We’ve spent the past few weeks breaking down each Common App essay prompt one by one, and now it’s time for the grand finale: our ultimate guide to writing the Common App essay. Sure, there are seven different prompts, but at the end of the day, every school is looking for the same thing: a story.
Getting waitlisted or deferred from your dream school is hard. We know it’s hard! You feel rejected, but it’s this weird non-rejection rejection that can leave you feeling lost and confused. And while a lot of things in college admissions are totally out of your control, there is something you can do if you’ve been waitlisted or deferred to give yourself another chance. A letter of continued interest, sometimes known as a waitlist letter or deferral letter, is one of the few, actionable things you can control when admissions decisions seem so out of your control. It’s your only chance to make a good second impression, and we help students write them every single year.
Getting waitlisted is the ultimate limbo – it’s not not a rejection, but it’s not a full-on denial, either. And depending on your circumstances, you could be feeling everything from mild disappointment to full-on panic. Don’t get yourself into a tizzy just yet, because there are things you can do to give yourself a shot at getting off the waitlist and make sure that you have a plan in place for the next year.
Hey, look, sometimes ED doesn’t work out the way we want it to, and we have to change strategies. If you just got rejected or deferred from your ED/EA option, we’d like to introduce you to our good friend, Early Decision 2. ED2 is just as binding as ED, and it signals to the school that you are serious about attending that school, and guess what? Schools like when you’re serious about them.
Every single component of your application, from essays to short answer supplements, should show the admissions committee a different part of you. Let your personality become three dimensional. Don’t just rattle of the same redundant information they’re going to see on your resume.
Not all Common App essays are created equal. In fact, many are garbage. That’s good news for you. In this blog post, we discuss how to get ahead of your competition by creating an excellent and memorable Common App essay.
The Harvard supplement is optional, which is one of the reasons for their very, very low acceptance rate. Plenty of unqualified kids think, “Hey. No essay? I’ll throw my hat in.” If you’re serious about applying and your scores and GPA fall into Harvard’s range, then write the essay.
There are a million different ways to write your common app essay, but in this post we’re going to share the process that we use with TKG students. We like this method because it helps us zero in on topics and ideas that students commonly overlook. It works with every personality type and any potential interest, from introverted interior designers to extroverted entrepreneurs.
Humility, self-awareness, and a sense of humor. These are all traits applicants should seek to convey in their college essays, and essays about failure are a great vehicle for doing so. Students are sometimes hesitant to highlight failures. After all, isn’t the objective to cultivate and showcase a cluster of assets on the application? In short, the answer is ‘yes.’ However, highlighting a weakness, if done properly, can also mean underscoring growth, as well as an ability to think critically and learn from past mistakes. Simply put, it’s humanizing.
High school college counselors often advise students away from creativity and into a box of ordinary, albeit palatable humble brags. Their method has worked for them before and they’re not about to go out on a limb if they’re not positive it will work. But college is getting increasingly more competitive and run of the mill essays are not going to put anyone over the edge.
We post some of our favorite essays on our website in hopes that you’ll read them. They’re fun, interesting, and great examples of thinking outside the box. We also realize that they aren’t necessarily helpful to someone looking for actual tips on how to write their own essay.
We are in a war with prompts. Yes, you read that right, we can’t stand them. We hate having to follow them, and we comply only as far as is absolutely necessary. Why? Because college essay prompts have a way of bringing out the worst in the very people that they are supposed to be helping. It’s as if they were purposefully written to produce bad writing, which is the exact opposite of what we want from our students.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll keep repeating it: we ignore the essay prompts. However, we also understand that for kids that are ‘going it alone’ or who will have to vie with 30 other students for hands-on help from a teacher, the essay prompts can serve a very important purpose. They offer direction and they provide structure, so we’re breaking them down, one-by-one, just for you.
We have a secret to share. We totally ignore the Common App essay prompts. It doesn’t matter which kid we are working with or what kind of story they have to share. We believe in starting with a blank page—not a prompt. However, we also know that not every kid gets to work with us 1) because we are a specialized service and 2) because there are just so many hours in a day and only so many days before applications are due. We started this blog so that we could speak to the kids who don’t have a hands-on helper during this process, and we understand that, like our posts, the Common App essay prompts may not make it smooth sailing, but they do give you a place to start.
The biggest (and most frequent) complement we get on this blog is that we’re not selling things—we’re asking and answering questions. Yes, we are a company that provides intensive college admissions support, but it’s impossible for us to work with everyone. The next best thing is to make sure that everyone has the right information.
So, your application is finally starting to come together but the essay is still hanging over your head. Writing a common app essay can seem daunting, especially at first. The goal is to zero in on a fresh topic--to add an additional piece of information--that gives admissions officers an idea of who you are and what differentiates you from the rest of the applicants.