This short paragraph can be an essential component of your entire presentation as an applicant.  In just a few sentences, you must convey something personal, meaningful, and interesting about yourself.

Seems impossible, right?  “How can I sum up my experience in my favorite extracurricular activities in 150 words or less?”

Well, it’s time to tackle the impossible. These tips may help you decide which activity to focus on, and how to write a well-structured paragraph that gives the reader a deeper understanding of your motivations and your priorities.

Choose the Right Activity

Don’t necessarily pick the activity that looms largest on your resume or activity list. If you are a star tennis player and a possible recruit for a college team, that fact will be clear on your activity list. If you are the best clarinetist in the city, then your activity list should reflect that fact.  Remember, the prompt asks you to “elaborate” on the activity. It doesn’t say you have to choose the one that takes up the most time, nor does it say that it must be the one that is your primary extracurricular focus.

More specifically, it may be that the activity in which you have achieved or excelled the most is not the activity that will be the best to elaborate upon in this short essay. Consider the other activities that may help to round out your application and present another view of what motivates and interests you.

Consider which activities carry the most personal meaning to you. Look back over your resume or activities list and ask yourself, “Which of these would I miss the most if I could no longer do it?” Perhaps it’s that annual scouting trip, or the weekends skiing with your family. Or maybe it’s that concert you organize at the nursing home twice a year that brings you particular joy. Choosing the right activity is the first step as you write your extracurricular activity essay.

Your “Hidden” Activities

Consider elaborating on an activity that is not on the activities list or resume. For example, perhaps your extended family shares Sunday dinner together regularly, and this ritual has had a big influence on you and helped to shape your feelings about family. Maybe you actually enjoy mowing your lawn every week, making it look nice by paying attention to details. Perhaps you ride your bike to school every morning, and you use that time to notice details on your route and get your head together before and after your workday.

Not Necessarily Your “Best” Activities

Consider taking one of your activities and giving it greater specificity and detail. As you know, the space on the application in which to elaborate on your activities is very, very limited.  So use this short paragraph to pull out some details. For example, perhaps you mention on your activity sheet that you have done volunteer work at a hospital, and that you have several responsibilities. But perhaps there is one responsibility, in particular, that you most enjoy. That one responsibility could be the focus of your extracurricular.

To take another example, perhaps you are a guitar player, and your activity list indicates that you’re fairly good, but not great. However, there I some particular aspects of playing the guitar that you enjoy. Perhaps you don’t mind playing scales over and over in order to improve your technique.

Or maybe you go to a music store on Saturdays where a bunch of bluegrass players get together and jam, and you join in, despite the fact you aren’t the best player; or you are a huge fan of Andre Segovia and have listened to every piece he has ever recorded. These sorts of details can say a lot about the depth of your interest in an activity, even if it is not where your greatest accomplishments lie.

The Focus: “Why?”

Your activity list or resume should address the questions of “What, When, and Where?” (the “who” should be apparent:  you!). This list explains your accomplishments and the range of your commitments. But it doesn’t explain your motivations or your priorities. This short essay-ette gives you an opportunity to do some explaining.

As with your primary college essay and with the supplements, the aim here is to give the admissions officer reading your file a bit more information about yourself.  What you convey in this short paragraph is something that they won’t find in the essays, and that they won’t really know from reading your activity list. This is another opportunity for you to present another interesting and important facet of your personality. All the essays give your application depth and dimension. Don’t throw away this opportunity to tell the reader more about yourself.

Tips for Writing the College Extracurricular Activity Essay

Start with a list of reasons you participate in this activity:

• What do you get out of it?
• Why do you enjoy it?
• Why would you miss it if you suddenly were unable to do it anymore?

Remember that not every aspect of your participation may be enjoyable. Are there reasons you participate in this activity that actually help you accomplish something else that is, in fact, even more enjoyable? For example, weight training may not always be fun, but it can make you stronger. Practicing the flute may be enjoyable in some respects, and not so much in others—but practicing makes you a better player.

