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Introduction to application essays

Broad topics

These are not specific college application essay topics but rather broad ones, so that you can provide as much material as you can. The more you have, the better your chances to discover something special in it.

Growth and Development

Think of events and scenarios to show how you have changed. Well, it does not have to be a revolutionary change – any small on counts. It does not matter if changes were sudden and abrupt or gradual.

Goals – personal, academic, career

Think of all three categories as much as you can. You might come up with specific and “realistic” responses, but you might also come up with hazy, fuzzy, “wild” daydreams. Do not dismiss any of them.

Role Models and Influence

Think of the forces that shaped you. You don’t have to describe them in great detail; it’s you who colleges are interested in. Think of how these shaped you, how you changed under their influence.

Achievements

These do not have to be the most impressive ones by mainstream standards. It’s important to choose the really meaningful to you, no matter how small and unimportant they might seem to the conventional Bulgarian audience. They might be about meals you have cooked or the day you learned to tie your shoelaces. Anything that has brought you satisfaction and pride counts.

Hobbies and Interests

Don’t just list them. Elaborate on them. Include even the ones you have not had the chance to pursue.

Childhood Experiences

Think of your most vivid childhood memories. Then pick out the ones that can be related to who you are today.

Your Favourite …

Book, character, historical figure … anything. I’d like to hear of as many favourites as possible.

Growth and development

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Growth = change

If you feel intimidated by the word “Growth”, think of a substitute. I suggest “change”. Well it may turn out to be inappropriate to include in a college essay later, but might turn out to be your rite of passage into personal writing. Indulge in some “useless” exploration of your personality. Here we go:

Remember times in which you were different from what you are now – in any little respect.

It does not have to be a revolutionary change, for it is rarely possible to have undergone any of the kind at this tender age. Any little one counts. It could be a change in habits, looks, outlooks, values, style, etc.

Describe the difference between what you are and what you used to be.

It is always a good idea to stay focused and avoid digression. However, if you feel that the change has somehow colored aspects of your life which are hard to immediately relate to the issue, don’t hesitate to discuss them. A thoughtful and observant person can see beneath the surface and beyond the horizon.

Try do identify the factors instrumental in the change.

It could have been all your decision and implementation. Still, you might have been inspired, supported, assisted by something or someone. Try to do justice to everyone and everything, including yourself. You don’t need to be neither too modest nor too self-promoting. Honesty is the best policy.

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Failure = Growth

Some students believe that they have nothing significant to boast. Well, if you have never reached resounding success, why not write about failure? Isn’t overcoming failure a kind of success?

Wasn’t it you who wrote an essay trying to prove that in the trying moments of our lives we find out who we are? How we cope with our limitations and deal with disappointment are at the core of out human experience, so such moments might make great essay topics.

Have you seen “Babe”, the movie about the pig who wanted to be a sheepdog, or “Ratatuoille”, the cartoon about the mouse who wanted to be a fancy restaurant chef?

Failure might have inspired you to stretch yourself beyond your limits; it might have led you to a rude awakening and helped you give up a vain, hollow ambition.

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Growth revisited

Colleges will expect you to discuss not just any incidence of growth, but one that is due to conscious effort and has influenced you beyond the immediate. Now that we have had fun with personal inventories and sharing anecdotes, let’s sift through our material to identify changes which:

are propelled by your conscious effort

AND

have had a “universal” effect on you, i.e. colored your whole life

Goals

Goals = Dreams

The second suggested broad topic was Goals – personal, academic, career.

Some of you might have had quite specific goals for quite a while; yet, when asked to elaborate on them – how you happened to set them up, how you imagine the achieved results, you feel there’s not much to say. Then, how do you know you have these goals? Can you be sure they are truly yours? Are they what you have always known you should do or be? Well, if that’s the case, chances are these are not your dreams but your environment’s expectations about you. I don’t mean they don’t stand a chance of overlapping with your real dreams, but to make sure, you need to put them to a reality test.

Here is a way to do it:

Extrapolate your dream to the full, or … as much as you can.

You can’t? Well, if you have never played with a dream and extended it into the future, then how are you sure it’s your dream? Aren’t dreams supposed to fill you with bliss? Why have you been missing these happy moments so far?

You can? OK, now if you have reached the zenith, stop and tell me how you feel. Do you feel at home? If not and still hell-bent on reaching the goal, you might some day have climbed up a tall ladder only to realize that it had been propped against the wrong wall. That’s what some people call “mid-age crisis”. Buying a fancy car and changing your husband / wife do not always help much.

