The Insider: College Admissions Advice from the Experts

College Coach Survey Reveals That 75 Percent of Students Accepted To Ivy League Colleges Responded to the Same Common App Prompt

April 1, 2015—In a startling discovery, College Coach’s nationwide survey of high school students who were accepted to Ivy League colleges almost overwhelmingly wrote their essays in response to prompt number 4, “Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?”

Common College Essay Mistakes: Word Choice

Over the last couple of weeks, essay review season has really started to pick up at College Coach. We’re diving into drafts each day, providing both the big picture ideas and the small-scale tips to help students find success with their college application essays. Our past blog entries have focused more on the big picture: how to approach the “failure” prompt from the Common App; ways you can effectively use the Additional Information section; brainstorming through writer’s block. Today I want to focus on the smallest of issues with college essays: the words you choose to use.

How to finish your application essays on time

One of my colleagues at College Coach sent an email to our admissions team today. “Six weeks until November 1!” it said. I had to check my calendar just to be sure. Yep, she was right. Six weeks until the first big deadlines of the student admissions cycle. Six weeks until those precious ED applications would be shipped off to my students’ top choice colleges with personal statements perfected, activities lists completed, and supplements fully executed. Six weeks until we could all pause and breathe a heavy sigh of relief and either begin the anxious wait for decisions or take a well-deserved rest before diving back in to more applications.

The Common Application launched yesterday, allowing hundreds of thousands of students to create their accounts and begin applying to colleges around the country. The essay portion of the Common App requires the most planning, the deepest thought, and the hardest work. But before you start drafting your essays, it can be helpful to take a step back and reflect on who you are, what you care about, and the message you want to send to the admission officers who will read your essay.

Universities are places where debate and argument are fostered in all academic realms:  science, philosophy, law, culture, politics.  More often than not, they are places where students encounter the “other” — those holding beliefs that might seem “different” or “strange.”  Conflicts are bound to arise in such environments.  But how does one conduct himself when he sees an opportunity to make an argument that goes against the grain?  That’s the question facing students who choose to answer the Common Application’s essay prompt number three:

It’s mid-July, and I’m sure most soon-to-be seniors are enjoying a much needed respite from school work, term papers, and standardized testing.  But the halcyon days of summer, unfortunately, will eventually come to an end.  It’s not a bad idea to get started on the main Common Application essay — get it out of the way before it has to compete for your attention against tests, papers, extracurricular activities, and any supplemental application essay questions, most of which get published August 1^st.

Spokespeople for the Common Application recently announced that the 2013 – 2014 version of the application would include five brand new essay prompts, which are:

College Coach Expert, Elizabeth Heaton, explores “5 horrible essay topics for your college application.”  To find out how you can avoid some of these application essay writing pitfalls, read her blog post in today’s USA Today.