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How to Write the University of California Personal Insight Essays in 2020-2021

June 22, 2020June 22, 2020wordguild

Advice for Writing Successful U. C. Essays, Part II–Personal Insight Prompts 5-8

This is my second installment on writing successful University of California essays for 2020-2021. For the first installment, click here: How to Write the University of California Personal Insight Prompts 1-4.

In this post, we turn to the final four of eight U.C. prompts. Note that you are not required to write 350 words, but if you have a good topic, the 350 word limit will feel too short, and your big problem will be fitting it all in. In a later post, I will look at the art of editing for word count.

Also be sure to give each prompt a try before making your final selections for the four required personal insight essays–if you start with the concrete evidence in terms of experiences you’ve had and actions you’ve taken, you may surprise yourself by findng that a prompt which seems not to apply to you actually does. And as noted in my earlier post, even if you don’t write the final essay for a prompt, the material from brainstorming and scribbling out ideas may be useful elsewhere. Now let’s move on to U.C. Personal Insight Prompts 5-8, and to why this post is worth reading, even if you end up not writing any U.C. essay prompts–my advice on the “Woe is Me” essay.. This kind of narrative has become increasingly common in the college application world. Tread carefully.

U.C. Personal Insight Essay Prompt 5, and How To Write It

Question 5:

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

Here is the guidance that the U.C. offers for this question:

Things to consider: A challenge could be personal, or something you have faced in your community or school. Why was the challenge significant to you? This is a good opportunity to talk about any obstacles you’ve faced and what you’ve learned from the experience. Did you have support from someone else or did you handle it alone?

If you’re currently working your way through a challenge, what are you doing now, and does that affect different aspects of your life? For example, ask yourself, “How has my life changed at home, at my school, with my friends or with my family?”

Commentary and Analysis on UC Prompt 5

A specific challenge when it comes to actually writing a response to this prompt is the risk of creating a “Woe is Me” essay. What do I mean? First of all, I am not addressing those of you with learning challenges who have found ways to compensate and overcome them. However, I would add that you do not have to reveal disabilities or learning challenges to a university, though when you arrive on campus after having been admitted, they do have to provide you with necessary support–usually under a student services section or department. When I say the “Woe is Me” essay, what I am really focused on is essays that are meant to promote the trials and tribulations, the difficult life and intense suffering of an applicant to get the sympathy of the application readers. This can be a bad strategy, when it is a strategy and not just a life story.

The Rise of the Woe-is-Me Strategy

Here is why this strategy became popular: At some point around the turn of the century, word got out that the University of California was looking for ways to assess challenges in life that affected students, and that writing an essay about the life challenges you had to overcome was the best way to boost your chances of admission to the University of California system. Tbis approach first becme noticeable in the aftermath of political and legal action against equal opportunity programs in California.

So the essay on a difficult life, known in its extreme and false form as the “Woe is Me” essay became a kind of meme that drove thousands of applicants to concoct Dickensian background stories about poverty, disease, etc. Some of this was real, some was exagarrated, and some essays were totally fabricated. Application readers grew really tired of reading tales of suffering and woe, particularly when they obviously reached for sympathy. I am, of course, speaking of those essays sent in by applicants whose basic situation seemed pretty comfortable.

The worst effect of this meme in my opinion was its effect on students who suddenly felt they needed to have a competition for who had suffered the most or who had the greatest handicap to overcome. This seems to be to bad all around, for several reasons.

Why the Woe is Me Essay Should Usually be Avoided–and Who Can Authentically Use It

In the first place, it’s inauthentic for reasonably comfortable people to create sob stories out of their lives in order to get a benefit. In the second place, this is a bad game for most applicants to be playing–because there is incredible hardship out there in America, but if you are among the majority audience for a website like this, with time, realiable internet, a decent computer, etc, it’s a losing game to try to compete for a championship in hardship. You may end up looking phony. In the third place, it’s bad for young people to pretend to be something they are not in order to get a reward. I know that’s a bit circular, but so is the Nicomachean Eth i cs, which also offers some arguments on this writing situation, if you are interested.

