Janine Robinson's Blog, page 2

FREE College Application Essay Webinars!

FREE Summer Essay Writing Webinars!
First one: Wednesday, July 8!

I know this is a hard time for many students and families. To do my small part to try to ease the financial strain due to the current pandemic, I will be offering FREE webinars this summer to help students get a head start on their college application essays. The first one will be Wednesday, July 8, at 3 p.m. via Zoom meetings. 

During our sessions, I will walk you through the basics of what makes a great essay, and then help you brainstorm topic ideas. Time allowing, I will also share other advice and tips on structuring and editing essays to make them focused and meaningful. Students will learn the step-by-step process that I have taught thousands of students over the last decade. We will end with a Q&A session, so bring your questions (eg. topic ideas you have that you would like feedback on…).

The vibe will be very informal, friendly and encouraging and ideally leave you eager to get cranking on your college application essays! I will focus on advice and ideas on how write the most common essay–the personal statement. This is the first-person essay that you write about yourself, and is required for The Common Application, The Coalition Application and other applications, such as for scholarships, etc. The tips and instruction you get in this session should also help you with other college application essays, such as for the University of California, common supplemental essays, etc. It’s all about learning how to pick topics and write about yourself, and what you care about and why.

Participants Can Get My Companion Online Essay Writing Bootcamp Course for Only $20! (Normally almost $100!)

BONUS! Also, any students who would like access to my popular online essay writing course (that I sell for $99)–which includes my best-selling writing guides (eg Escape Essay Hell and Heavenly Essays), short instructional videos and other helpful resources–can get it by simply donating a minimum of $20 to any non-profit organization working to support the underprivileged in our country (just email copy of receipt). Any students who can’t afford this donation for whatever reason can get it for free by asking.

HOW TO SIGN UP: For a link to my first webinar on Wednesday, July 8, please send me, Janine Robinson, an email at: EssayHell@gmail.com. Depending on demand, I will be giving weekly webinars through the month of July and into August. Send me an email for future dates and/or watch this page. Tell your friends!

Here are a couple awesome organizations that could use your support (click name of organization to learn more about these groups and how to donate). Or pick one you like:

Campaign Zero

The Marshall Project

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

ACLU

National Immigration Center

Border Angels

The post FREE College Application Essay Webinars! appeared first on Essay Hell.

Start a Coronavirus Diary NOW!

It’s Not Too Late to Capture Your Unique
COVID-19 Experience in a Journal

I know most of your are busy with online schooling. If you find extra time on your hands, and want a great way to practice narrative writing to prepare for your college application essays, start a diary about your Coronavirus experience as soon as you can.

For most of you, this could be the most dramatic, real-life experience of your life–and it’s happening right now.

For some of you, the hardest part so far has been the boredom of staying at home, cancelled events and not seeing friends. I hope that is your biggest problem. Many students will experience more intense repercussions from this pandemic, including losing loved ones, watching parents get laid off from jobs and enduring financial and emotional hardship.

All of you will have stories to tell. It’s not necessarily one long tale. But many small moments, incidents, conversations, emotions, insights, questions, conflicts, frustrations, jokes, and so on. If you’re smart, start collecting them now.

Trust me–someday you will be so glad you took the time to write down the details of your experience. You think you will never forget what it’s like now, but you will.

Also, keeping a Coronavirus diary (or journal, same thing) is an awesome exercise to learn the style of writing (narrative/story-telling) you will need to ace your college application essays.

This pandemic started a while ago, but you can start a diary capturing your unique and highly personal experience NOW! It’s not too late.

Even though COVID-19 most likely will not be a great essay topic on its own, there’s a strong chance it still will play a big or small part of your essays.

How to Start Your Diary or Journal

It’s best if you can find some type of self-contained notebook. Lined or unlined. Personal preference. If you don’t have one single notebook, just find a way to collect your pages, either in an envelope or folder. You can always bind them together later. You can also write on the computer. Create a file and get started (I would print out your work, if possible, as back-up.)

Find a time of day that works for you to spend at least 10-15 minutes to write. It can be in the morning or afternoon or before you go to bed–again, your call. Just make a commitment to write something–anything–every day. If you miss a day, or even several, don’t let that stop you. Dive back in whenever you can. Put a reminder on your phone.

At the top of each entry, put the day and date. Doodling is totally allowed!

Resist the urge to erase. Even if you re-read what you wrote, and it sounds dumb or cheesy or not how you want, just LEAVE IT ALONE. That is your voice at the moment, and it is fine. If what you write really bugs you, just don’t read it. Keep writing.

WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT?

Diaries are usually a mixture of recounting what happened to you during the last day or so, and your feelings about those events. You can give an overview of your day, or pick one or two interesting things that happened. It’s up to you. If you give an overview, stick with chronological order–start with how it began, what you did, and go from there. If you just want to share one thing that happened, just start with that. There are no rules.

The other part of a diary, besides telling what you did and what happened, is to write about what it meant to you. This can include a lot of reflecting, examining and analyzing what happened. You can also share how you felt and what you learned. (In your college application essays, especially personal statements like the Common App essay, you also recount something that happened to you–like telling a real-life story–and then you explain what it meant to you. See how they are similar?)

One writing tip to keep your Coronavirus diary balanced between what happened and what it meant to you is to shift back and forth. If you write a few sentences or paragraph about something that happened and those details, follow up with how you felt about it–especially your feelings and what you learned about yourself, others and the world. Then describe something else that happened, and reflect. Back and forth. Something happened => what it meant to you => something happened => what it meant to you….This writing technique (sometimes called the Ladder of Abstraction) is how you add depth–another skill you can use to power your college application essays.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS WRITING TECHNIQUE: How to Structure a College Application Essay

When you tell about your day, and the specifics of something that happened, make sure to includes tons of details. Name the movies you watched, the brand of cereal you ate, the friends you talked with, the words your dad used, the way your room looked, etc. These type of details will brighten your story and years down the road, you will laugh or even cry at many of them since you and your life will change.

