<p>One advantage of the Common App for my son is that only one major college essay was required. Though he was in regular, non-honors English/Lit classes by choice, he was always a reasonably good writer and whipped out his college essay in one evening, choosing a humorous subject of his politically incorrect teeth and the joys of imperfection in life. After about 20 minutes of proof reading, spell checking and grammar checking he popped in into his CommonApp file and didn't show it to us until all Apps were sent out. That was easy!!!</p>
<p>I agree with LH o' D about the new SAT writing section. If there is a big disconnect between the college essay and the SAT writing score, that is sure to raise some eyebrows in the Adcom office and probably for good reason in many instances.</p>
<p>With word processing tools, how bad grammatically can an essay possibly be? And with one careful proofread, is a mispelled word even possible?</p>
<p>I think the mistake most students make is tackling a subject too big, resulting in an essay that is either sterile, bombastic or trite. A much better idea is to mine that small element hidden within that is uniquely you. For my son it was his slightly askew teeth but it could of also been the brocolli "incident" in 6th grade or "Why ska?".</p>
<p>
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He is an excellent academic writer with a highly analytical mind, but the freestyle creative writing he had to do for college essays was sheer torture.
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This was my D. As I have stated in other threads , her high school writing left a lot to be desired. :eek: Just not enough opportunities. A big void dumb ol' Dad didn't see until the essays were raining down like a plague of frogs. </p>
<p>OTOH, I did help her with the essay writing process for college essays. Most times by handing it back and saying "This sucks". ..but with a really helpful smile. ;) She fought me like a cornered wolverine. Tears, threats , curse words and it wasn't just me ;) , she did some bad stuff, too. But slowly the process started making at least a little sense to her.</p>
<p>She came to understand that self-editing was a good thing. That a full wastebasket could be a sign of progress and not always a reason for intense frustration. That writing a college essay without any editing is probably not a good idea (and that was quite literally her plan). </p>
<p>She may disagree but I may have been most helpful in convincing her that her spoken voice was charming, intuitive, and artful while her written voice was direct, emotionless, and artlessly precise. At its terrible worst , when she was trying to "copy" better writers, her essays were contrived, wordy, forced and without subtlety or nuance. I may have been able to convince her to "talk " her essays before writing them. Whatever it was, she improved dramatically over the process. </p>
<p>So, in our instance at least and "coming from where she comes from", a little home-schooling essay writing course was a good thing.</p>
<p>
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Are there any other parents out there who have been completely hands off?
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D is a junior this year but next fall- YES, I will be completely hands off. My help would = definitive rejection. I cant spell and flunked grammar (just read my previous posts for proof).</p>
<p>I actually convinced my spouse to "talk" his way through writing when he was in law school. He had a summer position at a firm that did not offer computers to each attorney (back in the late 80s), and they encouraged the use of dictaphones. He was an excellent debater/extemper in HS, and I told him the dictaphone would probably work to his ultimate benefit. And it did.</p>
<p>Now I have a 9th grader who is in the same boat -- very, very auditory. His writing is SO much better when he talks out what he wants to say and then writes it down. It becomes authentic, witty, and unstilted.</p>
<p>I am also in the pool of folks who will not be editing college essays. I'll be glad to read them if he asks me to. DS1 tells me he already has a list of possible topics for next fall, but won't tell me what they are (though I have a pretty good idea). </p>
<p>Learning to write effective essays starts long before senior year! My spouse and I both write for a living and so we have always worked with the kids on communicating more effectively. Now that they are both in high school, their English classes are sufficiently rigorous that we have backed out of the picture. While I may occasionally wince at a child's turn of phrase or intellectual arrogance, at least the reader will know it's authentic work!</p>
<p>DS1 has always had a big thing for grammar, spelling, etc. and has a passionate, humorous writing voice, which I think will serve him well. DS2 leans more to the creatvie side and has a wonderful way of combining what he knows from a variety of fields and integrating them into some terrific, insightful pieces.</p>
<p>I think one skill that kids could use more work with is polishing their essays. Writing is not a one-draft process -- and editing is not a skill only performed by someone else.</p>
