The 2018-19 Common Application Essay Prompts: How to Write Essay #5
Learn more about writing Common Application Essay Prompt #5
The 2018-2019 Common Application Essay Prompts: How to write #4
Tips on writing Common Application Essay Prompt #4
The 2018-2019 Common Application Essay Prompts: How to write #3
How to write 2018 Common Application Essay Prompt #3
The 2018-2019 Common Application Essay Prompts #1
Common Application Essay Prompt #1 can be the inspiration for an effective application essay.
The 2017 Common Application Essay Prompts
There were several changes to the Common Application essay prompts (www.commonapp.org) this year and I thought it would be helpful to offer a strategy for responding to them. I’ll start with the two new prompts (one is actually a revival of an older prompt), then circle back and offer some tips for answering the holdovers, and […]
THE “#BLACKLIVESMATTER” STANFORD APPLICATION ESSAY
#BlackLivesMatter One Hundred Times For many years, one of Stanford University’s (www.Stanford.edu) college application essay prompts has been, “What matters to you, and why?” It’s a wonderful essay topic and has often been answered with passion and creativity. This past year, a student responded to the prompt by writing “#BlackLivesMatter” (www.blacklivesmatter.com) one hundred times. That […]
Don’t Let Your College Application Essay Topic Get Too Cute!
A GREAT IDEA FOR AN ESSAY, OR IS IT? Cyrus had a great idea for his college application essay. In answer to Common App Essay Prompt #4 – about an intellectual challenge he’d like to solve – he would write a question mark. That’s it, one giant question mark. For the entire essay. The more […]
Outlining Your College Application Essay
Rolling with the College Application Essay Josh figured he’d write his college application essay like he did everything else – making it up as he went along. After all, wasn’t that how he became the freestyle skateboard champion of Bakersfield, CA? Bringing this approach to his Common Application essay, however, proved difficult. He would start an […]
WRITING THE COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAY – REMOVING THE CLUTTER
There was an article in The New Yorker magazine this week about beloved non-fiction writing teacher, Bill Zinsser, author of the classic writing instruction book, On Writing Well. The author of the article, William Singer, was a student of Zinsser’s and states: “Our first imperative was to eliminate “clutter,” which Bill regarded as “the disease […]
WRITING THE COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAY: IT’S ABOUT MORE THAN COLLEGE
I was recently interviewed for an article in the Los Angeles Times “Mind and Body Section” (okay, the writer is a friend of mine) about writing as therapy. The writer wanted to know if I thought writing the college application essay could be therapeutic for high school seniors. My initial response: You have to remember, […]