In order to be more concrete here: I have done work for applicants who were functionally if not legally parentless, these being teenagers who worked jobs, went to school and took care of younger siblings because their own parents were unable or unwilling to do their job or were out of the picture. These things happen in America. Many college applicants come from really challenging backgrounds–but then they don’t have to pump up the suffering in their lives. Just reporting the facts is enough, and the fact that they have doen well enough in those circumstances to apply to college speaks for itself.

You, of course, have to make the call here–I do not know your life. There is great human misery to be found even among the owners of chalets and castles, but as a rule, suffering is distributed unevenly in all societies. But pumping up your suffering to get into a school is not a good thing to do. College app readers will frown mightily on those they feel or discover are manipulating the facts of their lives to get sympathy.

Who Can Write this Topic with that Focus

If you do come from a challenging background, however, it does make sense to choose this topic. The key for my clients who have written this essay is whether the circumstances shaped their lives and so were really a necessary topic for them to discuss, to explain certain aspects of their backgrounds and academic records. But even then, the main point of these essays was the way these students overcame the challenges. With real suffering, as noted above, there is no need to offer a florid description–the deeply personal circumstances speak for themselves in this kind of personal statement.

As a final, concrete example, I have also helped people with college applications after they arrived in this country fleeing war and violence or poverty and starvation or all of the above. So please weigh carefully if you need to respond to this prompt. If you are offering this essay as evidence for your challenges in life, make sure that others will see your problems as challenges significant enough to merit the time of your application reader as they fit together the puzzle of who you are. My most memorable experience working with a student writing about a life experience like this started with floating away from her country of birth on a smallish boat, being interned in camps for displaced persons, seeing other people die along the way, and then coming to the United States where she had to learn a new language, working a job to help support her family, dealing with prejudice about her appearance and assumptions about her religion, and still she excelled in school. Notice how simply stating concrete facts in this case is an example of facts speaking for themselves. Also, this was for a longer essay, back when U.C. allowed two essays of up to 1,000 words combined–she reused her Common Application essay on her background.

No doubt many of you’ve been working as well as taking care of siblings, many of you have learning challenges, and you may have been juggling family challenges, like your own academic challenges and the sudden switch to online classes in last semester of school. Just keep in mind that this was true of pretty much all of your peers and fellow U.C. applicants. Ask for some ourtside opinions of the merits of your personal challenges before going with this approach.

And if you do have dramatic or challenging personal story, state the facts without dramatic, you-are-there stuff and try to focus more on your initiative and problem-solving, and on the impact your efforts had in your success. But do make the cirumstances clear–a basic description of the situation or events will make clear the obstacles you overcame.

U.C. Essay Prompt 6 and How To Write It

Question 6–

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

Here is the U.C. guidance for this question:

Things to consider: Many students have a passion for one specific academic subject area, something that they just can’t get enough of. If that applies to you, what have you done to further that interest? Discuss how your interest in the subject developed and describe any experience you have had inside and outside the classroom — such as volunteer work, internships, employment, summer programs, participation in student organizations and/or clubs — and what you have gained from your involvement.

Has your interest in the subject influenced you in choosing a major and/or future career? Have you been able to pursue coursework at a higher level in this subject (honors, AP, IB, college or university work)? Are you inspired to pursue this subject further at UC, and how might you do that?

Commentary and Analysis on UC Personal Insight Prompt 6

My main recommendation: if your passion is intellectual, be sure that your passion extends outside of the classroom. You want to show this as a self-motivated activity, as something you pursue for its own sake, not just for grades. And you should think about why you pursue it, on a personal level, but also see if you can show some benefit for those around you–from your community through your school to your society at large and the world. Is there some way in which your interest can make the world a better place? If so, write out some ideas on that–whether it’s already true, or part of your plan for the future, through your education (something you should say–don’t assume the reader can infer the ouctomes of your interest, or their context). Show why you care about this.

And look at how a passion may apply to other areas of interest. One of the more interesting essays on this topic I have seen was by a student who attended an arts-oriented school, who worked on both visual arts and sculpture there, and how the manual skills picked up, and the artist’s sense of shape and design, helped this student come up with a design solution on what I will loosely call a high-tech robotic machine. This student solved a difficult problem involving how to shape and consruct protective cladding.

