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
about
Category: Essay on an Important Experience
-

For a great activity and college application essay, start a fruit harvesting group.
-
Hello–As an FYI, Harvard has not posted its prompts for this year, as of this writing (July 13th). This post is for the class of 2021; if you are applying this year, you will be entering school (barring a gap or spring enrollment) in the fall of 2018, making you the class of 2022. It…
-
Yes, folks, it’s time to get your essays started. If you think that this is premature because most universities haven’t yet released their applications for next year, I simply point to the Common Application prompts, which are unchanged–and most of you will be applying to at least a few Common App universities. Use this link…
-
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…
-
Many applications ask for an essay on a person who influenced you or on an important experience. There are wrinkles to this kind of question–in some cases, the “person” can be a fictional character and the influence can be a work of art, as in one of the prompts from the Common Application in recent…
-
In my last post, I discussed what is know as The Significant Experience Essay, which appeared, among other places, in Prompt 1 of the Common Application Personal Statement for 2011-2012. Possibly you’ve done the prewriting exercise I recommended in the last post, and you may even now have an essay in hand and are looking…
-
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…