Essays
Write an Academic Personal Essay – with a Hook!
Application essays offer an invaluable chance for you to present yourself to colleges—and they are the one piece of your application over which you have total control. Regardless of your grades, scores, or extracurriculars, essays give you the flexibility to show who you are and what you care about. An original, thoughtful, genuine essay can delight and impress admissions officers. In an applicant pool full of students with great — but identical — grades and test scores, the essay could even be the one element that sets you apart from your fellow applicants.
College essays are an unusual genre: they are intensely personal, but have specific purpose and a specific audience. Your goal is to express who you are, but in a way that tells colleges that you are a good fit for them intellectually, emotionally, ethically, and otherwise. The essay must also convey your ability to write and think clearly.
The Common Application Personal Essay is the most important essay you will write. College is about academics, so make this essay about your scholarly focus and offer the reader a sense of what you’re going to bring to the classroom. If you write about how you like to help save sea turtles or read all of Jane Austen, that’s fine and it speaks well of you. But a conversation about merely liking turtles or being obsessed with Jane Austen can only go so far. No one cares if you’re in love with Mr. Darcy—Mr. Darcy isn’t reading your application. But if you bolster your essay with descriptions of the research you’ve done on ocean pollution or on the ways that Jane Austen’s work affected notions of romance and social graces in her time and in our own, then you’ve presented something that can spur curiosity and interest from an admissions officer.
Also, spend some time working on your opening line – it matters! You want a hook that grabs the reader’s attention.
BAD HOOKS:
- I had no idea how poor people in Africa were until saw them when I went on safari in Kenya last summer.
- College holds vast potentialities for the optimization of my intellect and ability to succeed in the personal financial arena.
- I was up late last night trying to figure out what to write for my college essay when the idea finally hit me!
- Like Proust and his madeline, I remember the day I found my passion for molecular biology.
- I didn’t think I’d ever make the squash team.
GOOD HOOKS:
- I am my own favorite fictional character.
- Every October, the dry winds arrive, the sky clears, and at night the hills above my house cut a black profile against the stars.
- I first got into politics the day the cafeteria outlawed creamed corn.
- Every afternoon my bike ride from school to work takes me past the remains of the steel mill, which shut down two years before I was born.
- Anyone who says you can’t iron shirts and read a book at the same time hasn’t tried hard enough at either.
Rising Seniors
We are working this week with rising seniors in our 2nd Application Boot Camp session. You can create your own focused Boot Camp by setting aside time NOW to complete your applications. It can be an overwhelming process so take it step by step. We’re here to help.
- Need help with your essays? Lead Editor Josh Stephens is a master and will work with you via phone and internet.
- Unable to make it to Cambridge to join us this week or next? Schedule a Personal Application Boot Camp and Josh Stephens will come to you.
- Want to create your own 4 Day Boot Camp for a fraction of the cost? Check out our Self Guided Application Boot Camp.
- Need help brushing up on your October Subject Test scores so your application has the numbers you need? Genius tutor Mike Barrett gives you strategies to outsmart the tests.
Once again we are indicating samples of application options. Our newsletter last week included an outdated schedule, we apologize for our error.
Types of Applications*
| Application | Deadline* | Sample Schools |
| Rolling Nonbinding |
September onward | University of Wisconsin Penn State |
| Early Action Nonbinding |
November 1 | University of Chicago UNC MIT** Notre Dame |
| Restrictive Early Action Nonbinding but may not concurrently apply to a binding Early Decision program, although may make multiple Early Action applications. |
November 1 | Boston College Georgetown |
| Single-Choice Early Action Nonbinding but unable to apply Early Decision or Early Action to other schools |
November 1 | Yale Harvard Princeton |
| Early Decision Binding |
November 1 or November 15 | Dartmouth Bowdoin |
| Early Decision II Binding |
January 1 or January 15 | Vanderbilt Vassar |
| Regular Decision Nonbinding |
December 15-January 1 | All schools |
* Double check application deadlines as they can vary year to year
** MIT’s Early Action Program is available only to citizens and permanent residents of the United States.
More Early Explanations:
Single Choice Early Action: Means you can ONLY apply to that school early, no ED schools or other EA schools. You can, in some cases, apply to your state, public university.
1. Yale: Single Choice Early Action: http://admissions.yale.edu/faq/single-choice-early-action
2. Stanford: Restrictive Early Action (but should really be called Single Choice): http://stanford.edu/dept/uga/application/decision_process/restrictive.html
3. Harvard: Single Choice Early Action: Not up on their site yet, we have: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/02/early-action-returns/
4. Princeton: Single Choice Early Action: Not up on their site yet, we have: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S29/85/15K32/index.xml?section=topstories
Restrictive Early Action: You can apply Early Action to other schools but not Early Decision except for Stanford which calls themselves Restrictive Early Action but is really Single Choice Early Action
1.Georgetown: Restrictive Early Action http://uadmissions.georgetown.edu/applying_firstyear_earlyaction.cfm
2.Boston College: Restrictive Early Action: http://www.bc.edu/admission/undergrad/process/tips/s-applyingearly.html
Early Action:
UVA is regular EA now.