So I go back again to my advice in my first post on writing the U.C. prompts for 2020-2021–start by writing down experiences and scribbling out some details of description. While you come up with concrete experiences and actions, also look for ways in which your academic passion may have shaped your approach to problem-solving, or how it may be connecting you to knowledge outside of the specific discipline. On addition, look for chances to show how you may have worked with others, innovated and showed some leadership ability. It is nice to overlap (a bit) between essays, like this prompt and the prompt on leadership experiences, prompt 1, showing some leadership again in an essay not explicitly about leadership. The discussion on U.C. prompt 1 is located in my last post on the U.C. personal insight essays–click to see.

U.C. Essay Prompt 7 and How To Write It

Question 7–

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

My first point on this one: You are free to define your own community here, as shown by the guidance offered by the U.C.–

Things to consider: Think of community as a term that can encompass a group, team or a place — like your high school, hometown or home. You can define community as you see fit, just make sure you talk about your role in that community. Was there a problem that you wanted to fix in your community?

Why were you inspired to act? What did you learn from your effort? How did your actions benefit others, the wider community or both? Did you work alone or with others to initiate change in your community?

Commentary and Analysis on UC Prompt 7

If you come from an interesting family, your community can start there. And if your family has some traditions and customs that define it and in some sense define you, and those offer a positive insight into you and what you want to do in the world–fantastic. That’s step 1. Now what have you done to help your community? Also, repeating my recent comment, there is an element of leadership here as well, and that overlap of ideas and traints between essays (but not repetition of content).

Social justice is perhaps the most obvious community issue in the United States today, and no doubt many of you are interested in it, and perhaps actively involved in making change happen. However, if that is a recent passion, consider whether you have the record to address it in a college application essay.If you are applying in fall 2020, then June, 2020 is not the time to develop a sudden commitment for justice to your community or to the fight for civil rights for all.

On the other hand, many people have certainly had an awakening in the last month, if not the last six years. Maybe your awakening or commitment is serious, you are committed, and you are doing the work and putting yourself out there (hopefully with mask and sensible precautions.) Then you can write this essay as an important part of defining yourself. Just be wary of appearing to look like a carpettbagger or bandwagon jumper if you’ve been mostly an observer until recently–and just speaking up in class and posting a bit on social media is not really enough to make you an activist for an essay like this.

Also be wary of preaching and oversimplifying. Now is the time to act on principles, so be sure to clarify them, their origins and development in you, and be wary of preaching and oversimplifying. Yes, I know I already said that. History is complicated, and its long arc has bent toward justice, but only slowly, through activism and dramatic moments, but mostly through determined and disciplined work over time. You can already see how long the fight is still likely to be based on the lack of legislative response in Minnesotat this June. So be in it for the long run in life and in this essay, if you write it.

I have written about how to tackle essays on a problem, on social justice, etc, so you can see a post like the one I link now, and follow the subject tags for more, here–Essay on a Problem. All of the topics I list in this years-old post are still at play, now. Which says something in itself. If you scroll down in that linked post, I specifically address social justice essays.

U.C. Personal InsightEssay Prompt 8 and How To Write It

Question 8—

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

Here is the U.C’s guidance on this question:

Things to consider: If there’s anything you want us to know about you, but didn’t find a question or place in the application to tell us, now’s your chance. What have you not shared with us that will highlight a skill, talent, challenge or opportunity that you think will help us know you better?

From your point of view, what do you feel makes you an excellent choice for UC? Don’t be afraid to brag a little.

Commentary and Analysis on UC Prompt 8

Coming up with suggestions for this is a stumper for me, because it’s a personal insight essay–only you as an individual know your unknown topic that will fit here.

But in my experience, this essay tends to develop when a student starts our to write one thing and ends up with an essay that does not classify clearly–so it goes here. It’s a nice place to drop a good essay that does not quite fit anywhere else.

But here is a final, point: this personal insight application essay is not an essay for a high school class. I have made this statement several times in my two-part analysis of the U.C. essays this year, but in this case I mean that an application essay is not like an essay on a history test. There is no one right answer, or even a narrow range of right answers. These are personal essays, about you.

