in our industry in the college admissions industry a lot of talk about um what they call like trauma porn and personal statements right like it's students writing about some of the worst moments in their life because they think that that will get them into these colleges and universities I want you all to know that you do not have to perform in that way hello welcome back dear virtual little siblings and parents we're back with funi from quad education and in this interview we're going to be talking about those college essays specifically how to begin how
to edit them how to evaluate whether you're on the right track in the previous video we focused a lot on this concept of a formula or strategy and honestly there is also kind of a formula and strategy when it comes to college essays I know F jouri has a lot of thoughts and great insights on this topic so I'll just turn it to her but before I do so don't forget that quad is offering free intro calls I'll drop the link in the comment section and description below come work with me so let's talk about
college essays how to begin what's the strategy here what do you think for juny honestly for a college essay the best strategy is to go in very open-minded there are seven prompts that are outlined on the common application an activity that I love to recommend to my students is picking out of those seven two or three write prompts and just free writing writing without a purpose or intention but really thinking about what your first response or reaction is to that that question or that prompt and then thinking about how you can fit that into a
story right if you want to show a college that you are a dazzling student athlete who is going to change the world by going into medical school what about you or your the experiences that you've had reflect that it's more so finding out person that you want the admission committee to to know you to be and then thinking about the things that have happened that help you demonstrate that specifically thinking about how the essay fits into all other aspects of your application I think is the biggest biggest key especially in the College admission games it
is a holistic process thinking about what is said across those items is very important some students I they may have struggled a year in AP calculus right but they had a really strong relationship with their teacher who was writing them a letter of recommendation and they allowed their teacher to in that letter of recommendation speak about how they struggled with math and they were able to still get the highest grade in the course that term even though it wasn't an a it was a b right like that teacher is able to provide that context to
something that's happening on the transcript but it's a way for then the student not to have to tell all of that right like you don't have to explain why you didn't have that that great semester in math and you can spend more time in your personal statement thinking about reflecting other characteristics or attributes that you'd like to portray definitely definitely I think step number one is just knowing what's required of you again super duper simple barebones what are the prompts I know a lot of you guys are also applying to UC schools so some of
our students actually begin by responding to the UC piqs the UC personal Insight questions don't even judge I think a lot of students they get really paralyzed and caught up just write already at that stage just focus on putting the ideas onto the page and good ideas are just a function of the number of ideas if you're able to put down 10 15 20 responses to those questions they are kind of designed in a way that should be pretty easy to answer actually what I've realized too helping a lot of students and I think funi
kind of mentioned this but your best responses tend to be the most natural ones and I think a lot of students kind of second guess that instinct but actually the path of least resistance tends to make for some really great essays the next step is to consider like what are the key themes and characteristics you really want to convey then the editing process is kind of about bringing those two closer together but at the same time there are a lot of moving Parts there's the recommendations there's supplemental essays so a great exercise that uh we
like to do with our students is to just draw a simple vend diagram these can be two or three different vend diagrams one for your main common app one for your supplementals one for your recommenders and guidance counselors teachers what's really common is the recommenders will talk about intellectual curiosity maybe some perseverance so then you know okay I'm good I don't really need to emphasize that as much in my common app or supplementals it will still be good to touch upon it but in a different way so what does that different way really look like
it could be embedding intellectual curiosity but with something like service and again you don't want to regurgitate what's on your activities list either typically your essays should be about things that cannot be found anywhere else in your application it's really a chance to Showcase your Humanity your personality not just who you are as a student but who you are as a person as a human being yeah what are some other tools tips tricks strategies students can utilize when beginning this process I feel like honestly starting is the hardest part yeah um I think starting off
by like personal statements a really great resource that I always recommend to my students is essays that work um this is a website um and if you go there they actually have essays that have been organized based on like schools that students have been accepted to the topic that students discussed and you can read past essays that have worked in our industry in the college admissions industry a lot of talk about um what they call like trauma porn in personal statements right like it's students writing about some of the worst moments in their life because
