July 22nd, 2010
With the latest Common App coming on August 1, we will be opening up a forum here to give you feedback on miscellaneous issues related to the college essay process. This way you’ll not only save hours of work and enhance your efficiency with CEO’s web tools but also get some clarity with the more confusing aspects of the process.
In the next few weeks we’re going to up the ante a little bit and open the floor to you in a more hands on, nuts-and-bolts way. If you have a question you’d like answered about the college essay process in general, about a specific prompt, or about CEO, let us know by dropping us an email.
As we roll into the fall and the admission season heats up, we’ll continue to maintain an open forum so you can get answers to your questions about your struggles, your curiosities, and your successes.
Tags: Admissions, CEO, College Essay Organizer, Common App, Deadline, Essay, Guidance Counselor, Guide, Help, News, Organization, personal, Regular Decision, School, statement, Tips, Top Choice, university
Posted in College Essay Writing Tips, News | No Comments »
June 30th, 2010
You have a summer. Don't spend it like this guy.
One of the great advantages CEO provides to its users is the ability to get a head start on what can be a pretty humungous amount of work. Access to our database comes along with a weekly emailer, letting you know which schools’ requirements have been updated for the coming year, and giving you a chance to get out in front of that pile while you still have the time to do it.
The rude, nay, completely unacceptable reality of senior year is that your superiors insist on continuing to give you homework despite your being a full 75% complete with your high school education. What I’m saying is that seniors have work. Papers. Math. Things to do.
Piling the applications and essays has loads of upsides for you, but the amount of work and the creeping deadlines are not part of those upsides.
So here it is, July already, and after that, there’s, you know, August. Months when you may find yourself with a wee bit of free time. Working with CEO can help you turn September and October’s piles into very manageable slates of work. Get started ahead of time and knock those essays out beforehand, so your revisions in the fall feel more like tweaks and fine-tuning. The kind of work that turns high school writing into actual, honestly good writing.
Tags: accomplishments, Admissions, CEO, College Essay Organizer, Common App, Deadline, early decision, Essay, Guide, Help, News, Organization, Overwhelming, personal, procrastination, Regular Decision, School, statement, summer, Tips, Top Choice, university
Posted in College Essay Writing 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 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
November 30th, 2009
Somewhere in the nineties there was a flat-out boom in college applications. The kids of the baby-boomers came of age and started applying to college en masse, creating demand for top education like there had never been before.
What that means now is a standard of applying to six, eight, even twelve or more universities for most high school students, especially those applying to competitive schools, where they may be rejected despite being academically qualified, for reasons outside their control.
And what that means is a big ol’ pile of college apps, with their requisite essays, recommendations, and other assorted paperwork to bog students down right when they need it the least.
SO MANY.
But what’s often overlooked are the many supplemental essays schools require, in the interest of distinguishing themselves from the other schools you might be applying to with the Common App. These can pile up, making 10 or more essays required of you, on top of the standard long- and short-answer responses the CA needs for every application.
Later this week we’re going to do some posts about the colleges with the most ridiculous lists of requirements and see how we can whittle them down quickly, often by repurposing writing that’s already been done. It will be a bit light-hearted because the bottom line is that each college has its own requirements reasons they think are quite important. But… we’ll see about that.
It’s a jungle out there but use the tools that have shown up and are right at your fingertips to make the thing more navigable. You’re almost there! Stay tuned.
Tags: Admissions, College, Essay, Guide, Help, Tips, Top Choice
Posted in College Essay Writing Tips | Comments Off
November 24th, 2009
Chances are, your days are already pretty packed: classes, extracurriculars, seeing friends, spending time with family… and now throw on top of that applying to college. Senior year can be overwhelming, especially when it comes to writing your personal essays. And while you’ve certainly written essays on the Civil War, Einstein, or plant biology, a personal essay is a different animal.
Maybe be more subtle than this.
Instead of trying to brainstorm an essay that matches an existing question from your school of choice, try working backward. Think of a personal experience that moved you or changed you … then tailor that to answer the question. Let’s say you want to write about your experience playing the flute for the first time with a large orchestra. This story answers a lot of possible essay questions: what was a personal activity of special significance, or an accomplishment you are proud of—even an adversity you have dealt with. This one story can be tweaked into the many essays your colleges require.
It’s great to get feedback from a friend or a teacher on a draft you’ve written, but don’t overdo it. A common mistake is an essay written “by committee” – too many people have read it and the writer is trying to please too many different opinions. In the end, you’re left with an essay with all the life sucked out of it. Find one person you trust—preferably not a family member or friend—and let that individual be your sounding board.
Make sure to set aside a little bit of time every day to work on your essay. It’s better to spend 20 minutes on it daily than 10 hours right before it’s due. You’ll find that visiting it every day will help your ideas flow and connect better, give you perspective on what you’ve already written, and reduce the chances of sloppy mistakes.
Tags: Admissions, College, Essay, Guide, Help, personal, statement, Tips
Posted in College Essay Writing Tips | Comments Off
