Collegewise

Costume not requiered

I remember a Collegewise student who began his college essay,

"I hate Halloween.  Actually, it's not so much the holiday I hate as it is the obligation to wear a costume.  No matter what costume I wear, I just feel like an idiot."

In three sentences, he's already accomplished three important goals for college essays.

1. Get the reader interested right away with a pithy first sentence.
2. Inject some of personality into the writing. 
3. Use your story to help readers get to know you in ways the application alone would not allow. 

What do the first three sentences of your college essay say about you?

Have fun, and be safe tonight.  Happy Halloween.

What if parents are invited to college interviews?

What should you with your parents while you have your college interview?  Simple.  Leave them at home.  Or send them to dinner.  Or send them to Jupiter.  Interviewers are far more interested in what kids have to say about themselves (after all, it's the kids--not the parents--who will ultimately be attending college).  So we tell our Collegewise students not to bring their parents unless the interviewer explicitly asks you to do so (or if it's just an informative interview taking place at a college you haven't actually applied to yet). 

So, what if the interviewer does specifically ask you to bring your parents?  

Competitiveness Reconsidered

You don't have to spend a lot of time reading our blog or hanging around our offices before you hear our Collegewise mantra.  The bad news you hear about getting into college is only true for about 40-50 schools.  The vast majority of the over 2,000 colleges out there accept most of their applicants.  Relax.  You're going to college.

We'll be using a new study by an economist at Stanford University (one of those schools where the bad news is true) to give our mantra additional legs.  From the article Competitiveness Reconsidered in "Inside Higher Ed"

"A small number of colleges have become much more competitive over recent decades, according to Caroline M. Hoxby, an economist at Stanford University. But her study -- published by the National Bureau of Economic Research -- finds that as many as half of colleges have become substantially less competitive over time."

Spread the word. 

Five Students Every College Loves

Different colleges look for different qualities in potential students.  But there are some characteristics that are appealing no matter where you apply, from Duke to Duquesne, Harvard to Haverford, Princeton to Purdue, Stanford to Samford, Vassar to…OK, you get the idea.  

1.  Students who raise their hands in class.
We really can’t emphasize enough how much of an advantage you will have if you just participate in class (at least, we can’t emphasize it enough without using all capital letters and bolder print).  The teacher will appreciate that you are engaged.  Your grade will likely be higher in the class.  And you’ll be much more likely to get a positive letter of recommendation from that teacher when you apply to college.  Colleges are looking for students who’ve shown they are ready and willing to take responsibility for their education.  Those are the students who will make the most of their time once they get to college.   

2.  Students who really love what they do outside of class.
Kids who have passion love what they do; they aren’t just going through the motions to please colleges.  You can hear it in the poet’s voice when she talks about how writing makes her feel, and from the future scientist who took college classes over the summer because he had to know more about physics.  You can sense it from the student who volunteers at the vet because she loves animals, from the artist who loves to paint on the weekends, and from the water polo player who rides the bench but still loves being on the team.   These passionate students are the ones who are most likely to make an impact on their campuses in college. 

3.  Students who work regular part-time jobs. 
There’s just something likeable about a kid who flips burgers, or washes cars, or finds outfits for screaming children at Baby Gap.  These—not a fancy sounding job at your dad's law firm—are regular jobs.  And kids who have them are always appealing to colleges.  We’re not suggesting that you should drop your current activities and run out to get a job if you don’t currently have one.  We’re mentioning it because too many students think you need to spend summers shearing sheep in Tibet or attending a pricey summer program to impress colleges.  You don’t.  Colleges would be just as impressed (maybe even a little more impressed) if you waited tables or stocked inventory at a clothing store down the street.

4.  Students who do thoughtful college searches.
Colleges want to admit students who have really thought about what they want their college experience to be like.  That’s why the most successful college applicants do a lot of college soul searching about what they hope and expect their college experiences will be like.  So start asking yourself what part of college academics you are most excited about.  In what kind of college environment do you think you would flourish socially and academically?   What are you hoping to gain from your college experience (in addition to a degree)?  You don't need answers to all of these questions right away.  But thinking about them will show the colleges that you are a mature college seeker. 

