March 4th, 2010
Even the best get a little... hold on... wait... uh, busy.
Our friends at the New York Times has published an article on a recent study showing that most people who graduated from high school in the last dozen years thought their guidance counselor was unable to provide useful advice on their college decision, with a large percentage feeling that the help offered was impersonal.
Also cited in the article was the sobering statistic that the American School Counselor Association considers a student:counselor ratio of 100 to 1 as ‘optimal,’ but that the average nationwide is 265:1, with schools in California shooting up over 1,000:1.
We should read this as evidence that the people tasked with providing the kind of organization and optimization that today’s college application process requires are understandably overwhelmed by the task much of the time. And who can blame them? Much of a guidance counselor’s time is eaten up with in-school requirements, scheduling conflicts, and even disciplinary issues that have nothing to do with helping to plan college experiences for their students.
So for students, try to make your time with your counselor count – and know that they aren’t necessarily going to have the resources to organize your work for you, nor are they necessarily going to be able to plan your meetings in advance in a way that will optimize the experience for both of you.
Make sure that the preliminary, basic work of organization and management of your tasks is taken care of automatically, and try your best to mine your guidance counselor’s considerable knowledge of university specifics and different opportunities, rather than just focusing on “what you have to do to get these applications done.” You’ll be much better served the sooner you can get to the upper-level discussions your guidance counselor is qualified to have with you. And he or she will be a lot happier, more grateful, and eager to do so.
For guidance counselors, remember that there are tools out there that may seem cost-prohibitve at first, but ultimately save your school money through greater efficiency. Using CEO as a management tool, for example, makes your job easier, cuts anxiety for all involved, and helps you keep on top of where your students’ applications stand without a single piece of paper to keep track of.
Tags: Admissions, California, College, College Essay Organizer, Deadline, Essay, Guidance Counselor, Guide, Help, New York Times, News, Organization, Overwhelming, School, university
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March 1st, 2010
Wasn't I Supposed To... Do..... Something.......
It’s March 1st, which means most if not all of the applications are out the door for seniors by now. But if you’re a junior, now is the time to get started with CEO and have a look at the benefits it provides if you’ve still got a year in front of you.
When you think about your senior year, what do you think about? Probably not your bright and shining desire to achieve. In fact, you may think of it as a time for doing… absolutely nothing at all. Wanting to get out from under your work will surely include avoiding the avalanche of application requirements that’ll be coming at you in the fall. CEO can make that workload shrink, and with our new email notification system, you don’t even need to check to see when the applications have been released by the schools. We’ll shoot you an email each week telling you which ones have been updated, so you can get going when you need to and not a second earlier.
Here are a few of the benefits juniors get from using CEO:
- Know in advance how many essays are expected from the colleges you’re considering
- Manage all essays simultaneously, rather than one at a time
- Receive notification over the summer each time a college updates its essay requirements
- Finish some essays over the summer
- And avoid the onslaught of work when the madness of the fall begins!
More than anything, CEO is about making it easy – now – and getting it done sooner rather than later.
Check out our new demo on the front page and see for yourself.
Tags: Admissions, CEO, College Essay Organizer, Deadline, early decision, Essay, Grades, Guide, Help, personal, procrastination, Recommendation, School, Tips, Top Choice, university
Posted in College Admissions Tips | Comments Off
January 20th, 2010
We have written about the style of the college essay many times here on CEO Blog. The form at its best is almost its own genre of writing – it is a combination of story telling, personal expression, and resume that demands a level of revision that most high schoolers are not used to.
There are all kinds of things that can make a writer freeze up when putting together a personal statement, but ironically, one of those things is having too many options. Many essay prompts, including the Common App’s long response, allow you to write on a topic of your choice, which is to say anything at all.
When you can write about anything, write about your passion.
Your passion won’t be the thing you think you’re supposed to write about, or the thing you think will be most impressive to the guidance counselor you are imagining, but it will be the thing that makes you sit up and say, “I can write about that.”
When you have that a-ha moment and recognize what you care about, your writing will actually improve. You will avoid cliché and, better yet, you will be able to write with detail that shows you understand the world you’re talking about. You will be able to invite the reader into an understanding of what you love and show why your involvement in it matters.
In short, you’ll be able to describe for the reader something about yourself that your resume doesn’t reflect as well as it could, and that’s the job of this piece of writing.