And college application readers are looking for good writing, interesting matrerial, and insight into you. If an essay is a slight reach on what community is (see above), so what? It it’s good and they like it, they like you as a candidate as well. Maybe it goes here, but if it sort of fits community, don’t worry too much: app readers don’t toggle back and forth between the prompts and the essay you wrote and look to deduct points because you did not answer all aspects of the question.

But still, this final prompt is a place to drop a good essay that does not really fit any of the others. And it’s maybe an opportunity for that quirky idea. Just don’t be too cute.

Contact Me for Essay Developing and Editing

Well that’s it for me on analysis for the University of California essays for this year. I do still have some spots for editing and essay development as I write this in the third week of June, 2020, so Contact Me if you need help. (Note; this link takes you to my business portal, which I separate from this free, advice-to-all-applicants website. Not a scam, just to separate the buisness from the public service and journalistic side).

And get writing soon. Four essays is a pretty hefty workload.

Tips for Writing a 2020-2021 Common Application Essay

June 10, 2020June 10, 2020wordguild

This Year the Common Application Essay Prompts are the Same but the World is Different

The Common Application Prompts for 2020-2021 take a page from Yogi Berra: It’s Deja Vu all over again. But it’s only deja vu when it comes to repeating last year’s essay prompts. When it comes to actually writing the 2021 Common Application essay to reflect the world around you (and your application reader), we are truly living in a different world than we were in the fall of 2019.

How to brainstorm ideas and start a winning Common Application Essay for 2020-2021, creating an essay that gets you accepted by reflecting who you are–

In this radically changed world, you need to make your essays reflect who you are as an individual. But if we are all in this together, as the advertisements and public announcements say, you will also want your essay to reflect what you have to offer to the “we,” to the society and world around you. Any college application that requires an essay is evaluating you holistically, so your essay should have a holistic approach to you and to how your education and goals fit into a big-picture future.

The Common App folks may not be changing their prompts this year, but to write a successful Common Application essay in 2021, your approach to the prompts should in some way take into account this historical moment, and how you see yourself playing a role in making a future that is better.

For more on how application essays are evaluted, see my classic post: The Secret of College Admissions.

Start Your Essay with Yourself

My first tip on writing a successful 2021 Common application essay: in order to talk about what you have to offer, you need to start with yourself, and where you want to go through your education. As long as all of that connects to the greater good. Hey, it’s 2020, not 2019.

Continuing from that point, as you turn to writing your essays, don’t think of the process as being simply about trying to get to some destination, from some point A to point Z. Instead, think of it more as a trial-and-error process. If art is your thing, it’s like making a sculpture out of clay–add stuff, tear stuff off, smash the whole thing flat and start again. Make a few trials to compare. One of them will finally “go.”

If you are a tech person or a builder, its like trying to create a complex device from scratch–a robotic car, or submarine, for example. An essay is a bit like a machine, with parts to build and integrate– an introduction, body and conclusion–and a purpose. There are certain things that need to happen at each stage, but you have to design the parts around your own experience. And just as you could come up with a chassis first, or develop a propulsions system first, then design the chassis, or hull, you don’t necessarily need to come up with your introduction as your first item. In fact, it’s often better to start with your concrete experiences. And if a design does not work, take it apart and try another design.

Begin the Thought Process by Picturing Yourself Ten Years from Now. Then Start Writing Down Concrete Experiences, Ideas, Values.

Only you can determine the specific interests and experiences that deal with your twin topics in this essay–who you are and who you want to become. But here’s an assist in writing that successful Common Application essay: keeping in mind that common good ideal, stop and think about where you see yourself in ten years. More specifically, how could your interests, your education, and the kind of work you might do be of value to others ten years from now? You are not just angling to make a six-figure income in a successful college application essay, though that’s a nice thing to have; you are trying to change the world for the better, even if incrementally.

After thinking about that, take a look at the Common Application Essay Prompts for 2020-2021, below, and put each at the top of a single page; then start writing ib response to one prompt at a time. You can brainstorm big ideas, but focus on scribbling down or typing out descriptions of any of your experiences and concrete ideas and values that come to mind that fit under a prompt.

The great idea for a hook to start your essay is always important, but it’s the rest of the essay that is hard to do. That long blank after your hook is where most of your work lies, and to fill in that space effectively, you need concrete material. That’s why it’s a good idea to see what you have in your real-world experiences and ideas, before launching a full essay draft.

