College Application Essays Stand Out - Get In: Avoid Common Mistakes and Write Stand Out Essays

By Randy Levin

Learn the secrets to become a highly desirable candidate. Discover the purpose of the essay and what admission officers are looking for. Recognize what not to do so you don’t waste valuable time. Learn to set yourself apart from all the other applicants with step by step explanations delivered with humor as well as numerous examples from successful students. “Perfect for parents and students...clear command of the material… obvious expertise...can’t recommend highly enough. Engaging and funny… ” Terrence Hinson, Assistant Principal: Northport High School, NY “A strength of your approach to college application essays should not be undervalued. You take an often-overwhelming project and make it feel approachable, staying consistent with what we hear colleges want” Matthew P. Spatz, Director of Guidance: Northern Valley Regional High School District, N

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483488844

Book preview

Refreshing and lighthearted… extremely useful information and advice delivered with humor.

Vincent J. Pisano, Director of Guidance:

John F. Kennedy High School, Bellmore, NY

Educational, entertaining, authentic and relevant... breathes life into a process that often drains it out of students and parents!

Alison Grill, College Counselor:

Summit High School, NJ

Perfect for parents and students. Great advice and invaluable information delivered with humor. He really knows his stuff.

Rachel Crowe, AP English teacher:

Half Hollow Hills High School, NY

Randy covers everything that families need to learn about the college essay process. His use of humor puts students and parents at ease and allows them to forget the stress of college admissions.

Jen Huey, College Counselor:

Randolph High School, NJ

College Application Essays

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Stand Out - Get In

Avoid common mistakes and write stand out essays

Advice from a well-established college application essay adviser with a national reputation of helping students get accepted to the Ivy League, top tier colleges, competitive colleges and reach schools

Second Edition

Randy Levin

ISBN 978-1-4834-8885-1

eISBN 9781483488844

Copyright © 2021 by Randy Levin. Registration #: TXu 2-128-651

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Published March 2021

Second Edition

Dedicated To:

My supportive and encouraging wife Nancy, our two incredible twin girls Morgan and Jordan and my late parents, Victor and Jeanne.

A Very Special Thanks To:

My brilliant cousin and editor, Ruth Abrams. Rachel Crowe and Donna Gross, two extraordinary educators who were the first to bring me into the classroom to speak to students about the college application essay process. Suparna Mahableshwarkar, the very first PTSA President to invite me to speak to parents and students about the college application essay process. All the superintendents, administrators, guidance counselors, English teachers and parent organization presidents who allowed me to speak to their school communities on an annual basis. All the librarians who also allowed me to speak to their communities.

All my former clients who trusted me to help them achieve their goals.

To all the students and parents who allowed me to use their work as examples for this book. Last but not least, the supportive and talented staff at Lulu Press and 2Nimble.

In Memory Of:

James LaFemina

My good friend and my Educational Psychology professor who left us much too young.

contents

Part One: Whats' the point?

Part Two: Common Mistakes

Part Three: The Common Application Essay.

Part Four: Supplemental Essays

Part Five: The Coalition Essay

Part Six: Things to Keep in Mind

Part Seven: Writing Lesson

Part Eight: Putting it All Together

Part Nine: Pickles

Part Ten: Buyer Beware

Part Eleven: Now You ZeeMee, Now You Don’t

Part Twelve: Checklist

Part Thirteen: Resources

part one

What’s the Point?

If you first understand the purpose of the college admissions essay, you will not only avoid common mistakes but you will also be able to set yourself apart from other applicants with essays that are truly authentic to YOU.

Back in the olden days, when I had to walk to school barefoot, ten miles, uphill, in both directions, in five feet of snow, transcripts pretty much did the trick. Strong GPA, solid SAT scores, and a decent well-rounded transcript with positive letters of recommendations were all you needed.

I honestly don’t remember if I even had to write an essay for my college application way back when but if I did, I can guarantee you that I wrote it while laying across my bed eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and watching Gilligan’s Island on channel 11. (We only had six television channels back in the day. I know! How on earth did we survive?). I’m sure I wrote it in pencil, never showed it to anyone, and mailed it, possibly with jelly stains on the envelope. Somehow, I still managed to get into college. Go figure.

Things have clearly changed dramatically. I thought that the best way to start off is by depressing you. I always wanted to be a motivational speaker.

Let’s start with the following chart. Although my examples are comprised of top institutions, these same numbers are reflected in all tiers.

As you can see, a record number of students apply to college but the acceptance rate is very low.

Now consider the article written by Frank Bruni that appeared in the New York Times, January 20, 2016: "Rethinking College Admissions ." A link to the article is available in Chapter 11: Resources. The article is based on Turning the Tide, a report of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

When I first saw the title, "Rethinking College Admissions , " I was terrified that essays were being eliminated and I would have to start a new career cleaning excrement from Port-A-Potties. Thankfully, the article reiterated everything I have been saying for years saving me the trouble of renting out my children for medical experiments (again).