Still, how could you discover your real dreams? I have told you many times: first, forget all about your limitations – inadequate finance, body size, brain power, wrong place of birth – whatever you believe is the hindrance. Yes, explore the same old topic:

What would you do, how would you be spending your days if you didn’t have to work for money – you had all the time, money, power, health, support, etc. that you need. Dream wildly!

I know you have done that already. I know I have read some of your responses. You know what? I have not seen really wild dreams. You have been so sadly “realistic”, so shortsightedly confined in your provincial little world.

Try again!

If you have already reached what you believe you can reach in dreams, go small – think of the details. Try to imagine your dream life as vividly as possible. You come up with too many scenarios? Don’t be afraid of being inconsistent. Consistency is the last refuge of the mediocre, they say.

Turn every little stone to get out the treasure that’s lying underneath. Imagine colors, smells, sounds, sensations.

It’s useless? Well, that’s what my assignments for you have always been.

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Goals – reality check

As part of the college application exploration, I suggested Goals as the next lesson topic. Write homework assignments and be prepared to speak. In the long run I will expect you to follow these steps:

1. Dream.

2. Check against reality to find out:

a) if it is possible

b) how you could make it possible

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Transcendental dreaming

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

People say you should have big dreams because you can never achieve more than you have dreamed of. It’s not just a beautiful adage; it’s down-to-earth logic – if you haven’t dreamed of something, you’ll never make efforts to achieve it; should it come to you out of the blue, you won’t recognize it for what it is, so you’ll either let it go unnoticed or deny it. In order to get hold of it, you should have somehow been prepared. Unfortunately, many people are not prepared for good luck because too often it goes beyond the confines of their little world.

Most people around have not heard of so many facts of life that they don’t believe me when I speak about them. How could they dream of things they don’t believe in? Well, we all have limited knowledge, but some of us recognize their ignorance and have in their minds free space for the unheard of, so when it comes, they don’t deny it and might wish to explore it and give it a chance. Some of us don’t even wait for the unknown to come; they create it themselves.

There are so many careers my students have never heard of. How could they ever dream of them? Besides, they refuse to believe that there could be any career they have not heard of, and they cannot possibly imagine that new careers could be invented. Yet, it’s a fact of life: people do invent their own careers and businesses, offering unheard of products and services, thus positioning themselves out of competition – at least for a while.

If you only dream of what you know, and you know so little, then you’ll have tiny dreamlets.

Consider this text when you’re working on your GOALS topic.

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Dreams don’t come easy

I substituted “dreams” for “goals”, as a goal sounds so scary – like something you have to roll up your sleeves for, something you might fail. It has nothing to do with playing safe, avoiding pain and frustration; it has something to do with guts.

Some people would have been glad to spend some time lost in reverie, visualizing themselves in contexts that have always fascinated them, being and doing what they have always dreamed of. Most of my students, though, are never keen on daydreaming. Why? Is it because they don’t want to cherish dreams that might never come true, thus getting frustration and disappointment? Or is it because daydreaming takes pro-activity, creativity and effort? Yes, dreaming is not easy – it’s like building a house on your own – coming up with the idea, the design, producing blueprints, laying foundations, and then brick after brick … It takes time, focus, passion and sweep. It’s a waste of time. Yes, developing a vision is costly. Taking orders to implement somebody else’s vision is cheap, unless you share in it, which, actually, makes it your own.

You don’t have goals? Well, aren’t you applying to college? Isn’t it a goal? Why do you want to go there? Is it because it’s the thing to do? Even if you don’t believe you have your own unique reasons, then think of common ones? Why do people go to college? What do they expect from it?

Let’s say it’s the trivial – a license to a well-paid job. We can dig further. Why do you want a well-paid job? What are you going to spend the money for? What kind of lifestyle would it provide for you? If the way you earn money does not matter to you, then focus on your leisure time – how would you be spending it – day in and day out, for years and decades? If the way you earn your living matters, then tell us how it does – what you expect from a good job.

If you believe college is more than a license to a well-paid job, then what is it? Hell, yes – isn’t it time to think what college is after all? Is it where you would like to spend four years of your life? How do you know?

Dreams and goals might be related to what you care about, what you are concerned about. These could be related to people and things outside you – the orphans and the alcoholics, landmarks, pollution, animals, energy, religion, family, etc.

If you have never cared about anything and lack the energy to build a dream, you might start in a reactive, rather than a pro-active way – by thinking of your likes and dislikes, i.e. “I would like to be surrounded by familiar people every day.” or “I would like to meet new people every day.” or “I would like to be away from people.”; “I would hate to spend time outdoors.” or “I would hate to spend all day in an office in a suit and tie.” Try to do that for every possible aspect of your life.

Why do it? Because the colleges you have chosen would like you to. Do you still want to go there?