A few more tips: Write like you talk. Don’t try to make your coronavirus diary sound like an English paper. You can use slang, or even foul language, if that’s how you talk. The important thing is that you will be capturing your authentic narrative “voice,” which is exactly what you want to use when writing your college application essay.

Also, stick to the past tense, even though you are writing about things that just happened. They are still in the past, and it reads better. Try to use the grammar, spelling, punctuation, and all that you know, so that it’s as readable as possible, but don’t sweat the them. Most important, you want to be able to read your diary later.

Use mainly first person. “I” “Me” “We” “Us”….

These are just some ideas on how to capture your experiences and feelings and observations about what’s going on right now with you. But there are NO RULES. This Coronavirus diary is yours, and your alone.

Some Prompts to Get You Going

The dreaded blank page. Yikes!! How do you start when this CV has been going on for a while and you have already been homebound for a week or more? Try something like this:

Start with your first impressions of the pandemic. How did you first hear about it? Where were you? What did you think? What went through your mind? How did you feel? This will help you start at the beginning of this CV phase of your life, and you can go from there until you bring it up to today.

“I’m not sure the exact moment I first heard about the Coronavirus, but I remember seeing a video on Facebook about someone in China……”

Share some details about other things you remember early on learning about it, from your friends, from social media, from your parents, etc. You can keep this short, or write about it over the next couple entries and days. Your call. At some point, you will start simply writing about what happened THAT DAY (or yestserday).

Talk about the first day you learned school was closed. Include how you felt. Scared? Disappointed? Angry? Depressed? Anxious? Share what your first day home was like. It will be interesting to see how that changes over the coming weeks, and possibly months. Did you start a routine? What did your parents tell you about what was happening and what to expect?

Still not sure what to write about? Just think back over your day. Did anything happen that made you laugh? Write about that moment. Did anything happen that upset you? Write about that moment. Did someone else do something weird or unexpected? Write about that. Just pick a small incident or conversation or moment, and simply tell what happened. If it comes to mind, it’s memorable to you and worth jotting down the details. Then, Boom. You have a Coronavirus diary entry.

REMEMBER: What you choose to write about does not need to be super exciting, life-changing, shocking or momentous to have value. It’s actually the everyday and ordinary moments and interactions that are the most meaningful since they are the most real to YOU. Trust what you cared about, and record it. If you have some more dramatic incidents, of course, record those as well!

Also, you don’t have to tie everything you write about directly to this Coronavirus. Everything that happens to you now IS related on some level because it is happening now during this pandemic. Simply focus on writing about how your life is now.

If things in your life are bad, all the more reason to write down what’s going on in your Coronavirus diary. Getting out what’s happening and especially how you feel about it can help you get through this. This won’t necessarily fix things, but it will help you handle them and can be helpful since you can get out your fears, worries, anger, whatever.

Hopefully, this will get you launched on your Coronavirus diary. You will never regret it, and again, you couldn’t have a better exercise to prepare for writing a killer personal statement for your college application essays. Big bonus!

We are in the middle of very weird and terrifying times. From reports I’ve read, we could return to some type of new normal within a matter of months. And then, looking back, this will be one of those bizarre nightmare experiences that you endured and will never forget. Your grandparents and parents had watershed times like the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, 911 and the 2008 Crash. This is yours, happening now. If you have a written record of how YOU handled it in your Coronavirus diary, you will value that for the rest of your life.

So get a notebook, jot down the day and date, and write something. Anything. Then put it down. Repeat.

Good luck!

I plan to write some follow-up posts with more tips and prompts for keeping your diary/journal going. So stay tuned!

The post Start a Coronavirus Diary NOW! appeared first on Essay Hell.

The Main Point of Your College App Essay

Know the Main Point You Want to Make

About Yourself In Your Essay!

Or else…

 

I don’t know why I haven’t written about this before. It’s soooooo important to writing a college application essay that will give you that edge in landing your dream school acceptance.

To start off, if you don’t know the Main Point of your college application essay, you are pretty much sunk right off the bat.

In my popular writing guide, Escape Essay Hell, I’m pretty sure I mentioned this somewhere in my step-by-step process. But I probably should have hammered this topic more.

If you are writing a personal statement style essay for say, The Common Application, or other college applications, the piece needs to be all about you.

So, as in all good writing, you can’t really begin until you have a clear idea of what you want to say. In this case, what you want to say about yourself.

Finding THE MAIN POINT YOU ARE GOING TO SAY ABOUT YOURSELF in your college application essay is similar, actually almost identical, to making a thesis statement.

Ugh. I know. I never liked having to deal with those. They make you think, and also make some hard decisions.

Why? Because you have to boil down your message to its essence. And that ain’t easy.

When you write a personal statement essay, you need to DECIDE what the main thing is you want to say. About yourself.

Trouble is, you can’t say everything. That would take a book.

So you must pick. Narrow it down. Frame it up. Decide on ONE main thing you want to tell these schools about yourself. ONE!

No, you can’t just say how great you are. Or, pick me, pick me, I’m super smart, and a hard worker and also play a mean sax. And did I mention I have 40,000 hours of community service?

Instead, you want to find ONE thing about yourself that you can write about that will help your target colleges and universities:

Differentiate you from the other applicants
Find you likable
See that you are interesting
Get a sense of your “intellectual vitality,” which mainly means you enjoy learning and thinking
Remember you when they are making their cuts

This is where you want to start the brainstorming process to try to identify topics that you can use to show this ONE MAIN POINT about yourself to these schools.

Here are some topics students wrote about in the sample essays in my collection, Heavenly Essays: An obsession with junk collecting. Messing up while waiting tables. Coming from an in vitro egg. Road trip in Winnebago with parents. Getting stuck in a tree. Swallowing a goldfish. Having three older bossy sisters. Smiling too much.

Great topics! However, before these students could write about these ideas, they had to first know…you got it…THE MAIN POINT THEY WANTED TO MAKE ABOUT THEMSELVES in their essays.

