10 Steps to Writing a Winning Personal Statement

I have yet to meet the student who finds writing their Personal Statement for the Common Application to be the most exciting part of their college process. They whine, they procrastinate, they beg me to write it for them – and I am sympathetic. It’s hard to capture the “essence of who you are” in 500 words. But just as each essay should be as unique as the person writing it, there are some qualities that successful personal statements share: 1. They give a unique insight into the applicant. Begin by writing one sentence about what you want to convey about yourself to the reader. After the first draft, ask yourself if your essay conveys what you wanted it to. If it doesn’t, refocus.

2. They are well edited. Don’t let your mom or dad be your only editor. Chances are they love you too much to bring any kind of objectivity to their assignment. Beyond identifying grammatical errors, ask your editor what impressions of you your essay sent. Does that message match the one you intended to send?

3. The personal statement doesn’t rehash information that can be gleaned from other pieces of the application. If you’re a B+ student taking Honors classes at a competitive high school, there’s no need to tell the admissions office about how challenging your classes are - they already know. DO talk about an assignment or a moment in class when you felt particularly challenged or successful.

4. 3,000 words were written to get to the final 500. One page doesn’t leave any room for digressions or unimportant details. Make every word count, because it does.

5. They focus on describing moments, feeling and insights, not scenery. If your essay tells little more than what the reader could see on the front of a postcard, send the postcard instead.

6. They view the moment through a microscope, not a telescope. You can’t tell the reader everything you want to, so focus in tightly on the most significant details.

7. They are not cliché. Did you score the winning goal for an important game? Did you travel to far-off lands to do community service? Do you have an uncle who has overcome a serious physical handicap to accomplish incredible things? That’s wonderful. But, unfortunately, not original. If you are going to write on a theme that has been worn to death, there is a special onus on you to show how these moments have specifically shaped YOU.

8. Great personal statements are not about anyone else but the writer. If you are telling the story about a person who had an influence on you, be sure to keep the spotlight on you.

9. It’s not just about the story you tell, it’s also about how you tell that story. The deft use of alliteration, allusion, metaphor and other literary devises separates the good essays from the great.

10. They are more personal then they are statements. Great essays give the admissions officer information about what make you uniquely you.

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No One Said Applying to College Was Easy: 7 Tips for Parents

Time and time again parents sit in our office and reflect, “I don’t remember it being like this when I applied to college” and, indeed, the process has changed in some important ways. More colleges are making standardized testing optional, schools are becoming increasingly competitive, students are sending out more applications and parents are more involved in the process than ever before. For parents of rising seniors, we offer these words of advice: 1. Help your child remember that college is first and foremost about the academic experience. Colleges are offering some very enticing options including gourmet food service, dorm suites with full kitchens, athletic centers with state-of-the-art equipment, and cyber cafes at every turn. All this is very appealing, but students can lose focus on what should be at the center of their college experience – the academic program. Enjoy all the amenities colleges have to offer, but help your child assess the breadth and depth of courses offered and the level of academic rigor. While these intangibles can be hard to evaluate, it is important to help your child to keep the rightness of the academic fit at the center of the decision making process.

2. If your child has been a procrastinator for 17 years, going through the college process isn’t going to draw out Type A qualities. Know your child’s strengths and weaknesses, and proceed accordingly. If he is disorganized, set up organizational systems. If he needs to read about colleges to really understand them, buy him guide books. Tech savvy kids can gather a lot of information from YouTube videos, podcasts, and school websites. Learning and behavioral styles are hard to change, so play to your child’s strengths.

3. Remember, this is not your turn to apply to college. While you’re college years may have been the best of your life, that doesn’t mean that your alma mater is perfect for your child. Let your child decide what is the best place for him/her to spend his/her undergraduate years.

4. It’s hard to be objective and supportive at the same time. If you start more sentences with “Tell me more about what you think about …” and fewer with “I think that…”, you’re well on your way.

