12345
Come up with at least five qualities a match college must have for you. Examples—real campus, strong frats, travel abroad possibilities, etc.12345
Positive Personality Traits
5. Other Brainstorming Tips
Help them brainstorm
1.Make a resume.
2.Write about three of your major activities.
3.Reading model essays from actual college websites
4.Looking at other college’s essay prompts-U Chicago, Tufts
5.Creating a letter to future roommate or an amazing list of what makes you you.
6.Looking at 5 top FB and Instagram Pictures
7.Reading models from other students
8.Do culture bags
What Did You Do Last Summer?
Jason-Cornell
With my left hand covered in a work glove and forming a diagonal “L,” I nudge a nail in the web between my thumb and index finger. Grabbing a hammer from my tool belt, I slam the flat head against the butt of my target. A withered, white piece of gripping tape rubs against my dirtied, metal hammer and my right jean glove. I glance over my left shoulder toward a five-foot-tall woman, looking for more strips. I point at my hammer’s grip, gesturing for more tape. It is hard to hear beyond the whining circular saws. With the sun beating down on our backs, we continue working on the frame for the rest of the day without speaking. Beyond the man-made cacophony of saws, jackhammers, and nail guns lies natural silence.
Fast-forward two months. A textured cement path lined with bright-white daisies leads me to a welcoming, white door. A shade reaches across a mat, providing me a respite from the blazing sun. In the windowsill a cheerful stick-figured man dances across yellow construction paper. I smile, delighted that the house I helped build has become a cozy home. House-warming basket in hand, I knock. Moments later, a petite woman whom I recognize opens her door and grins as she sees me. After all, it was just two months ago that we built her kitchen frame side-by-side. I eagerly offer her the welcome basket and thank her for becoming the newest member of the Pierce Street Villas.
Her eyes squint. Silence. It dawns on me that the woman that I had been working next to for hours under the sun and I do not share a spoken language. I struggle to find words in Spanish for the gratitude I want to express to her. “Gracias por… por…” I grunt in angst and frustration. A young, perky girl dressed in an orange dress skips to her grandmother, leans against the elder’s waist, lifts her head, and grins up at me. She begins to translate. The shield between the woman and me weakens as we exchange words through a preschooler and emotions through the use of body language. Clasping her hands together, bending her elbows, catching her breath, the pruned woman smiles and then breaks down in tears. Stress and anxiety turn into sighs of appreciation and joy.
Yet, a screen still separates us, between giver and receiver, between privileged and underprivileged, between teenager and elderly, between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking.
This is not my intention—I thought we had shared our mutual feelings of love, life, and gratitude at the construction site. I thought her community was one to which I belonged. But, I could hardly speak her language. Little did I know what the true nature of community was until I experienced that unnatural silence. High school Spanish was glaringly not enough.
Fast-forward another six months. I am living in a modest home with a Spanish-speaking family outside Madrid. No English is spoken; no North American schedule is followed. For one month I live the Spanish lifestyle, sleeping late, gorging at daily large family functions, and cooking at night for meals for the coming day. After weeks immersed in a language, culture, and way of life, I find myself unintentionally thinking in Spanish.
Submerging myself in a world almost 6,000 miles away has helped heighten my Habitat for Humanity experience fewer than 15 miles away to an unparalleled level. For me, Habitat goes far beyond the building of physical houses. The Spanish language that has become second nature allows me to connect with the residents of our new Habitat village at a much deeper and personal level, including the grandmother of the girl in the orange dress. This desire to push beyond the building of homes to the building of community sparked my effort to create an ESL program, where Harvard-Westlake students and Spanish teachers can come to the Habitat village and instruct English as a second language. And during builds, I encourage Harvard-Westlake students to develop their Spanish alongside the volunteering Habitat homeowners.
Last weekend: 7:00am. As I walk over to the breakfast table at the end of the cul-de-sac, I hear, “Ven aquí, Jason! Tengo las fotos de anoche!” The five-foot-tall woman, with her front door wide-open, waves photos of a girl in an orange dress. I eagerly stride down the alley of white daisies toward her. “María! Son de la obra de teatro de tu nieta Susana? ¿Cómo le fue?” I naturally ask, as we embrace each other in a hug. “Le fue muy bien,” she chokes in pride. “Ya sabes que estoy tan orgullosa de ella.” We continue to share what has happened in our past week and revel in each other’s company.
Minutes later, as we prepare to put on our work gloves again, María goes to the coat closet to grab her jacket. We leave the house hand-in-hand, dissipating any barriers and engendering a harmonious and natural silence.
