the college app jungle

College Advising, Superb Application Essay Development

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Category: common application

  • Essay Prompts vs. Essay Topics: A Discussion of the Significant Experience Essay

    Most college applications have a prompt which addresses a personal experience.  An example can be found in the Common Application essay prompts, which  have not changed in recent years; in the first prompt for the Common App essays for 2011-2012, you will find what I call the “Significant Experience” essay, which is broken down into…

  • The Common Application for 2012

    The big news for the Common Application of 2012 is:  no news.  The application itself is essentially the same application used last year.  The essay prompts are identical. For those of you eager to get started, the Common Application site will be closed from July 15, 2011 to August 1st, 2011, for maintenance.  Currently a…

  • How to Evade the Cliche in Your College Essay

    In my previous post, I discussed one of the gurus of college admissions and the college essay, Harry Bauld.  Mr. Bauld described a set of essay types which he believes are “a noose” with which a college applicant can “hang” herself.  Scary. What Bauld is after is a set of essay types which are commonly…

  • College Essay No-No’s: What Not To Do in Your Personal Statement

    Before I get to the gist, a short preface:  I hope that you followed my advice in the last prompt and did a considerable amount of writing before you arrived at this post.  I say this because I think that it is important to write without having that inner, critical voice whispering negative asides to…

  • So You Want To Write a College Essay

    Long ago, a man born in a peninsular region of far northeastern Greece left his provincial home to head for Athens, the New York of his day. Any young man who wanted to hit the big time went to Athens in this era, and if he were particularly bright and lucky, he would enter Plato’s…