@NJWrestlingmom - The word count goes by quickly. S was saying one of his supplements (Davidson) is over but that he can’t see where to cut it. Neither of us feel compelled to have me read it again bc when I saw the first draft I told him I wasn’t impressed (he’s usually terrific writer) and that it was stiff and not up to par. He agreed. But now I also don’t trust myself not to be too critical. I’m very good at being critical.
Yes, we went ahead and hired a local independent college advisor/consultant in May to get us through applications and essays. She had been working with S21 on tightening up and editing his essay and supplements.
…and he hasn’t let me read his essay yet. He said “maybe once it’s done and he steady to start submitting apps” ?
It’s very hard to write concisely. That’s what these kids need to learn to do. Every sentence has to have enough meaning to be included. Anything that seems repeated but just in different words has to be cut. D would have preferred to have more words for her personal essay and I think some of the power of her essay was taken away when she had to shorten it but I still like it a lot. It gets across enough of the story she wants to tell.
The 150-200 word essays are hardly essays. They are like seven or eight sentences. Those are difficult.
@chillycow, @mm5678 , and @Aguadecoco I think there is so much confusion about UT especially when it comes to engineering majors and management. What happens if they do not accept them into their first or second choice major? We thought A&M would be our safety. But now that they confirmed for class of 2025 the ETAM GPA for auto admit is 3.75 is it really a safety? Especially if your child’s major of choice is very competitive. And this year with the TO thing I think we are in uncharted territory. How much weight will ECs, and essays have? Is it better to submit the score if you have a score at the top end of the 25- 75%ile range? so many questions, so few answers.
My kid is working on her draft, and I know the topic, but she won’t let me see her writing. Stinks because I’m a darn good editor. Just too close. She needs to find someone. She did mention she was also well over 800 words last count and not done- but she’s still in the first writing /get it all on paper phase.
@eb23282 Glad to hear your thoughts on Roanoke. We talked to an AO at a fair last year and have been on their mailing list, but she has her sights set “higher.” We listened to their presentation yesterday to get the 3 free application vouchers for VA private schools since she is applying to W&L and UR and we needed to attend a 3rd presentation. I was impressed, and I think she secretly was too. No app fee and no extra essays- why not! Maybe we will go for a day trip to break up the monotony one of these days and check it out.
I read my daughter’s initial draft, but we agreed she won’t look at it again until next week. I think it’s a good essay, and a great start, but she needs to look at it in a lens of “college admissions officer trying to build a class” vs. just telling a great personal story.
I wrote down three questions that I think the essay should answer (not necessarily outright, but the essay should at least imply answers), and I want her to look at her essay with each of the questions in mind - searching for good evidence and adding to/revising the essay where necessary.
I think she’ll be receptive. I’m not telling her what to write, just giving her ideas of some concepts to include. After she’s happy with her essay, I’ll give it another look through for grammar, spelling, etc - but I won’t rewrite it, even if I have different ideas of how to get these concepts across.
My reply to that is usually something along the lines of “I bet when 1/2 of the population of the known world died within a year in the middle ages they thought the same thing. Guess they were wrong that time.”
My patience with people is really growing short. Yesterday I had someone trying to be friendly start a conversation with a few things he figured were safe to discuss around here (crazy NY libs blaming things on Trump, Confederate statues, the police). I’m beyond smile and nod, I challenged him on everything. With facts, which really threw him off I think because he didn’t have any facts of his own to counter what I said.
After about 5 minutes he realized it was going to be a long day if he kept trying to talk politics, so he moved off it and never raised a political issue the rest of the day. We got along great as soon as he realized that he was talking to the wrong crowd. I knew I wasn’t going to change his mind, but I’m kind of done just going along with people saying things that are obviously factually false.
It would be great if it were possible to have facts-based discussions but sadly it seems that is seldom possible.
@gotham_mom wrote:
Seems to be a combination of wealth (the smallest endowment is a billion dollars) and location; they all seem to be in states where the virus is under control.
Hm Bates endowment $330 million. Colby also under a billion at $870 million. I didn’t check them all but some NESCACS do have endowments under $1 billion.
S21 has been working on his personal statement for the past week and a half. We had a lot of lead up to that over the past month - talking about what makes a good personal statement, brainstorming ideas, etc. (pulling lots of tips and ideas from “Write Your Way In” and “On Writing the College Application Essay.”) He needed all this lead up because writing is one of his least favorite things and writing about himself is even leaster-favoriter. ?