Once your list of reasons why you participate in this activity, pick the top three. Write your essay in 5 sentences. One to introduce the activity, three to explain why you do it, and 1 to spare, either as a conclusion or as an elaboration on your introduction.

Some Prompts to Get You Going

If you are having trouble, try completing these sentence prompts to get you going.

• When I participate in this activity, I feel ___________.
• I originally got involved in this activity because ____________.  And now I continue this activity because ____________.
• My favorite aspect of this activity is ____________.
• My friends think this activity is ___________.
• I take the most pride in this aspect of the activity: ___________.

The College Extracurricular Activity Essay – Final Notes

For most of us–adults as well as teens–our activities are good reflections of our priorities, talents, and motivations. We often demonstrate excellence through the things we do outside of school (or outside our jobs or professions).

The supplemental extracurricular activity essay is a great way for you to share more about who you are as a person. If you focus on WHY you engage in these activities, you’ll be able to convey those motivations and priorities.

You have fun engaging in your extracurricular activities. Now enjoy writing about one that is especially important to you.

Need Help With Your College Extracurricular Activity Essay?

If you are having trouble putting together your college essays, including your college extracurricular essay for the Common App, then you might want to consider reaching out to Great College Advice. We help students with every aspect of the college admissions process, and we would love to guide your toward your educational objectives.  If you’d like to learn more about what we do, contact us.  We’ll be happy to chat with you!

Great College Advice Guide to Supplemental Essays

• See our guide to why supplemental essays are important;
• See our post with tips on the college supplemental essay about your academic interests;
• See our recommendations on the ‘community’ supplemental essay;
•  See our guide to writing a great ‘Why This College?’ supplemental essay.

Since 2007, the expert team of college admissions consultants at Great College Advice has provided comprehensive guidance to thousands of students from across the United States and over 45 countries across the world. Great College Advice has offices in Colorado, New Jersey, Chicago, North Carolina and Massachusetts.

In addition to our one-on-one counseling, Great College Advice extends its support through one of the most active and resource-rich Facebook Groups for college-bound students and their families: College Admissions Experts. With nearly 100,000 members—students, parents, and experienced counselors—this vibrant forum offers peer support and expert advice like no other.

The post The College Extracurricular Activity Essay first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

In our Common App essay guide post, we provide additional tips on how to tackle the Common App personal statement.

So, here’s how the “writing about failure” prompt reads:

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?

Below we will review all the key words of this prompt, and give some tips about how to address this prompt of writing about failure.

Recount a Time 

First, you are being asked for a specific event in time in which you encountered some sort of obstacle. Thus you will tell a story to your reader in which you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. Here’s what to focus on:

• This story should be succinct, but contain a beginning, middle, and an end.
• Provide enough detail that your reader can follow the narrative, but not so long that you get boring—or worse, go over the word count limit.
• Remember that the story is merely the entry point to the heart of the essay:  your “reflection” on this failure. 
• Your failure does not have to be a big, embarrassing, terrible event.  In some cases, a failure might be one that is otherwise invisible to other people.  It could be an incident in which you failed to live up to your own moral standards.  Thus the magnitude of the setback or challenges is not what is important; rather it is how you responded to these obstacles is what will be at the heart of your essay.
• Bombing a math test or other academic failures is not the best topic – focus on something else other than a classroom assignment.

How did this experience affect you? 

Be reflective. Examine your emotions.

• What was the impact of this failure?
• How did it make others see you?
• How did you see yourself after this incident?
• Did it make you angry, embarrassed, disappointed, secretly thrilled, or downright sad?
• What was the immediate impact of your failure?

This is perhaps the hardest part of answering this prompt: you have to go into that mess of feelings that you’ve tried to put behind you. But the admissions office is asking you to share, so share you must.

What did you learn?