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Dreaming communities

As dreaming turned out to be the murkiest part of our lives, I suggested we build dreaming communities to support one another.

I have not thought much of tools and ways, so the only thing I could suggest now is write in your blogs and comment in other people’s. I hope this will help dreams take shape.

Of course, they don’t have to be complete pictures because completeness implies boundaries.

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Extrapolate a day

Anastas shared the following dream: to tour Europe, spending more time at a place than an ordinary tourist would, i.e. he wants to live for some time in each town he visits. He also came up with a list of the countries. So far so good. However, that’s just an outline of a dream. It’s like an artist saying, “I would like to depict a horse.” That doesn’t say much about the work of art. After all, there are so many artistic media, techniques, moods, whose interplay might produce thousands of horses, but you know that a sketch of a horse affects you in a way that is quite different from the way an equestrian statue would. Thus, there is a long way to go from the simple utterance of intention to the detailed action plan, based on a vivid vision.

As we’re aiming at vividness today, we’d better focus like a laser, rather than radiate like a sun. Here’s why I, after hearing about the sights he would see, the food he would taste, the people he would talk to and the music he would listen to, I asked Anastas to focus on a day – a whole day – from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep and fill it with his life. For some people it’s not easy to bear the world for a whole day; for most it’s not easy to bear themselves for a day. Do try to concentrate and experience the best introspection ever – be conscious and save the day.

Role models and influence

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Role models and influence

It’s fashionable among young people today (the ones who believe they are God Damn Independent) to say they have no idols, that the most important thing is to be yourself. Would you give me a break, please? Recognizing an influence in your life does not detract from your greatness. Perceiving someone as a role model does not mean emulating him completely, stealing his identity; it means liking him for some aspect of his personality. I am not embarrassed to admit, for example, that my prep class English teacher, Ms Dobreva, has contributed most to my teaching style – self-reliance is what I got from her. You see? It doesn’t hurt.

Colleges are not interested in the role-model / influence himself; they want to find out about you, so try to persuade people that you are what you claim to be (examples, illustrations), and show them the way you adopted what you claim you did from the person. It could be a real or imaginary person. Thus, I could admit that Pippi has had a far greater overall impact on my personality than Ms Dobreva.

You have to prepare a speech for tomorrow, don’t you?

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Parents as role models. What do people expect from personal essays?

I hope you have 7 min. fun with my beloved George Carlin (R.I.P.) It is useful and relevant.

I have just read Janeta’s essay on influence. You probably remember her speech about her parents, who taught her how to read, write and do sums, took her to piano lessons, helped her with schoolwork, introduced her to family traditions, treated her while she was will and took her on trips. Well, I would not object by saying “Isn’t that what most normal parents would do? What makes your case special?” because we are humans, and we share most aspects of our experience, and there’s nothing wrong of growing up in similar ways. The point is not to present the audience with a unique stunning experience that will speak for itself; the point is to present readers with your personal interpretation and meaning. It’s not the experience that matters but what you make out of it. The point is to be introspective, conscious of your life and self. What Janeta inferred from her experience ran along the lines of “It made me better prepared for school.” What I, as a reader, infer is, “She acquired some academic skills earlier than many other kids because her parents started her academic education earlier.” Does this say anything about her personality? No. Then it’s useless because as far as academic potential and performance are concerned, there’s a lot of material in the school transcript, test scores, teacher recommendations, lists of achievements. All these will show admissions officers that Janeta is a brilliant student, but they will not reveal anything about her personality. And aren’t essays meant to reveal personality? Well, it’s true that she mentioned that her parents brought her up to be “a good and ethical person”. First, I cannot easily trust that because it does not show me how they did it, and second, I cannot see any proof that she is such a person. Nobody trusts declarations. Everybody wants proof. Proof is found in experience, so … tell stories, and don’t forget that telling a story is not so much about telling; it’s more about showing. You have read fiction and biographies, haven’t you?

The other problem with her essay is that all the time I perceived Janeta as a blank page on which her parents wrote, a lump of clay which they moulded. So shall we infer that Janeta has never had any will of her own, that she has never been pro-active? Are passivity and obedience what colleges are looking for? Well, if they imagined you as a tabula rasa, on which professors would write, yes, but is that really the way they imagine students? If they need a number of blank pages on which to print, would they require personal essays in the first place? If producing batches of identical experts were their goal, then personality would only get in the way as it might pose some threat by resistance. Well, we all know that colleges are not looking for intellectually gifted blank pages.

