Good afternoon,
I am applying to become an mid-upper (11th grade) at Phillips Academy Andover and was working on my essays. I know it’s a little late to be working on my essays, but I have been busy and have not been able to get around to them.
I am having writers block with the long essay selection: What is one situation or issue you were once certain about, but are now no longer so sure. What caused you to change your mind?
I was wondering what you all would talk about?
And is any nice samaritan willing to look over my essays and provide feedback?
I really hope to get accepted and thank you in advance for any help that you give.
Hi, I am in the same situation. I am also applying to be an 11th grader at Andover and I am barely starting my essays.
I am writing about how I went from being a really devout Catholic to being an atheist. If you want, we can help each other out by providing feedback to each other’s essays. Best of luck!
@perlovs be very careful when writing about subjective topics such as religion!
You don’t want to sound preachy or inflexible to the admissions officer.
I believe in brainstorming ideas and writing down bullets based on those ideas before you start writing. I would think an impactful experience in your life, positive or negative, might be appropriate for that prompt. What you thought was the case might not have been in the end. My DD write about this prompt two years ago and it was her best essay as it reflected current events regarding her heritage. She was waitlisted…so go figure.
In the end you want a polished essay. No grammar or punctuation mistakes for the most part. You want to show you can communicate a message. There should be a beginning, a middle and an end to the essay, sort of a natural progression. Other than that, you want to show you are a critical thinker. You may have started off accepting something blindly, but then you thought about it, as a curious student. You started asking questions and testing your hypothesis. You might have asked others for their opinion because you respect others’ opinions and you value diversity of opinions, and welcome those that are different from your own.
Make sure that whatever you write about is something you really care about. You want the essay to show who you really are