College Essays: from Writing to Revising

This is as crucial a time for me as it is for all of you Seniors. I've been reading about the application process for years, and now my first deadline is less than a month away. Panic? Not really - that was for junior year. I've ultimately learned how to control that inevitable anxiety about the process by doing things early and learning to objectively critique my own application and essays.

I've now written my main Common App essay, main supplemental essay that I'll be sending in a few applications, and my personal statement via the Common App's "additional information" section. "How are you managing?" people ask. Basically, I'm setting optimistic deadlines for my essays, teacher recommendations, and mountains of paperwork that come with this process. Now I have everything done... in rough form. I feel really relieved to have all of my essays at least started, even if I haven't edited them yet. The ideas are there, and I now have time to go back and revise, to help explain myself through these essays by connecting the thoughts and making sure everything makes sense.

I'm now onto stage two of the writing process: revising. As simple as this may sound, it's not just checking for grammar like you've likely gotten through high school doing: it's mapping your essay in an outline, making sure every point makes sense and logically flows from the one before it. The only way to be able to see this level of individual-point analysis is to start seeing things objectively. For me, this means putting at least two or three days between when you first spill out your ideas from when you next attempt to edit. You really need to pay attention to how you're telling the story, and not making any assumptions about what the reader already knows. This is really challenging, so if you haven't developed that eye for objectivity, give the essay to one of your parents, siblings, or friends to read. Chances are, you've skipped some logical links.

 I have linked below some really helpful blog posts from Brown University's Admissions Office Blog, and I would really suggest reading them. One point I love that helps with objective analysis is to outline your essay after you've written it to see if it met the criteria you wanted to get across when you started writing. What does it say about you? How could you tie in more information about yourself to make the essay resonate with and compliment your resume and transcript? The post on choosing a topic is really helpful also: there really aren't any cliché or exhausted topics, but there are definitely dull and typical ways to write about them. The post asks you to objectively ask yourself what the topic (and subsequent essay) says that makes you stand out from the applicant pool, and helps the admissions office see what you would contribute to the campus.

From the Brown University Admissions Office Blog, Prospects and Providence:
Getting a Personal: The Writing Process
Getting Personal - Choosing a Topic
The Personal Statement in Context

One thing I love about the Brown Admissions Office Blog, Prospects and Providence, is that their writers are real admissions officers at one of the most selective universities in the world, and yet they don't come off as intimidating. Everything is written to help the applicant, especially in terms of stress management and taking a really hazy process and breaking it down in to manageable pieces. As a final note, I couldn't agree with them more about their approach to taking the essays in context (the last article). Your essays are important, but try to focus more on ideas than writing at first, and everything will fall into place. The essay is ultimately just another tool for the admissions to learn about you, so put in the time and show off your skills. Embrace them and start writing and revising, seniors!

P.S. Hope you had an awesome Harry Potter Homecoming, BHS!

College Admissions Office Blogs

Some of you have probably gotten emails from colleges of interest with a link to the school's own "admissions office blog" to help you get to know the office/college. Some posts are silly, some are serious, but they all help to provide hints as to what the officers are looking for and speak to the vibe on campus.

Some blogs like UChicago's "The Uncommon Blog" are all over the place, with multiple authors writing off-key, sometimes whimsical, mostly intellectual posts about their very diverse and fulfilling pursuits at Chicago. Recent posts range from "Transformers descend on Chicago" about the upcoming movie's filming in Chicago, to "Summer Research" following some exciting projects.


Other college admissions office blogs are much like my own: attempts to clarify the college admissions and selection process. Blogs from Tufts and Dartmouth offer really useful information with a lot of outside info on student life and stories of memorable applications the counselors have seen.

Here are some of my favorite college admissions office blogs (some more active than others):

University of Chicago - The Uncommon Blog
Swarthmore College - Parrish Beach Patrol
Brown University - Prospects and Providence
Perspectives from Dartmouth Admissions
Vanderbilt University - The Vandy Admissions Blog
Tufts University - TuftsBlogs
MIT - Admissions Blog

The Importance of Campus Atmosphere

Everyone always wants to know how important the demographic of students on campus is. Well, coupled with the location of the school, it can greatly define one's college experience, as I've experienced firsthand through my two six week pre-college programs. That reassuring proverb endlessly spewed by adults "you'll find your niche anywhere" or "people everywhere are pretty much the same and you'll find your crowd" now seem incredibly uninformed to me.

