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: Essay on What Matters to You
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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…
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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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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 post specifically addresses a Harvard application essay about a book, but this discussion is on writing about books in general. The advice here is also good for the 2015-2016 Princeton prompt on books and for other colleges asking you to write about a book in some way. I continue this thread for several…
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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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