Tag Archives: college

Five Effective Techniques to Optimize College Visits

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Do you plan to tour a few colleges and universities? Your college essays will flow freely and authentically if you do these five things:

1. Invest thirty minutes to soak it in, then take some notes.
Pick a few vantage points to sit and simply soak in the activity at the school. Pick an outdoor location, an academic setting, and a social setting. Close your eyes for a moment and take a few deep breaths. Then soak in the scene. After about five minutes close your eyes again and take a few more breaths. Then take no more than five minutes to jot some notes: What did you see? How did it make you feel? Could you imagine yourself in this place, participating in the campus life that you observed?

2. Try to meet with some undergrads.
If you have an idea of a major you would like to undertake, try to speak with students majoring in that department.  Visit the department. Write or dictate a quick memo on what it might feel like to take the major. What would you be doing and with whom? Why does that excite you?

3. Take in the campus life.
Visit the student activity center and dining halls. Investigate some clubs and groups you can imagine joining. Make a note to check out their social media. Snap some photos of notices, pin boards and hangouts.

4. Get off campus.
If you have a particular activity that you do, such as running, visiting art galleries, browsing used book, or exploring the Indie music scene, try to do those things during your visit. Take notes and pictures.

5. At every turn, use whatever it takes to help you to solidify your memories.
Take notes (voice dictation counts), snap photos, grab brochures. Don’t just buy T-shirts and sweatshirts! Most importantly, develop a scrapbook (concrete or digital) of your imagined future at each of the schools you visit.

These techniques will help jog your memory and conjure specific feelings about each school. They will help you you craft compelling admission essays.

Happy visiting!

I have guided hundreds of college applicants in crafting winning essays. 92% of my students have enjoyed admission to their top schools. Contact me if you would like to optimize your summer and enjoy a lower-stress Senior year. My bookings are limited.

For more tips on College Essays, visit my website

Your essay topic is not the same as its subject

admission essay

The Common Application Essay questions presents you a great opportunity to convey elements of your character that are not obvious through your transcript, resume and test scores.  College admission committees really mean it when they say that they want to get to know you.  They seek to understand not only writing skills, but something about your character.  This is the goal of every prompt.

In my essay coaching practice, I find that students often respond to the prompt with a great topic, but they sell themselves short by not taking the time to plumb for deeper meaning –they don’t get to the subject of the essay, or the subtext.

Here’s an example:

I’m working with a student right now –lets call him Caleb–who came to me with the idea of writing about how he learned to drive a manual transmission (a.k.a. “stick shift”) car. He laid out all of the details of learning how to drive, along with the harrowing details of his first time driving in actual traffic and how he overcame that set of fears. A lovely anecdote.

So I pushed Caleb a bit to move from the topic to the subject. I wanted to help him to use the story to indicate a few things about his character: What did the experience convey about him as a human being? So I probed him a bit: Why do you think it’s important to do something that’s relatively obsolete? If you see driving stick as more basic than other ways of driving, what does that say about you? What kind of experience –in this case of driving– do you get by doing this thing? What does that say about what you value? And so forth.

Now Caleb is using the topic of his story -learning to drive stick shift- to express a deeper subject: his appreciation for the basics, for being deeply connected to his endeavors (you really need to give the car, the road and the traffic your deep attention when you drive stick shift), for being in the moment. He thought about other elements of his life that are similar to this “back to basics” mentality and they are weaving through as well. Now the subject of his essay is about appreciating the doing the “basics” of an activity in a mindful way. See the difference?

So when you put fingers to keys for your essay (and please draft in stages), be sure to scrutinize your piece and understand the subject of your essay, beyond the topic.

Happy writing!

have guided hundreds of college applicants in crafting winning essays. 92% of my students have enjoyed admission to their top schools. Contact me if you would like to optimize your summer and enjoy a lower-stress Senior year. My bookings are limited.

For more tips on College Essays, visit my website

Reach out if you need me.

have guided hundreds of college applicants in crafting winning essays. 92% of my students have enjoyed admission to their top schools. Contact me if you would like to optimize your summer and enjoy a lower-stress Senior year. My bookings are limited.

For more tips on College Essays, visit my websit