This seems obvious, but these lessons can be hard to articulate. Begin with a list:

• How many things can you pinpoint that you learned from this mistake?
• Think about how you can learn things at different times, too. Sometimes we learn things from failure immediately. Other lessons take longer to sink in. 
• I recommend that you come up with three solid lessons for this essay.

Writing a college essay about failure:  Summary

Writing about failure can be difficult. And when writing about failure, the fear is that the essay will come off as too negative, too self-critical. The ultimate direction of this essay should be positive and optimistic. You should not worry too much about the nature of the mistake: we’ve all made them, and admissions officers, frankly, have seen them all. The point of this is to allow you to demonstrate your maturity, your humility, and your ability to turn a bad experience into a good one.

So in order to really turn this negative experience into a positive one, you really do have to dig into the ways in which this challenge or obstacle affected you.  And if you can carefully and thoroughly present the ways in which you have learned from this failure, you will be on the road to writing an amazing college essay that will convince readers that you are just the sort of human being that belongs on their campus. 

Need help writing your Common App personal statement?

The team of expert college counselors at Great College Advice have helped thousands of students write excellent college essays on every Common App prompt.  We can help you brainstorm topics, structure your prose, hone your messages, and edit the essay to perfection.

If you’d like more information about our college essay services or our comprehensive college advising packages, please contact us. Or just give us a call. We would be happy to chat with you. 

Want to know how to respond to the other Common App essay prompts? Here are some more helpful links.

• See our guide to prompt 1 of the Common App Personal Statement: 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.
• See our recommendations on prompt 3 of the Common App Personal Statement: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? 
• Prompt 4: Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you? 
• See our guide to prompt 5 of the Common App Personal Statement: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. 
• See our essay tips for prompt 6 of the Common App Personal Statement: 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? 
• See our blog post on how to write prompt 7 of the Common App Personal Statement: 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. 

Since 2007, the expert team of college admissions consultants at Great College Advice has provided comprehensive guidance to thousands of students from across the United States and over 45 countries across the world. Great College Advice has offices in Colorado, New Jersey, Chicago, North Carolina and Massachusetts.

In addition to our one-on-one counseling, Great College Advice extends its support through one of the most active and resource-rich Facebook Groups for college-bound students and their families: College Admissions Experts. With over 100,000 members—students, parents, and experienced counselors—this vibrant forum offers peer support and expert advice like no other.

The post How to Write the Common App College Essay on Failure first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

So you have to do something to wake him up. Grab his attention. Make him sit up and take notice: “This essay is going to knock your socks off, Buster!”

In order to jolt him upright in his chair, you have to hit him from the opener with some tidbit that will force him to say, “Hmmm…I think the essay may actually be worth reading carefully all the way through.”

The best way, perhaps, to illustrate the point is to give you some real-life examples of essay openers. I think you’ll begin to understand what I mean. Plus, if you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the folks at the Stanford admissions office.

How to write the perfect college essay with a great opening line

Stanford has published a few choice opening lines of college essays to help students understand how important it is to hit your reader over the head with something intriguing, funny, poignant, or otherwise worthy of attention.

Here are some of my favorites from that list:

• Some fathers might disapprove of their children handling noxious chemicals in the garage.
• I have been surfing Lake Michigan since I was 3 years old.
• On a hot Hollywood evening, I sat on a bike, sweltering in a winter coat and furry boots.
• Unlike many mathematicians, I live in an irrational world; I feel that my life is defined by a certain amount of irrationalities that bloom too frequently, such as my brief foray in front of 400 people without my pants.

What does each of these samples have in common?

They are rich with details

“Noxious chemicals.” “Furry boots.” A lack of pants. These details help paint a picture, or at least a tiny corner of a picture that contains enough scintillating detail to make me want to look at the entire thing.

They contain incongruities

How does one surf on a lake with few waves? Why would one wear a winter coat on a hot summer evening? Why does a mathematician end up in front of an audience with no pants?