they think that that will get them into these colleges and universities I want you all to know that you do not have to perform in that way and often times is places the admission off officer in an awkward um situation because they have to report whatever assault or situation that you disclose on your personal statement what we recommend students do sometimes if you really want to talk about that is you can briefly mention it in your additional information section in sort of a much more report likee or matter OFA way you can just be like
okay at this point in time I suffered XYZ injury or ABC thing happened to my family as a result I wasn't able to you know and you can kind of elaborate on that in the additional information SE now that being said there is a way that it could work in the Common App essay there's a reason why people do it because it can be successful but just remember that more than half of the essay should be about you overcoming this challenge not about the specific details of the challenge itself ultimately this is a hero's journey
story right you are rising above these kinds of challenges and circumstances that's what we're interested in hearing about and not just like what you did but also how you grew the way that you approach life differently as a result of this experience that's where the true you know gold and and champions are made that's what you should focus on along those same lines I always emphasize right like you said hero's journey so thinking about literary tools right like the ways that you are able to use grammar spelling Pros right to push forth the narrative is
very indicative to admissions officers of Your Capacity right like your ability to write which is most like top colleges and universities freshman first year students are mandated to take writing seminar right like you have to improve your skills as a writer so that you can enter into that academic conversation whatever feel it may be but that is the root training that we receive and admissions counselors are looking to see where students are at as it relates to those skills so with regards to building in more literary aspects into your essays I have several really exciting
strateg that I want to share one is just simple loow hanging fruit again upgrading your writing using a good simile metaphor even a powerful one in your hook instantly that's going to stand out amongst like hundreds of other essays so that's kind of very surface level icing on the cake another tactic literary device that I see used a lot is kind of like a motif in a college essay and I've seen this used successfully many many times like essays that worked so you see a motif like a bonsai tree or a teddy bear or a
pen a fountain pen and the studio uses this object to tell a story about how they've grown over the course of owning this object how they acquired it those essays can be really successful and they're really great for kind of like middle class students who maybe they're like oh I don't have some crazy challenge that I've overcome you can also use a place um it could be like a treehouse that you and your father built those work wonders really really successful essays so you must have read and edited dozens of essays for Juni what are
some of the most common or like the biggest red flags that you I think the biggest biggest biggest red flag that I have seen and I think this is something that a lot of students just do is that their essay isn't about them oh yes like it's about your mom or your grandma or like how your sister influenced you right like if you are writing an essay about someone who has been inspirational to you how you can bring it back to self every paragraph checking like okay how does this relate to me oh my goodness
guys we've seen this happen time and time again maybe like a quarter of the essays that we get aren't even about the student themselves like we're not trying to admit your cousin your aunt your grandfather your mom who had a big impression on you we are trying to admit you and in order for us to do that we need to see your actions your contributions so think of the relationship as a two-way street yes this other person is doing things for you maybe in front of you and you're picking up on that then you have
to talk about how the way they operate has influenced you to make positive changes that's like the missing ingredient and then you can kind of bridge the gap and talk a bit about your conclusion reflection key character traits that you want to showcase the other issue stories with no end we read the essay us as counselors us as Mission officers are kind of just left wondering what was the main idea what was the point so in order to fix that guys just go in and just write down the two words that you want to communicate
in this essay it could be courage it could be fearlessness it could be determination it could be C curiosity make sure those ideas are clearly articulated in that conclusion I think that really good essays they tend to have a mix of two or three different themes so don't just make them one-dimensional I'd say that's a bit of a yellow flag or red flag that I see like the essay is just purely about my determination to overcome this academic challenge or Sports Injury if you can combine it with another dimension that tends to make for really
really interesting and memorable essays so my I agree o and just a slight yellow flag um language when you are trying to convey like a special word always add a mini translation and that goes to another point about readability some places they have a differentiated process right where you have like Regional coun like admissions counselors they will represent a region and they'll read all of the applicat applications from that region and they would present the students that they're like most advocating for what you don't want to do is alienate your reader so if you include
a bunch of foreign language terms honestly guys I wouldn't write more than two or three I've seen students write entire sentences in a different language and that you're you're kind of wasting words at that point but the same thing can be applied for like really specific terminology if there's really specific medical terms or for instance I break dance and I'm mentioning like these crazy break dance moves but people don't know what they are that can be a bit of a red flag you can kind of Define them but honestly you can use your creative expression