Choosing to write about your parents as influence / role models is tricky. Some colleges even ask you not to write about family members. If you choose to write about parents, you will have to make extra efforts to come up with a decent personal essay. As personal essays are meant to reveal your personality, they are supposed to show your own choices, your own will to pursue them. What Janeta presented us with is the choices her parents made, the obedient acceptance of their will (“I started taking piano lessons when I was five years old because they took me there.”) Well, it’s normal for parents to make many decisions for their young children, but these decisions mostly reveal their values and standards, not their children’s, and we are not trying to send our role models to college, are we? So, let’s try to promote ourselves.

I don’t mean to say it’s impossible to write a decent essay about parents, but we should be careful about the emphasis. We should choose experiences which demonstrate our choice and will: it should be we who choose (not always consciously, of course) whom to admire for what, and it should be we who choose to emulate him in one way or another. From colleges’ perspective, it’s like getting to know a person by the people he chooses to hang out with. Well, if it’s your parents, you can’t choose them, but you can choose whether to be similar or different or nothing of the kind.

Who is a good candidate for your mentor or hero? Well, nobody is better than anybody else. What matters is how you portray him – whether you focus on relevant features and experiences and if you succeed in showing them related to yourself. And there should not be just declarations like “My grandfather was a reliable and knowledgeable person, and I wanted to be like him.” You should paint pictures showing events and scenarios, in which he stood out as such a person. You should be an eye-witness or at least you should have heard of them, and you should have been impressed, fascinated, etc. You should show your thoughts and feelings, leading to a conscious or unconscious decision to emulate the person in some way. You should show that you picked out some experiences or responses to experiences under this influence.

You should be specific and show, paint – I cannot emphasize that enough. A solid part of your essay should be some kind of narrative. That’s what makes it interesting. Do you like reading declarations like “I am smart and studious, helpful and considerate.”? It’s boring, isn’t it? Tell stories – that’s what everybody craves for. When you write your essay, read it. Does it kill you with boredom? Well, would you like to kill admission officers too?

Achievements

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Achievement: don’t be proud of being a good student

I have already warned against writing about things which could be found elsewhere in your application. Well, actually, it’s ok to elaborate on some of these, but in your case being a good student is not one of these, I guess. If you come from a family which values education and does its best to provide you with educational opportunities, you have not gone through hell to become a good student. It would be a shame if you did not get good marks, so what’s so special about your academic accomplishment?

Of course, valuing education does not necessarily mean you have developed the best philosophy of education, but we cannot tell admissions officers that our parents are not interested in whether we learn or not but rather in whether we get excellent marks or not, can we?

Of course access to educational opportunities is not the same as educational quality, but we cannot tell admissions officers that teachers at prestigious selective high schools are ignorant and negligent, can we?

Even if it is true that your parents and teachers are not educationally enlightened, you cannot brag about being an excellent student because you were not born and raised in a ghetto / mistreated minority, and, you haven’t actually made the most of your blessings. How many books have you read this year? Well, just forget about being a good student, OK?

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Achievement: is there anything to be proud of?

I guess, yes. It’s something that you have achieved on your own. I don’t mean it should be something to which nobody else contributed. Of course, not. If we examine our achievements, we’ll see that at least some of their aspects have been brought about by other people, even if they served just as inspiration.

It could be something little. The best essays are usually about little accomplishments, because in such cases we tend to dig deeper and examine from a broader perspective, trying to find little gems. If the achievement is big, we rely on its speaking for itself, thus coming up with superficial flat descriptions.

People are not interested so much in WHAT you achieved but in HOW you achieved it. Your way, your struggle should reveal some of your merits.

Thus commitment to something small other people find useless (e.g. learning how to juggle with 5 tangerines) might turn out to be the gem because you show you’re brave and confident enough not to care about other people’s opinion as long as you believe in your cause. You’re also patient, etc. Well it’s just another possible scenario.

Hobbies and interests

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Interest verified

Colleges are interested not only in what you are interested but also in how you express your interest, curiosity or excitement. You cannot just declare your interest; you have to prove it as genuine, passionate and your own.

I was just looking at someone’s essay for Caltech. The task was: “In a page, more or less, tell the Admissions Committee how you express your interest, curiosity, or excitement about math, science or engineering.” The essay seemed to be completely off topic as it mentioned:

a) that his interest was inborn as his parents are engineers;

b) how some relatives sparkled his interest in math / science / engineering;

c) his accomplishments;

d) how important science is;

Listing your accomplishments is a bit off topic here. They’ll be listed in your resume / application anyway. Your teachers will probably mention them in their recommendations.

Here you have to SHOW your passion at work (or rather at play [pic]). What are the things you do for fun, out of curiosity, without anyone pressing you? Please, don’t say “taking part in competitions”.

