COLLEGE ADMISSIONS MASTERCLASS Week 4 Video 2- STANDOUT Essays

All right, welcome back. Week four, video two. We are now talking about essays. I can feel everyone's breath Essays. Anxiety producing, stress inducing essay writing. I'm going to tell you the story of my essay. When I applied to college, I added it in my book. You'll see it in my book Breaking into College. Because I think it kind of underscores, you really shouldn't take this so seriously, that the people who take this too seriously come across as someone who should not attend a college where someone wants to go. Right? So when I approach essay writing, I always encourage people to let their personality come out. That's what the colleges want to see. They want to see who you are. Right? So when I applied to college, I applied to a bunch of different ones. And I was trying to find this essay. The essay I wrote for Penn University of Pennsylvania answered the question, who would you like to meet, either live or dead or fictional and have dinner with? And I thought about it for a long time, and I thought about one of my childhood heroes, that person. Person. I think he's a person. He's about three apples high. He's blue, wears a white hat and has a white beard. His name, oh, wait, he has a red hat. His name is Papa Smurf, and he is the leader of the Smurfs. If anybody knows this cartoon, it's now coming back into fashion because it came out as a movie. I talked about in my essay why Papa Smurf is my hero, or was at the time, and how I viewed myself as possibly being the next Papa Smurf, that I wanted to be a leader on campus who led people to great things. I went on and on about Papa Smurf's qualities and how I really tried to model my life after Papa Smurf. My parents were appalled. My school counselor thought I did it as a joke, and I submitted it anyways. When I got to Penn for student orientation, I was walking down Locust Walk, which is the main walk right through the middle of campus. And we had our name badges on, so there was my name. And as I'm walking down the sidewalk, a gentleman's walking the other way. And as he approaches, he kind of stops and he goes, you're Papa Smurf from Kentucky. I was kind of startled. And he explained that he was the reader of my admissions file, that he remembered my essay as being the Papa Smurf from Kentucky and that it resonated with him as being distinct and it really made him laugh. And he remembered it. He goes, you know, at that time, I think it was, like, late January. I was tired and I was really bored, and your essay made me laugh, and I thought, this guy should be at our school. I don't encourage everybody to write about Papa Smurf, but hopefully what my story does is it shows that you just need to stand out in some way, in a good way, that makes people remember you. In this time where schools are getting so many applications and everybody looks the same, and in the selective colleges where everyone has high GPAs and high test scores and that we have 40,000 valedictorians graduating and 17,000 spots in the Ivy League, not everyone gets in, that you have to find some way to make your personality come out, that you got to find some way to let the world know that you're different in a good way, and that you're going to add something to that campus. And the essay is the best place where you can do it. It's the place where you have the most control, Especially if you're in your senior year, you can get your grades up a little bit, right? Maybe you can retake the sat, the act, try to get your scores up a little bit. But the essay literally is a blank slate for you. It's a blank sheet of paper or a cursor on a screen. It's your opportunity to start fresh and say, how do I want to present myself to the world? So you start with the opening statement, taking the opening statement, reminding yourself how you want to come across in your application, and then putting that forward in your essay. This is the time where you do it, and this is the time where you allow yourself to step forward and stand out. That no other time are you able to literally take the witness stand and tell the world who you are and say, through my essay, if you let me come to your campus, this is the kind of person who you're letting in. So make sure that the essay really does back up how you want to present yourself, that it presents yourself in the way that you wrote in your opening statement, that your essay resonates with people and resonates with that school. And if you've done all your homework that we've talked about in all the videos leading up to now, you have an idea what the school is looking for, who you are, how you want to present yourself. And so now it comes time to actually writing the essay. And it's hard, right, because for students, we're told all the way through high school that you don't write in the first person, that you write in the third person, right? You don't talk about I. You don't use I, me, we. But then all of a sudden, it comes time to apply to college, and you're asked to write a personal essay in the first person. You're asked to write in a way that you're never taught. And it sounds strange. We would never do this to students in any other world. But when it comes to applying to college and the essay writing process, this is what we do. It's one of the reasons why we started the Legacy class. There was this problem with students not understanding how to properly write and bring themselves out in their essays. So what we try to do is try to make you stand out by writing in a way that makes people relate to you, that you tell stories that people identify with, and that you put yourself out there in a way that resonates and also is consistent with how you want to be perceived in the world. The other thing you want to make sure you do is that your story fits into that need of the university. So again, it goes back to that point of saying you recognize what the need is of the school. And then you write your essay in a way that makes sure that you are identifying with that need, and it's a need that you feel passionate about. In the next video, we're going to talk about how you actually do that. But there are some points I wanted to highlight in this video. And the first one, I want to talk about what I call the four Ds. And the four Ds are areas that are not topics that I discourage people away from writing about, but they take a level of sensitivity. I've read some great essays on these topics. But if you're writing about these four Ds, we're talking about death, divorce, drugs, and depression. If your essays are about those four topics, take special care. Okay? We talk about this in the Legacy class. We actually have a whole video on it. Death, divorce, drugs, and depression. Those are areas, four areas where I don't discourage people from writing them. I don't discourage people from writing about anything. I've read great essays about pencils. But if you're writing about those four things, take special precautions because they are sensitive areas. Right. Just want to make sure you're aware of that. But when it comes to writing essays in the other areas Outside of the 4Ds, the personal story wins. The story that allows yourself to be personable and show who you are is ultimately going to win. And we're going to talk about that in the next video. It's not a place where you're going to rehash your resume. It's where you're going to thin slice an event. Make your personal story come alive. One last point, parents, I love you dearly when it comes to essays. I strongly encourage you not to read your student's essay. What? Yes, parents are very well intended. Very well meaning. The way we used to write essays has changed when it comes to colleges. We used to, we were encouraged, as was I, to not write about our personal stories as much, to really step back. And we were supposed to be a writing exercise to show how we're great writers. That's not what it's about now. It's about making your story come alive. And sometimes parents, when they start reading the essays will tamp down the personality in that essay and it will come across as a 40, 50 year old parent had wrote that essay. Don't do that to your child. Let their story come alive. And if that means not reading the essay, please be fine with it. Just recognize your child's going to do very well. Just let their story live. Okay, so the question I have for you in the end of this video is how do you want to be remembered? How do you want you to be remembered as you submit that essay to the colleges? And in the next video we're going to talk about how to actually bring that essay to life in the next video.