5. Applying to college is probably the longest, most involved, and most difficult decision your child has ever had to make. Give him plenty of time and space to process all the information and don’t undervalue the emotional component. This is important practice for making even the even bigger decisions which the lie ahead.

6. View the process of applying to college as just that – a process. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end and each child will go through the process in his own way, in his own time, hopefully taking on increasing responsibility and ownership. Ultimately, this is not just about “getting in”, but about developing self-awareness, clarifying values and becoming self-sufficient and self-directed. When parents become too involved, the student is denied the chance to go through this very maturing, self-actualizing process.

7. First row seats don’t always provide the best view. Sometimes the best place to watch this process is from the bleacher seats.

One Tour, Two Different Perspectives My daughter is a high school junior and last week we took our first official tour of colleges specifically for her. Although I had, of course, anticipated this moment for years, looking at colleges through the eyes of an invested parent instead of a detached consultant, was an extraordinary experience for me, unexpected in many ways. I worried about how she would find her niche in this new community, I tried to imagine her taking a semester to study abroad, and I wondered how she would be shaped differently by her experience at each college.

Read more: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/archive/x1076645602/COLLEGE-MATTERS-One-tour-two-different-perspectives#ixzz1KGkDiJSm

How to choose classes for next year Over the next few weeks, students will be filling out their course selection forms for next year. Students should put careful thought into their choices, selecting those that will demonstrate their academic potential and willingness to challenge themselves while not creating a schedule that will leave no time for extra-curriculars - or sleep!

Predicting who is more likely to retake the SAT

Does your SAT score end in "90"? Tomorrow Juniors head off to take the SAT with varying degrees of preparedness and nervousness. While most students will sit for the SAT and/or ACT at least twice, we don't encourage our students to take these tests over and over in pursuit of that ever-elusive "highest score possible". Standardized tests are only one piece of the college application. While an important part, they shouldn't be given undue time or weight.

Good luck, juniors!

Helping your child with the college process

Resolutions Worth KeepingHelping your own child with their college process can be a rewarding, bonding experience - but boundaries have to be drawn. Here's where I have resolved to draw the lines and I embark upon this process with my own daughter.

Essay Writing Tips

The Dos and Don'ts of Graduate School Essays Marybeth Gasman, who works in the admissions office at Penn's Graduate School of Education, offers some pointed advice about how to write a compelling essay. While her words of wisdom are directed at graduation students, most of the advice she offers could be well heeded by anyone applying to college. Among my favorite tips: Don't use the word "love" - ever, and don't make excuses.

The Effective Personal Statement

10 Steps to Writing Your Best Personal Statement The Personal Statement demands a lot of the college applicant - to present themselves fairly but favorably, to articulate to those things that inspire them, to capture their character and personality, and to do it all in 500 carefully chosen words. No wonder so many find this to be a painful exercise. But with enough time, introspection, and careful editing, students sometimes learn as much about themselves as the reader does.

When haste might make waste

Pulling an all-nighter for the college application Our goal for many of our college clients is for them to have most of their common application completed by the end of the summer. In July and August rising seniors have more time and fewer distractions so they can fully focus on completing the common app, and completing it well. The Fall is can be a very busy time and students should be focusing their energies on their classwork as this is the last opportunity for early applicants to show their academic metal. Final visits to colleges, interviews either off or on campus, and filling out the supplemental materials required by some colleges takes a tremendous amount of effort and emotional energy, leaving little for the common application.

That said, pulling all-nighters over the summer just to "be done" or to be the first applicant at a school seems imprudent. With only one chance to make a good impression on admissions officers, it's important to devote time and care to the application so that you will be viewed in your best possible light. So, work to get that application done well, but don't sacrifice quality for speed.

Top 10 Strengths and Experiences Colleges Look for in High School Students Just as no two students look alike, neither do any two applications. Here's a list of the top strengths colleges look for in applicants, but it's important to highlight your unique skills and interests.