Try to be as explicit as possible. Describe the process, some scenarios, some things you have created on your own. Tell them the books and articles you have read on the subject. Interest might manifest itself in many forms.

For example:

If I were writing about my love for blogging, I would tell them that I have several blogs. I would describe their content. Of course, I could provide links to them, just as someone might provide a portfolio of images or records. These are the products of my passion.

Still, the products are not the most important thing. The process matters even more. So, I could tell them that the moment I open my eyes in the morning I start thinking, reading, and writing down some thoughts of mine, some things to explore further. Almost every morning I have come up with at least one text before 9 a.m. and I am eager to post it. I could also tell them that with one of my blogs I take a lot of time choosing images. I am also careful about making the blogs user-friendly and interesting for my readers. I could tell them how often I check my traffic, how I feel about comments, etc.

In short: I’ll try to immerse admissions committee into my experience: the product, the process, the thoughts, the feelings … everything [pic]

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Commitment

Yesterday I watched a documentary about a Tai Chi master who taught in a public park in China. People said that they had to go to him at 6.30 every morning for three years before he deemed them serious and agreed to teach them. This anecdote could be used as an illustration of “Commitment” – another college admission criterion.

Most students are preoccupied with adding more and more items to their resumes. What they don’t know is the fact that colleges are not interested in serial club joiners. They are looking for people who can show dedication.

One of the signs of commitment is how much time you have invested in an activity. That is measured by the number of hours you dedicate every week  and also by the number of years.

The quality of your involvement with 1 activity is much more important than the number of activities.

Personal statement

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Personal statement

I have already mentioned ( a number of times) that your main essay (common app big essay, for example) could be a personal statement. European colleges usually require a personal statement.

You could find some good directions here. Yes, they  teach you how to write about major and career choices, and what if you are undecided? Even if you are undecided, it could be of use because it explains again some pieces of application logic.

You might wish to re-read this to remember that an essay could be quite straightforward [pic]I’ll tell you a secret: people generally prefer to read clear easy pieces to … Hegel, for example [pic]

Here’s what Wikipedia says:

When the scientist Ludwig Boltzmann wanted to learn the profound answers to his questions about life and nature, the culture of his time directed him to Hegel’s works. “To go straight to the deepest depths, I went for Hegel; what unclear thoughtless flow of words I was to find there!”.[27] He soon turned his quest to the works of other philosophers.

Another popular criticism of Hegel came from Bertrand Russell, who was one of the leading figures in analytical philosophy. As an advocate for clarity in language Russell has openly criticised and mocked Hegel in his book Unpopular Essays. Russell also targeted Hegel again, in his A History of Western Philosophy claiming that “…he…is the hardest to understand of all the great philosophers” but also admitting that “Even if [as I myself believe] almost all Hegel’s doctrines are false, he still retains an importance…as the best representation of a certain kind of philosophy.” Also like Schopenhauer, Russell notes that much of Hegel’s philosophy is merely an elaboration of his mystic insight which Hegel was attracted to in his younger years. Russell also attacks Hegel calling his logic “obscure” and accusing him of making knowledge “metaphysically impossible” because of Hegel’s attempt to get rid of the in-itself .

The motivational essay

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“Why college X?” – the motivational essay

Some students write list-like paragraphs of what a college offers, liberally spiced with meaningless words like “nice”, “pleasant” and “useful”. Well, admissions officers do know what their college offers, so they don’t need you to tell them. They also know that their college offers more than a single student can take in four years. What makes sense to write in a motivational essay?

Of course, you have to show that you know the college well, but not by simply listing what it offers. A motivational essay is as much about you as it is about the college. It has to show that you two match.

There is no “right” way to show that you fit in as college is not army. Thousands of people have graduated from your dream college, and they all followed their unique path. Some of them stood out with their ways of fitting in [pic]In fact standing out among those who fit in increases your chances of getting in.

How do you fit in and stand out at the same time?

If you have read Hermann Hesse’s “The Journey to the East”?, you probably remember hoards of people moving together driven by a common goal – to reach the East (here’s how they fit in); yet each of them had his unique reason to join the group: one hoped to meet a beautiful princess, another to discover some jewel (here is how they stand out)…

You can fit in by showing that you share the same educational philosophy and values, that you like the way people interrelate. In short: you have to show them you’ll thrive in the college atmosphere and that you share the college culture.

You’ll stand out by sharing some personal / academic / career goals and showing how a particular college experience will help you reach them.

The tricky part is to show “fitting in” and “standing out” simultaneously – through sharing your dreams and goals and showing how particular aspects of college experience will help you reach them.