Because these essays were not about these topics. They were about these students. And your essay needs to be about you.

When working one-on-one with students, I usually start by having them identify a short list of their defining qualities or characteristics. Then we pick one, and we use that to decide the ONE MAIN POINT they will write about themselves in their essay.

RELATED: How to Find Your Defining Qualities

I don’t know where you are at in the brainstorming or writing process. But see if this helps you identify your MAIN POINT:

Can you write: “I am the type of girl or guy who is _______________________ and it matters because ______________________.” ?

Try to fill in that first blank with one specific description of yourself, such as a defining quality or characteristic. The second blank will help you identify what you value and/or what you learned.

This is how you pick or decide what part of you you are going to showcase in your essay. This will give it focus and allow you to write about yourself without needing an entire book.

Remember, you are going to write about only one part of yourself.

Once you have a clear idea of your MAIN POINT, everything you have to say in your essay will relate, somehow, to this point. Everything you say will support this point, offer examples (little stories of you in action) of this point, explore and explain this point.

Check out this post, How to Write a College Application Essay in 3 Steps, to learn how to put together a narrative style personal statement essay that will cover all these goals. And of course, include your main point. You might not need to overtly state your main point, as with a thesis statement, but it will be in there somewhere.

If you want more help, my book, Escape Essay Hell, lays this all out step by step in more detail.

Remember, the MAIN POINT of these college application essays is to help you stand out among the competition. And you can’t stand out unless you first know the MAIN POINT about yourself that will help you do this best.

Good luck!

 

 

 

 

 

The post The Main Point of Your College App Essay appeared first on Essay Hell.

Looking for College Application Essays to Publish!

***Looking for help starting your essays? Check out my affordable Jumpstart Webinars! Adding more for July. Only $30. FREE if you can’t afford them.

My Sample Essay Collection

Have a College Admissions Essay You Love? Send It In!

It been a little over five years since I published my best-selling collection of sample college application essays, called Heavenly Essays.

Most of the essays were written by former students, although I also included a handful by other students who submitted their pieces to me.

Now, I would love to add about a dozen new essays to this collection to keep it fresh and timely. (Mainly personal statement essays used for the Common App, Coalition App, Questbridge App and others core essays.)

Anyone is welcome to send in essays. Of course, I especially love hearing from former clients, but I know many other students have written excellent essays as well.

In Heavenly Essays, I included the essay, along with the student’s name, city/state/country, and school attended. At the end of each essay, I have written a short analysis where I shared my thoughts on what worked well and why, and what writing devices, ideas or techniques the writer used effectively. My goal is for students who read these essays, and my analyses, to learn how to craft their own narrative essays.

I believe one of the best ways students can learn how to write engaging and meaningful personal statement essays for their college applications is to read what others have written.

Not only can they get a sense of how these story-telling style essays are structured, and notice the more casual style and authentic voices, but students can also find inspiration for their own topic ideas.

Who knew you could write a killer essay about collecting trash, or messing up a food order while waiting tables, or coming from a family with big hips?

Those of you who have worked with students on their essays–college admissions counselors, English teachers and even parents–are all welcome to submit essays for my collection. Of course, you need to get the student’s permission.

You can either copy and paste them in an email, or attach them as Word or Google docs, and send them to my email: EssayHell@gmail.com

Please feel free to ask me any questions, too.

In my opinion, I think this is a great opportunity not only to share students’ work and inspire others, but publishing a personal piece of writing is a nice accomplishment.

I’m also happy to send a free copy of my collection of Heavenly Essays to anyone who wants to submit essays for these additions. Again, just send me an email.

My Step-by-Step Guide

(I also have a long-standing offer to anyone who buys any of my writing guides on Amazon, either digital or paperback version—Escape Essay Hell, Heavenly Essays or The Writing Survival Kit–and leaves a short star-rating and comments on its Amazon sales page, is welcome to a free digital copy of any of my guides. Just let me know if you left a review and what book you would like.)

Best Essay Writing Tips and Advice!

Thanks for your support!

Janine Robinson

The post Looking for College Application Essays to Publish! appeared first on Essay Hell.

How to Write About the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

***Need in-person help getting starting? Check out my Jumpstart Webinars. Only $30! FREE if you can’t afford them. Two left this month! 

Tips on Turning Problems into Hot Topics

So you have thought of a topic you want to write about in your college application essay.

I’m guessing it will fall into one of these three categories: the Good, the Bad or the Ugly.

If so, here’s tips on how to approach them so they make effective essays.

#1: How to Write About the GOOD in Your College Application Essay

Of course colleges want to hear about all the GOOD stuff you have done in your life so far, especially during your high school years. And it’s natural to want to stuff your college application essays with all those glowing details–about your achievements, your accomplishments, your shining personality and your stellar character.

Stop right there! The last thing you want to do with your essay is cram it full of lists of every good or impressive thing you have done. Not only would your essay be dull as dirt, but your application will already be loaded with details about your impressive grades, extra-curricular activities, awards, internships, etc.

Also, an essay that only talks about your good side can easily tip into a tone that comes across as boastful or arrogant, which is off-putting to readers (aka admissions officers).

Then how do you write about something good about yourself in your essay?

Easy! Start with something not so good about yourself.

If you are showcasing an accomplishment, start with a time when you were just starting to work towards it. Look for obstacles or challenges that were in your way. Share your frustrations, defeats, mistakes, conflicts, missteps, etc. After that, you can shift into how you overcame them and ultimately conquered your goal.

The point of sharing an accomplishment, achievement or something good about yourself in a personal statement essay is not only to let schools know what you did or how wonderful you are–but how you did it or got that way, why you did it, and what you learned in the process. That is what should make up the bulk of your essay if you want to write about the Good in your essay.

You will strike the right tone if you were first humbled by the challenge or obstacle. When you share how you worked toward your achievement, accomplishment or personal growth goal, you will indirectly reveal your impressive qualities.