The admissions process warps the values of students drawn into a competitive frenzy….The report recommends less emphasis on standardized test scores…admissions officers won’t be impressed by more than a few Advanced Placement courses…colleges discourage manic résumé padding.

Now let’s do the math. If I knew there was a test, I would have studied.

Most students have bought into this competitive frenzy so everyone’s transcripts look alike. Just remember, your parents aren’t the only ones with a bumper sticker that reads, My child is an Honor Student. Yes, transcripts illustrate hard work, intelligence, drive, aptitude and all the other qualities that the other 29,999 applicants possess. So unless you flew to Mars in a spacecraft you built in your backyard or you cured cancer in your bedroom lab, you aren’t necessarily going to stand out merely from your academic and extra-curricular record. In fact, you will most likely blend in.

If everyone is a scholar, an athlete, a musician, a club president, and a volunteer, what separates one student from another?

It’s simple. The personal essay allows you to distinguish yourself from everyone else by showing who you are as a person, what you are truly passionate about, how you will fit into their community and what makes you an individual. In short, what makes you, you.

An AP English Coordinator from California emailed me for advice about the essay process and used the term, spectacular in terms of what students wanted from their essays.

Parents, students and even well intentioned and excellent educators often make the mistake of assuming that set yourself apart means the essay must be spectacular. In fact, when I tell a student, That is a great idea for an essay, I occasionally hear something like, But it doesn’t sound impressive enough. In the same vein, when the student writes about being on the high school soccer team or on the school newspaper, parents and students will occasionally say, But that is so ordinary. Other students will write about that too.

Don’t worry about seeming impressive, spectacular or too ordinary in the college essay. What makes an essay spectacular is if it’s you. The essay should be honest and insightful and show who you are as a teen, as an individual and as a three-dimensional person.

You may have noticed that I haven’t yet mentioned another common buzzword, unique. For years, I used to use unique as a way to describe a student’s focus on content.

However, when I learned that Amy Gutmann, President of the University of Pennsylvania, has said that UPenn admissions officers are looking for something that is authentic and imperfect, I recognized immediately that these two words work much better than unique.

Authentic and imperfect mitigate the idea of ordinary. For the overwhelming majority of students applying to college, their high schools are all fairly similar in terms of classes, sports, clubs and other extracurricular activities. There is only so much life experience a seventeen year old can have. What are they going to writing about? The time they fought off a Zombie attack or consulted with the President of the USA on policy change? Of course students will write about the same subjects but it’s the content that matters more. One hundred teens can write about playing the guitar and can all touch upon different aspects specific and authentic to each teen. Real and imperfect is never ordinary.

As you read through this book, the concept of authentic and imperfect will not only reinforce the points made in Frank Bruni’s article but will also make it abundantly clear how to approach your essays.

Now you know the point: The essays are about YOU as a HUMAN BEING. The content of your essay should illustrate that you are real, authentic and imperfect. Don’t look to manufacture a spectacular event to appear perfect. Each essay is merely a snapshot of an aspect of you, not all encompassing. Don’t try to force your entire life and the kitchen sink into an essay.

Wait. I lied. There is a secondary point to many of these essay prompts.

Admission officers want you to be happy, healthy, safe and productive when you are on their campus. They don’t want you to be under your bed in the fetal position crying to mommy and daddy on the phone to take you home. Any life lessons that demonstrate your ability to do well living on your own in a community setting can be to your advantage.

Ralph Waldo Emerson understood college applications. Ralphy once said, Life’s a journey, not a destination. In high school, a focus on grades, scores, accomplishments and awards is typical. Students, parents and teachers all seem focused on the end result. Colleges are looking for a sense of your intrinsic motivation, the ways you embrace learning for its own sake. They want you to be passionate about the process. Showing how you learned the value of the process can be a great topic to show who you are.

Show how you discovered the importance of group effort over individual achievement, or love of intrinsic reward over extrinsic awards. I am not talking about your hard work and diligence as a student. I mean the types of qualities that point to you as a true, authentic individual. Can you laugh at yourself? Do you know how to cope when things go wrong?

Throughout this book, you will read many examples from successful students I worked with who all ended up in the Ivy League, top tier or simply competitive schools. Many received personal notes about their essay in their acceptance letters because they were authentic, imperfect and gave the admission person the feeling, She will be just fine in our home for the next four years.

part two

Common Mistakes

I want to first address common mistakes so your essays don’t read like everyone else’s. These are the clichés and faulty assumptions that drive admission people to early retirement.

1. Writing about Academic Accomplishments

I addressed this on a cursory level in the first section. Here I want to be a bit more specific.

a. Birds of a feather flock together

Think back to the sixth grade. Remember your best friend? Time has passed and the two of you have grown and drifted apart. Now that you are in high school, you will be voted Most Likely to Succeed and that old friend will be voted, Most likely to puncture a vital organ with a pencil.

The point is, the two of you aren’t applying to the same schools. No matter the tier, everyone applying to the same level school looks the same on paper. If you are a high achieving student applying to top tier institutions, your transcript as well as the other 29,999 look