Don’t Forget to Say WHY
You’ll notice that few colleges (and none that use the Common Application, unless they have a supplement) ask anywhere on their application WHY you’re interested in their college in the first place. That’s too bad because they really do want to know. Between two kids with similar scores and profiles, they will always pick the student who offers specific reasons behind his choice. They figure that the enthusiastic student will be more likely to accept an offer of admission, and colleges care very much about their yield.
You’ll want to add a paragraph to your main essay (or just append a short WHY paragraph) about why you are applying, but don’t fall into the trap that many students make in which they offer only generic reasons for liking the school’s location or campus or, even worse, simply recount the school’s virtues from their brochure. Focus instead on specific programs or academic opportunities rather than simply saying you like the campus or the outdoors. Show them that you’ve done your homework and that you know what makes their school unique and different—and about how those differences relate to your interests, personality, and goals.
When you visit each campus, try to connect with a professor in your area of interest so you can then leverage that info in your WHY paragraph. Again, feel free to add a short paragraph in one of your essays that details why you are applying and why that school is one of your top choices. If you’ve had a chance to visit, mention what impressed you the most. Again, be specific. You’ll find yourself with many more options come decision time.
Year By Year – There’s Lots You Can Do
SAMPLE Questions:
I have just finished junior year and am stressed about the whole application process and selecting schools. Do you have any services that might help me?
What should I do this summer that would help me get into a better college? I’m going to be a junior in the fall?
●The Ultimate Guide to Top High School Summer Programs
My son is a smart kid and did well his freshman year in high school, but he doesn’t have any of the high level awards other kids in his school who have gone to the Ivies received. Can you guide us?
●The Ultimate Guide to Top Contests and Awards
How can I push up my SAT scores? I have time this summer, but I’ve heard that the big company SAT prep courses in a class room aren’t customized enough and sort of waste time? Any ideas?
●SAT Tutoring with Rogue Tutor Mike Barrett
My son took the ACT with Writing and followed your newsletter advice and compared it to his SAT scores and we’ve determined the ACT is his stronger test. Now how can he take it again and do better? Can you give us more info on your tutors?
●ACT Tutoring with Steve and Amy Dulan
Do Your Research
We can’t tell you how many times kids report to us that they want to go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, etc… but when we ask them why, they have no good reason. Colleges want to know WHY you are applying — are you impressed by their world-famous chemistry program? The well-known English department? The art history department with a specialty in Renaissance art? Often times students with particular interests do themselves a great disservice by not bothering to check if the schools on their list match their own academic interest. For example, if you like ancient languages you’d want to apply to a school that at least offered classes in Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Sanskrit and the like. [Read more]
Private versus Public High School
Many parents ask us if for college admissions purposes it’s better to attend a well known private school versus a public school. The key to this question is, “for college admissions purposes.” The truth is, parents should not make ANY decisions based purely on college admissions odds – that’s the wrong way to address a crucial choice that involves far more variables than simply college admissions. One valid reason to send your son or daughter to private school is if you want him or her to have smaller classes, specific classes not offered at your particular public school, a different social environment, athletic opportunities not found at your local school, etc. The worst reason to send a student is in the vain hope of bettering college admissions odds. Most of the Ivies admit roughly 25% of their populations from private schools and roughly 65-70% from public (the rest from parochial or home-schooled), but that merely reflects the fact that more kids from publ ic school apply — again, the acceptance rates are usually about equal.
What To Do If You Were Deferred
Around the first week of March, admissions offices at top colleges sort through all their deferred candidates in order to see how many they will ultimately admit. Much will depend upon the strength of their applicant pool for regular admission — was it higher than usual? Were applications up? Was there a strong geographic spread? In other words, what does the statistical makeup of the class look like, and where might it fall short? For example, if there were a shortage of female apps, the office might accept a higher percentage of females from the deferred pool who showed a strong interest.
Happy New Year – Now Think About Summer!
It’s hard to think about summer as you celebrate a bright new year, but we want you to shift your focus as the best summers take planning. But, we want you to shift your focus as the best summers take planning.
As you probably know by now, the Common Application has added a new category called WORK EXPERIENCE with five or so lines of description. Getting a job is as important today to admissions officers as community service was ten years ago. Likewise, many students are more career-oriented than ever before.
Admissions Blogs
Many colleges are beginning to create blogs written by admissions officers. These blogs are helpful resources no matter what grade you are in because often some interesting insight is shared. Take some time to check websites of colleges that interest you and read their admissions blog, if they have one, if not, read the school newspaper online.
Get Some Testing Done Early
Unfortunately, many students only start their standardized testing in junior year and as a result have no SAT Subject tests. The last thing you ever want to do is wait until spring of junior year and then take all three Subject Tests (most top colleges require three Subject Test scores) on the same test date!
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