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: Uncategorized
-
I am not advising or editing essays this year. Feel free to read and use any articles. Some will date quickly, others remain gold for the long term, particularly posts on specific essay types. Use as needed, and All the Best!
-
Introductory College Essay Workshops in June and July With Follow-Up Editing–Also Available for Distance Clients Via Skype I will be holding small-group essay workshops that introduce the process and get a draft started, on a weekly basis in June and July, meeting at public locations (e.g. conference rooms at libraries) in the Danville and Lafayette…
-
Back in Blue (and Red): The U Penn prompts are out. Of all the Ivy League applications, UPenn has the most elaborate contextualizing, and their prompts explicitly demand a level of research and personal introspection that is unique, even in the Ivy League. Yes, Cornell asks you to explore your major and puts up an…
-
Who should read this post: Anybody applying to the Ivy League, or anyplace else that asks you to respond to a prompt that uses a quote or that asks you to use a quote. My usual advice when asked about using a quote to start a college application essay is pretty simple: Try something else–unless…
-
Who should read this post: Anybody applying to Yale or Dartmouth and anybody who needs to write about community or about a problem that needs solving. In my previous post, I discussed sorting prompts into categories in order to save time by creating reusable essays, or at least some reusable language. To summarize the basic…
-
And my advice is: follow the money. Or at least consider if going to, say, Cornell, is going to offer enough bang for your bucks. Paradoxically, there is evidence that, if you are a “First-Gen” college student, or your family has limited financial means, the extra money is more likely to pay off in the…
-
Who should read this post: Anybody looking for ideas on an essay about a quote. You should also check out my last post on Writing About a Quote for Princeton, which introduces how to use an essay or a quote from an essay. For those of you who read my post on using an essay…
-
Who should read this: anybody interested in writing a Princeton Application Essay, or the Harvard Application (that book/intellectual interest prompt, still going strong) or the Stanford Interest short essay or . . . you get the picture. The broad scope of writing an essay about a quote means some aspects of this post will work…
-
Who should read this post: anybody writing the Princeton supplemental essays for 2017-2018. I discussed the short answers and listing responses in my last post–click here for that–Princeton Supplement 2017-18–then read on below for a complete, annotated discussion of this year’s Princeton essays. Let us begin with a quick look at the prompts for this…
-
Greetings Ivy-Seekers: Below is the post for last year’s Princeton essays (I am writing this in July, 2018). I expect most of last year’s prompts to remain, but they can tinker, and sometimes pull a fast one by trotting out a whole new set of prompts. The confirmed prompts usually appear in the last week…
the college app jungle 