I use Northwestern as an example of a school that simply didn't fit with my personality. When I first arrived on campus for my pre-college program two summers ago, I was wowed by its historic, prestigious feeling, and I soon came to love its natural beauty and proximity to Chicago, not to mention it's awesome location in Evanston. This satisfaction soon changed once I began the second week of classes (anthropology and history) and we were still solely in lecture format, even though my classes had only 5 and 12 other students respectively. There was zero class involvement in either of my classes, and after class my professors promptly got up and left, not leaving room for questions or discussion. I was simply disappointed that for so much money, my education was what one would expect from a community college class. For that much money, I now expect the intimacy provided only by extremely wealthy universities who can provide an intimate liberal arts experience (think Ivies) and small liberal arts colleges themselves.

In addition to academic disappointments, the social environment slowly grew more taxing on me. Though I at first loved the lively nature of eventful nights and sporadic trips into Chicago, this lifestyle really started to drag on my studies, and things became so social that I had very little time to study. I realized that the school was just not compatible with my priorities: most people there really wanted a 50/50 balance of work and play, as opposed to my 70/30 preference. On top of that, play at Northwestern consisted of things like going to the beach and joining Greek life, rather than doing something intellectual like going to a museum or play, which is much more valuable to me.

Thus, in terms of both academic focus and social scene, Northwestern simply did not fit my personality. I later realized that most people who graduate from Northwestern go into pre-professional fields like business or medicine rather than intellectual pursuits such as going into academia or further graduate school. This is a minor distinction to make, but I think it really has a huge impact on the academic experience. People who love learning and want to continue learning for the rest of their lives choose small liberal arts schools or more intense universities that are more focused on the intimate, genuine academic experience and don't go to large, state universities or schools like Northwestern.

Harvard provided a completely different environment that was much more compatible with my personality. Specifically, Harvard had a much more academically intense student body that had a much more valuable balance of work and play. This meant that I never felt pressured to skip out on work like I did at Northwestern, and I could really be myself much more with friends taking the time to do meaningful studying and just going out  for fun on nights and weekends. Students were also much more interesting, and the things we did outside of class were extremely engaging but also intellectual, whether it meant seeing a noir movie, stopping in one of Harvard's many free museums, or wasting away hours exploring the COOP bookstore.

Ultimately, I want you to leave with the message that student demographic does matter. College should be an experience to facilitate your existing personality and interests, throwing in some twists along the way as you find yourself. It should not be a vastly different and uncomfortable experience where you are constantly fighting your environment, even if it's only in small ways like I realize I now was at Northwestern. Campus visits are the best way to gauge the priorities and general demographic a school has, but guides like Barron's Guide to the Most Competitive Colleges, the Fiske Guide to Colleges, and the Princeton Review's Best 373 Colleges guides are a great way to get a feel of how a school falls on the study-hard/party-hard spectrum and should help you find the place that will really speak to your personality.

College Rankings: the right way to rank

When most people (and colleges) reference a college's "ranking," they're typically referring to U.S. News & World Report rankings that have been running steady since 1983 and have helped to transform a once moderate admissions process into one that's far more competitive and stressful, both for colleges and applicants. But that's old news on an old topic I've written about before.

I want to share with you a few other means of ranking colleges that will hopefully help some applicants prioritize their lists and get a better picture of the school that fits their priorities. Take these sources of information loosely, as studies like the Wall Street Journal and Ph.D. study have pretty small data sizes and the difference between 4th and 12th place might be less than a 5% difference. The general idea is that even making it on these rankings should be impressive.

The Wall Street Journal "Top 50 Feeder Schools" is a list of colleges that send the highest percentage of graduates to Ivy League and other top law, business, and medical graduate schools. I like that the list includes liberal arts colleges and gives you a good picture of how successful very small colleges are at producing successful graduates. Most of the rankings are as you would expect; Harvard, Yale, and Princeton take the top three, but there are some small colleges like Williams (5) and Pomona (13) that also prove that they have a formidable reputation in graduate school's eyes. I think this is a great reminder to go to the school that fits you best, even if it is a tiny liberal arts college that no one has heard of, and a testament to the idea that names don't always mean everything.

Another metric I like to use is the percentage of graduates who go on to get a Ph.D. Again, merely making the list is a really impressive indicator of academic excellence. These rankings are nice in that you can look up individual departments to see what schools have strong programs for a given major. Especially for those of you looking to go onto non-professional graduate school, to something like English or Physics, these rankings would be a great source to reference even if not for a Ph.D. Another trend that has helped me a lot is that this figure tends to be associated with how intellectual or nerdy a college environment is, so there is definitely a lot to work with out of this study.