Best of all, your college application essay will be interesting to read! What good is an essay if no one wants to read past the first sentence or two?

Start with the Bad–and then move into the Good! Works every time!

#2: How to Write About the BAD in your College Application Essay

I think topics about your Bad stuff usually make the strongest essays. They are the most interesting, and also give you the best platform to shift into all your Good stuff.

RELATED: Find Your Problems

I write a lot about how problems make awesome topics. If you think about problems you have faced in your past–especially the everyday, mundane ones–you will discover your little mini-stories, incidents, moments and experiences to power your essays. When you face a problem (challenge, obstacle, change, mistake, phobia, flaw, conflict…), it means that something happened. If something happened, then it’s interest to read about. You can also show how you turned that problem into a Good thing–because you dealt with it and learned something in the process.

When brainstorming topics for your essay, trust the times you had to handle problems. Almost any kind can work. You are terrified of the dark. You spent too much money at Target. You got caught gossiping about your best friend. You spilled coffee on a customer during your Starbucks job. You forgot your mom’s birthday. You got off the bus in the wrong neighborhood. You broke your dad’s favorite power tool. You dyed your hair orange by accident. You couldn’t afford the cost of your school trip to France.

Maybe you can’t believe you could spin an effective essay from a bad thing that happened to you. Won’t it be a giant downer and turn off your target schools?

Nope!

Don’t believe me? Try reading some sample essays and see if you can spot some Bad stuff–and see how the writer turned it into an interesting and meaningful essay that ended up showcasing a lot of Good stuff. (Just put Sample Essay into the search box on this blog to find some. I also have a collection of sample essays available on Amazon, called Heavenly Essays.)

#3. How to Write about the UGLY in Your College Application Essay

When I say Ugly, I’m talking about the extreme Bad stuff. If you are lucky, you don’t have any Ugly in your life. That’s great!

However, many students have faced some really challenging realities and experiences. These can range from financial hardships to prejudices to illness, injury, death and other personal tragedies.

Should they write about these if they were so horrific?

I say YES. How could these circumstances or experiences not have shaped who they are, most likely in really Good ways?

That said, these highly dramatic or sensational topics can be tricky to write about.

What you want to avoid is an essay that describes all the Ugly stuff and only the Ugly stuff. Even though these details can be very moving and interesting, the essays need to be mainly about how the students handled these issues, and turned them into something positive as best as possible.

In fact, the most intense, tragic or Ugly the experience or situation, the less the student needs to write about it. Typically, a paragraph or two will convey enough for the reader to understand how hard it was. After that, time to shift into how the student dealt with the Ugly or handled it, and then what they learned from that process.

Another trick to handling a highly sensitive, emotional or tragic topic in a personal essay is to look for a smaller piece of that topic. Look for an example of the larger issue to share at the start of the essay, and then describe later the larger challenge. For instance, if a student writes about losing a parent, look for a moment, incident or experience that shows a related problem due to that loss. Maybe the student needs to find a resourceful way to get to school because no one is there to drive them. Or the student has learned how to buy groceries to feed the family now that mom is gone. (Notice that these are smaller “problems” that relate to the larger Ugly “problem.”)

Writing about these types of highly personal and often deeply painful topics can be extremely challenging. I think they can make powerful topics for college application essays if the student feels ready to explore and share them. Give it a try. If it’s too hard, bag it. There are many other topics out there!

Again, read sample essays to see how other students handled all these types of topics–the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Here’s a link to a few essays from Heavenly Essays to get you started (the second one, by Alex Segall is an excellent example of how to write about the Ugly): Sample Essays

Good luck! Remember, it’s not what you write about, but what you have to say about it that matters the most in these essays!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post How to Write About the Good, the Bad and the Ugly appeared first on Essay Hell.

How to Ignore College Application Essay Hype

Need Help Starting Your Essays? 

I have a Jumpstart Webinar THIS Saturday morning, June 22!

Only $30, includes my online essay writing course, too!

Webinar Details Click Here!

Keep Your Summer Chill!

Many of you are already out for summer, or at the finishing line. Yippee!!

If you’re now officially an incoming high school senior, or soon to be, it’s time to get cranking on your college application essay.

I’m sure you have heard that summer is the ideal time to start the brainstorming and writing process. If you can get them all done before the start of your senior year, all the better.

You most likely have heard these essays can be critical to your college acceptance chances.

Yes, it’s true they can matter, and sometimes tip the scales in your favor. No doubt it’s worth putting in significant time and effort on them.

But I believe it’s important not to fall for all the hype and madness around this application process.

I know when I’m stressed or anxious, my creative juices quickly shrivel up.

Once you start reading about college application essays on the Web, you most likely will find advice that uses intimidating words, such as “transformational” and “differentiating.” So-called experts like to say things like how it’s critical to “Be yourself”  in your essay, and how these are your “Chance to shine.”

They aren’t wrong, necessarily. But all the ballyhoo isn’t very helpful if all you want to know is how and where to start, and what topic to write about, and how to craft it into an effective essay.

When you hear that a killer essay is one that shows you “transforming yourself,” that’s quite a directive. It means you had some type of dramatic change in your life, whether it was physical, emotional or even spiritual.

If you had that type of experience, good for you. And it could make a solid topic.

Most of us, however, by age 16 or 17 or even later, have not experienced that type of radical metamorphosis. So can you still write a great essay?

Absolutely!

What I have found working with students on these essays and the search for the holy grail topic, is that the simple, everyday “mundane” ones usually work best. Same goes for life changes. They don’t need to be profound to be interesting and meaningful.

For instance, if you are rooting around for an interesting topic, and reflecting on ways you have changed in recent years, look for the smaller changes. Look for shifts, adjustments, alterations, smaller movements in your life. I believe the most interesting shifts come in your thinking, especially if you learned something new or unexpected, or saw something in a different light or context.