<p>GFG--- I understand your point that the application essays are not like the kind of writing that they will have to do in college (and for that matter are not like the kind of writing they ever had to do in HS either). The college essays are partly about showing writing skills but that is not their only purpose, however. The essays are a chance to show the colleges something about the applicant that isn't as evident in the black and white information on the rest of the application. It is a chance to get to know the person, what they care about, what makes them tick, their attributes and traits, personality, etc. It is not enough to submit a good piece of writing but the point is to have something to show the college about yourself. That is why the college app is truly not like any essays they wrote in HS and not like any college course writing assignment either. It is a different sort of writing, that while it can demonstrate writing skills, is about what the person is showing about themselves more than anything else. Students are always asking...what topic should I write about on the essay? But the point is not so much the topic but more what it is they wish to show about themselves to the adcoms. That is what needs to come first and then the writing needs to reveal those things. So, I understand what you are saying about the style of writing on the college essay and how it differs from samples of writing done in courses but the aim is not just to reveal writing skills but the app essay is about way more than simply writing itself.</p>
<p>You're right, sooz. But even if you understand the revelatory purpose of the college essay, the ability to write well about oneself does not seem to be innate since it is so often lacking in many otherwise intelligent, creative, and academically-capable kids. As you also point out, a student wouldn't necessarily have been taught how to write this type of essay in high school either. This is precisely why the essay portion of the application process and interference in it by paid professionals concerns me. Outside help that only some can afford and many don't realize they even need has the potential to make a significant impact on the quality of the essay. Hence the need for an SAT-type essay test to even the playing field.</p>
<p>CountingDown, I agree . You said it very well.
[quote]
Now I have a 9th grader who is in the same boat -- very, very auditory. His writing is SO much better when he talks out what he wants to say and then writes it down. It becomes authentic, witty, and unstilted.
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See. It's not just my D. LOL. </p>
<p>In our case I do wish dumb ol' Dad had seen the void before she was about to fall in it. A more hands-off approach would have then been possible. As it turned out, I had been hands-off for way too long. Like forever. That was my fault. I hadn't and still haven't looked at a math or science assignment, test, or writing since 7th grade and only rarely have I had anything to do with any other subject. </p>
<p>She never asked for help, never seemed to need any. I was quite surprised as most of her writing was "fine" for her classes and test results were always in the topmost percentiles. It was writing about herself that revealed the problems and to my knowledge she had never been asked to do that before.</p>
<p>I was pretty hands-off, corrected 1 typo (that spell-check missed because it was a word, but not the right word). I wasn't sure about it on first reading, but everyone who has read it, including 2 who read college essays for a living) really liked it, so that did it for the CA essay. One evening's work. He had written a witty little statement about his favorite EC for a college visit, so he expanded that and was done.</p>
<p>The supplements are proving to be much more difficult to produce, as I am moaning loudly about on another thread. Once he's done a couple though, I think it will start getting easier because his colleges are all so similar in some ways that he'll be able to re-work and re-use.</p>
<p>I'm an over-involved parent generally and have been with the college search too (thank God he's let me), but I'm feeling I need to back off a little. Not easy for me at all. I feel strongly that the writing--all of it--needs to be in his voice and his alone. When I coached OM years ago, I strictly upheld the "no outside assistance" rule. You could clearly see it in the unpolished end-products, but at least the kids knew they'd done their own work.</p>
<p>Cur,
I would suspect writing about oneself is a problem for a lot of kids this age. DS1 is fiercely private and after seeing some of the topics that CC kids have written about, I can't imagine how he will find the gumption to spill his guts to an admissions committee. So, while he writes very well, the personal essays may prove a bigger hurdle than I anticipate. I defer to the collective wisdom here...and take copious mental notes! :)</p>
<p>DS2 is more open with his feelings -- he had to write a "stop and drop" essay for admission to the IB program last year -- 30 minutes total, topic was announced during the test: write about an emotional experience you have had. He wrote about his Bar Mitzvah tutor, his B/M readings and how they all linked to a series of special projects he was doing in school that year related to the laws of war. He came out afterwards and told me what he'd written about and I burst into goosebumps. </p>
<p>Another friend of mine with a senior reports the same thing -- her son HATES writing about himself. Worse than pulling teeth! As I read somewhere else on one of these threads, I think the "fear of "what if they (the adcomms) don't like me?" is very real.</p>
<p>Bethievt, I coached OM and DI as well -- no outside assistance has been a useful philosophy! If the kids ask me for comment, I might ask "what's another word that would also describe X?" or similarly DI-directed questions. I'm sure not editing college papers, so they'd better learn to ask themselves these questions now! :)</p>
<p>DS2 will tell you my favorite line about homework is "I've already been through 9th grade. I don't need to do it again!"</p>
<p>
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DS2 will tell you my favorite line about homework is "I've already been through 9th grade. I don't need to do it again!"
