DS will have both mom and dad comment on his main essays. We did that for his summer program essays, and I think the essays that resulted still have his “voice” throughout.
He sent some of his summer program essay drafts to a local college counselor we are thinking of using a bit. She provided some good insights into “What is this prompt looking for?” Since we know him, we were better at, “Why didn’t you mention x thing you did?” The college counselor charges by the hour, so it wasn’t too terribly much.
His GC won’t have time to read his essays. And, I’m not convinced that the English teachers he’s had are particularly good writers/editors for essays that are not literary analysis.
DS is generally a good writer, but he’s uncomfortable writing about himself. I’m a technical writer for a living (we have lots of writers in this thread!!), so DS is used to asking me to look over his writing when he’s unsure. I’m good at mechanics and finding ways to stay within a word or character limit. DH writes a lot of gov’t grant applications, and he is better at making writing persuasive.
Thanks for sharing the calendar, @eandesmom. Even if we have to modify the dates, it’s good to have a fairly comprehensive list. We will also encourage DS to write essays over the summer.
@nw2this There are a whole bunch of books about college essays on Amazon. I wouldn’t know where to start. Anyone?
@4beardolls English is my first language, but I won’t be able to really help my D too much with her essays. She has had me read papers in the past, but I can’t usually give her too much constructive criticism. I’m an engineer, although my parents were both journalists. It didn’t rub off. I talked to D’s current English teacher at conferences and she offered to proofread for D. I don’t think she does it that much for kids, being that she is a junior-year teacher.
I believe the Common App essays are 250-650 words? That’s really not all THAT long. My D is kind of wordy, I’m sure the biggest struggle will be with the length (or lack thereof).
@2muchquan, my S is finding it difficult to get his essay down to the word limit and still say what he wants too. He has never been concise. I keep telling him that is where the (old) SAT words come in. Find the words where one can take the place of many. That idea didn’t fly.
So…I realize this is likely a stupid question but I am going to ask it anyway …on the essays. The common app has 5 prompts. Other apps have different requirements. With 250 as the min 650 as the max word count and a maximum of writing an essay for each prompt so you had a library to choose from…maybe I am missing something here. Why would it take all summer to do these? Is there a compelling reason to choose more than one prompt? And, on the common app, do you have the opportunity to choose a different prompt for each school or does it just take the “main” one you select and apply that to all your common app schools unless the school has its own writing supplement requirement? Do kids really not recycle what they’ve used in the common app for other applications? This is completely new to me so I do apologize if they are silly questions but we’ve been given no direction on this stuff.
As for proofreading whatever it ends up being, I am sure S17 will want me to look at and may ask his AP Lit teacher but as best as I can tell it does not appear to be part of the class outline for next year so it would be a separate request.
@eandesmom I think it would take ‘all summer’ because these kids want to get into their first choice. They want these to be their best work. Ever. Plus, ‘all summer’ just means that they may only work on it a little bit at a time, not that it’s a 40-hr a week job. I think most kids would choose just one prompt and go with it, but if they happen to get stuck, they may choose another.
The other reason is what you touched on. Other schools have supplements that may or may not be similar to the CA essays. Normally, I’m guessing it’s different, especially if the school is on the CA. But, this is my first time too, so I don’t know really what to expect either. Honors programs, too, have essays. So, there could be a lot of essay writing over the summer!
I believe there IS a way to have a different essay for different schools on the CA, but it’s clumsy. Involves doing an essay and submitting your completed app to a school, then changing the essay and submitting the app to another school. I believe I read you could do this up to 3 times…but I’m not sure if that’s still accurate. Someone else on here will surely know.
S17’s are all over the board it looks like but at most it looks like about 3-4 unique (or semi unique) essays in total based on his current school list. 1 for the CA, 1 that will take it from the common app, or let you submit their own app (which uses the CA prompts but in theory would be an easy way to use a different one than for the other CA school) one that is different (though you could use the common app one, I think S17 will like their prompts better and do a unique one) and one totally unique.
