COLLEGE ADMISSIONS MASTERCLASS Week 4 Video 3- "Flip Your Success" Exercise

Alright, week four Video three Essay writing. We're going to talk about the flip the success exercise, okay? And we're going to do that with our eyes closed, okay? So everyone close their eyes. Parents, you too. And I need you to think about a moment in your life where you felt a level of success and victory and triumph. Think of a time where you crossed some finish line in your life. Maybe you had your arms high in the air in victory and you were screaming out in exaltation and you were smiling that you had finally done it. You had finally achieved the goal you had worked so hard, hard for. And your family were all around you and they were cheering you on and patting you on the back. And there was your mom coming up to you and saying, I'm so proud of you. You finally did it. You did it. You worked so hard. This is the moment that we were looking forward to. Okay, open your eyes. That is a horrible story to write about for college essays. That's the essay that you probably would have written about, right? That's the essay that people write all across the country. And every admissions file across the country has some story like that, right? It's the triumphant essay, the finish line that you crossed. The problem with that essay is one, every. Everyone's writing that essay. And number two, it's the end of the story. And people don't identify with the end of the story. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that people identify with the struggle, for example, David versus Goliath. It's a story that we identify with. So, with so much with. We still talk about it. It happened 2,000 years ago, right? This story of the little guy versus the big guy, this struggle of a little guy versus the big guy. Ultimately at the end of the day, succeeding. But the story that we focused on isn't the end with the giant on the ground. It's this trepidation of the man walking up to this giant, slingshot in hand, right? So I say flip the success. We call it the flip the success story. And try to think of that point of decision or, or point of inflection. So I had you walk through that exercise where you're up here, okay, this is the finish line. And here you are smiling. Yay. There's your little flag you're waving. It's my beautiful drawing of a man or a lady triumphant at the finish line. This is where you're ultimately going to end up. And this is the story everyone likes to tell. The story you should tell is this story. This Is the story of the point of inflection, the point of decision, where you're living your life going along and you just say, I'm going to make my life go in a different direction, that I'm going to train, I'm going to move myself forward, and that at no point am I going to live at this level any longer. At some point in your life, you made this decision to change who you are and then you led this upward climb that ultimately led to this finish line. What is that point for you? For me, this point, as I talked about in the first video and some of my other videos, was what I call my U haul moment. Remember the story? 15 years old in a U haul. We're moving for the 19th time. I'm moving to my third high school in two months. And at that moment I said, I can't do this any longer. I'm not going to reach my goals unless I reach some level of certainty that I needed to find some way to get myself up to here. But it was this point here that people are interested about. I tell this story because people identify with this point. People, although, like to hear stories about success, they really like to hear about the climb. They like to hear about this point where you drew the line in the sand and said, I'm going to change who I am and I'm going to change where I'm going. But this is the point where you need to focus, not this point. Too many people spend their time focusing up here. And the admissions committee decides to put you in the buckets. Oh, this is the I won the game essay. Oh, this is the I got the answer right on some test essay. But this is the essay that wins the day. These are the essays that ultimately swing the needle right, but move the pendulum. These are the essays where admissions committees talk about how they read it. And they got up and they ran down the hall saying, you got to read this essay. They don't run down the hall talking about these essays. So to get to this point, what you need to do is you need to thin slice moments into particular areas where you can try to identify this point, not this point, not this point, this inflection point. And it's usually one day at most. It's some activity, some thin sliced area. Usually have a few moments where you had this epiphany or somebody said something to you and it hit home, or you saw something, you experienced something, and your view of the world changed. You were like this before and you were like this after, trying to figure out where that. What that moment is is the key. And if you can focus the reader's attention on that point, everything else flows. But you got to thin slice it down for people. You got to figure out what that moment is for people so they can identify with your story. And what I hear from people is, I don't have this moment. I don't have this huge change in my life. And my answer to you is, you do. You just don't recognize it yet. And one student I worked with named Jess, when I started working with her, she said, I have had the burden of having a boring life. I don't have a story in me. And as I'm starting to talk to her, and I've heard this from a lot of students, that I've grown up in a small town. Nothing ever happens