The idea is that your essay topic doesn’t need to be about a momentous change in your life. Instead, recall moments, incidents or experiences that happened in your recent past (high school years are best), and see if anything changed or shifted in your thinking (about yourself, about others or about the world) in the process of dealing with whatever went down.

That takes off the pressure to have had a radical life experience where you were one person, and then something happened, and suddenly you were an entirely different person. That rarely happens. Instead, brainstorm those everyday moments or “times,” and explore how your thinking changed. Even better, think about how what you cared about changed. Hint: those are called your values.

Colleges love to not only get a sense of your unique personalities in these essays, but they value seeing how you think, feel and behave, and what you value and learn, in these essays. You can write a “transformational” essay without having changed from a bad person to a good person, or a shy person to an outgoing person, etc.

You are changing all the time, and it can be hard to notice at the moment. Take a little time to think of things that have happened to you, and more time to examine how you responded to them. Another hint: best place to find interesting moments are those that involved problems.

Even if you are following me so far, you most likely are wondering what you do once you think of some of these personal changes or shifts, and how to spin them into a piece of writing.

I have written posts all over my Essay Hell blog on exactly what to do, and I also spell it out in my popular writing guide, Escape Essay Hell, and in my online writing bootcamp. I’m also walking students through this process in my Jumpstart webinars, which started this month. The next one is this Saturday, at 10 a.m., West Coast time, and I will have several more this month.

So many ways to get started on these essays. Pick one and get going!

I hope you are hearing my main point in this post: Don’t get freaked out by all the hype about what these essays are all about.

Like all the millions of students who have gone into Essay Hell before you, you will also find a topic and write a killer essay! Just buckle down at some point this summer, read up on what they are all about, pick what resources you think will help you the best, and you will find they aren’t that freaky after all.

Here are some of my best posts to get you launched:

What Makes a College Application Essay Great?

The Secret to a Killer College Application Essay

#Selfie: 5 Ways It’s Like Your College Application Essay

Land in the Yes Pile

Use The Unexpected

Essay Topics That Worked

How to Show Your Grit

How to Write Your College App Essay in 3 Steps

GOOD LUCK!! You got this!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post How to Ignore College Application Essay Hype appeared first on Essay Hell.

College Application Essay Help for EVERYONE

I’m back! Haven’t posted for many months.

I don’t know about you, but the recent college admission scandal gave me a total gut punch. All these rich people buying and cheating their way into colleges. Disgusting.

(In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this: They Had It Coming from The Atlantic.)

I did some soul-searching about my own role as an essay writing coach in this crazy college admissions industry. The unfair stress on kids, the insane antics of desperate parents and the toxic collusion of privilege and education.

Living in affluent Laguna Beach, California, the last 23 years, where several of the 33 parents charged in this scandal are from, I’ve worked with my share of oblivious, entitled parents. Most of the mothers and fathers, however, have been good people trying to do what they thought best for their kids–and I tried to focus on them. 

When I learned about this scandal, and the sleazy college admissions counselor from nearby Newport Beach who masterminded the whole scam, I seriously considered quitting my Essay Hell business. It was too hard to ignore the sullied admissions world. When anyone asked me what I did for a living, I was embarrassed to tell them. And still am. Maybe I could start a dog-walking service or drive a school bus.

In the decade I have worked with students and others on these essays, I tried to stay outside the admissions frenzy and resisted the networking scene among the related industry “players.” I stuck to working with individual students, and coaching groups of teachers, counselors and others so they could help students learn how to write essays that were effective and meaningful. And also become better writers in the process! How could that be a bad thing?

My goal was to empower anyone working with these essays with specific writing techniques and tips so they could effectively find their unique stories and tell them in an engaging and meaningful narrative style. I did not try to game the system, or encourage gimmicks or shortcuts. And of course never wrote essays for students. (I know, I sound defensive. Guess I am a bit.)

Based on the feedback from students, parents and others over the years, most of those who did the hard work wrote outstanding essays and got into terrific schools. No cheating. No influencers. No bribes. (As far as I know. Sheesh!)

In the past, I charged a bundle for private hour-long tutoring sessions. I justified it because I’m good at what I do, have a lot of professional experience and thought my fees should reflect my value.

But charging $200 an hour for one-on-one coaching did put me in the hot seat of giving the most privileged students and families an edge in the admissions game. No denying that.

So I’m done with that for the time being. Now I’m in the process of revamping my services so that I can make my tutoring more accessible and feasible to all students. And I believe they can be equally effective and helpful.

The New Plan: Affordable Webinars!

Here’s my plan. I’m still offering in-person and online essay-writing training workshops to groups of teachers, counselors and students. But no more private sessions, at least for now. And I intend to only offer editing services to students who start with my Jumpstart webinars and are on the right track from the get-go. (I believe that prevents too much intervention on my part, to keep it fair.)

Instead, I’m planning to offer my college application essay writing instruction and advice through group workshops online (webinars via YouTube Live) and keep them relatively cheap and simple.

Starting soon (June 15 first one!), I will offer hourlong online Webinar Jumpstart sessions. They will cost $30 each.

All webinars will also include access to my popular online College Application Essay Writing Course, which has 11 videos, handouts and ALL my essay writing guides on it (Escape Essay Hell and Heavenly Essays). This will be FREE (currently charge $99 just for the course!) 

At first, most of these online workshops (webinars) will feature my trademark Jumpstart process, where I quickly help students understand what makes a great essay, and then step them through a step-by-step brainstorming process to identify killer topics, as well as how to structure their drafts. The idea is to help you get launched!

In upcoming weeks, I will set up a schedule of available workshops (webinars) on my Services page. As summer gets rolling into fall, I will offer other follow-up workshops topics, such as How to Write the University of California Essays, How to Write the Most Common Supplemental Essays, How to Self Edit and Bump Up Essays, etc.

If this works out, I like to think that any or all students can get plenty of great inspiration and direction on how to write their essays–ALL of them–for around $100 or less. Some might only need one workshop, and they are off.