To Start an Essay, Go to your Concrete Experiences

List and describe concrete examples of things you have done, experiences you have had, and even ideas and values that are important to you that seem to fit each prompt, quickly, without sweating about the paragraph form or grammar or spelling. Just get some stuff on the page under each prompt. When you run out of things to say, set the page off to the side and move on to the next prompt.

Eventually you will find that one of the Common App prompts allows you to write more. It just comes more easily. And if it feels lively, and it seems like it will allow you to show who you are and how you will use your (future) education to make a contribution, that is probably the one for you. Go ahead and write an essay draft. Figure out a hook to get the reader started, and you are on your way to a full draft. (If you have problems with hooks and getting started, I will be following up later with a general discussion of hooks and essay structure. Click to Follow my site to get updates when I post. )

Here They Are: The 2020-2021 Common Application Essay Prompts

1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?

4. Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma – anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.

5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

But do get started now.* Whether you apply to the Ivy League or hundreds of western, land-grant colleges, or hundreds more small, liberal-arts colleges, your Common Application essay is the lead essay for your application. Start early and be willing to try multiple essays and approaches.

I will be writing more about the Common App Essays soon, so come on back for more. Follow my site to get updates when I post.

*Write Your Essay Now, But Don’t Create a Common App Account Before August

A warning: start writing your essays now, but do not create an account or upload information on the Common Application itself. Yet. While the prompts I list above are live for 2020-2021, the Common App site is not.

Any information that is uploaded before the offical 2020-2021 application rollout in early August, 2020 will be deleted. All accounts and information currently on the Common Application site are linked to last year’s applications. In the last days of July the Common Application will go offline and then will reappear in its 2020-2021 version on or around August 1st. At that point you can go online to select colleges and begin uploading essays and answering questions.

Contact Me for Essay Development and Detailed Editing Help

If you need help developing and editing your Common Application Essay, contact me.

Activities To Create Great College Application Essays

June 9, 2020June 15, 2020wordguild

No doubt many of you find youselves unexpectedly trapped in and around your house, your plans for internships, work and personal growth put on ice by the Covid pandemic. What to do? You could sit home and play videogames, chat online and read some books–the latter activity has promise, at least, for college applications as well as that personal, intellectual growth. Or you could also come up with some new activities to create great college application essays.

(If you are not clear on why activities are important, please read my classic post on how college applications are evaluated: The Secret of College Admissions.)

And here is an idea for an activity you can quickly organize and move on, as well as scale up: harvesting food that is going unpicked.

Harvesting Excess Fruit in Suburbs and Cities–for Community Service and Great College Essay Potential

If you live in a suburb that is more than a decade old, as well as in the lower-rise areas of most cities, you will find a source of food waste that is often overlooked: fruit that goes unpicked on trees in private yards. There are also many people with gardens producing more than they can consume.

To create a great exracurricular activity for college application essays and filling in your personal profile: simply find excess fruit (and vegetables, when possible) and connect that fruit with food banks and other organizations. Your equipment as simple as a pole harvester for fruit and possibly a good-quality ladder or two (this latter element, pun intended, does introduce a risk of falling. Please take note).

This is not an original idea on my part–there are dozens of groups, some highly organized, that already exist–just a simple search can show you this: gleaning on DuckDuckGo. And you can find a short list of well-known gleaning groups here: Harv esting/Gleaning Organization Directory.

But my pitch is this, even if you live near one of these groups: start your own.

Show Leadership and Initiative by Creating Your Own Organization

Creating an organization could be as simple as a single friend or a group of friends to pick this fruit, or it could involve you getting a group organized, creating a nonprofit with a website, and expanding your organization–particularly if you are, say, a rising sophomore–time is on your side. But even if you are a rising senior, imagine the value of being able to write your college application essay on a summer spent helping neighbors who can’t pick fruit and helping those who are hungy. Call that a win-win-win.

Your tools can be as simple as making or buying a few pole harvesters and (possibly) one or two good-quality ladders of no more than six-eight feet. Add some boxes and bags, and gloves and sturdy hats might also be helpful–you will find out why the first time you pick off a thorny lemon tree.