Don’t forget that college is not simply in incubator; it’s part of life too [pic]It would be to your advantage to show a vivid picture of your college experience. One way to do it is to describe a day at the particular college you’re applying to. Of course, that will take a lot of research and daydreaming, but if you cannot picture yourself on a campus, how do you expect admissions officers to be able to picture you there. And if they are unable to picture you there, how do you expect them to accept you?

For a start … be honest and sit down and write in a simple down-to-earth way, as if you are talking to a good friend, why you’d like to go to college, why you have chosen X or Y. Sometimes love cannot be explained [pic]So share your daydreams about life at college. As simple as that.

P.S. These tips were meant to help students applying to American schools, preferably liberal arts ones. If you’re applying to career prep schools, you’d better be more matter-of-fact, focusing on career goals and plans and trying to prove you have relevant experience, skills, knowledge, attitude …

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Motivational essays: Jivka’s experience

Jivka has taken time to read the Fiske Guide and write down everything she liked about the colleges of her choice + some doubts she had about them. That’s really cool! ( I would also read the websites and copy/paste).

You can’t remember everything you liked about every college you liked, but you’ll need it when you’re trying to write good motivational essays. You also need to consult me about your doubts. Creating files for all colleges is a good idea. You might use them when preparing for college interviews as well. In case you’re not accepted and wish to try again next year, you’ll have a lot of work already done.

When you start working on your motivational essays, you have to bear in mind that you cannot just present colleges with lists of your likes about them. You should assign your notes to a number of categories and refrain from using every detail in your essays. You should work on a bit more abstract plane.

As people cannot remember more than a couple of items in a row (advertising gurus say no more than 7, but I feel it’s too many for overworked admissions officers), make sure you don’t come up with too many paragraphs, and don’t forget the golden rule: 1 issue per paragraph.

What could these items be? If I were a college applicant, I would probably focus on people (they might be divided into students and faculty), the educational philosophy. Some people might focus on some physical facilities as well – labs, theatres, sports fields, etc. Other people might focus on extracurriculars – clubs, projects, etc. Still others – on the class format or the student-faculty ratio, etc., etc., etc.

You don’t need to write about all the nice things offered by a college. You should focus only on the ones that matter to you.

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Misunderstood

What we mean, what we say, and what people make out of it are three different things.

We are now focused on finding out the truth about ourselves.

The next step will be to decide what we should and what we should not share with admissions officers.

Wording what we have decided to reveal about ourselves comes last.

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A piece of cake

Writing a college application essay is NOT the same as taking part in an essay writing competition. Most applicants were not made for Nobel Laureates in Literature, do not produce exquisite subtle prose, and are not expected to be brilliant writers. What a college admissions committee looks for is people who could cope academically, who share the college culture. Eligible applicants are people who are likely to be happy at a particular college, which has the resources to contirbute to their future happiness and success.

That you’re going to cope academically is evident from your high school grades, test scores and teacher recommendations. You don’t need to try to demonstrate it through your essays.

That you share the college culture and are likely to be happy at college X, that you are a person to whose future happiness and success college X can contribute should be made evident by your essays. You probably remember that the tricky part is that you have to show them you not simply fit in but also stand out. You have to be remembered as a unique personality.

How do you show them all this? It’s simple: by showing them WHO YOU ARE. No matter what  topic you choose to write on, it’s your personality that has to shine through.

How do you show who you are?

1. You have to find it for yourself.

2. You have to make sure you show it in an unambiguous, unequivocal, CLEAR way.

Some people forget these simple facts and try to present colleges with sophisticated subtle prose. Come on, guys! You are not expected to show them you’ll be the next Nobel Laureate in Literature. You don’t need to waste your time to polish your sentences. It’s not the form that matters but the substance. You can write in a simple straighforward way, not using SAT words and letting your real voice be heard.

It’s so easy to write things that people like by having something to say. If you have nothing to say AND you try to say it in a sophisticated subtle way, you are in deep shit.

How do you find what to say, i.e. who you are? Well, do you remember the broad topics I gave you back last spring? You have to think about yourself and your past, present and future.

Is there another way to get into college? Yes, you apply to a Bulgarian one: no Bulgarian college is interested in who you are and whether you are a good match, whether you’ll be happy and successful.

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The mosaic

Colleges require a lot of information about you. Some student perceive that in a linear fashion – as a list of items they should send. However, I believe you should perceive it as a mosaic, a jigsaw puzzle, a web, the forest, the big picture, i.e. the way items interrelate.

You should be careful about what COMBINATION of essays you send. Each new item should not repeat what admissions officers already know from other documents / essays, but add something new. It’s the overall picture that matters.