Spanish to English translation:“Come here, Jason! I have photos from last night!” “María! Are they from your granddaughter Susana’s school performance? How did it go?”“Very well…you know how proud I am of her.”
Daniel-UC 2 and Common App
Never in my life has a book grabbed my attention and crushed my soul as did The Things They Carried. This novel illustrates the utter powerlessness of many Vietnam soldiers during and after the war. Tim O’Brien’s intense characterizations sparked my fascination with the soldiers, now veterans, who suffered so much on our behalf, yet were abandoned by our society. Excited to meet the characters of the novel that had shaken me so deeply, I decided to volunteer last summer for twelve weeks at my local Veterans Administration.
Placed in the Prosthetics Department, I spent hours every day trudging heavy equipment from my small office to the main hospital. Just as the soldiers in the novel carried “safety pins, trip flares, razor blades, chewing tobacco, The Stars and Stripes, and captured AK-47s,” I carried toilets with hand railings, knee braces, and blood pressure monitors.
But the things I carried went much deeper than medical equipment. Each day, as I was conducting my deliveries on my way to the main hospital, I would start out on my own, and by the time I arrived at the hospital, ten to twelve veterans would surround me. There I was, my arms overflowing with equipment, engulfed by a crowd of senior citizens, all shouting their heads off, yelling their stories to me at the exact same time. Some would crack jokes, some would grumble about the incompetence of the hospital employees, and some would share X-rated stories. But mainly, they would thank me for volunteering.
Every time soldiers came up to me and found out my age and that I was not getting paid to work, their faces would light up. One vet in particular, Ron, eagerly ambushed me every time I made a delivery to the Physical Therapy Ward. The conversation followed the same pattern every time but never bored me. First he would flood me with pictures of his grandchildren, try to convert me to Christianity, and scold me for not knowing enough about my Persian ancestry. By the third or fourth time I went to Physical Therapy, I made sure I was well schooled in ancient Persian literature so that I could pass Ron’s pop quizzes. And no, I have no idea how this 70 year old, African American, Vietnam War veteran became an expert on ancient Persian literature, but the more I learned about my past, the more I learned about his passion for life.
My most profound interactions occurred with my bosses, many of whom were veterans as well. We discussed politics, religion, and of course, their War. They told me why they enlisted, what they experienced when they were overseas, and how they were treated like garbage upon returning. O’Brien’s words matched their stories to the tee. As they spoke, I could visualize their experiences in my mind. One character in the novel often speaks about the creepy vibes given off by the Green Berets, and how he was terrified of them. Then, Bob, one of my bosses, told me how as a medic, he went on a mission with some “greenies” during the war, and how they were some of the most psychotic, mortifying men he had ever met. He would go on to tell me, how, upon returning, kids he had grown up with would spit on him in the street, again matching up with O’Brien’s world. After reading that novel, I was able to relate to and connect with the veterans in a profound way.
Through my summer at the VA, I learned about the resiliency of men who sacrificed everything for this country and how listening and just being there for the veterans was as valuable as any of the blood pressure monitors I carried.
Into, Through, and Beyond Essay Approach
Tip 7. Follow Dr. Joseph’s Into, Through, and Beyond approach.
It is not just the story that counts.
It’s the choice of qualities a student wants the college to know about herself
Into,Through, and Beyond
Into
It’s the way the reader can lead the reader into the piece—images, examples, context. Always uses active language: power verbs, crisp adjectives, specific nouns.
Through
What happened…quickly…yet clearly with weaving of story and personal analysis Specific focus on the student Great summarizing, details, and images at same time
Beyond
Ending that evokes key characteristics Conveys moral Answers ending prompts of two UC essays
UC 1”and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.” UC 2 “What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it
relate to the person you are”
Goal of Into Through Beyond
Share positive messages and powerful outcomes.
Focus on impact, leadership, and initiative.If you want to include challenges, lead
quickly to who you are now.Some states can use only socio-economic
status, but not race, in admissions, but in your essays, your voice and background can emerge.
Tip 8. Use active writing: avoid passive sentences and incorporate power verbs. Show when possible; tell when summarizing.
Tip 9. Have trusted inside and impartial outside readers read your essays. Make sure you have no spelling or grammatical errors.
Take the Time With These Essays
Final Thoughts
Tip 10. Most importantly, make yourself come alive throughout this process. Write about yourself as passionately and powerfully as possible. Be proud of your life and accomplishments. Sell yourself!!!
Students often need weeks not days to write effective essays. You need to push beyond stereotypes.
Admissions officers can smell “enhanced” essays.
You can find many great websites and examples but each student is different.
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