Spiky lemon trees aside, your only real risk from this operation, provided you keep a sensible distance while harvesting and stay out of people’s houses, is from heat/ a sunburn or a fall off a ladder. Make sure you train everybody on ladder safety as well as dealing with Covid safety.

Why you should to this: self interest. You need Covid-safe activities to crate college essays. And this will get you outdoors, will allow you to “hang” (literally) with your friends, again in a safe way.

Community Service is In

And more importantly, you will be giving to your community. As an aside, while I was growing up, I watched a more communal ethose in my hometown, state and the USA in general recede into a focus on self interest. I think that may be changing. And the nice thing is, in giving you to your community you are doing something that shows leadership, initiative and a community spirit. You can scale it up as much as you like, set up a website, form a 501 nonprofit. How far you take something like this is up to you.

And before you even get a few pieces of equipment, finding trees is as simple as looking around your area, then knocking on likely doors, taking three or four steps back and cheerfully explaining, through your mask, that you are launching a neighborhood harvest of excess fruit to send to food banks (et al). Network with your local food banks, and you could be harvesting and transporting within days.

You can help your pitch by kicking some fruit back to the tree owner.

Tips and Links for Setting up a Fruit Harvesting Extracurricular Activity

Here’s a few more tips on everyting from creating a cheap and safe pole harvester to organizing a 501c3 cheaply, without hiring a lawyer:

Making a pole harvester, youtube lesson

You will find a series of related videos on making picking tools and harvesting fruit as you scroll down from that Youtube link. Like this one:

Pole harvester, with a Brit Accent

And if you want to have a telescoping pole on which to mount your harvester, just repurpse a painting pole, e.g. these examples:

Telescoping painter’s poles

And if you have or plan to buy a ladder, be sure to study ladder safety–most orchards use a tripod ladder, for ease of setup, as shown in this link:

Ladder safety, OSHA

Tips on Writing Successful Boston College Application Essays for 2019-2020

July 3, 2019July 30, 2019wordguild

Who Should Read This Post: Anybody applying to Boston College or another Jesuit or Catholic college, like Georgetown; anyone who needs to write a supplemental essay about art or a book as inspiration; anyone who needs to write about a social justice or problem essay for College Applications. And if you do need support in writing your essays, Contact Me for world-class essay development and editing.

Overview: Beginning a Successful Boston College Supplemental Essay

Boston College is on the Common Application, so you will write one of the Common App essays (650 word limit) and choose one of the prompts below to write about, for a maximum of 400 words on this B.C. supplemental essay.

Also note that the Common App site does not go live until on or around August 1st, so you should not set up an account there until the site reopens for this year’s application cycle, but you can choose and write both the Common App essay and the Boston College essay now–the prompts are live for 2020. I do link sources of inspiration and information on multiple topics associated with the Boston College prompts below, but remember that you should seek inspiration rather than copying inspiration directly. So to speak. Many colleges do use Turnitin.com or their own, proprietary software to look for plagiarism on application essays.

Let’s start with a look at all of the Boston College prompts, then break them down one at a time:

Boston College

The writing supplement topics for the 2019-2020 application cycle (400 word limit); prompts first, then a discussion of each prompt to follow that:

1. Great art evokes a sense of wonder. It nourishes the mind and spirit. Is there a particular song, poem, speech, or novel from which you have drawn insight or inspiration?

2. When you choose a college, you will join a new community of people who have different backgrounds, experiences, and stories. What is it about your background, your experiences, or your story, that will enrich Boston College’s community?

3. Boston College strives to provide an undergraduate learning experience emphasizing the liberal arts, quality teaching, personal formation, and engagement of critical issues. If you had the opportunity to create your own college course, what enduring question or contemporary problem would you address and why?

4. Jesuit education considers the liberal arts a pathway to intellectual growth and character formation. What beliefs and values inform your decisions and actions today, and how will Boston College assist you in becoming a person who thinks and acts for the common good?

Boston College Supplemental Breakdown and Analysis

Now let’s take a closer look at prompt #1, Great art evokes a sense of wonder. It nourishes the mind and spirit. Is there a particular song, poem, speech, or novel from which you have drawn insight or inspiration?

