<p>ok, summer ia almost here. My D will be finish with school at the end of June. She just took the Sat II in math IIC and ACT is next week. She is going to continue with science research from last summer.</p>
<p>What should we do in the summer?</p>
<p>Do you have any sample college admissions essay topics(Common application or other school)?</p>
<p>I don't want my D to be too stressed this summer.</p>
<p>Any tips will help</p>
<p>The new Common Application will be available in July; check their website. Other colleges should be putting their applications up this summer. In the meantime, you can use last year's essays; they probably won't change much.</p>
<p>Paul, </p>
<p>Here's my plan for my daughter for the summer (we'll see how much she actually does): </p>
<p>(1) download the actual applications, including teacher recommendation and counselor recommendations, from each school on her list. Read through all of them, get a sense for the types of things each school is looking for (just looking at the common application doesn't give you this - looking at the actual application sometimes shows you a bit more about what's important to the specific school). I'd do this even if you plan on using the common application.</p>
<p>I particularly want her to look at the recommendation forms so she can start thinking about which teacher(s) she is going to ask for recommendations and about what types of information she will need to give both the teacher(s) and her guidance counselor --- she had to get two recommendations for a summer program she will be attending and both the teacher and the GC let her read their recommendations. She realized that there are alot of things that they don't know about her, even though she thought both new her fairly well. She is also applying to several schools that her GC is not familiar with (and some of the teachers she may ask for recommendations may not be either) so I am going to have her write a brief summary of each school to give to them with the rec forms.</p>
<p>(2) Draw up a list of all of the dates related to admissions --- my daughter knows that there is going to be a lot of work (mainly because I've told her) but I don't think she really has a sense of the timeline involved. So, she has an "assignment" from me to draw up a month by month list of deadlines for various things (rec's to teachers, test scores sent, application deadlines, etc.) by the end of the summer. </p>
<p>(3) Spend some time thinking about what makes her unique and how she wants to present herself to schools. Luckily, she has already done a fair amount of this on her own while she's been visiting and looking at various schools. In the past two weeks, I've been asking her lots of questions about how she sees herself and how she thinks colleges might see her. I've also asked her to give me specific stories that demonstrate some of the things she sees as strengths in herself - it has been interesting to see some of what she has come up with. I've also given her a few ideas of things I remember about her that demonstrate what she thinks she wants colleges to see about her. It's all been low key - just getting her to keep thinking about herself and how to get colleges to understand who she is and what she has to offer. She's started jotting some of these ideas down as potential essay topics or examples.</p>
<p>(4) Thumper1, another mom here, told me that her son (already in college) found it helpful to write down loose thoughts and ideas for essays, including specific examples, over the summer before senior year and I've passed this suggestion along to my daughter. She liked it very much and is having a lot of fun with it (I suspect it's a good way to procrastinate about studying for finals:) ). </p>
<p>She's already made a list of the essay topics from each of the schools on her list (again, she is leaning towards using the actual application for each of the schools she is applying to, not the common application - that's just a quirk of her nature and she is probably only going to apply to 5 schools. This could also be done for the common app. essays. ) She's been trying on the various essays for size - playing around with them, telling my husband and I which ones she likes and how she might answer them, etc. I even heard her telling her best friend one of the essay topics and asking her what she would say in an essay like that. </p>
<p>Ideally, I'd like her to actually write several of her essays before the summer is over, but realistically, I doubt that will happen. I do think she is on the right track though and if she can at least identify and clarify her possible direction, she'll hopefully be a step ahead. I am hoping to sneak a few books with sample essays under her door because I think most kids have no idea what makes a good college essay --- right now, I am just trying to let her mind work on it, without mom-the-editor jumping in and making suggestions.</p>
<p>Just a note about essays: good essays do not have to be about a students' strength. It can be about anything that is meaningful to him/her...and it therefore should show something about how the student thinks, feels, views things, etc. Some of the best essays are ones which demonstrate the students' strength by the power of the writing.</p>
<p>A friend's D wrote a wonderful, humorous essay about wanting to go to a small liberal arts college after growing up in a Big Ten university town (four doors down from three frat houses).</p>
<p>Carolyn- I have cut and pasted your summer plan and e-mailed to undecided D2. I will hope she opens her eyes to the process. Thanks again</p>
<p>I would also suggest holding on to and filing term papers/reports in the event that the college you are applying to requests a graded writing sample (ex: Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke).</p>
<p>Because writing is a process that sometimes involves a lot of rewrites, if child is not a writer, get into the practice of writing . This could be done by keeping journals, and doing free writes so that s/he can get more comfortable putting their feelings into words.</p>
<p>It sounds like Carolyn has a great plan in place. Timelines with checkpoints along the way work great. I might also suggest copying the timeline onto a calendar and then adding any personal commmitments you know about (vacations, work, ECs, events) and update as the weeks go by. I think it really helps for kids to see how much of their time they really don't have. We also had a rule that all apps, regardless of deadline, were submitted by Thanksgiving which made for a much more pleasant holiday season.</p>
<p>This really can be a relatively painless process if you break it up into smaller steps and set early deadlines. You may also want to keep a bottle of wine handy! </p>
<p>I wanted to add that last year it seemed several college online app sites were overwhelmed with high volume traffic on the final days leading up to submission deadlines. These sites were running very slowly or even inaccessible at times, another reason to submit early..</p>