Tags: Admissions, avoid, CEO, College, College Essay Organizer, Common App, Deadline, Essay, Guide, Help, mistake, personal, Regular Decision, statement, Tips, Top Choice, university
Posted in College Essay Writing Tips | Comments Off
January 18th, 2010
Think long and hard about how funny you are. Are you funnier than this cat? Are you sure?
As we have mentioned many times before the college essay is not to be considered a cousin of the typical five-paragraph essay. It is a piece of writing that lends itself to an invention of its form, and in its best cases operates almost like its own genre. Depending on the prompts there can be opportunities to discuss unique experiences, failures, crimes, and misdemeanors. There is also an almost nagging opportunity to write the thing as wittily as possible. For many, that urge is irresistible.
We recognize this desire. We have felt this desire. We demand that you repress this desire.
Why?
Because unless you are simpatico with the admissions officer reading your essay – and have caught him or her in the right mood on the right day – you run the risk of just straight up falling on your face with any gag or tonal shift you attempt. And that is not a risk you can afford to take.
It’s not to say that you’re not funny – though in our experience you are almost definitely less funny than you think – it’s that the shaky likelihood of your reader thinking your humor is good and appropriate to the subject is multiplied against the shaky likelihood that you’re funny. Multiply it again by the number of admissions officers who have to read the thing and you’ve written yourself into a statistical hole.
But the best reason to avoid humor in these essays is the amount of time you’re going to spend on the piece. You will be able to much more easily figure out if your essay is good by avoiding humor. You will be able to focus on structural, stylistic, and content elements that are much more easy to quantify. The flip side of that, of course, is that those elements are much more easy to recognize as being well done by the admissions officer, too.
It’s not that we don’t like funny! We live for funny. It’s just that we really live for your admissions success, and that’s no laughing matter. Ba-doom-ching.
Tags: Admissions, avoid, CEO, College, Common App, Essay, Guide, Help, Humor, mistake, personal, Regular Decision, rejected, School, statement, Tips, Top Choice, university
Posted in College Essay Writing Tips | Comments Off
January 15th, 2010
"Seriously, baby, I can prescribe anything!"
So today is another one of those days. One of those dreaded deadline days. A big pile of schools and their January 15th deadlines celebrate the end of another college application cycle this afternoon at 5pm.
It is what it is. Time marches on. Hope you wrote the essays you had to (and no more!) and they were better than you could have ever dreamed.
But what if they weren’t? What if procrastination reared its ugly head and delivered the fatal stink bomb of slapped-together awfulness that kills so many college essays to your essay? What now?
Well, take it from Dr. Nick – there’s always Hollywood Upstairs Medical College.
But in all honesty this post is about letting go of those worries. We at CEO recognize the stress that goes into the application process and the problems applying to a large number of schools has created. So today’s the day to let it all roll off your back and remember that what’s done is done. The apps are out the door, so it’s time to recognize that it’s out of your hands and hope for the best.
The admissions process is a long and involved one, but it’s worth it to celebrate your accomplishments from time to time and to recognize the value of the hard work that goes into it. You’re making an effort to improve yourself and present yourself as capable of great things, and all that effort pays off in one way or another. Onward and upward!
Tags: accomplishments, Admissions, CEO, College, Common App, Deadline, Essay, Guide, Help, holistic, personal, procrastination, Regular Decision, statement, Tips, Top Choice, university
Posted in News | Comments Off
January 13th, 2010
I don't mean to brag, but... I was an incredibly strong baby.
One of the potential stumbling blocks many students face when writing personal statements or other pieces about their accomplishments is in navigating the fine line between self-promotion and bragging. We’ve seen “I don’t want to brag, but…” in a startling number of essays. That part shouldn’t be a problem. Here’s a tip if you’re including that line: don’t.
But selling yourself is part of the deal, and you’re going to need to get across what makes you great without ever seeming pompous. Here are three important tips:
1. Try to state what you’ve achieved, not what others have failed at. When you’re trying to avoid bragging, remember context. The context you put your accomplishments in will make the difference between stating your achievements and just kicking dirt in your opponents’ faces.
2. Talk about your decisions, and why they were unique. By discussing the things that were right, you imply options, and in the process, you articulate things that others have done and gotten wrong, without denigrating them or seeming like a sore winner.
