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Hey there it's Dr. Bernstein, the founder and president of Get Yourself Into College,
and today I'm going to walk you through a review of the opening paragraph of an actual
student's college application essay. I want to give you some really valuable strategies
for approaching your opening paragraph and avoiding some common pitfalls. So stay tuned.
INTRO
Okay, so I'm going to start by giving you some background information on this student--we'll
call her Emily--because she raises a number of important issues in her email, and you'll
benefit from hearing my responses. Then we'll look at the paragraph she sent me, and I'll
give you specific strategies that will help you with your own application essay.
Emily told me wants to show admissions officers her situation and how she's grown from it,
so I'm assuming she's chosen to respond to the Common App essay topic that allows you
to "recount an incident or time when you experienced failure" and to share how it affected you
and the lessons you learned from it. Emily doesn't want to present a pity story that
makes admissions officers feel bad about her situation. It's really important to avoid
trying to make admissions officers feel sorry for you. That's not an effective strategy.
It's not going to get you into college. You've got to take responsibility for your experience.
She points out that she's "trying to explain" in her essay that she messed up her grades
during her junior year because she moved from Connecticut to South Carolina halfway through
high school.
Okay. . .let's stop right here for a second. As I said before, you've got to take responsibility
for your experience, so your essay can't be about who moving caused you to do poorly in
school. You can't blame other things or people. What Emily could do is talk about how her
own attitude or perspective on the move caused her to struggle during her junior year. She
could also focus on how she didn't have the inner resources to effectively deal with this
major transition. Do you see the shift here? These two possibilities are much more focused
on Emily herself than on the external situation. Of course, she'd have to be able to talk about
how this attitude, perspective, or lack of inner resources affected her and how she overcome
the situation--how she changed her perspective, her attitude, or developed new inner resources
for handling change. So if you're going with this kind of narrative about yourself, you
need to give admissions officers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into your "before, during, and after."
In most cases, you don't want to dwell for too long on the problem because ultimately
admissions officers aren't that interested in the problem. They want to see how you handled
the situation--how you turned it around and how this experience has changed you in some
way--some way that extends beyond this particular experience.
The
last thing Emily said in her email is that she feels like her essay is boring but doesn't
know what to say
to make it interesting.
I hate to say this, but I need to be totally upfront with you. I totally understand how
hard it is to move--especially when you're in the middle of high school. But. . .this
topic is a bit cliche.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't write about it--it just means you've got to find a good
angle on it.
And one of the best ways to do this is to set the scene for admissions officers. Give
them specific anecdotes--little stories that really take them inside your experience. . .that's
what's going to make your essay different.
Okay, so now let's get into Emily's paragraph itself.
Here's what she's written so far:
Moving can impact you in many ways, whether it may be good or bad. In the beginning, moving
had a negative impact on me. I moved from New York to North Carolina half way through
high school. This had a huge influence on not only my social life, but my education
as well. It was tremendously difficult to concentrate on school knowing that I wouldn't
be enjoying my last two years of high school as much as my friends back home would. As
you can see from my transcript, my grades junior year dropped. I was caught up in trying
to regain my social life and adapt to the "southern lifestyle". Half way through second
semester of my junior year I realized that no matter how hard I try to enjoy living in
the south, it just isn't for me. I'm a northern girl and always will be. Once I realized that,
I immediately picked myself up and have been nothing but determined to get my grades back
on track. Moving has forced me to adapt to different situations and thus made me a stronger
and more flexible person. I have pushed past the weakest point in my life and now on a
one way path towards excellence. "Sometimes life is about the ability to believe in where
you are going, even when you're not sure what lies ahead." Anytime I start to question myself
as to if I'm going to earn a successful future, I think of that quote. This experience has
changed my attitude towards completely. Moving states has shaped me into a well-rounded person.
I've become a very positive person and can find something good in almost anything. I'm
not sure what my future is going to look like, but life is about the ability to believe in
where you're going. I believe that I will move back to my home state and pursue my dreams.
I'm not going to edit any of these sentences even though they need editing because Emily
needs to make some BIG changes first.
There are 3 big problems in here:
1. The paragraph seems to contain her entire essay.
2. It's too focused on telling--on stating things. You've got to show things through
specific and vivid descriptions. 3. I actually think Emily should change the
focus of her essay. It shouldn't be a response to the "failure" essay. Rather, it should
be a response to the new Common App topic that asks you to
"Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience
there, and why is it meaningful to you?" This would allow her to avoid almost all the talk
about how moving hurt her grades. She could include one sentence about it--about how being
in the wrong environment made it hard for concentrate. Oh, and just FYI, Emily is applying
to schools in the NorthEast--back where she's from. So I want to ask Emily to consider focusing
on this essay topic. I think it really goes to the core of what's most important to her
about the experience--as far as I can tell from reading this draft. The other stuff about
pushing past the weakest point in her life and the quote and everything--it just sounds
banal and not very convincing. However, I bet Emily could come up with some really great,
vivid scenes of her life in New York and her life in North Carolina and why she felt soooo
content in New York and so uncomfortable in the south. Now, she has to be careful because
you don't want to put down North Carolina. You just want to show how you're more content
in one place than another and why. Keep the focus on you....as much as possible.
So how could she do this? Through anecdotes!
Remember that you're writing a personal narrative--not an academic essay--so you don't have to follow
the traditional conventions. I think a really powerful opening paragraph for Emily's essay
could plunge readers right into a scene of discomfort in North Carolina. Set the stage--set
the scene for readers--make them feel they're there with you--in your mind...in your experience.
You want to strike a balance between external details and your thoughts and feelings. Think
about how novelists draw you into the world of their characters--you want to do this for admissions
officers...take them into your world.
Then, in the following paragraphs she could describe how and why she thrived in NY. ..what
it was about this environment that was more suitable to her....and then end with why she
wants to go to college there--describe the possibilities there and why she'll keep thriving
in t. Of course, I think you'd also want to makes sure you're not coming across as rigid
and incapable of adapting to change, so she might want to address this issue somewhere
in the essay.
I highly recommend that Emily create a really narrow focus for her essay, so she wouldn't
just be talking about New York or the North in general or North Carolina and the South
in general. Rather, she'd zoom in on maybe just one significant aspect of these environments
because that will really let you go deep, which is want you want to do. You don't want
to just skim the surface of things.
So that's my advice for now. I hope you enjoyed this critique of an actual application essay
and that you see why it really helps to have someone--preferably an expert--look over your
essay. Sometimes you get really locked into your idea or what you've already written,
and you'll spend all this time feeling frustrated and stuck. However, in just about 5 minutes,
I've been able to help Emily get to the essence of what she's trying to convey to admissions officers. This approach
will provide admissions officers with more meaningful insight into Emily's character
and help her avoid falling into the "I messed up my grades because I moved cliche trap.
If you're interested in having me critique your application essay, register for one of
my College Application Essay Breakthrough Sessions, which you can do by heading over
to my website.
Also, as always, if you liked this video, I'd love it if you "liked" it, subscribed
to my channel, and got on my special insider email list, which you can do by visiting my
website and entering your name and email address into the "Free Videos" box.
That's it for now. Take care! Bye.