A lot of the time, the hardest part of this college essay thing is just getting started. Too many schools, too many questions, not enough time. Not to mention, the way these questions are written, they make it seem like you need to know what your life’s work is before you even graduate high school.
The name of the game for starting these things isn’t so much about knowing what you’re going to write exactly, but which prompts you’re going to have to deal with in the first place. Once you have those figured out, whittling down the amount of work you actually have to do can be a pretty easy job.
First, do yourself (and your parents) a favor and make a list of the schools you’re most interested in applying to, and try to identify your top choice. If you can’t pick a number one school just yet, that’s fine, we’ll worry about that later.
Then, once you’ve identified the schools you’re interested in – don’t worry if there are too many, we’ll work on that, too – look for a tool to help you organize and minimize the amount of work you have to do. Think three essays instead of seven, five essays instead of twelve, that sort of thing.
Doing this kind of work takes just a few minutes all together, and it helps you get your head off your desk and makes the whole thing seem a lot more manageable than it used to be. Plus, when your parents come knocking on your door to find out if you’ve done anything with those gosh darned essays you’ll be able to say yes, thank you, please get me a beverage.