They feed the reader’s curiosity 

Each of the lines leaves us wanting more. The chemicals in the garage may explode. The idea of the mathematician with no pants will make us laugh. Surfing the Great Lakes is a funny idea in and of itself. And who would wear fuzzy boots while riding a bike? Well, as the reader, I really want to learn more.  I’m hooked.

So that’s the idea: you have to come up with a hook that will snag the attention of your reader. Pique his interest. Make weird images rise in his imagination. Leave him asking questions.

Now, it’s one thing to recognize the importance of a strong and interesting opening line for your college essay. But how do you get there?
Usually, it doesn’t come easily. And it usually doesn’t come until the end of the editing process. Only on rare occasions will a student be able to frame the whole initial draft around an incongruity or a humorous one-liner. Most often, these grabbers only come toward the end of the process.

Why is that?

Well, the first requirement for creating a strong opener is that you have to have a very clear idea of the main point of the essay. Sometimes that main point is the result of several drafts. I find that many of my students begin with an idea that is at the heart of their story, and they begin by writing and writing and writing with that idea in mind. But as the writing progresses, the narrative may open up new directions, new discoveries, and new truths. No matter how the story evolves, however, it will be vital to be able to summarize the main point in a single sentence.

Oftentimes, it is this one-sentence summary that becomes the opener. Or at least the summary will point the way toward an interesting opening line. And again, it may not be possible, to sum up your essay until you are pluperfect positive about its central point.

Another way to arrive at a zippy opening line is to think about how to give away about 75% of the story in a single sentence—leaving the rest of the story for the remaining paragraphs. Here again, it will be hard to sum up the 75% until the story is 100% written.

The bottom line is that the top line of your story may very well be one of the final touches you put on your essay. But it’s that final touch that could make the difference between just another dull essay and the one that makes your reader stand up at the end of the night and say, “Finally, an essay worth reading…this one’s a keeper!”

Want more information about how to write the perfect college essay?

For more on writing the best college essay, see these posts about the importance of answering the prompt, considering your audience, telling a good story and painting a picture.

And if that isn’t enough, you can always see our expert guidance.  We help students brainstorm topics, hone the messages, structure the piece, and fine-tune the editing. We have helped literally thousands of students over the year to write their own version of the “perfect” college essay. There is no single essay that is perfect, but yours can be an awesome depiction of what makes you interesting and worthy of admission to the schools to which you aspire.

Give us a call or contact us on our website. We’d be happy to help you write a fantastic college essay.

The post How To Write the Perfect College Essay—Grab Some Attention first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

How to write the perfect college essay?  You have to paint a picture.

The Portrait Example

Let me explain. Visuals might help. So let’s start by looking at this portrait of King Philip IV of Spain by Velazquez. A portrait like this is fairly static: no movement, no grand story to tell. It’s just a guy wearing a fancy outfit. But what makes this portrait interesting?

It’s the details.

Look at the flow and drape of the cape he’s wearing. Notice the care and attention the artist paid to each bit of embroidery on his vest and his pantaloons–and even the black hat, which you have to look at carefully to discover. Look at Philip’s face and the care with which Velazquez paints his upturned mustache.

And what, pray to tell, is that piece of paper Philip holds in his right hand? A love note? An important missive from France or Italy? Or just a doodle he scotched off while trying to stay awake in a really boring meeting? The details help make the painting interesting and raise questions in our minds about the central figure (which in your college essay would be you!).

How to Write the Perfect College Essay: The Landscape Example

How about the old guy using a stick for balance: should he even be out there on the ice? Note the bare branches in the foreground with the birds on them. How do these branches help enhance the landscape by giving us a sense of perspective (we are viewing the scene from a distance)? Taken as a whole, the scene is a bucolic winter’s day full of fun and frivolity. But without these details, the landscape would not be as interesting or lively.

So, when you sit down to write your college essay, you’ve got to paint a picture with your words.

Your college essay is a story, as I’ve said before. But the story loses all interest and meaning if you don’t take the time to fill in interesting details about the people (as in Velazquez’s portraits) and the setting (as in Bruegel’s landscapes).

