<p>I felt this way last year. I was so angst filled, I wanted to jump off the Q bridge. DD had planned on applying ED to Wesleyan. She was absolutely head over heels in love with the place since 9th or 10th grade. Deadline? 11/15. She did an overnight on 11/11 just to be on the safe side. Most of her essays were still in their “infancy” stage as she put it & still had lots of school work, p/t job, ECs etc to juggle in that 3-4 day period before she hit submit on the CA. She texted me 2 hours after her arrival to say how much she hated the school and wanted me to pick her up. Needless to say, that school came off her list! </p>
<p>We then set our eyes on RD. My nagging was an excruciating exercise in futility. Her apps were finally submitted on 12/31. Her goal was to hit submit on 1/1, but I just so happened to take a peek at her laptop which was sitting on the island in the kitchen. One of the schools on her list had a deadline of 12/31. Thank God I looked! </p>
<p>My son submitted his ED app to Brown, because that’s the only school he loves, so far. Yikes! We have set up a meeting (highly recommend one meeting per week to discuss college stuff, rather than all-week-long nagging) tomorrow after church, and we will help him add some more match and safety schools to the list! He is motivated to go to college, but is seriously burned out from all the other stuff he’s got going on. The first semester of senior year is stressful, and even if kids go get an early application in, they may still have to wait until March or April to find out what their choices are if they get rejected from their ED school.</p>
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Thank goodness for UC. No recommendations</p>
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<p>lol…I think the Calif teachers union is so strong that if UC’s started requiring LORs, they’d have the wrath of the CTA on their backs. </p>
<p>I know that my kids’ undergrad doesn’t ask for LORs, either…and no essays…and they start taking apps in July. So, some kids get their acceptances a few weeks later (rolling admissions) and then say, “I’m done,” …and enjoy the rest of their senior year. lol</p>
<p>Personally, I think essay req’ts have become silly. With so many kids using teachers, parents, and paid advisors, I imagine that few essays are true examples of a student’s writing capabilities. </p>
<p>When my younger son applied to med schools, I looked over his essays, my H looked over his essays, and his super-writer older brother looked over his essays…they were so fine-tuned.</p>
<p>This might help save your sanity. The Common App essay should be the easiest to patch together. The prompts are so wide-ranging that anyone should be able to assemble an essay from the many parts that are required elsewhere. As a rule of thumb students tend to procrastinate and delay to start working until that great idea for an essay appears. That is the first mistake as they should simply write SIMPLE essays that tell stories. No deep introspection is needed. Nor changing the world attempts. </p>
<p>There is never great writing but great editing. With all bits and pieces in front you, seek to develop a consistent image of who the student is. Do NOT be afraid of being repetitive as the objective of the entire essay process is to make a MEMORABLE mark in the head of the reader. If the outcome is that the reader refers to the students as that XYZ dude or dudette, you have a winner. </p>
<p>Much. Very much is made of the essays and it should NOT be that hard. Well, as long as students remember to forget about everything the well-meaning but clueless adults in their life have told them, and that DOES include parents, teachers, and guidance counselors at most schools. College essays follow different rules than HS school essays. They can and should be entirely personal and the style as free as the spirit of yound minds. </p>
<p>Get them to tell stories and do not stress about the lack of deep thoughts or intellectualism. The latter being a figment of the imagination of most people, anyway. You can count the 17 year old deep intellectuals on your hand --although several thousands are purported to apply to Chicago every year! Or so it seems on CC!</p>
<p>PS To be clear, I do not think essays should be a hastily penned patch of non-sense. They do require work but this work should have been in the books before September. If there is fast approaching deadline, just make sure to keep it as simple (and lively) as possible.</p>
<p>Yep, my boss and I spent the whole day applying to an in-state school, sending SAT’s, calling other parents, emailing the HS, texting our sons.
I thought we could do it without the professional counselor, since it was my second time. Every kid is different.
My husband can’t stand talking about this anymore!</p>
<p>Some essays on the common app and UCs can be the same. After my daughter had a final list. I started listing how many essays so we had an idea how many she had to write. Lots of schools were dropped because of the essays.</p>
<p>Don’t you love those “Why XYZ” essays? :">
I told my kids to be honest:
You guys are really high on the USNWR ranking - and my parents are prestige pros*itute.
You guys are really high on the Forbes ranking - and my parents told me that if I don’t go to your school, I am destined to spend my entire life in their basement.
You guys do not appear anywhere on the Washington Monthly ranking - and my parents told me that is perfect because everybody knows that “contribution to public good” does not pay bills in real world.</p>
<p>^^
Then make them optional. Those who need the nudge because of their special story can provide those essays. The rest of the applicants are same-old same-old.</p>
<p>Ah, yes, @furrydog, for his Why Brown? essay, my son was very tempted to say, “because you don’t have any distribution requirements and I never want to take math again.”</p>
<p>I just spent the last hour helping my son trim his 257 word essay down to the required 250. I’m hoping that neither one of us will discover that he left out a word.</p>
<p>@furrydog - Yup! For the “Why BU?” we have joked about him writing something along the line of, “BU isn’t an especially good fit, but it’s a good school, and I have a shot at the full tuition Trustee Scholarship, so if I get it, I’ll find a way to make BU fit.”</p>
<p>@awesomekidsmom: For BU, how about, “I loved the BU beach and the MLK statue BUT I can take the Green Line T from campus right up to Chestnut Hill to meet my future spouse at BC.”</p>
<p>Nah, it’s about as good as the Trustee Scholarship idea.</p>
<p>We are just home from the giant college fair. DS was going to get “face time” with the reps from 2 schools, one who he had communicated with extensively via email. I was prepping him ahead about generally being engaging and having a few questions ready. This is my extrovert boy. I had his sister do this 3 years ago and I was telling him about that. Finally I had to go with, “look, if your sister could do it and her default demeanor is that of a cat who’s been dressed up, you can do it.” He burst out laughing and said that was so spot on RE sister’s public persona and was totally on board after that. He wondered if I had that prepped or “free-styled” it. Ha! Mom points. We were in and out of the fair in 15 minutes and the interactions went even better than expected. He had questions ready when asked and got lots of great information about the rest of the process and what will happen with his app. More mom points!</p>
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<li>Let the record show that I have only actually dressed up my own cat once. I tried to put her in a pink princess costume her first Halloween as a big girl cat and it was not well received. Now I live vicariously through the google images of others with more accommodating feline companions. </li>
</ul>
<p>“Personally, I think essay req’ts have become silly. With so many kids using teachers, parents, and paid advisors, I imagine that few essays are true examples of a student’s writing capabilities.” - I disagree, at least in our case. </p>
<p>I hired somebody to help DS with his essays ($75/ hr, about $300 total). The coach’s main value add was helping DS with topic and tone (not too modest, not too boastful). She also helped him plan out a schedule and modular approach. (He couldn’t reuse exact essays, but he did find ways to re-spin some of the topics for 10 or more different questions / word length). I was blissfully detached and did not see the essays until after apps submitted. </p>
<p>The essay coach did NOT do any of the writing. Not really sure if she did much proofing. Frankly to me some of the long sentences seemed to be run-on . But they oozed of his personality and writing style. Along the way he also gained some insights about himself and his college priorities. </p>
<p>Kept saying when football season ended he would dig in. Hasn’t happened yet. I’m still nagging him about one more TY card on one of the programs a college sent him to as well. It’s driving me crazy!!!</p>
<p>Any motivating techniques other than threats?</p>