I wanted someone else to look over his essay and a way to get him to do it now instead of later, so I signed him up for a 3 week online course (which he felt was a good idea). The course started last Monday, and he spent several days last week getting his first draft done without worrying about word limit. It was somewhere between 1200 and 1300! I’m going to be honest - he is not a great writer. And he vacillates between wanting his writing to be perfect the first time (paralyzing so he sits for forever and writes and deletes and ends up with exactly zero done) and deciding it’s done when it’s still quite rough because he did it and so therefore it must be done. Period. His preference for revising would be just a spell check. Ugh.
Happily, his first draft, while extremely rough, was a personal statement. It had a message about him and some anecdotes with details. it showed growth in him as a person. There are some students in his online class shooting for the super reach/lottery schools - some of them are great writers and clearly understand what a personal statement is meant to be. Others wrote pretty well but not in personal-statement style - either very formal or all about something outside themselves with no reflection back to themselves. Some did a great job with anecdotes and concrete details but had no message. Some were conveying a message that would not be particularly helpful or impactful to an admissions rep. And so on. Such a variety. I was happy that his first draft, while full of issues (grammar, not enough detail, sequencing, and so on) had a decent intro, decent conclusion, good message/growth/story, and some personal anecdotes to make it more interesting. One of his instructors told him that his is an ambitious essay but that when the pieces all come together, it will really stand out (and that it is a good fit topic/story for the schools he’s applying to).
This week, he’s been assigned to comment on the drafts of some of the other students (a part he resists/hates, so I told him when he signed up for the course, that I’d help him with this). It was useful as I was able to ask him questions that led him to think about the parts they did well and the things they did less well, and that was like a mirror to him for his own essay. Then another day they worked on improving their intros and conclusions, and today they were working on pruning words. He’s gotten his down to 798, so it feels possible for him to get it to 650 (though clearly it will get harder to cut words as he keeps going).
I also asked him this morning what he’s learned from this process that he can use in his future writing, and he was able to articulate several tips and admit that the intense revision process has been worthwhile and that his essay never could have been as good without revision/guidance/critique, etc. - I told him this means he’d better seek out the writing center/tutors when he gets to college (he is a kid who really needs it).
In the end, I know it won’t be as well written as many, but it will reflect some of his best work, a lot of effort, and a message really central to him. I’m certainly happy about that.
@Aguadecoco - no essay consultant here, unless we count D16, who has been helping her brother out. I knew that D16’s essay was successful when we met her AO, who told her “I’ve been rooting for you since I read your essay.” That’s what I think an effective essay does - it brings the person to life, makes them likeable and makes the AO want to bat for them. The other piece of advice I’ve been told is — if your essay is dropped in a hallway at school, someone — your counselor, one of your teachers — will be able to read that essay and figure out who it belongs to.
My D and I watch together. She logs in with her real credentials and I log in with a different email and a fictitious name. I don’t think the AO’s really keep track of who asks tough questions, but it lowers the stress for my D.
@homerdog Just wanted to share that we toured Boulder last summer and really liked it, though it is a bigger school than my son might prefer and a rep for a party school. The city seemed like Pleasantville. Consistently nice campus and the tour was very polished. Based on that, I would expect them to have their virtual tour stuff together. They take a lot of out of state students. They also have two I think scholarships for top performing out of state students - top 25% OOS and top 3% OOS.
@AlwaysMoving You made me LOL!!! That is awesome! ?
Yep. My D took a class way back in April or May to work on the Common App essay, and that was the biggest takeaway. Cut all the fluff and get to the point. She started by writing an excellent essay with everything important, and then they sliced and diced it down tot he limit. I thought there was no way, but I was wrong.
@homerdog FYI, back when D18 applied to Boulder, the Presidential Scholarship (top OOS scholarship) was $55,000 total for all four years. Just wasn’t enough for us.
How expensive is CU Boulder and other Colorado colleges? 50% of the students at my kid’s HS in the city of Boulder go out of state.
Mine won’t let me read her essay. She is working on it as part of the Brown online summer class she’s taking, with a group with individual feedback, etc. But not doing much else. The last week of the class is next week and then she’ll have August to get all her apps done. That’s her job for that month.
That being said, there has been no thought to supplemental essays or the Apply Texas questions yet. Sigh. Getting my nag muscles warmed up! At least several of her schools are stats-only and don’t have supplemental essays.
Sharing her long list to see what we have in common with others. Chasing merit, plus a couple of lottery tickets in there:
Probably applying: UT Austin, Univ of Houston, Trinity U, UCLA, USC (CA), Univ. of Arizona, Smith, Mount Holyoke, UCF, Pitt
Maybes: Univ South Florida, Univ San Francisco, UMASS, Boston University, UMD College Park