The Forbes magazine rankings "America's Best Colleges" uses a similar approach to U.S. News & World Report but uses slightly different weighting and factors that make these rankings more about value and educational quality versus U.S. News's emphasis on endowment and reputation. They based 25 percent of their rankings on seven million student evaluations of courses and instructors, as recorded on the web site RateMyProfessors.com. Another 25 percent depended upon how many of the school’s alumni, adjusted for enrollment, are listed among the notable people in Who’s Who in America. The other half of the ranking was based equally on three factors: the average amount of student debt at graduation held by those who borrowed; the percentage of students graduating in four years; and the number of students or faculty, adjusted for size, who have won nationally competitive awards like Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes.

Rankings are never a sole criterion on which to choose a certain school over another, but these metrics are really user friendly and have done a lot of the deciding work for you; take advantage of them!

P.S. Try making your own ranking at StudentsReview that's customized based on what matters to you. Additionally, the Princeton Review allows you to look up colleges you're already interested in to see where they ranked on the publication's most recent lists such as "best campus dining" or "students study the most."

Great College Lists and Profiles from Allen Grove

August 11, 2010

Allen Grove of About.com runs a great college admissions blog for About.com that I consider to be top tier, along with Jacques Steinberg's New York Times Education blog: The Choice. One of the best features on Allen Grove's site is the "starter lists" he makes akin to the "best and worst" lists the Princeton Review's college guides are famous for. I find these lists really useful when sorting between the over two thousand four year undergraduate programs in the country; Grove brings lesser-known colleges really worth considering to life in his short lists and convenient descriptions. Furthermore, Grove has an unbelievable grasp of the American higher education system as a whole and offers great application and admissions advice.

20 Most Selective Colleges
Ivy League Schools
Top Catholic Colleges and Universities
Top Liberal Arts Colleges and 20 More Great Liberal Arts Colleges
Top Public Liberal Arts Colleges
Top Public Universities
Top Undergraduate Business Schools
Top Undergraduate Engineering Universities  and Top Engineering Colleges
Top Universities and 10 More Great Universities
Top Women's Colleges

Also of note are Groves's lists of "top picks by state" which break down great schools by geography. I hope you Illinoisians will appreciate the "Top Illinois Colleges" page!

The Common Application is live, Class of 2011!

The Common Application went up on August 1st, 2010 for the High School class of 2011 who will be entering college in the fall of 2011. Don't tell me you haven't been waiting all summer for this moment... maybe just me! In any case, the Common App is now legitimate, so you can add the schools you're interested in applying to, get all of the address/family/education background questions out of the way, and find out the fees and supplemental applications associated with each college. If you haven't done so, register for an account now so that you can start taking advantage of the resources the Common App makes available, even though most applications aren't due until November (early programs) or January (regular decision).

As far as opportunities to get started on your essays before school starts, this is the time to start! I would recommend that everyone work on the required Common App "pesonal essay" first, and then go on to school specific supplemental essays, which are unique to each college and will only be read by that particular school.

This year's Common App essay choices are as follows:

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
Topic of your choice.

Stay posted for advice on writing and revising your essays. I have attended three workshops on writing the college application essay and will be sure to fill you all in! I'll also be reviewing the book 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, Third Edition: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice (Harvard Crimson). For now, here is a great exercise to get started.

The Ideas Exercise - Facing a blank Word document with a blinking cursor taunting you? Don't know what to write about in your essays? This exercise is designed to get your mind loosened up to writing freely. It should preferably be performed with paper and pen, but it can also be done on a computer word processor. Set aside ten minutes of time at a desk in a quiet area with no distractions, and simply begin writing. Here's the only rule: never, never stop writing. Even if you run out of things to write (or type) about, simply write "I have nothing to write about. I have nothing to write about." Before long, you will notice that you "have something to write about... this one time..." and so the exercise goes. Simply getting those ideas out on paper shows you after a few brainstorming sessions, which things you naturally think about in the world. Do you write mostly about your past experiences, about other people, about places in your future, or about the meaning of life? That's the gist to capture in your essay first and foremost: your approach to the world and the way you really think. (Exercise courtesy of a writing workshop I attended at Harvard.)

In addition, here's a great resource on the application process in general that also addresses the common apps and shows a few strong sample essays for you to get an idea of what is expected: Allen Grove's article on the Common Application (About.com - college apps).