when doing so and you can say okay this word here's a dictionary definition but here's what it means to me right like a Portuguese word like Sal for instance here's what it you know means in general but here's kind of what it means to me and honestly that's not a bad way to kind of begin an essay as a hook another point that funi made which was about making it super easy for your admissions officer to defend you because that's the way admissions works there's somebody who gives your application an initial read through and then
they're like oh wait this guy they're on to something and they pull you out of the pile then they have to defend you and argue for why you deserve to be at this school in front of other admissions officers and you want to make that really easy here's how you do that again you simplify your kind of profile into maybe just a few key wordss and be like okay this is the break dancing biology kid here's why he deserves to be at Yale or Princeton that's literally how the process works and that's how they argue
for you ultimately admission officers are looking for diverse classes and not necessarily diverse individual so that's why you don't want to be the kid who showcases eight bajillion different activities you kind of want to emphasize a few key points I definitely agree and that triggered a thought for me thinking about institutional priorities right when writing and completing your applications this is more General to the personal statement but your applications as a whole a lot of schools communicate the types of students that they're looking for they give you the characteristics outright um and you can use
that when thinking about okay what do I want to convey in my personal statement so doing that research will really help you during that process and you'll often see that on the admissions page um I always share with my clients teaching them how to use that space because it is such a great resource you can use it to research teachers right or professors or events that the school is hosting to see how you would fit on that campus it's for extracurricular development right Princeton used to host hackathons high schoolers could participate in the hackathons right
so looking to see if they had local events that you could attend to learn more about what was going on on campus another red flag is just not doing the research I really think that a lot of students neglect that they obsess over the commona and they leave their supplementals to the last minute all of a sudden their research is rush if it's there at all but make sure you guys are spending at least you know doesn't need to be dozens of hours but I would say a solid 3 to 5 hours on a school
their admissions pages looking at even things like commencement speeches or Instagram pages of the clubs that you want to be a part of that can be the thing that gets you in one way of doing research is much more General as Funia was alluding to kind of looking at the mission statements what the school really cares about Columbia for instance makes it really easy on their literally they have a page called what we look for they mention academic preparation curiosity so it could be really smart to make sure that you're nailing that Curiosity um in
your common nap in your supplementals and a really cool thing you can do is kind of add an adjective in front so you could say I'm actually really curious about religion and I've looked at all these different religions in my past I'm really curious about emotions and I've done a lot of research into you know the history of emotions how they develop but another thing that you guys can definitely take advantage of is looking at the school's newspaper this can be news from the students themselves or it could be news from the administration so the
news from the administration tends to be way more like okay here's really cool research that professors have published and then the the from students tends to be a lot more you know on campus here's the tea on campus so that's a really great way to figure out if this school is going to be a good fit for you a really u a quick little tip too is you can read the articles and potentially even email the person who wrote the articles and try to get in touch with them ask them um some follow-up questions and
that's a great way to show your interest in the school so that's what we mean when we say research guys it's not just like okay I looked at the website I you know copy pasted one paragraph you know moved it around that's not good enough that's like the low that's the bare minimum but if you guys can go above and beyond watch Vlogs you know go on YouTube take a look at students who have Day in the Life videos there's there's no excuse anymore even I have students who are in uh Asia and Africa and
still able to perform this level of really detailed rigorous research so I know you guys can do it too reach out to professors too right that you admire at the schools that you're interested in like read an article or two and then reference it in the email yes that's how you personalize it that's how you get a higher open rate response rate it's not enough to just be like hi please let me work at your lab right if you can reference the work that they've done and even connect it to an extracurricular or something you've
done in the past that's only going to help you so we're nearing the end of this interview I really hope you guys found it helpful useful I know the college admissions process can be a little bit scary but hopefully with the more you know the less um daunting it feels if you guys have any questions at all please leave them in the comment section below again quad is offering free intro calls to everyone who accesses the link in the comment section description below so definitely take full advantage of that funi do you have any final
thoughts or comments you'd like to share before we wrap things up yes thank you so much for inviting me to all of the sibs and parents out there just be you you can make your personal statement entirely your own and definitely seek our help help and support with that process or take advantage of all the free resources online there's so many free resources but yeah I hope you all found this very informative thank you thank you again for watching until the end until next time take care bye bye
