Right My College Application Essay

By Christine Gacharna

The college application essay uses a completely different rhetorical mode from the typical five-point essays high schoolers are used to writing, and that's the catch-22: most students won't learn about rhetorical modes and organizational methods until their undergraduate English courses--only first, you have to get in!

In this post-COVID era, many colleges and universities have made standardized test scores optional for admission--which puts even more pressure on students to write an essay that separates them from others in a sea of highly qualified applicants.

Right My College Application Essay bridges the gap between high school English lit and academic writing at the undergraduate level, starting with the college application essay. This step-by-step guide uses powerful visuals, easy-to-follow instructions, and sample student essays to guide students in writing, organizing, and polishing a college application essay that weaves in personal variables to help make them jump off the page.

Award-winning writer, newspaper editor, former lead faculty, and English/communications instructor Christine Gacharna spent six years teaching undergraduate writing courses and streamlining the evaluation and assessment of student writing for her faculty peers. In this workbook, she shares her radically effective trademarked system of Communicate. Navigate. Punctuate to transform anxiety into a stress-free path to crafting a college application essay that helps high school seniors sell themselves to admissions officers, land acceptance letters, and earn scholarship offers to help them achieve their undergraduate dreams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886541335

Book preview

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Right My College Application Essay

Christine Gacharna

Copyright © 2023 Christine Gacharna

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88654-132-8 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88654-133-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

This workbook is dedicated to all of my inspirations:

To Jonathan and Lexi, my first students, and all the interesting and colorful Gen Zers who use my instruction to tell their stories. Getting to know these students gives me incredible faith and optimism in the future of our world.

A big shout-out to all my hardworking adult students in Louisiana, especially those of you who left comments in end-of-course surveys that encouraged me or illuminated places where I could improve. If it hadn't been for y'all, I never would have pushed myself to create any of this. (SWIDT???)

To Dr. Wawa Ngenge, who deliberately disrupted my interview to teach me valuable lifelong lessons in classroom management resilience; to Sunny Ryerson and Dr. Barbara Holloway, who mentored me with integrity and kindness; and to Lee Melancon, who modeled leadership, enthusiasm, possibility, brilliance, and excellence. As my boss, he handed me two valuable gifts while we worked together at UOPX: (1) a memorable and motivating compliment and (2) the missing piece of the puzzle I was struggling to put my finger on that made all of this instruction come together.

Welcome

Testimonials

Preface

How to Use This Workbook

Understanding Academic Integrity and Copyright

Communicate

Prewriting

The Five Whys

Overcoming Mental Models

The 80/20 Rule of Righting

The Steps in the Righting Process

The Five Most Common Mistakes Students Make

Noncognitive Variables*

Thesis Statement

Student Essay: Show Me, Don't Tell Me

High School You Is Ending

You Don't Sit Down to Write a Rough Draft

Navigate

Review: Rhetorical Modes and Organizational Methods

Review: Topic vs. Thesis

Rhetorical Modes and Organizational Methods

Fifty Percent of Your Work Happens Here

Research

Outline

Review: Five-Point Hamburger Essay Outline

Narration + Chronological Outline

Rough Draft

Review: Putting It All Together to Tell Your Story

Revising

Punctuate

Editing

Final Draft

Word Count

Feedback vs. Criticism vs. Editing

Bonus

The Blank Page

Facing the Blank Page

Writing Is a Complicated Art

Mistakes No. 6–11

The Twelfth Most Common Mistake Students Make

A Note on Introductions and Conclusions

Student Essay: Short Answer

Student Essay: Short Answer

Student Essay: Show Me, Don't Tell Me

Student Essay: Lessons from Failure

Student Essay: Significant Experience

Student Essay: Unusual Way to Have Fun

Student Essay: Research

Student Essay: Research | Diversity

About the Author

Index

This workbook is dedicated to all of my inspirations:

To Jonathan and Lexi, my first students, and all the interesting and colorful Gen Zers who use my instruction to tell their stories. Getting to know these students gives me incredible faith and optimism in the future of our world.

A big shout-out to all my hardworking adult students in Louisiana, especially those of you who left comments in end-of-course surveys that encouraged me or illuminated places where I could improve. If it hadn't been for y'all, I never would have pushed myself to create any of this. (SWIDT???)

To Dr. Wawa Ngenge, who deliberately disrupted my interview to teach me valuable lifelong lessons in classroom management resilience; to Sunny Ryerson and Dr. Barbara Holloway, who mentored me with integrity and kindness; and to Lee Melancon, who modeled leadership, enthusiasm, possibility, brilliance, and excellence. As my boss, he handed me two valuable gifts while we worked together at UOPX: (1) a memorable and motivating compliment and (2) the missing piece of the puzzle I was struggling to put my finger on that made all of this instruction come together.

