the college app jungle
College Advising, Superb Application Essay Development
recent posts
- College App Jungle College Advising and Essay Editing is on Hiatus for 2025-26
- More Ivy League Schools Drop SAT/ACT Requirement; Princeton Drops Early Admissions
- How to Write the University of California Personal Insight Essays in 2020-2021
- How to Write the University of California Personal Insight Essays for 2021
- How to Write a Successful Cornell University Essay for 2020-2021
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Category: college essay
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In my last post, I took a look at trends in admissions–finding, most notably, that admission rates at the most competitive schools are continuing to trend downward in the single digits. This post will give three year results for all of the Ivy League universities, below, as well as results on other universities that were…
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College Counselors, College Application Services and Test Prep Companies: An Overview and Evaluation
There are four main categories of individuals and businesses currently offering college advising and application essay services. I will take them in order to describe what they offer and the advantages and disadvantages of each. The first category is individuals and companies offering themselves as “College Counselors” or “College Application Advisers.” Many of the individuals…
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Who should read this post: parents and students considering applying to a university in California; parents and students who are beginning to investigate or just jumping into the college applications process; parents and students interested in application trends in California universities; those who want to explode the myth that a good football team is vital…
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Most university application essays or supplements present at least the possibility of writing about books. Several applications ask directly that you write about a book or a series of books. If that sounds like you, read on, after you have a look at my last post which opens up the conversation which I will continue below. After…
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Stanford uses both the Common Application essays and what it calls The Stanford Supplement. If you are reading this, you probably already knew that. Bear with me while I establish the basic rules of the Stanford game for this year. I will then expand by analyzing the specifics of the prompts. When you have one…
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College Advising and Essay Development for the College Class of 2024, from Singapore to Palo Alto. My Editing and College Advising Business is on Hiatus from 2025 on. I will not be editing or providing college advising services. However, this blog remains up as a public resource. Some posts will already be past their shelf…
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My last post introduced the essay on a personal influence, which was the focus of Prompt Three and Prompt Four of the Common Application in recent years, and I suggested some exercises to get you started. This post assumes that you have some material ready to work with. If you don’t, have a look at…
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This post was originally written in the summer of 2011, but developments over the last year simply reinforce my message about thinking critically and avoiding simplistic, bumper-sticker solutions to complex problems in this kind of essay. In this post, I will briefly discuss a couple of potential topics which address prompt two of the…
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