I will continue to offer my online writing bootcamp (that includes my writing guides) FREE to all teachers and students who are underprivileged or underserved. Just email me and let me know your name, school, city/state, and background: EssayHell@gmail.com. And students who cannot afford my webinar rates can also contact me and we can work out something they can afford.

I would love to hear from you if my new approach sounds fair and a good way to get help on these essays. Also, what days and times would work best? Please leave comments, ideas and questions in the comment section below. Or email me directly at: EssayHell@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading this. I hope I don’t sound like a martyr or that I’m looking for praise for these changes. They are mainly so that I feel good about what I’m doing, and thought I would try to explain the reason behind them.

So stay tuned!

Don’t worry about your essays and your future! You got this! And I hope I get the opportunity to help you.

Janine Robinson

The post College Application Essay Help for EVERYONE appeared first on Essay Hell.

How to Record Scratch Your College App Essay Stories

                      

How to Background an Anecdote
(Includes 5 writing examples at the bottom!)

If you’ve done your homework on how to write an effective college application essay, you probably know the place to start is with your real-life stories.

The idea is to find moments, incidents and experiences from your past that illustrate a larger point you want to make about yourself in your essay.

Often, the best place to share an engaging mini-story (also called an anecdote) is at the very start of your piece.

The anecdote (mini-story) serves to “hook” or grab your reader’s interest at the start—something you always want in a standout application essay.

However, once you share that little moment, incident or mini-story (anecdote) that you have plucked out of time with little to no introduction, where do you go after that first paragraph or two?

When working with students on using this approach in personal essays, I advise them to take the reader back to the beginning and give some context to the moment they described in the anecdotal introduction.

HERE’S HOW YOU USE A RECORD SCRATCH

Recently, a student I was working with helped me discover a new way to explain this “backgrounding” of the anecdote.

When I told him about the process of rewinding that moment to describe the broader context of what it meant, he said, “Oh, you mean it’s like in a movie after something big happens, and they stop the action with a record scratch or freeze the frame, and someone says, “Oh! You are probably wondering how I got here?”

Exactly! I told him.

 

Watch This Clip to See Record Scratch in Action

In movies from the ’80s and ’90s, and even earlier, a cliche trope was to use what’s called the “Record Scratch” or “Freeze Frame” after the initial exciting moment (often plucked from the middle of the storyline; a device described in writing circles as en media res) to indicate the shift back to the beginning of the story’s timeline to explain how it all started.

I know all this writing lingo and terminology can start to sound confusing. But it’s actually really simple:

Start a personal, narrative-style essay by retelling something that happened to you, in a paragraph or two at the most (called an anecdote).

Use fiction-writing techniques, such as setting the scene with a few sensory details and including a line of dialogue (someone saying something.) Watch my short video on How to Write an Anecdote!

The moment or incident will only have lasted over the course of a few minutes.

There is little to no build-up or explanation; you start as close to the crucial point of action as possible.

Then, in the following paragraph, you shift gears (Can you hear the needle scratch a vinyl record–the Record Scratch?) and take the reader back to “It all started when….”

In this paragraph you explain the context and meaning of that moment or incident you started with as an anecdote.

Get it?

Here’s how it works in a personal essay:

Anecdote that recounts something that happened to you
Record Scratch: Shift BACK IN TIME so you can start at the beginning and explain what it means.

3. You then continue with your essay to explore, examine, analyze, reflect upon more about that thing that happened and how it           reveals something about how you are, your personality and character.

4. A big part of the rest of the essay is more introspective, where you dig deeper to think about and share what you learned about yourself in the process of whatever happened.

5. Wrap it up.

I think you will get this process if you read some examples.

Here are the starts of FIVE sample essays from my collection, Heavenly Essays, written mainly by former students who used this approach. I identified the ANECDOTE and RECORD SCRATCH/BACKGROUND in red text:

Brock Csira

Laguna Beach, CA

University of California, Berkeley, CA

Hang Ups

ANECDOTE: Dangling about 30 feet above the ground, I looked down on the entire neighborhood park with its rolling hills, vibrant green grass, and multiple tall eucalyptus trees. Buckled tightly in my brand new Diamond Mountain climbing harness, I admired my handiwork.

My old blue-and-black braided climbing rope thrown over a branch held me aloft, while a slipknot I tied while hoisting myself up prevented my descent. After a few minutes, I decided to return to the ground, but realized my knot grew too tight for me to untie. I was stuck.

RECORD SCRATCH…

BACKGROUND: Ever since my dad taught me the Bowline in second grade, the intricacy of knots has fascinated me. I spent hours mastering the craft, reading every knot book and website I could get my hands on. All my knots usually came in handy. In 8th grade, I won a competition in the Boy Scouts with a square knot, beating the instructor who taught an alternative knot that took longer to tie. A couple years later, I rescued my brother’s pickup out of the mud with the unbreakable loop of the Bow Line during one of our off-road adventures. I even returned a stranded rock climber’s lifeline by tying a Sheep’s Bend between a small piece of paracord and his climbing rope. …

Brooks Johnson

Laguna Beach, CA

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA

Call Me Crazy

ANECDOTE: After two hours of intense racing on the open water, we thought our day was done. Instead, our coach ordered us to race another five miles home, rowing as hard as when we came. Stuck in the middle of the harbor with seven other teammates in the crew boat, there was nowhere to hide.

“Give me a reason to call 911,” coach yelled. Drained and exhausted, I could feel my eyes starting to close. Tunnel vision set in. For a few moments, I blacked out.

I had been here before. This was the point where I had to push my body to do the opposite of what my brain wanted me to do: Go even harder. I focused on the coxswain yelling at me, and hoped my adrenaline wouldn’t wear off. …

RECORD SCRATCH…

BACKGROUND:

I first joined the team as a freshman, I only knew a little about this sport. My older brother warned me about the ridiculous hours and tough workouts. The one thing no one told me, though, is that to row crew you had to be a little crazy. It’s not the mentally insane type of crazy, but the type where you force yourself to disregard all logic and reason and push yourself to keep going.

