Essay Lab: Word Counts and Krispy Kremes, Some Advice

Posted on Wed, 11/23/2011 - 21:35

We're going to send you off into the Thanksgiving holiday with the following excellent advice about college application essays from Alice Kleeman, a contributor to College Admission and the college advisor at Silicon Valley's Menlo-Atherton High School. Ms. Kleeman knows her way around the personal statement and short answers of the application. She estimates she has read the essays of several hundred students each year for the last eighteen years. The two best?  "There was one about Krispy Kreme donuts and one about a student's job in a hardware store. I like that contrast!" says Kleeman. "Most important thing: The essay is all about you."

Her advice:

•             Respond to the prompt! And if it's a two-part prompt, be sure to respond to both parts.   Example: "Tell us about your world; what impact does your world have on your hopes and dreams?"

•             Don’t hesitate, if you’re working on the Common App 500-word-max essay, to choose “Topic of Your Choice” as your prompt.  That choice may help you respond more naturally and feel less confined to canned topics.

Essay Lab: A Reading List

Posted on Wed, 11/23/2011 - 04:40

One of the most challenging aspects of writing college application essays can be finding and writing in the first-person voice. This is partly because the type of academic writing required of high school students is often heavy on the passive voice and expository -- or third-person – writing. So what you have learned in your English class can sometimes get in the way when it comes to writing the personal statement or essay required in the application process. You will have to move beyond what you have learned to write for class to a more personal kind of essay in which you write about things from your unique perspective in a style closer to your speaking voice. We are not fans of "essays that worked" whether found on the web or bookstore shelves.  It's hard to write an essay about who you are when you have someone else's ideas fixed in your head. But we do believe that reading great first-person essayists -- authors like David Sedaris and Annie Lamott -- can help you find your authentic voice and your story.  And they're terrific reading in any case. Here are our recommendations:

Essay Lab: Getting the Words to Flow

Posted on Wed, 11/23/2011 - 03:57

Mix one part approaching holidays with one part looming application deadlines and you may have a recipe for procrastination or full-on writer's block when it comes to writing your essays. But no worries, both are temporary conditions.

If you're in the throes of a case of writer's block, one of the ways to get “unstuck” and develop some good stuff you might be able to use for your essays is to actually take a detour and write about something else. This may seem counterintuitive, but responding to a different -- and slightly provocative -- question than the one you seek to answer in your application essay can help move things along. And doing so can also help you find the heart of things, so that what you say and how you say it can have more impact.

Essay Lab: Day Three Prompts

Posted on Tue, 11/22/2011 - 19:42

Still stuck? Or still procrastinating? Here are some more prompts for inspiration. We especially like Michel's last one -- the perfect photo of you that doesn't exist?!?

Deborah Michel, author of the forthcoming novel Prosper In Love and parent to two applicants for the Class of  2016

One of my daughter's essay prompts was "You're looking out a window.  What do you see?" I remember a writer friend using that one, and I like it myself. 

I access art a lot when I'm writing.  So…

                Describe a painting or photograph you love in detail.  What is it about that image? 

                Describe your favorite photograph of yourself.

                Or, better yet:   Describe your favorite photograph of yourself that doesn't actually exist.

The web can also be a good source for prompts. College Admission did some web-surfing (one of our favorite methods of procrastination) and found some links for you:

Prompt generator 

Essay Lab: Day Four Prompts and Some Advice

Posted on Tue, 11/22/2011 - 19:29

Today, some advice and more prompts:

Meg Waite Clayton, bestselling author of The Four Ms. Bradwells, The Wednesday Sisters, The Language of Light, and the forthcoming The Wednesday Daughters 

From Meg's blog, how to get the words onto paper:   

I remind myself that I can throw anything out if it doesn’t work. The trick is just to write without worrying about exactly what you’re writing. Any sentence will do to start — and if it sucks, you can throw it out later! 

And some prompts from what she calls her "bag of tricks":

                Dig out an old personal photo and write about how it makes you feel.

                Subscribe to an online word-a-day service like Google word, and each day when you sit down to write, start with a sentence that uses your word of the day.

Essay Lab: Day Five Prompts

Posted on Tue, 11/22/2011 - 19:20

Today we conclude our first week of the Essay Lab with some final writing exercises for students working on their college application essays.

Shelly King, author of Morning Fog, available in Epiphany 

One of my favorite prompts was from a master class that novelist  Elizabeth Rosner conducted. We described a character by describing an object that is important to him/her. The example she gave was a friend of hers who always wore flip-flops, even in the dead of winter, even when he was hiking. Here are some others:

                Where were you last night?

                I don't remember....

Ken Harvey, author of the memoir, A Passionate Engagement, and the award-winning collection of short stories, If You Were with Me Everything Would Be All Right.

                Talk about a time when you changed your mind.

                Talk about a time when a book surprised you.

Essay Lab: Day Two Prompts

Posted on Tue, 11/22/2011 - 18:40

Yesterday, we kicked off our series on essay writing with prompts from best-selling writers Firoozeh Dumas and Ellen Sussman. If you're just joining us, we'll be posting a couple of prompts each day for students who may be in the throes of writer's block or have fallen prey to procrastination.

To recap, one of the ways to get “unstuck” and develop some good material you might be able to use for your essays is to actually take a detour and write about something else. This may seem counterintuitive, but responding to a different -- and slightly provocative -- question than the one you seek to answer in your application essay can help move things along. And doing so can also help you find the heart of things, so that what you say and how you say it can have more impact.

Can writing exercises like this help you? They very well might. Some of them even have the potential to work for the open-ended "Topic of your choice" essay.  Give them a try.

Today's prompts -- and some excellent advice:

Irena Smith, writing teacher and independent college consultant

How Do College Students Learn?

Posted on Fri, 11/18/2011 - 19:59

One of the most important things to evaluate about prospective schools is their academic life. After all, you will be spending a lot of time in the classrooms of the college where you eventually enroll. There are lots of ways to do this: you can investigate majors, sit in on classes, check out the faculty on ratemyprofessors.com, and even arrange meetings with teachers while you're visiting campus.  Another research tool for applicants is the National Survey on Student Engagement, a survey of students at hundreds of colleges that examines their participation in the classroom and academic life -- including how many hours a week they study, whether or not they participate in internships, and even how many books a year they read and whether they contribute to classroom discussions.  The results are provided to the participating colleges, which may or may not publish them. But check and see if the colleges to which you're applying make their results available. It's a great way to see if that school is a good fit for how you learn. The 2011 NSSE Survey is now available.

Media Madness

Posted on Tue, 11/15/2011 - 20:44

A recent Opinion piece in the New York Times titled Athletes Are The Problem, begins:  "Like it or not, 40 percent of the class at most top colleges are reserved for "hooked" kids…" This is the kind of media madness that students and parents find so discouraging. For example, we question much of the data in the piece. Regardless, the implicit message is that if you want your student to have a competitive advantage with athletes -- legacies, minorities, fill-in-the-blank -- then you had better find your own ace in the hole and hire a private counselor.  But applying to college is not about gaming the system. Instead, let's focus the public conversation where it can be most helpful -- on the best way for students to move through the process in a healthy and productive way.  One way to start? Ignore the hysterical headlines.