5.  Students who are comfortable just being themselves.
Individuality is something every college wants to see from an applicant.  They want students with different strengths, interests, beliefs, and backgrounds.  So don’t try to be something you’re not just to impress colleges.  If you’re terrible at sports but love math, don’t be ashamed of it—embrace it.  Take additional math classes outside of school.  Join the math club and become its fearless leader.  Openly admit that you have a relationship with math that borders on romantic.  Colleges know that if they put these different, interesting, motivated students together, they’re going to learn from each other.

The Five Most Overused Essay Topics

“Blood drive” essays.  They make a lot of admissions officers want to draw their own blood by jabbing themselves with a paper clip, as one applicant after another claims that one on-campus blood drive changed his life and made him appreciate the importance of serving humanity.  

When students try to write what they think the admissions office wants to hear, they inevitably arrive at the blood drive essay and its clichéd cousins.  Overused essay topics aren’t wrong, but they’re all the same.  They won’t help a student stand out.  So here are five topics you’ll want to avoid. 

1.  The aforementioned “blood drive essay” or “How community service taught me the importance of helping others...”
Colleges appreciate students who are concerned about their communities.  But one blood drive does not a humanitarian make.   A claim to have learned how important it is to help people needs to be substantiated with evidence of a sincere, long term commitment to helping people.  Otherwise, your message loses some oomph.  If you had an experience during your community service that really meant a lot to you, say so.  And be honest.   Otherwise, consider doing a good deed for admissions officers and avoid the community service cliché.     

2.  “Hard work always pays off,” and other life lessons learned while playing sports.
A lot of athletes try to inject meaningful life lessons into the experiences they write about in their college essays.   But if the whole point of your essay is that hard work in the off-season pays off, you’ve just written the same essay that thousands of other varsity letter holders will write.  And you probably would never say to your friends, “I feel very fortunate to have participated in athletics because it has taught me many important lessons about hard work and commitment. “  So be original.  Tell your athletic story that nobody else will be able tell. 

3.  “How my trip to another country broadened my horizons…”
A lot of applicants recount their trips to strange, uncharted lands.  Like France.  These students were inevitably confronted with the challenge of adapting to the bizarre customs of their foreign hosts.  Maintain your perspective.  Visiting a country and noticing that it is different is not a story that you own.  And if your parents took you on an African safari in which you petted lions, we’re jealous (and some admissions officers will be, too).  But a safari doesn’t make you a worldlier applicant, and it won’t help you get in.       

4.  “How I overcame a life challenge (that wasn’t really all that challenging…)”
Essays can help admissions officers understand more about a student who has overcome legitimate hardship.  But far too many other students misguidedly manufacture hardship in a college essay to try and gain sympathy or to make excuses for things like low grades.  That’s not going to work.  If you’ve had a difficult hardship and you want to talk about it, you should.  Otherwise, it’s probably better to choose a different topic.   And please don’t write a eulogy for your pet.  Ever.

5. Anything that doesn’t really sound like you.
Your essays are supposed to give the readers a sense of your personality.  So give your essays a sincerity test.  Do they sound like you, or do they sound like you’re trying to impress someone?  Don’t use words you looked up in the thesaurus (there really is no place for “plethora” in a college essay).  Don’t quote Shakespeare or Plato or the Dali Lama.  If your best friend reads it and says it sounds just like you, that’s probably a good sign.  

Advice for Ivy League Hopefuls

Olympic medalists.  Concert pianists.  Teenage mathematicians who enjoy pointing out the inherent limitations of calculus.   Ivy League applicant pools are chock full of these students.  But there’s one trait those students who are ultimately admitted all have in common; something that when coupled with their perfect GPAs, top test scores and multiple Nobel Prizes makes them that much more appealing to Ivy League admissions officers.

Most of them never said the words, “I want to go to an Ivy League school.” 

The “Ivy League” (there are eight schools in the Ivy League—Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale) is not a label that was bestowed upon colleges that were somehow recognized as the best; the term actually refers to an athletic conference.  In the 1940s, eight schools agreed to standardize their athletic eligibility requirements and financial aid practices for athletes.   That’s about all that the Ivy League schools have in common (well, that and the fact that Ohio State would beat the snot out of any of them in a football game). 

A student who says, “I want to go to an Ivy League school” is really just revealing that he cares more about how famous a college is than he does about what the unique learning environment will be like.   He’s showing symptoms of a bad case of name-brand envy.  That’s not a student that’s going to get an Ivy acceptance.      