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LOL. This meshes very well with the line I repeated at several colleges around the country. "No ma'am, I don't need to sit in on a class or look at a dorm room. I've already been to college. She's perfectly capable of doing this on her own." </p>
<p>D received several positive comments from adcom's about the way we handled visits. </p>
<p>(Now, of course I immediately went and talked to the lunch-lady, the man at the liquor store, the janitors, and made my own visual inspection of the facilities, including what was on the doors of the prof's offices. We had our system down and we trusted each other's observations. It worked for us.)</p>
<p>Funny you should mention the professors' doors. We did the same thing when we visited schools over the summer. In fact, the doors have become a litmus test of sorts with DS1. </p>
<p>At one school he visited, the doors were plastered with cartoons, postings of where graduating seniors were headed, fellowship info, mentorships, Putnam problems and results, photos of dstudents and family, etc. Same school had faculty members coming out of their offices to greet and chat with him. At another school the next day, no professors to be found, and noone had anything on the doors. It was dark and industrial. Made a <em>major</em> impression on DS1.</p>
<p>We also don't ask questions on tours. Not to say we don't strongly suggest to DS1 that <em>he</em> have at least a mental list of questions going in...</p>
<p>"Junior's high school requires a SENIOR PROJECT"
My dd's high school district requires a Senior Seminar project too. It has mixed reviews from current and prior 12th graders, and parents. The district is utterly committed to it though.</p>
<p>We don't have GCs here so I hired one--not the $30K variety--the $2K variety. One of the best things she did was put son in a room (during their one and only meeting last spring). Over five hours, he wrote a few essays. Those essays are full of his voice. I've sent them on to the Grammas because they are such a great window into his mind. Once they were loaded into the online apps, the hired GC checked them online for Horrific Grammar, Spelling and Whoopsies. Mild grammar faults were left alone. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, those folksy essays are not what's required for the UK UCAS essay. He wrote that final essay months later and it is far more stilted than the others even though it had far fewer grammatical errors. I think you can hear my prompting in the background of it--"Yes, but WHY do you like to read history?". A version of WashDad's E<em>X</em>P<em>A</em>N_D or cur's epic struggles. Oh well. </p>
<p>His SAT writing scores weren't great but I figured the adcoms would be able to see that he can write when they read his essays--and see that he won a national writing contest at age 12. Maybe I am naive but I don't think an adult would be able to fake that 17 year old voice. It's too real. It's full of 17 year old humour and wisdom.</p>
<p>I sent off the last app via FedEx yesterday. At the last minute I decided to include the business plan he presented to the VC last week. I haven't read through the whole thing but it does show he can write and prepare a substantial 30 page document with supporting graphics and figures. </p>
<p>He's going to go to college somewhere. I'm not that fussed about the where. The where isn't going to alter his life that much. He is a mixed bag of huge talent, drive and 18 year old naivete and his SAT/app/portfolio shows that.</p>