That will make your essay list longer because you might have a ready essay, required by a couple of colleges, but it might be wiser not to use it for college X, as when combined with the other responses you’re sending to Х, it just repeats something or by sending it you might miss the opportunity to tell admissions something really important.

What I would do is jot down ideas on EVERY topic instead of picking one out of 3-5 and not trying the rest at all. You don’t know where the treasure lies.

So, present me with lists of ideas instead of whole essays at the beginning. Actually, you might even have several ideas on the same topic [pic]

It’s not a waste of time. You’ll have bigger chances to come up with good ideas, and if an idea is good, an essay is easy to write, and you’ll do it fast and smooth. If the idea is not so good, you’ll spend a lot of time on it, and it’ll never be THAT good.

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It’s all about you

I have read a lot of philosophizing and generalizing these days. You, people, are forgetting that ALL essay topics and short answer questions are related to YOU. Whatever the topic, you should use it as an opportunity to reveal something about you, even if it is a quotation by a famous person. OK?

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Why should they pick YOU?

If you are sure you would like to apply to a certain college, and you plan to do it this year, then you probably believe that you have chances for admission. You don’t? Well, what’s the point of bothering over your application then? You do? Well, then you should be able to explain why you believe you’re a good match for the college; you should be able to tell me why they should pick you.

After so much exploration of yourself and colleges, you should know them and yourself so well as to be able to give better reasons than “I just want it!” or “That’s what I have dreamed of since I was a kid!”.

I have been reading what you have been sending me these days, and I wonder why you have been telling most of the things you have been telling me. For a couple of months it was good to try to take out all that you have thought, dreamed of, experienced, as you would learn to be observant and learn not to ignore little things that might turn out to be great treasures, and I would be the watchdog who would not let you waste the precious grains among the straw, but … some people did not even try to learn how to be discerning about their own lives.

I’ll go on reading every text you send me and send back my questions and comments, but after months / years of working together on your applications, I expect you to try to do part of the sifting on your own. A simple way to do it is to ask yourself whether going into sooo much detail makes any sense – whether each detail gives relevant information about you and can be added up to the pile of reasons why your dream college should pick you. If it is not worth telling them, don’t send it to me. An example? Well, I have just read a report with the scores of every match a student’s team got in an international tournament. He could have simply given me the bottom line: that they didn’t win the coveted first place.

Before sending me your whole stream of consciousness, you could reread it and delete part of it. You could change another part if you believe it does not convey your ideas clearly. What I expect to get is your clear thoughts. You could also send me your doubts and questions. While we are still in search of ideas for essays, not working on the essays proper, it might be a good idea not to send me things that look like essays; it might be a good idea to send me things in which you address me, have me in your mind as the audience.

So … tell me why you believe you deserve to get in (all possible reasons!), and then try to prove it by telling me stories about yourself [pic]

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Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder

When you have written an application essay (and preferably before you send it to me), stop, reread it and think: “What does this text reveal about me? Is it something I would like if I were an admissions officer at Dream College?”.

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Step back from yourself

When you write a personal essay, step back and read it through the eyes of a stranger. What would you infer about the portrayed person? Do you like him? Would you like him to be your classmate or friend at college?

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Choosing a topic

If you have the opportunity to choose 1 topic from a list of several, don’t be quick to choose the one that seems the easiest and rule out the rest before even trying to figure them out. You’d better work on all of them to come up with as many ideas as possible, so that you can choose the best. Some topics might sound very strange and eccentric to you, but aren’t you a person who believes he is good enough to earn a scholarship at a good college? Then prove it: that you are smart, persistent, creative and funny enough. Just relax and have fun with ALL the topics [pic]

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Real isn’t neat

Some students tell me they have no ideas about some topics. Well, some day they’ll have to generate ideas in order to survive, and there’ll be nobody to help them. It’s obvious that they have to develop the skill and habit to think on their own feet. When I have to figure out something and come up with ideas about it, I usually ask a lot of questions … all kinds of questions, trying to approach the issue from as many perspectives as I can. Some of the perspectives are usually just the opposite of other perspectives, and then things are not clear-cut anymore. It appears that there are more than two poles, that opposites seem to penetrate and permeate each other, etc. etc.

Yes, I invest a lot of time in questions. At first the picture becomes blurred, but I am not in a hurry for easy neat answers. If I am patient enough, I reach the point when I am able to see more clearly than before I had jumped into the bog.

I know how jealous you might be as college applicants, but I’ll suggest that you could work together on deconstructing some hard essay topics. When you make sure you have figured them out deep and wide enough, you can separate and come up with your unique anecdotes to relate to the stories. You could do that in the FB group or you might start a secret blog [pic]You might invite me there. Any volunteers?

