“See, what you have here is a lot of raw emotion. It’s fine to start with. But for our purposes, we need more control. You only have five hundred words. You need to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. A story that hits certain notes the committee wants to hear. Does that make sense?” “Not really.” “You need to contextualize things. Make it about the true goal here, which is getting into college. Getting access to more opportunities. So yes, your friend is part of that, but more important, for our purposes, is why you didn’t end up like him. Where did your paths diverge?” “I thought
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