Welcome

Testimonials

I wanted to let you know that last night I was admitted into the University of Washington!!! I want to thank you for everything you did to help me reach my goal. I ended up getting into every school I applied to! Thanks again,—Tim R, Student

Thank you for all the help with Tim's essays. He was so proud of the end result and we couldn't have gotten there without you. I so appreciate it.—Teresa R, Parent

I highly recommend using Christine's expertise to help your child write his/her college essays. Christine provided assistance to my daughter when she was writing her personal essay for her application to the University of Oregon. Christine made personal connections with Darian to make her feel safe and know that her work and ideas mattered. Christine provided strategies that Darian could use in all types of writing. Most importantly, she gave Darian specific feedback on all aspects of the essay. Through the revision and editing process, Darian was able to improve her essay and still keep her voice present throughout it all.—Jodi B, Parent

So, I was one of those students who put all of her eggs into one basket. I knew I wanted to go to the UO, & it was the only school I applied to. I didn't realize it at the time, but my entire college application essay was built on a phrasal verb. I had no idea what that even meant but by the end of the process, I was confident that at least I was using a phrasal verb correctly. :) I also made one of the biggest mistakes most students make. I'm super grateful that I got that corrected before I hit ‘submit.' Go Ducks! :)—Darian B, Student

ESSAY CURE strengthens a critical part of the college application—the essay! Her fun, easy-to-follow approach helps students relax, stay focused and create an essay that will express their strengths and uniqueness. Parents can breathe a sigh of relief knowing Christine has their backs! Thank you so much!—Marnie B, Parent

Christine is very supportive and she genuinely wants you to be satisfied with your essay. She is super proactive when it comes to editing/composing and gives advice that I still remember today when writing. The biggest thing I gained was how to approach an essay and the attitude when tackling a prompt, which is something I struggled with before. Christine answered questions really thoroughly, even giving examples that made writing easier. I would recommend ESSAY CURE to anyone applying to college or looking to improve their writing skills. She really wanted me to feel confident about writing and her advice always seemed to be focused on quality writing. In the end, I got into my top choice, U.S. Air Force Academy!—Nathan P, Student

Christine's experience with college admission essays is highly extensive. She helped me write a very strong essay from scratch that helped me receive admission to the University of Washington, as well as multiple other Universities. My writing skills overall improved throughout the process and I feel much more confident in my ability to write papers for college classes in the future. I highly recommend her book to any high school student applying to college.—Camden R, Student

My essay is now so much better than when we first started. At first, I really didn't know what to incorporate into my essay; some things l went too far into detail on and some things I needed to elaborate more on. Showing me the places in my essay where I needed to show more than tell definitely helped me the most. Also, adding comments on my punctuation helped so much as I struggle a bit when it comes to that!—Helen S, Student

I'm super happy to inform you that I ended up getting accepted! I honestly have never had the sort of support that I received from you, and it was amazing. I'm beyond thankful for the opportunity and for all your help. Thank you so much!—Angelina H, Student

This was super helpful! I sent my essay to Mrs. Gacharna and the feedback was extremely constructive and helpful. And I got an A! Thank you, ESSAY CURE!!!!—Kyle H, Undergraduate Student

"Thank you, Christine! I've been admitted to all the colleges I've heard back from so far: Georgia Tech, Cornell, Clemson with $20K/year in merit, UVA, Wesleyan College with $15K/year in merit, and WashU. ESSAY CURE helped make the college process much less stressful.

Going into my senior year, I didn't know what I wanted to write about, and I felt a lot of pressure around the Common App essay in particular because colleges kept emphasizing how important it was for admission, and the prompts were really lofty. The most I had done with essay writing was the five paragraph AP Lit essay, and I quickly found that that approach wasn't going to cut it for my college essay. It was hard to decide what to write about because I'd read a bunch of examples of college essays online (like Examples of College Essays that Worked) and I didn't know how I would even go about writing an essay like that.

You made the process so much easier by helping me brainstorm and write an essay that made my application more personal to me. It even turned out that my Common App essay was one of the strongest parts of my application. Showing you ideas for drafts and running drafts by you was enormously helpful for me because it gave me an honest, expert opinion from someone with a lot of insight into the perspective of college admissions officers.

The most helpful part for me was the process we went through. First, I would show you a draft. If it was on the right track, you would point out directions I could take it or encourage me to do some more thinking and get back to you. I went through a lot of drafts, but even though this sounds like a lot of work, I was actually felt very relaxed and on-target about it.

Overall, ESSAY CURE definitely made the college process a lot easier and less stressful to navigate. I would definitely recommend ESSAY CURE to a friend and I know ESSAY CURE would be super helpful to parents who are stressed about college stuff coming up next year."—Elizabeth B, Student

I was accepted into Virginia Tech and I will be attending this upcoming fall!! I am super excited and it was my first choice. Thank you SO MUCH for all of your help.—Rachel S, Student

I think it was a valuable experience for all of us, and I hope that Libby has recognized the amount of effort needed to write a good essay or paper. We spent quite a bit of time discussing how to effectively communicate important ideas and maintain author's voice with limited word count requirements. Very hard to do well. Thank you for all your help, advice, ideas and guidance—we could not have done this without you!!—Alyssa E, Parent

My writing skills improved throughout the process in almost all areas. I couldn't have done any of this without you! Thank you!—Camden S, Student

Thank you for helping me write my college essays. I have just been accepted into UVA and am very grateful for all that you have done to make me a better writer.—Jonathan M, Student

Hello, Christine. I just wanted to thank you for your work with Marin, particularly yesterday. As you well know, this personal statement & essay is pretty intimidating to these kids, and it's easy to see why. You really helped illuminate a lot of things to her and I feel like she has a new sense of peace, focus & confidence about it all. Because she's Marin, she did a deep dive into NU's page (not for the first time) and is pretty motivated about their dual-track that results in a BS in Engineering and a BA in Communications. It just seems like such a great fit for a young lady with a clear aptitude for STEM, but also possessing tremendous soft skills (she already has more environmental/emotional awareness than 90% of the adults I've ever met; she hears what's not being said and can take the temperature of a room/situation very well). It was also fantastic specific advice when it came to the potential benefit of being a young lady applying for an engineering department at a school like that. She was pretty energized last night (though probably not nearly as much as I was!) and I just wanted you to know that your time and skillful help were greatly appreciated on this end. Cheers,—Jay C, Parent