So first of all, they do not want an essay explaining meaning in the same mode you do for an English class, so close that essay doc that you wrote for Catch-22 or Beloved or whatever other required reading and essay you did for your English class last year. For the moment. The prompt did not ask you to write about the meaning of poem x or novel y per se–though obviously the meaning matters–instead, they want first to understand its impact on you, how you relate to it, and what this shows about you. Of course the meaning will come up in discussing that, but not in the way you would argue for or prove a meaning in an Essay for an American Lit class, though at some point you might reopen that doc from your English class to help–just be wary of directly inserting high school English essay-style content into this college application essay.

A second reason to (maybe) not write about a novel written for a class is the nature of required reading. Novels from To Kill a Mockingbird to The Great Gatsby to Lord of the Flies are required reading or commonly read novels for high school students across the country, and the typical titles are widely known among college admissions readers, both for the public schools and for those elite private schools that still take their students on the voyage through things like Moby Dick (which was a standby at one time but has largely vanished from public high school curricula, though it is still a part of some private school curricula). If a required novel had a big impact on you, okay–your passion should override the fact that you had to read the book for school. And you have the advantage of having read the book with the help of a teacher, and likely have written about it already, after class discussion.

But if you have read a novel not for a class that had a big impact on you, then maybe start there–this automatically shows that you do more than the required reading; you could and probably should also suggest your own widespread and independent reading habits, driven by your natural curiosity, by explaining how you discovered obscure but great Novel X, the subject of your essay. Perhaps you still haunt that most archaic of businesses, the bookstore and found it, or you have a habit of reading book blogs. The disadvantage of writing about this more obscure novel that was read independently is the fact that you are on your own when it comes to interpreting the book, but if it is an important book, you might find help by searching for it and/or its author in the New York Review of Books–which is s serious book and culture site, but that does not mean that they will not tackle serious YA Lit, like Hunger Games or Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (Amber Spyglass, et al), or search for the book title on your favorite search engine with the term criticism, and you might find a stand-alone article or an article like this one, that looks at a set of YA Dystopian novels. I have written about how to write an essay on a novel multiple times before, so take a look at that as well–how to write about books.

Of course, there are many other kinds of art you could write about, and the most important thing to start with is art that impacted you, then to decide if it’s worth writing about. Even pop art is legit if you can take the write approach. Take a look at this on Lady Gaga.

And look at the work of critics for inspiration, like the pop music critic for NPR, Ken Tucker, who covers everything from country to hip hop, as seen here: Old Town Road.

And finally, consider a wide range of art to write about–from opera and bluegrass to sculpture and painting. And seek critics in these fields for examples of how to write. But write about a work of art that inspired you.

For an example of how to write about art that inspires, see this critic discuss his favorite paintings in New York: Jerry Salz takes a Grand Tour.

Now let’s turn to the second prompt:

When you choose a college, you will join a new community of people who have different backgrounds, experiences, and stories. What is it about your background, your experiences, or your story, that will enrich Boston College’s community?

The first thing I want to point out is that this prompt is nearly identical to the Common Application Prompt #1: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

So of course, if you have already written about prompt one for the Common Application, that nixes using Boston’s prompt two as a supplemental essay. But if your family/personal experience is unique, and you have not delved into it in depth on your Common App essay, this prompt is for you. And of course, in particular, this prompt tends to be selected by those who have some sort of personal of financial struggles in their background. This prompt is obviously a slow pitch through the strike zone for those who have emigrated to the United States under duress, or whose family has unique cultural inheritance and practices or who has just had an unusual upbringing.

However, beware of the Woe is Me essay. Long ago, students started writing essays on their suffering because they heard that their target school was trying to select students with compelling personal stories, particularly if those stories suggested some kind of poverty/minority application/personal struggle to overcome incredible obstacles angle. If this is true of you, your suffering may now provide you with something to talk about. But be wary.

If you are writing about a family member’s illness, for example, keep in mind that you are presenting this experience as a reason to admit you to college. And if the suffering or struggles are your own, beware of trying to get into a contest of suffering by suggesting that your tribulations are unique and make you a person they should admit above others (subtext: because you alone have suffered so much). If this background has involved you stepping up to work to help support your family, or to care for siblings or family members, that is always an aspect I ask to see emphasized–to show more about doing, about taking action, rather than focusing on affliction and misery as conditions. How did you respond? That is key.