Of course, the details must be pertinent, and they must enrich the story. Too many details will obscure both the plot and the meaning of the story. But you have to give your reader enough specifics that she is able to see the people and places in your story in her imagination.

Like the viewer in the Bruegel landscape, your reader can get enough detail to take it all in. Look back at the landscape. Bruegel’s winter scene is viewed from a distance, so we can’t see the exact expressions on each person’s face. We can’t make out precisely what each figure is doing or thinking. But we get a sense of the whole because of the important details that Bruegel does provide—and from these details comes our enjoyment of the story Bruegel depicts.

But without details, your story will be as hard to interpret as the paintings of abstract expressionists like Mark Rothko: there’s a message in there someplace, but it’s kind of hard to discern at first glance.

How to Write the Perfect College Essay for the Common Application
 
For more on writing the best college essay, see these posts about the importance of answering the prompt, considering your audience and telling your story.

You can also read these guides for answering each of the Common Application prompts:

• Your background story
• A instance in which you failed
• A place that means something to you
• Standing up to a belief or idea
• Your transition to adulthood
   

Still flummoxed?  We can help.  Give us a call or contact us on our website.

The post How To Write The Perfect College Essay–Paint A Picture first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

How do you write the perfect college essay? This is a complicated question.

In this post, we will focus on your audience.

No matter what kind of writing you are doing, you must consider for whom you are writing it. Who’s your audience? This is a good question to ask even as you write your high school papers. If your answer is, “My teacher,” then you may not fare as well as you might if you imagined about writing a paper (about a Shakespearean play, for example, or the causes of the Civil War) for your mother.

I’m serious. If you write for your teacher, you are going to presume too much knowledge on the part of your reader. You’re going to forget to tell the story, neglect to connect the analytical dots and assume that your teacher (who already knows the causes of the Civil War) will fill in the blanks. But too many blanks make for a holey paper.

So, write it for your mom. She can understand your academic point (because she’s a smart woman and she loves you), but you may have to lead her through it more methodically, and you may have to explain things a bit more carefully. And a methodical, careful paper is going to be better than a holey one.

So for whom are you writing your college essays? Good question. The answer is “some anonymous reader of unknown age or life experience whose job it is to find some reason to say no to my college application.”  Are you starting to tense up? Actually, you don’t have to imagine your audience in such a negative light. But you do have to keep in mind some basic characteristics of your audience. These characteristics will help you write a more methodical, careful paper (and not a holey one).

Your reader is tired and easily bored

It’s the dead of winter and he is curled up in front of his space heater, drinking tea, trying to get through as many applications as he possibly can tonight before he starts all over again in the morning. Your essay is the 65^th he has read today, and very few have been memorable. He yearns to be entertained.

Also, he wants to see something fresh and interesting. He wants to appreciate a creative twist on the same-old essay prompts. He wants something that reads well…like a mystery novel, a juicy gossip column, or at least a well-crafted feature in the Chicago Tribune. So punch it up.

One of the best ways to do this is to pay close attention to the first and last lines of your perfect college essay. The first sentence or two, especially, is worthy of your careful consideration: give your reader some reason to sit up and take notice.

Your reader may scan your essay to see if it’s worth reading carefully 

Again, these essays all begin to sound the same after a while. So it’s natural to imagine your reader scanning it first to discern whether this is just one more formulaic piece about the happy poor people you served at the soup kitchen one evening, or about how you saved the big game by throwing the touchdown pass in the final seconds of the game. Therefore, you can help your reader do the scanning by using some of those excellent writing devices you began learning in primary school.

Clear structure:  introduction, body, conclusion. Strong paragraph form. Clear transitions. Chronological sign posts:  “First did this, then I did that, finally I did that other thing.” You learned these techniques years ago: now is the time to deploy them.