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Use of resources

A student of mine was applying to an expensive private American high school. We were discussing her motivational letter, where she had written that she wanted to study there because they offered photography and web-design classes – activities she claimed she could not practice at home. I asked her if her family had a photo camera or a computer, and she told me that they had both. Then I asked her if there was someone forbidding her from using them to take pictures or create web-sites. She said, “Well, no, but we don’t study these at school.” Well, this statement did not explain why she did not practice photography or web-design on her own.

Too many applicants from my country believe that complaining about lack of resources would somehow help them get into college. Too many of them have access the Internet, digital cameras, libraries and cell phones. Admissions officers are aware of that because they know Bulgaria is an EU member, so it’s plain clear to them that we are NOT part of the Third World. Furthermore, they are not interested in what you haven’t but in what you have done. They are not interested in how you haven’t used what you lacked but in how you used the available resources. Not making use of available resources cannot be justified by lack of other resources.

I had a student who had neither a cell phone nor home access to the Internet but was offered fabulous financial aid by fifteen colleges, 5 Ivies among them. She never mentioned lack of resources in her application.

Colleges will not accept you because they pity you; they will accept you because you have become their hero – someone who has done his best out of what he has where he happens to live.

Believe it or nor, “use of resources” is one of their criteria for admission [pic]

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Pissed off

Some people keep sending me the same essays under different titles.  As you may guess, these are motivational essays.

First, I feel tired reading the same thing over and over again.

Second, it does not make sense to me. Does it make any sense to you?

Please, read my texts on motivational essays.

Some people say they don’t have any ideas. Am I the one to generate ideas for them? Well, do you really think that people who cannot generate ideas or don’t even try to are the most eligible top college applicants?

It’s your job to generate as many ideas as possible, to write huge self-inventories. It’s my job to read them and suggest which items are worth mentioning. OK?

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Always imagine an interview

When applying for a career oriented course, you have to write a personal statement, explaining how you got interested in the field and how you have developed your interest so far, demonstrating that you have some personal characteristics and skills which will make you a successful student and professional.

Yesterday I read a personal statement which looked like a list. When I asked the student to elaborate on some points, for example his internship with a professional, he said that he had taken a certificate from the professional – to certify that he has really interned. Hm.

First, some formats just don’t give you the opportunity to enclose such documents.

Second, even if they do, such a note does not say much about what you have done and learned.

Third, what if you are interviewed and asked to elaborate on the internship? Are you going to tell them that you have a certificate?

Talking intelligently about your experiences counts most when applying to college; it cannot be replaced by certificates, even if issued by the US president.

Being unable to talk intelligently sends the message that you are either unintelligent or just boasting about an experience you never had or trying to pass it off as something more special than it really was.

Here is my wisest tip: always imagine you are interviewed about the items you list in your resumes or mention in your essays. That will help you remember more and be self-reflective and coherent.

Meta: technical

Too many essays, too little time

Are they really THAT many?!?

Even if you’re using the Common Application, you might still have to write many essays as many colleges require supplements. You just know they are many, and you’re so worried that you are in a stupor, not writing anything because you have so much to write that you don’t know where to start from.

I have a suggestion: start from the beginning – create a table [pic]

1. In a column write all colleges. In the second column write essay topics, required by specific colleges.

2. Go through the list, and you’ll see that some topics overlap, even if they are not worded in exactly the same way. Use different colors to highlight topics. You might come up with 5-6 red ones, 2-4 green ones, etc. Thus, you’ll see that the topic list is actually shorter than you expected [pic]

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The safe side with supplements

How do you find out whether a college requires a supplement to the Common Application. The easiest way is to check the supplements page on the Common Application website. Still, some colleges might not have posted their supplements yet, and you might think that they do not require any. What if someone has forgotten to add a link to the supplement? It would be like a Misho’s nightmare come true. So, regularly check with college admissions webpages as well, and, please, never ask me if a specific college wants a supplement or not, or what the deadline is … I simply don’t know, and I don’t want to know [pic]

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I am not your secretary

When you send me files, make sure you have done the proper formatting yourself, so that I don’t waste so much time to:

1. Write your name

2. Insert page numbers

3. Justify

4. Change the space between the lines

5. Set the margins

When you’re creating resume tables, give wider columns to activity description than to ones filled with a couple of digits.

Before you send me a document, make sure you have imagined it printed on paper. OK? I spend hours on formatting while printing.

Here is a decent sample of what could make my life easier

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Word count

College application essays usually impose some limits to words / characters OR reqire a minimum. Please, do not forget to play by the rules AND to copy/paste the requirements whenever you send me essays to read.

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