Sum up your life in 500 words?  Many students feel that this is the impossible mission of the college application essay.  If the subject of your admissions essay had to be the entirety of your life and/or character, they’d give you more than 500 words.  The truth about admissions essays is that colleges want to get a sense of your personality in order to see how you’ll fit into the academic community they’re building.  Since you are yourself in everything you think and do, you can pretty much write about anything. I just made the problem worse, didn’t I?  Anything?! Not surprisingly, there are many theories about picking the right topic for your essay.  I’ll outline a few common theories, […]

With August nearing, it’s important for students who will be in 12th Grade in the fall to at least be thinking about what they are going to write their college essay on. It doesn’t need to be complete (yet), but it’s important to start to flesh out ideas. A lot of students will look at the questions provided on the Common Application as prompts for their essay, but it’s my belief that that type of thinking is backwards. The question that students should really be asking themselves when they are ready to write their college essay is this: who am I? On its face, answering that question might seem simple. But you should be thinking beyond simple characteristics and instead […]