Your reader does not have any information about your life

So assume nothing. If you’re writing about skiing, pretend your reader is an oboe player. If you are waxing eloquent about physics, assume your reader prefers poetry. Avoid using abbreviations or acronyms that may be perfectly clear to you and your friends, but may have no meaning beyond your circle. To tell someone that you passed through the IC building to go the LRC in order to work on your EE is to use language no one except someone who follows you around day-to-day could understand. 

Similarly, don’t assume that if you are writing your essay about model trains that your reader understands the difference between an STD and an HO gauge. You have to assume that the reader of your perfect college essay is educated and happy to learn new about model trains but don’t start getting technical on him or you’ll lose him (and he’ll doze off there in front of that nice, warm space heater…).

Your reader really wants to like you

Most students imagine admissions officers as really scary people. But it’s not true. Admissions folks are an interesting breed. They generally love their jobs, and they enjoy learning about young people. They see themselves not as the evil gatekeepers who take delight in rejecting applicants with a villainous cackle as they scrawl a big “deny” across your file in frog bile. Rather, they want to share their community with interesting people, and they are genuinely hunting for someone interesting like you.

So think of your reader as someone who is supportive and kind to young people. Thinking about the person who will read your essay will help as you craft it. Don’t assume too much of him, positively or negatively. Just be compassionate and understanding. Know where he is coming from. This knowledge will help you structure your piece in a way that he will appreciate, and that will give him every reason to leap up out of his chair and cry, “Finally, someone who understands me!”

Need help to write your perfect college essay?

Looking for help in writing the perfect college essay? Give us a call for a free consultation: 720.279.7577.

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Just the letters “SAT” can make high school students tremble as they think about this high-stakes standardized test. That feeling can become downright terror when you tack on the word “writing” to those letters. Writing essays for school is hard enough. But to do so under pressure and a time limit is many students’ nightmare.

Still, before you go wake up screaming at night, you should know that, like with any test, the secret to performing well on the SAT writing section is to know what to expect and prepare for it. By knowing the answers to a few simple questions, you’ll find that this test can become the least of your worries.

1) What are test evaluators looking for?

The key to writing a perfect SAT essay is not to write the most brilliant essay of your life; rather, you need to write an essay that meets the requirements perfectly. SAT graders are writing or English teachers. Who are given a specific rubric and told to look at an essay for only three minutes before assigning it a score. That means that, within three minutes, your essay has to convince the graders that you could meet the requirements. Your best bet is to stick to those requirements as closely as possible.

To familiarize yourself with these requirements, check out the instructions and the grading rubric for the essay, both of which are available at the SAT College Board website. Reading these before the test will help you prepare and save you time during the test.

When the graders examine your essay, the criteria they will look for are a strong position, clear organization, and well-written sentences. Of course, the only way they will be able to find these quickly is if your writing is legible and clear.
While you may be used to writing essays that try to take a new perspective or see the gray area, you should stick to the basics here and argue one side of the argument. This essay isn’t about which argument you choose: it’s about how well you support the argument you choose.

Once you pick an argument, you want to organize your essay clearly using three strong examples to prove your point. The writing prompts are fairly broad questions, so there are always plenty of examples to choose from.

While evaluating your content, the graders will also be critiquing your grammar and spelling. You only have twenty-five minutes, so no one is expecting a perfectly proofread article. However, you can ensure your grammar and spelling are the best they can be by avoiding fancy words or sentence structures that you are not entirely sure how to use. Being simple, direct, and correct is preferable to making unneeded mistakes. Leaving a few minutes to review each section will also help you catch errors and awkward sentences.

2) How should you divide up your time?

Twenty-five minutes may seem like an intimidating deadline, but with calm and intentional division, those minutes will be all you need. When the test begins, skip the instructions (you’ve read those online already) and read the prompt. When everyone starts writing furiously, use your first seven minutes to carefully construct your argument, three examples, and conclusion. By preparing and organizing your thoughts, you ensure that your writing time will happen exactly as you want it. Use the next fifteen minutes to flesh out your outline into the full-fledged essay. Use your remaining minutes to review your writing and check for mistakes.

