|
Brody's Guide to the College Admissions Essay
Brody's Guide to the College Admissions Essay is available at bookstores and at online retailers such as Amazon.com. The book was written by a college counselor and writer who has appeared on national television to discuss admissions-related issues, and a dean of law school admissions at a major university. It has been used in high schools and in after-school programs.
For those students who would benefit from professional help with their college admissions essays, we recommend EssayEdge.com, which has been praised by the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Getting More Specific: How to approach the essay questions, and how to find a topic
The hardest part of our job is telling students that their essays—which they’ve often spent a great deal of time conceiving, writing, and editing—need to be completely rewritten. Usually, this happens when we’re handed an essay that has absolutely no hope of conforming to all of the three rules we discussed in the previous chapter. Why do students choose boring, impersonal, or non-illuminating essay topics? Often they do so because they arbitrarily settled on a topic and began writing, perhaps with the encouragement of a parent or well-meaning teacher. But on many occasions, we find that the student felt constrained by the essay question itself.
Each essay written for a college application does one of the following:
-
It responds to a particular question.
-
It responds to one of several particular questions.
-
It responds to a general request for an essay about almost any topic.
|
Recent Common Application Questions (used by many colleges, both as part of the Common Application and as questions on their own applications)
|
| 1.Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
2.Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
3.Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
4.Describe a character in fiction, an historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, and so forth) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
5.Topic of your choice.
|
While students dealing with the Common Application might initially think they are deciding between several questions, in reality that “Topic of your choice” option means that any topic is fair game. Yes, you can send an essay about any subject to a Common Application school.
Yet 95% of the students we work with who have lousy essay topics for a Common Application school invariably have chosen one of the first four questions. Answering one of these questions is fine, and those prompts can serve to get creative juices flowing, but don’t just pick one of these questions and try to answer it no matter what!
Own your essay.
When we say that you need to own your essay, we mean that you must conform your best ideas to the questions you’re given, and not let the questions themselves dictate what you write. If your two major essay ideas are 1) your relationship with your autistic brother and 2) your love of painting, don’t choose Common Application Question #1 and then wrack your brain for an ethical dilemma you’ve faced, completely ignoring that great essay fodder you’ve already found.
Students who choose questions before topics sometimes write good essays, but they often don’t do the best job of portraying themselves to the admissions committees. If chess is your best essay topic, then write about chess! Sometimes, this will be impossible, such as when you are asked to answer a question about, say, an issue of international importance (any way you slice it, chess is probably not an issue of international importance). But usually, you’ll be able to find a way to write about one of your preferred topics.
This is so important that we can’t stress it enough. Owning your essay is the key to putting your best foot forward. Don’t waste your big essay opportunity discussing a book, historical figure, or social problem that means nothing to you.
|
