#colleg essay

[micdotcom]

Read the essay that got Kwasi Enin into every Ivy League school

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[murphmurphthejerk]

Going to try and finish my last college applications. Ugh these essays are going to kill me. 

[openbooksorg]

Open Books’ Guide For Helping Students Write Authentic, Engaging Personal Essays for College Applications

Open Books’ Guide For Helping Students Write Authentic, Engaging Personal Essays for College Applications

1. Start with a Discussion about What Makes a Good Story

Sometimes students don’t realize that a good essay and a good story share the same components. Thus, if we’re going to write an engaging essay, we have to remember the ingredients for engaging writing. We love to start with Andrew Stanton’s Ted Talk about story telling.

 2. Realize (and Define!) Your Personal Strengths

At its core, a college essay is a supposed to “sell” a candidate to a school, but if you asked most of our juniors what they excel in, you’d get a stumped expression. Thus, we start with curated activities and conversations about personal strengths to give our students a vocabulary to speak about themselves positively. Knowing their core personal strengths help the students pick stories that exemplify their values.

3. Read…A Lot

One of the best ways for students to understand what’s expected of their essay is to read a wide variety of strong, well-written examples. Every week, our Gage Park students read essays and work in small groups to identify what makes them successful….and often beautiful, too!

4. Start With Several Story Topics and Whittle Down

We have our students begin to develop several story ideas, which they have to whittle down with the help of their writing coach and peers. This helps students pick the story that is closest to their hearts (and therefore most sincere) and that will place them in the right light. Note: these stories are not always happy ones – many of our students have overcome incredible obstacles in their lives.

5. Pre-Write, Outline, Pre-Write Some More

Our Gage Park juniors have been planning and plotting their essays for several weeks, revising their ideas, and discussing the finer details of their stories with their coaches. This will give them a very detailed map for writing an amazing, tight essay – and a deeper understanding about how the pieces fit together. 

6. Down Draft, Up Draft; Section by Section

We’ve introduced the components of our essays - introductions, body paragraphs, and conclusions – one at a time, and given our students the opportunity to develop each section separately. From there, the students will have a working draft (which we call a “down” draft) to fix up, which they’ll polish, edit, re-write, slave over, and then send to colleges, all with individualized attention and help from their writing coaches. 

7. Voila!

At the end of the program, not only will our students have an amazing draft of their essay to include in their college applications, they will also have spent hours and hours reflecting on their post-high school goals, delving into the writing process in a unique, step-by-step way, and developing a relationship with a professional, caring mentor.