If you run out of time, drop one of the examples. It’s better to have less well-formed thoughts on the paper than many half-formed ones. Always make sure you have time to write a conclusion.

3) What should the structure of your essay look like?

Again, this is not the time to be fancy. Using a basic outline for the structure of your essay will ensure that you have time to include all the most important parts. Begin your introduction with a hook or attention grabber, something to pull your reader (grader) in. From there, you should transition in your thesis.  (If you’re having trouble with your thesis, simply use parts of the prompt in stating your answer.

As you provide each example, start each paragraph with a topic sentence that introduces the example. Continue to analyze the example in the following sentences, then conclude the example by connecting it to your argument.
Your conclusion is essential in leaving the grader with a positive impression.  Be sure to summarize your arguments, restate your thesis as you connect your arguments, and end with a sentence that provokes thoughts about the greater implications of the prompt.

4) How do you persuade your audience?

This may be a basic, formulaic essay, but you should still do your best to convince your audience (graders) of your point.  Doing this means choosing your examples carefully. First of all, brainstorm your possible choices for examples that could support the prompt. Make a list that includes as much variety as possible. You will evaluate which examples you should choose by several criteria.

First scan the list

Which of these examples do you know the most about? Examples are much stronger when they are specific and include plenty of detailed information. Using Abraham Lincoln as an example of a successful man is more effective if you know the specific names of the laws he enacted. Using specific details will make your example more credible, thus making your argument more valid.

Secondly think about ethos, pathos, and logos

These are the different rhetorical methods of persuasion that can help strengthen your essay.
Ethos refers to getting your audience to trust in the credibility of the speaker. So to use this in your essay, you may refer to the opinion of a well-known or respected figure, like using Mother Teresa’s opinions to support your point about giving.

Pathos is a method where you play on the emotions of your audience. To do this, you could choose an example that is shocking or sad, like telling the story of a starving child to push for more aid going to Africa.

Finally, there is the logos method where you use logic and reasoning to convince your audience. This example would use specific facts to make your side seem like the obvious choice, like using stats about the amount of food Americans waste that could be used to feed others.

Varying up your examples with these rhetorical methods will help provide a broad support for your argument.

5) How do you stay calm and focused?

Really, the key to writing your essay boils down to your ability to remain calm and focused during your writing time. Staying on task and preventing panic means that you will spend more time focusing on a quality essay.

Being prepared is the first step to staying calm. Read the directions in advance, know the outline you will follow for your essay, and decide how you will break up your time. Knowing all of these things in advance will give you a structure to follow when the test begins, which will help keep the panic down. Next, don’t be intimidated by the actions or pace of those around you. Using their methods won’t ensure your success, especially if their methods are created by their own panicked state.

Finally, remember that the goal of this essay is not to write the most brilliant piece of writing you’ve ever done. It is simply meant to demonstrate that you have the necessary critical thinking and writing skills. Aim for a consistent, well-written article instead of a brilliant one and you won’t drive yourself crazy. Who knows? It may just become the best essay you’ve ever written, but even if it doesn’t, you’ll still score well.

The post How to Train for the SAT Writing Section first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Here is how the prompt reads:

Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
Once again, let’s dissect the vocabulary of this prompt to help guide you in your writing. We’ll look at the words in the order of their importance, rather than in the order of their appearance.

Transition

This is the pivot. The prompt is asking you to talk about a change from one state of being to another. Thus like most of the other prompts, you are fixing your essay in time. You are identifying something that marks the moment in which that change occurred.

Childhood to adulthood

The entire process of going off to college marks your entry to adulthood, in some sense. But colleges are not looking to admit emotional toddlers. They want to populate their campus with young adults. Thus they are assuming that you already have made the transition to adulthood, at least in many important respects. So in what ways are you now an adult? Conversely, in what ways are you no longer a child?