Duncan Lynd

Laguna Beach, CA

California State University, Long Beach, CA

A Small World

ANECDOTE: While grabbing lunch between games at a water polo tournament, I noticed one of my new teammates rarely looked me in the eye. Instead of taking the empty seat next to me, he opted to sit across the table. Even when I tried to start a conversation with him, he only looked down, and mumbled, “Oh, hey,” and walked away.

RECORD SCRATCH…

BACKGOUND: This type of cold-shoulder treatment wasn’t new to me. I’m a big guy. In bare feet, I’m about 6 feet 7 inches tall, and I’m pushing 300 pounds. Yes, it can be a pain. I bump my head going through doorways, I don’t fit in most mid-size cars, and I can barely squeeze into most classroom desks. But I understand that the world is made for average-sized people, and I like to think I’m above average. One thing, however, is hard for me to take: People who don’t know me assume I’m mean. …

Gabrielle Mark Bachoua

San Diego, CA

University of California, Davis, CA

Leaping Dancer

ANECDOTE: As my mom backs out of our driveway, I glance at the back seats to make sure my basketball gear is there, along with my schoolbooks, phone charger, and beat-up copy of Catch- 22. We slowly wind through my neighborhood and over about a half dozen speed bumps, then pull onto the highway heading south with the other Sunday traffic.

I sit back and watch the familiar landmarks—the large Denny’s sign with the missing “N,” the short stretch of undeveloped land, the Shell billboard that meant we were almost there—flash past my window.

RECORD SCRATCH…

BACKGROUND: I’ve made this 20-mile trip between my parents’ homes for the last decade, four times a week, ever since they divorced when I was seven. I must have taken it more than a thousand times. Sometimes I dreaded getting into that car, and resented my parents for putting my older sister and I through the circular logic that moving us back and forth will make our lives normal because we see each parent often, but moving back and forth isn’t normal, unless they make it normal, which isn’t normal. Now I know it makes sense because normal isn’t ideal, normal is the unexpected and the crazy and the unforgiving. …

Reece Barton

Laguna Beach

New York University, New York, NY

Trash Talk

ANECDOTE: On our way to get fish tacos, about eight blocks from my house, I spotted the sign out of the corner of my eye. “Stop the car!” I shouted. Blake slammed on the brakes and threw the car into reverse. My eyes hadn’t deceived me, the hand- written sign read: “Free Trampoline.”

RECORD SCRATCH…

BACKGROUND: Ever since I can remember, I have loved turning other people’s trash into my personal treasures. I cannot walk past a garage sale without digging through the neighbor’s junk. Over the years, I have even decorated my room with accessories from various sales and giveaways. …

Give Them a Try!

I hope these examples give you a clearer idea of how to use this approach in using your own real-life stories to power you personal essays for college application essays.

Remember, even though these are narrative (story-telling) essays, they are not one long story.

Instead, they use an anecdote (small moments, incidents and experiences) as an example of a larger point the writer wants to share and explore about himself or herself in the rest of the essay.

You can learn how to write your own narrative essay and craft engaging anecdotes by reading my popular writing guide, Escape Essay Hell! I also teach this same step-by-step process in my online writing course.

If you want to read more of the sample essays, they are in Heavenly Essays.

You can also learn about this process by reading posts on this blog. My suggestion is to use the Find Helpful Posts INDEX on the right side of my blog, or enter topics you want help with in the SEARCH box (such as: Finding a Topic, How Write an Anecdote, etc.)

This is one of my favorite posts to help you get going: How to Write a College Application Essay in 3 Easy Steps

Good luck!

The post How to Record Scratch Your College App Essay Stories appeared first on Essay Hell.

How to Self-Reflect for College App Essays

Who Are You?
Tips and Resources to Think About Yourself

If you are working on your personal statement for The Common Application or other college applications, the first step is to start to think about yourself.

Sounds easy enough.

Who am I?

What am I like?

How did I get this way?

What do I care about?

How do I learn?

Why do I matter?

For some students, reflecting and analyzing their backgrounds can be a snap.

They enjoy that type of introspective, heady thinking.

For others, it can feel intimidating and baffling.

No matter how you feel about this process, you need to know who you are—or at least have some opinions about this—in order to write a meaningful college application essay about yourself.

In a personal statement essay, the most important content is where you showcase your ability to take a close look at yourself.

It’s not so much what you see, as how you can demonstrate the ability to step back and size up who you are and how you came to be that way—and why it matters.

The good news is that “getting deep” and self-reflection isn’t that difficult.

First, decide that it’s time to do a little soul searching.

Yes, it’s possible to learn how to push your thinking to a “deeper” level.

This is what college is all about!

(Do you have a Fixed or Growth Mindset? HINT: You want Growth to excel in college and life!)

So in your personal statement, make sure to show your target colleges that you already can self-reflect, analyze, examine, question and think (especially about yourself)!

Here are my best posts to help you learn

to bring more depth to your college application essays:

Learn what core qualities and characteristics make you you:

Find Your Defining Qualities

Learn how to use these in your essays:

Defining Qualities Rock College Application Essays

Find out what values matter the most to you:

Find Your Core Values to Rock Your Essay 

More help on figuring out what you care about the most:

What Do You Believe?

Teach yourself how to move beyond narrow, black-and-white thinking:

Best College Application Essays Have a Touch of Gray

Find out if a life lesson you learned applies to everyone in the world:

Do You Have a Universal Truth in Your Essay?

If you take the time to read these posts and turn the magnifying glass on yourself, I’m confident you will discover insights, observations and ideas to bring depth and meaning to your college application essays.

Here’s that Fixed vs Growth Mindset Question for you. I LOVE this!

Image Via Brainpickings.com

Good luck!

 

The post How to Self-Reflect for College App Essays appeared first on Essay Hell.

Perfect Students Have Nothing to Write About: An Education Tragedy

Okay, so this is a bit of hyperbole on my part.