Highly selective colleges like those in the Ivy League don’t want name-brand seekers.  They want ambitious, passionate, intellectually curious students who want to make valuable contributions in and out of the classrooms.  And more importantly, they want students who are confident enough to select each particular school based on fit, regardless of the school’s inclusion in the Ivy League athletic conference.

The fact that Brown University (a school that puts the liberal in “liberal arts”) is in the Ivy League isn’t what draws students who are ultimately accepted there.  They apply because they want to embrace the academic freedom Brown offers to explore a wide range of intellectual interests.  Accepted students talk about how they want to create their own major that combines music and physics (you can do it at Brown), how frustrating it was that their high school didn’t offer German as a foreign language option, and how they’d love to try a few anthropology courses using Brown’s “Pass/No Pass” option.  They appreciate the uniqueness that is Brown.

We’re not suggesting that you should pick an Ivy League school and then attempt to reverse engineer yourself to fit that school’s mission.  You are a not a widget—don’t act like one.  You need to find the colleges that fit you, not fit yourself to the colleges. 

If you really want to attend a highly-selective college like an Ivy League school, show them that you’re mature and confident enough to care more about what you’ll experience in college than you do about how famous a college’s name is.  Find the schools that fit you best.  And when you’re asked, “Why do you want to attend this college?” have a better answer than, “It’s a great school” (they hate that answer, by the way).

If some of the Ivy League schools end up on your list, great.  But if they don’t, that’s OK.  There are plenty of other leagues out there for you.

Just Breathe

I moderated a panel this week that featured admissions officers from Stanford and UCLA, as well as a high school counselor with 30 years experience helping kids get into college.  A parent asked what she should be doing with her kids in elementary and junior high school seeing that so many parents around her are shuttling their kids to private tutors, expensive lessons, and club teams.

The high school counselor jumped in first.  "Tell your kids to breathe." 

She went on to describe that elementary and junior high school are times when kids should be kids.  It's great for them to play on a club soccer team, or take piano lessons, or even take a summer school class if that's what makes them happy.  But not every nine-year-old is ready to pledge undying commitment to one activity.

And for the record, the panelists from UCLA and Stanford said they'd never seen any indication that successful applicants got there by starting their college journey in elementary school. 

So if your nine-year-old balks at piano lessons and would much rather build paper airplanes to have contests with the neighborhood kids to see whose can fly the farthest (that's what I did), that's fine.  It's normal. 

Everyone, just breathe. 

Elite Colleges Don't Make Elite People

Where did your heroes go to college? 

That's a question posed by Jay Matthews of The Washington Post in this article.  You might be surprised where many past presidents, state governors, Fortune 500 CEOs and other people who have achieved great success did--and did not--go to college. 

Here's my favorite part:

"Researchers Stacy Berg Dale and Alan Krueger found that admirable character traits -- persistence, imagination, energy -- produce success in life no matter which college a person attends.  So relax. Be happy about your chance to spend four years at any school, soaking up the wisdom of the world and deciding what kind of life you want. Those of you who become heroes will discover most of the qualities that made you so were already in your possession"

I knew that both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropped out of college (Reed College and Harvard, respectively), but I didn't know that Ted Turner was kicked out of college.  Twice. 

Essays from the Other Side - Margot's essay

Margot, our sweet-as-pie counselor in the Irvine office, wrote this essay about acting in high school.  Enjoy!!

McEssays (with Cheese)

Any senior who's planning to write college essays this fall should stop and read Parke Muth's "Writing The Essay: Sound Advice from an Expert."  In fact, his analogy comparing boring essays to Big Macs is so good that I actually started to resent him a teeny bit because I didn't come up with it myself.  At least I'm honest. 

Here's my favorite snippet: 

"Ninety percent of the applications I read contain what I call McEssays - usually five-paragraph essays that consist primarily of abstractions and unsupported generalization. They are technically correct in that they are organized and have the correct sentence structure and spelling, but they are boring. Sort of like a Big Mac. I have nothing against Big Macs, but the one I eat in Charlottesville is not going to be fundamentally different from the one I eat in Paris, Peoria or Palm Springs. I am not going to rave about the quality of a particular Big Mac. The same can be said about the generic essay. If an essay starts out: "I have been a member of the band and it has taught me leadership, perseverance and hard work," I can almost recite the rest of the essay without reading it. Each of the three middle paragraphs gives a bit of support to an abstraction, and the final paragraph restates what has already been said. A McEssay is not wrong, but it is not going to be a positive factor in the admission decision. It will not allow a student to stand out."