The only reason I would think to use different ones for CA schools (or in this case do one school as CA and one using their own app) is to tailor that essay to the program if the programs were substantially different and there was a direct link in the essay itself that made sense and was in the kids voice.
Not all schools use the common app and many common app schools have supplements. Then there are the essays for honor colleges and scholarships. My D will be doing a lot of essay writing. No summer vacation for us.
@eandesmom from what I gathered from this past year with my D16 and I just checked her CA to refresh my memory, it appears to me that when you have your account you need to choose one of the five prompts and it is saved within the CA. Then within the CA there’s a list of all the colleges you want to apply to and within each school they will ask for different questions/essays etc. specific to that school. So you can only use your common app question once. However all of the supplements that other colleges request, you can reuse those.
It doesn’t really take that long to write an essay. My D would pop one out in 1/2 an hour. It’s the editing and sitting on it a few days and relooking at it and reediting it etc etc. My D16 applied to 10 schools and if each school requires a supplement or two (such as why X or what did you do the past 2 summers, or your favorite word to name a few) it just takes a lot of time and your kid just gets burned out. Plus scholarship essays as well.
I’ll also chime in. My D15 chose one CA prompt. She applied to 9 schools, all small LACs of varying degrees of selectiveness. All had at least one additional essay. Some had as many as three plus scholarship essays. It was quite time consuming. Some essay prompts didn’t actually open until her app was submitted. Then, SURPRISE, write more for us. Same for the scholarship apps. She couldn’t see those until her regular app was submitted. She was able to recycle some essays in part, but never in whole.
@SRK2017, what is RSI? (whatever it is S didn’t apply or compete for it)
What do you all think? I have mixed emotions about some of this “advice” – some of the comments are interesting too. Overall I really wish students in high school could have more time to be teens could be confident they’ll get into a good college (whatever that means for each) without having to overfill every bucket category of APs/IBs or “rigor” courses, develop a “special” talent, have meaningful ECs with leadership positions, and of course significant service/volunteer experiences and significant accomplishments in several areas - oh yeah – and great ACT or SAT scores! It is all over the top. But so hard to get comfortable a student is “competitive” without doing everything possible and foregoing fun, sleep etc. Our high school is trying to focus on lowering students’ stress levels but I am not sure how much can be done given this college admissions environment.
@srk2017 My son didn’t apply to that one. I’ve read that RSI is super tough to get into, especially from states with large populations.
@mtrosemom To cut the length, little words can often be removed. Candidates for removal include “that”, “the”, “in order to”, remove a prepositional phrase, change a clause to an adverb or adjective, things like that. It adds up. If he is way over the limit, he’ll need to fall out of love with some entire sentences. My son has never been concise, either.
@srk2017, applying to selective summer programs is like having a dress rehearsal for next year college application process. It’s a good practice. Did your S apply to other programs?
@CA1543 I like quite a lot of the advice in that article, much of which we follow. To me, this sums it up
“If you couldn’t write about this on your college application, would you still do it?’ If the answer is ‘no,’ then you shouldn’t be doing it.”
I see SO much of this with EC’s, summer programs, class selection and to what end? In the big picture of life I question the ROI on those choices for teen years you will never get back. I may be in the minority in this.
I also agree with this
“There are some majors here where, if students don’t have any connection to that major, it’s hard for us to predict if they will be successful in it. But in some cases that experience can also come from something they did during the school year."
I want my teens to have a summer, to be teens. I want all the rest for them as well but I do prioritize balance. They will have the rest of their lives to work year round and between summer homework, test prep if re-testing, college essays…unless the student is driving a summer selective program because it is their passion (versus it looking good on an app) then for me, summer break should be just that. A break. This is the last one we will have with our Juniors, they will be mentally out the door next summer and while we will celebrate that in a different way this is one to try to make special for them if we can.
At least in my house.
I believe if you empower your kids to find their passion, their schedule will naturally fill with the types of classes and EC’s that look good on an app for them, for the kind of program they want. It’s figuring out how to empower them without getting in the way that’s the trick and it mostly involves listening and letting them drive. Which is easier said than done.
