the college app jungle
College Advising, Superb Application Essay Development
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Category: Essay on Intellectual Development
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In this post, after an opening discussion on how to approach any supplement with both short answer and essay responses, including advice on dealing with electronic submissions, I will begin analyzing the individual prompts in Stanford’s supplement for 2012-2013. I will include all of the Stanford prompts, both for short responses and essays. Keep in…
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Many universities use application essay prompts that ask you to write about either a problem of some kind or something you care about. I encourage my clients to try to come up with at least one counterintuitive essay, so let’s do something completely unexpected and go with a retro subject that could fit both of these prompts: libraries. There…
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I have previously put up posts with detailed information on intellectual and book essays–see the links and table of contents in the first column/post of this website. These posts will also appear under categories and tags for Harvard, Princeton and other University names, as well as under the essay about books, the essay about an…
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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…
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One of the greatest challenges in writing an application essay is the length demanded by the Common App and most universities: 500 words (or less). For many applicants, this is akin to writing a perfect Italian sonnet about their lives–or boiling their lives down to a haiku. But if your initial essay has “good bones,”…
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This is the inaugural post on the topic of books and intellectual development for the 2012-2013 application year. I have previously written about this topic in a number of posts; for writing about books specifically, you should start at The Harvard Supplement; Or, How To Write About Books Part 1 , a post from last year. I will…
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This post builds on the last two posts and offers a list of themes by which you can classify and discuss books. This includes a detailed discussion of books and particularly of some quality trilogies and series that have been popular in recent years. The post includes suggestions for mixing it up by developing a…
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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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