Accomplishment or event

In some ways, these two words go together, but in some ways, they are quite different. An accomplishment is some feat that you performed that would mark the transition. An event might be something that just happened to you, without any particular action or agency on your part. Either way, you are being asked to describe and discuss the “thing” that marked your transition. What was the catalyst that moved you from one state of being to the other?

Culture, community, or family

This part of the prompt asks you to further elaborate on the ways in which others now consider you to be an adult. In whose eyes are you now no longer a child? Who expects more from you, now that you have made this transition to adulthood? The reality is that some people probably still see you as a child. Heck, you might also still see yourself as a child sometimes. But in the context of this prompt, we assume that you have made strides toward adulthood. Who now regards you as and adult, and why?

Because it is fixed on a transition that takes place in time, you are being asked to relate a story. You want to recount this accomplishment or event that marks the transition, so you must construct a compelling narrative with a beginning, middle, and end.

However, it is not enough to tell the story. This prompt (like all the rest) asks you to analyze and evaluate that experience, that event, and that accomplishment in light of the definitions of childhood and adulthood.
As the writer, you have the opportunity to provide your reader with your own definitions. And as a young adult, you have the opportunity to demonstrate your maturity and to show your reader how you arrived at it.

VIEW THE COMPLETE SERIES OF POSTS ANALYZING THE COMMON APPLICATION PROMPTS

Writing About Failure
Writing About A Belief or Idea
Writing About A Place or Environment
Writing About the Transition to Adulthood
Writing About Your Background Story

The post How to Write the Perfect College Essay for the Common Application–Transition to Adulthood first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

As a professional, I always like to change things up. Fortunately for me, this year the Common Application decided to adopt entirely new prompts for the essay section.
Many college counselors moan and groan about these changes. Are they the best ones to let kids show off their innermost feelings and their outermost dreams? Will they allow students to freely express their thoughts, communicate their abilities, and articulate their ambitions?

These are interesting questions, but not the ones that will help students focus on what are now staring them in the face: the Common Application prompts as they are. No sense moaning. We have to deal with them.
So this is the first in a series of posts to help students sort out the meaning of the prompts and to offer some tips on how to address each one.
Today we start with the first prompt: The Background Story.

Here’s how it reads:

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

To help us along, I’ve highlighted the most important words in these two short sentences. I’m going to address each below—not in the order of their appearance—but in order of their importance.

Identity

This is the pivot of the prompt. However you address this prompt, you are being asked about your identity. You are asked to address the fundamental nature of how you see yourself as a person. Who are you?  What are you? What makes you, well, you? Admissions officers want to be able to say, “Hey, I understand who this kid is and where he came from, because the kid understands this about himself and is able to communicate it in a clear, compelling fashion.” So, this essay must address your identity, however, you define it.

Background

College admissions people know that some people have an interesting background that is the source of their identity. This background can be cultural, ethnic, familial, medical, physical, economic, or just about any other set of circumstances that defines who you are as a person.

Story

Some students have a story that helps define who they are. A story, by definition, is a narrative, an account of events in one’s life that may help to shape your identity. A background is something that is not really fixed in time: it’s a circumstance.  A story, on the other hand, exists in time and has a beginning, middle, and end. Do you have a story that helps to explain the way you see yourself, that has helped to form you as a person? If so, this is the story at the core of this prompt.

Incomplete

This word is also important. If your background or story does not really help to shape your identity, then perhaps your application is “complete” without this story. You should then be looking at other prompts for inspiration.
So to summarize, as you approach this prompt, you need to be able to clearly communicate your identity, and then you need to give the background or story that shapes that identity.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at the second prompt, which is all about something we all wish to avoid (in vain): failure.
 
VIEW THE COMPLETE SERIES OF POSTS ANALYZING THE COMMON APPLICATION PROMPTS

Writing About Failure
Writing About A Belief or Idea
Writing About A Place or Environment
Writing About the Transition to Adulthood
Writing About Your Background Story
 
 

The post How To Write A Perfect College Essay for the Common Application–Your Background Story first appeared on College Admission Counseling.