If there is one thing you should know about us at The Koppelman Group, we love food. We love cooking food, we love eating food, and we love working with students to write about food for a college essay. Food is a truly universal subject. We all eat, and so we each have a relationship with food. Over the years, we’ve helped dozens of students incorporate the universal nature of delicious (or not so delicious) carbs and condiments into acceptance-winning essays. 

Moving is a nearly universal experience, which is actually a really good thing when it comes to writing college essays. One of the biggest misconceptions about college essays is that if you don’t have something truly unique to say, you and your essay are going to fall into a pit of half-read applications from which no acceptances ever materialize. If you didn’t hear us say “misconception,” let us reinforce that this is a myth. The idea that a 100% unique never-done-before totally-novel essay is a winning essay is a total lie.

The people who know you the best are probably, for 99% of people, your family. You’ve spent more time with them than anyone else, whether they are biological, adopted, or chosen. So, you have the most history with them, and the deepest stories with them. There is a lot of fodder in there for essays! It makes sense, then, that you would think to write about your family in your college essay.

What do you think of when you hear the word “community”? Does a specific organization, group, team, or even class pop into your mind? Or maybe it’s a feeling — a sense of closeness, support, and reciprocal care. The coolest thing about community, though, is that there isn’t one kind of community. Communities come in all shapes and sizes, and what one person looks for in a community (let’s say, loudly supporting cheerleaders) might be the exact opposite of what someone else is looking for (bookworms with that quite kind of confidence). No matter who the community is comprised of or why it has come together, though, communities all have one thing in common: they bring people together.

Death is a universal human experience, but, while we love when students write about something universal for a college essay, death isn’t like other universals. This is because it’s almost always, and practically unavoidably, dark. Writing about other universals, like food or friendship, are assumed to be positive by the reader. As soon as they get a sense of the topic, they feel a warm fuzzy feeling. But writing about death isn’t like this. It gets depressing fast. Like literally from the get-go.  

If you’re sitting down to write your college essay but have no idea what to put on paper (or, more likely, the screen), we’re here to help. Writing a college essay can be scary and overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. One of the ways to make it fun is to write about something you love, something you cherish, and something that is close to you — and often that means your culture.

Picking a topic for your college essay can be intimidating, to put it lightly. In 650 words, you are supposed to distill yourself into an essay that is both a convincing argument for offering you admission and a literary masterpiece. That’s a lot. But picking the right topic for your essay can be the key to the puzzle. With the right topic, things flow.

We love jobs. We love summer jobs, and we love after-school jobs. We love part-time jobs, and we love seasonal jobs. We advise nearly all of our students to get a summer job that pays real money to do real work, as opposed to an internship — which is also good but different. Many colleges even prioritize applicants who have real-world work experience, so getting a job pays you at work and in the college admissions process. Because of this, a summer job is nearly always a great topic for a college essay.

The College Essay is mythical in status, but at the core it’s just an essay. Like any essay, it needs to say something, and preferably something interesting. As part of your college application, what it says shouldn’t be obvious, but it should make sense. You shouldn’t be repeating something elsewhere in your application, but what you say should resonate with the reader because it makes them feel like they’ve gotten to know you a little better than they would have without it. In 650 words, you need to do all of this while sounding smart, self-aware, and like someone they have to say yes to. That’s a big lift, but we’re here for you.

We get it. You pressed submit on your personal statement and now you’re wondering: Did spellcheck miss something? What if I wrote a really bad essay and got rejected early and YIKES now I want to change it? And, if so, what do I do next?

What makes someone the best at something? It can be a hard question to answer. When it comes to college admissions services, we believe we are the best. But what does that mean? What does it look like? It’s easy to say that we are good at our jobs. Every year we get over 88% of our students into their top choice school and every year that percentage increases. It’s the highest acceptance rate of any college consulting firm. Does that make us the best?

“What do you do?” It’s a question that comes up time and time again. Whether at a cocktail party or a business meeting, we like to talk about it. The reason? We are pretty proud of what we do.

“In this blog post, we will tell you how to write the best college essay introduction…” We’re diving right in with a what-not-to-do. College essays are always challenging. That’s why most of our blog is about the ins and outs of essay writing and it’s what most of our clients come to us for help with, too. You’re sitting there on your laptop, blank screen, with absolutely no idea where to start. Should you go corny? Saucy? Informative? What if it sounds bad? What if it makes me look dumb? Take a breath. Let’s figure it out together.

As summer draws near, the school year comes to a close, and decisions start getting sent out, it’s easy to start daydreaming about your future college. You have images of walking from your dorm to class, crossing campus, sitting in a lecture hall, cramming for midterms in a giant library. You dream of going to school in a college town, or in a city, maybe it’s a big school – or small. You think about all the different things you could study, friends you will make, and clubs you’ll join.

The common app essay can provoke a lot of anxiety, but we find that, when done correctly, it provides a chance for students to showcase their personalities. When you drill down to it, the anxiety around the common app is really a brainstorming problem. As such, most of your effort should go into finding a topic (a story) that allows you to demonstrate who you are as a person. Think of it as an opportunity—while a lot of your application is standardized, this essay is open-ended and allows you to get creative.