You don’t need to write up a tidy story which reaches “closure” but there needs to be more than trials and woe. If you have suffered deeply, so be it, but be sure that it in some way shows who you are or explains your academic record or has shaped your view of the world.

Some examples, to make my point: I have been doing this for a long time and have edited essays for applicants who have dealt with a cancer diagnosis and multi-year treatment during high school, while staying enrolled and pulling down good grades; or an applicant who fled Vietnam on leaky boats and watched some of her family members die on that boat before moving from internment camp to interment camp, then to three different American states, in high school working two jobs at a time while pulling a nearly perfect GPA (a tale from a Valedictorian in the mid 1990’s–like I said, been doing this for a long time); or, more recently, the kid whose introduction to America was to hang on a border fence near Tijuana for several hours in the middle of the night after his sweatshirt snagged at the top and his party went on without him . . only to be rescued hours later by somebody else coming through . . . then moved from house to house with relatives while putting together an education, to finish as salutatorian of his high school class . .

If you have faced significant obstacles that have shaped who you are, by all means write about them. Just be sure to have some perspective. Writing an essay about how unfair a coach, or coaches have been, and how you overcame that to become an all-league athlete or to make some uber-competitive travel squad . . . Okay, but don’t overdo the suffering there, and let’s face it, the coaches had a perspective on things too. As a rule, avoid dissing adults, particularly teachers and coaches. You are applying to a kind of school, after all, when you write a college essay. There is always someone who has suffered more. Be sure that you did something that is remarkable rather than just suffering passively, or watched someone else suffer. ‘Nuff said.

For Boston College Prompt 3, Boston College strives to provide an undergraduate learning experience emphasizing the liberal arts, quality teaching, personal formation, and engagement of critical issues. If you had the opportunity to create your own college course, what enduring question or contemporary problem would you address and why?

I would go either philosophical or World/Society Problem. Or . . . slightly tongue-in-cheek. Notice, however, how the prompt focuses on liberal arts (suggesting an emphasis on the humanities) and critical issues (suggesting social justice, environmental issues, etc) against a background of personal formation (suggesting that old-fashioned idea that you should go to college to find out who you are and develop yourself as a human being) and it ends by looking at an “enduring question” or “problem.”

So I would look at social justice, environment, energy and the ideas bandied in ancient Greek philosophical dialogues or in Christian ethics. For example, how about this class title: “The Other and Us: Ethics and Other People, which would look at everything from migrants to those among us who have less to ethical business practices. Or: “Trash: The Ethics of Consumption” which could look at a range of issues, from consumerism and materialism to all that plastic out in the ocean.

Or maybe slightly tongue-in-cheek: Survival in the Age of Facebook ant TikTok . . . how to live in a world of constant sharing and personal revelation without sharing away your soul.

Notice how I combined the ethical and philosophical with the practical problems we face in our environment today in these “classes.” A perfect combination of the intellectual and the pragmatic, which in particular suits a Jesuit school.

Speaking of which, our last prompt for Boston College:

Prompt 4–Jesuit education considers the liberal arts a pathway to intellectual growth and character formation. What beliefs and values inform your decisions and actions today, and how will Boston College assist you in becoming a person who thinks and acts for the common good?

You should be noticing the overlap betwen this prompt and the more specific question on a class that preceded it. Boston College is among the great Jesuit colleges in the world, teaching in a humanistic, Catholic tradition, with a concern both for the whole person and for the person as part of a larger community. Unbridled capitalism and personal success at all costs are not part of their ethos. I think the easiest way to introduce this communal and ethically-driven way of thinking is to hook you up with a famous modern practitioner of this way of thinking and acting: Charles Taylor. Read that entire linked page and see the video and you will have considerable insight into Jesuit humanism.

And then you should start doing some research on the things you can study at BC while thinking about how your career could be about improving society or the environment rather than just being about making money. Start by looking at the BC Humanities Core, but be sure to check out specific classes that might tie in to your curiosity or sense of mission, and mention them, as word count and context permits—Humanities Core. Keep clicking and reading until you have more information than you need. Then start writing.