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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.
Top Schools
At today’s most prestigious colleges (Harvard, Brown, Duke, Amherst, and so on), the people reading your essay are usually devoted admissions professionals. They use complex procedures to select applicants, and the essays are an important part of that process. Sure, the essays aren’t always important. If you simply don’t have the test scores and grades, you’re not going to get in—busy admissions officers don’t spend a lot of time reading essays from students who just aren’t qualified. Similarly, on rare occasions a student will be so qualified or otherwise guaranteed admission that the essay just isn’t important—unless the student writes something egregious, he or she will be admitted.
But for most applicants to top schools, essays will be read with a great deal of care. The person reading the essays is usually a tired, overworked admissions officer (sometimes working from home at night) who reads hundreds of essays each admissions season. With that much experience, the savvy admissions officer can get to the heart of your writing much more quickly than you’d expect.
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