All students have plenty to write about for their college application essays.

However, from what I’ve seen working with college-bound students for the last decade, many of our most talented, driven and intelligent teenagers are living such parallel, over-achieving lives that they struggle to find an effective essay topic.

These are the same kids, many targeting Ivy League educations, who will need bull’s-eye essays to have even a shot of getting in.

It’s sad, unfair and ironic: The hardest working students have no time for a life.

No Life: No Essay Topic

Here’s an example of a student I worked with recently:

The mom sent me an email summarizing her daughter’s background:

The daughter was interested in history and computer science, and also in theater (worked on every school production since 7th grade). She also did Model UN (with accolades); was editor of the school newspaper and active in debate club.

Also, she was captain of the robotics team, the chess club and some type of other academic team.

She had built her own computer and the family’s home service.

She also participated in three varsity sports.

The daughter’s GPA was stellar and test scores excellent.

Where did she want to go to college?

“Her high school counselor thinks she has a good chance at the Ivies,” mom wrote.

Sure sounds like this girl could have her pick of colleges, right?

Good luck with that!

Acceptance rates at the prestige schools are at all-time lows.

Even if she wrote an outstanding college application essay, her chances would be slim to none at the most elite schools.

The real problem, to me, is that this student isn’t unusual.

Most of these applicants have similar off-the-charts grades, test scores and extracurricular dossiers.

With everyone at the top of the heap, the focus often turns to their college application essays.

The tragedy I mentioned in my sensational headline is that these are the exact brilliant students who have the hardest time coming up with an interesting and meaningful essay topic.

 

Why?

They are too busy doing the same things.

Team sports, band, drama, clubs, and internships.

Model United Nations. Summer camp. Mission trips. Robotic competitions.

And mostly…studying.

Even though their activities and experiences are truly character-building and lesson-teaching, the highly orchestrated nature makes them difficult to mine for gritty, organic or relevant life-shaping lessons.

That’s why one of my first questions to students I tutor is whether they had held a summer job.

These are a gold mine for topic ideas, mainly because they fall outside that high school student bubble where everyone does the same thing.

Suddenly a student has to deal with getting stiffed by a customer at a restaurant where he waits tables.

Or a student has to find a way to get his lawn mower to job sites without a car.

Maybe a student gets passed over to caddie at a golf club because she’s hispanic.

I advise students to recall “times” they faced problems in their past to discover real-life moments that helped shaped their thinking in some way.

If they can show themselves in action handling that issue, their stories (and essay topic) will reveal a piece of their unique personality.

If they also reflect and expain what they learned when handling that problem, they also can reveal their character.

Personality + Character = Awesome Personal Statement Essay

The sad thing is that the most high-reaching students often have not had a summer job.

Not only have they not had time in their activity-packed lives to hold a job working at Subway, or a clothing boutique or for their parent’s grocery store, but they simply don’t have ANY FREE TIME.

Many of these students are distressed when we start brainstorming an essay topic.

They say the same things as all students–“There’s nothing interesting about me.”

I ask them what they do when they do get a moment of time to themselves.

They pause.

Think.

Think some more.

“I like to hang out with my friends,” many tell me.

Oh yea.

Friends.

How sad is this??

Unfortunately, hanging with friends doesn’t often yield great essay topics, so we keep fishing around in their past to find something they have done where there weren’t a lot of adults around making sure nothing went wrong.

Perfect life. Nothing happens. No story.

No story. Dull essay.

Talk about pressure!

These students have worked so hard, for so long, and truly sacrificed a lot to be perfect students, the exact kind who should get into the most competitive college and universities.

I believe many should simply let go of the Ivy League fantasy and focus on the several hundred or more outstanding educational institutions that don’t have Ivy status.

Boy, would that chill out this frenzied application world almost overnight.

I believe the kids would let them go without a second thought if their parents went first.

I know I’m old school, but I have to note that many of my achieving students also mention “My anxiety” or “My depression” as possible essay topics.

I don’t think that’s just a coincidence.

I remember one student who was so desperate for an interesting experience that he planned to borrow an experience that happened to his mother when she was young.

And guess who’s brilliant idea this was?

Yup, mom’s.

But for many of these perfect students, who have engaged in more interesting and challenging activities than many people do in a lifetime, they can’t find that magic topic or everyday experience to nail their college application essay.

It’s the overachievers who come from privileged backgrounds who have it the hardest.

Somehow these students do have time for international vacations, second homes, ski trips, spa visits, sailing, riding horses and golfing (I’m not trying to be snide; this is what they tell me).

It’s possible to extract interesting experiences and write compelling essays that involve these privileged activities, but I haven’t seen many.

Students who have had to somehow step in to help their family or their own financial well-being are the lucky ones—at least when it comes to essay topics.

If they lived on a ranch in the middle of nowhere and help raise pigs.

If they helped their mom clean houses on weekends.

If they ran the cash register at the family laundry mat.

If they have to get a summer job if they want spending money (HINT: That could be any kid.)

 

Perfect Students: Dig Harder for Your Essay Topic

This is where “real-life” happens, and no matter how hard you try, it’s much easier to write about, extract relatable experiences and moments, and draw out relevant and interesting life lessons when life involves a degree of struggle.

I feel for these overachievers.

They are hard-working, well-intentioned and great kids.

For some, this may be their first taste of how life can sometime be unfair.

Don’t despair, though, if you are a perfect student who has done all the right things, plus some.

You will still get into the most awesome schools.

When it comes to your college application essay, and finding a killer essay topic, you are going to have to once again be that kid who goes the extra mile.

You can and will find great topics.

They will just take more digging and more imagination, possibly more research and self-reflection.

I push the idea of the “mundane,” over the impressive.

Works every time.

Even if you are one of those determined students who does everything, and does it better than well, along with thousands of others doing the exact same thing, you are unique.

You just need to dig deeper into your past, and find some type of problems you faced, in order to show it.

Good luck!

RELATED: How to Find a Killer Topic

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