3. Discuss how you expect to improve even further. This doesn’t mean talking about what you did wrong, or even what you’d like to change about your past actions or accomplishments. Simply discuss in specific terms how you see a new level of development that was never available to you before, but that after all your hard work, you belong there.
You should be proud of all you’ve set out to achieve, and talking about what you are capable of rather than others’ shortcomings is a huge boon to your writing. Make the most of it.
Tags: accomplishments, Admissions, avoid, CEO, College, Common App, Essay, Guide, Help, mistake, personal, School, statement, Tips, Top, Top Choice, university
Posted in College Essay Writing Tips | Comments Off
January 11th, 2010
The Rushmore Beekeepers. I'm a member, but also its founder.
The New York Times’ lovely blog, The Choice, has recently done a couple of posts that don’t seem to be intentionally linked but have an interesting relationship regarding an important question many have asked about their college essays. What’s worth writing about when it comes to extra-curricular activities? Is it worth it to spend your time discussing something that’s already on your resume? And is it a no-brainer to write about the most remarkable one on the list? Should we always write about the thing we’ve stretched furthest and hardest to do?
Extra-curriculars are the worst victim of resume padding there is. They tend to be easy to add (or even make up), and every school has several that require little or no work most of the time. But we generally know even before we’re asked which ones are important to us. We know which ones were added because we love them – the ones we’d be happy to do without even being credited for it – and those that were asked just to look good on paper.
What you’re perhaps less likely to believe is that the person reading your essay can tell, too. Even if he or she hasn’t met you. And it’s not because the activity is rare or sounds fake, but that a lack of passion will almost invariably be revealed in an essay.
What’s most important when choosing what to write about is not whether it seems the most exceptional, or seems like it took the most amount or work, or even the one that needs the most explaining. It’s the one you can write about in an excited, engaging, and specific way. When you find these topics, you’re golden, because you will be able to articulate what it is that fills you with that excitement, and only then will the reader understand what makes you, you.
Tags: Admissions, avoid, CEO, College, Common App, Essay, Guide, Help, mistake, New York Times, personal, statement, Tips, Top Choice, university
Posted in College Essay Writing Tips | Comments Off
January 8th, 2010
We here at CEO would like to open up the blog to any questions you may have about the college essay or college admissions processes. In the coming weeks, we’ll feature a number of posts that address questions sent in by readers – which might mean yours! Please feel free to give us an email with any question or thought you may have about any part of the process, and we’ll do write-ups about them. Hit us up with an email and let us know what’s on your mind – what’s stressing you out, what’s confusing you, or what you want to see changed in the future.
Also, if there’s anything you’d like to see addressed in greater depth on the blog, let us know. We’re here to demystify and make the process easier for you, so if there’s anything we can do better to make that happen, let us know.
Tags: Admissions, Call For Entries, CEO, College, College Essay Organizer, Essay, Guide, Help, personal, statement, Tips, university
Posted in College Essay Writing Tips | Comments Off
January 6th, 2010
Truer words were never spoken.
Though many of the big admissions deadlines have come and gone, there are still a fair number of regular decision dates coming up in the next week, along with rolling dates for larger schools. Have you put yourself behind the eight ball with your powers of procrastination? Wishing you’d started this writing already? Can I say I tried to warn you?
When rushing through your last-minute work, the main thing to avoid is show-stopping human error. Check for misspellings. Ensure that you are referring to the correct college if you are using its specific name. Don’t let poor formatting drift into your final draft.
Most importantly, don’t write just to fill the page. Content is king with these things, and it’s important that every sentence you choose to include be there to support the overall idea you are trying to convey about who you are and what you can do. Don’t treat a one page essay as a “one page essay,” treat it as an essay about “the time I went to summer camp and discovered I love the ropes course” or something specific that gives insight into your character. When there are irrelevant details crowding your essay, the reader can tell, quickly, and it makes it easy to stop paying attention, which is anathema for short-form writing like this.
Remember our previous tips about the potential rewards of choosing an original concept and committing to it. Never be afraid to show off something that makes you, you unless that special something basically makes you look like a criminal. And if you are a criminal, well, remember our tips about not bragging.
Tags: Admissions, avoid, CEO, College, College Essay Organizer, Essay, Guide, mistake, personal, procrastination, School, statement, Tips, Top, Top Choice, university
Posted in College Essay Writing Tips | Comments Off