here. Nothing's ever happened to me. I've gone to school. There really is nothing to my life that I really can, like, seize on and identify. I keep doing this exercise, and I call it the why exercise. And I did it with Jess. So Jess said, I've had this burden of having a boring life. Okay. So I started asking her about different things in her life. You know, just talk to me about your daily life. Talk to me about anything that's happened. Have you ever had any injuries? Have you had any problems, obstacles? We've all had them. Anything at all? And she's like, no, not really. Well, I did break my leg once. So you broke your leg? So what happened there? And she's like, well, I was playing basketball. I broke my leg. And, you know, it wasn't a big deal. I was in a cast for a few months, and that was kind of it. I'm like, okay, so what happened after you broke your leg? Have your parents have to take you to school? Did you ride the bus? She's like, oh, no. I actually had to ride the bus that has a ramp that. My leg was fully immobilized, so I had to take this special bus that had a ramp. And she goes, you know what? I kind of like that bus. Why did you like that bus? Oh, well, I like the bus because I got to meet all these students. I never. They go to my school, but I never interacted with them. Well, why. Why didn't you interact with them? Oh, you know, I. You know, I got my friends. They have their friends. We just never really interacted until this bus ride. So why. Why did this bus make things differently for you? Different for you? Oh, because I interacted with them on a daily basis. And I got to ride this bus and I really enjoyed my conversations with them. Why did you enjoy your conversations with them? I kept drilling down, drilling down, drilling down the why exercise. Why, why, why? And ultimately from her story, the reason why she enjoyed getting on this bus and the reason why she enjoyed interacting with these students. It's because here were a group of students going to the same school who had entirely different experiences than she had. And it bothered her that she wasn't friends with them. And it bothered her that people didn't identify with them as being part of the student body. Right. It bothered her so much she started a club that brought them together through different committee meetings to make them feel more a part of the school. It bothered her so much that it became part of her essay and she talked about how she wants to continue helping out people with disabilities when she gets to college. It bothered her so much that she followed through with that and now she's making that her career pursuit in college. This why question of digging deep on every single question you answer, ultimately we will try to find this inflection point. And for her it was this one moment of on a bus when she's getting on the bus and she's getting off the bus and her friends are going one way and she's going the other and she's turning around and her friends from the bus are asking her to join her. And she's at this point of decision as her able bodied friends are saying, come on, come on. And her newfound friends are like, come on, come over here, we got to finish talking. This was her moment, her inflection moment, which led to better things, ultimately leading to this club at the high school, leading to a club in college, and then leading to her career pursuits. Now, strong, strong storyline, but it all starts with this point here. Now if she started with the end, I started a club, helps out disabled students, nobody's identifying with that story. People identify with this story. People identify with this struggle that we go through. And we all do it, however big, however small. And I've seen amazing essays written about very small, mundane points. Very mundane. But when written well and written in a way that people relate to it, your story comes alive. You don't need to go to Africa to do a mission. You don't need to do anything outside of your town to make your story come alive. You just got to thin slice it and come out with that identity point. That's point of inflection and it's point of decision and make it come alive through your writing. So how do you do that? The thing I always tell my students to do, and I do it with my legal writing too. When you write something, write it out. I rarely even outline my first draft. I just let it flow. Let the madman out. As you come back later and you try to fine tune it. The first thing I do is if there's an adjective or an adverb, I'm going to delete those, or I'm going to cross them out, red line them, because that means my verb is weak. If you're using an adjective or an adverb, it usually means that your verb is not supporting enough of that sentence. If you use strong, active verbs to make your story come alive, you don't need adjectives and adverbs. And a lot of the times if you're using an adjective and adverb, it's because your story isn't your. You're not using your verbs actively enough. You need to make them really do the work of the sentence. So the first thing I do is the biggest tip that I've given a lot of people over the years. Get rid of your adjectives, get rid of your adverbs, make your verbs come alive, and make it carry the story. The other point I want to make are on short essays. So a lot of people focus on the big essay, like the common app essay. The short essays are especially those that are sent out by the schools, are in many ways a lot more important than the large essay because they're written by the schools. So the short essays that come out by the schools, the school is asking a question for a reason. And usually they're asking at the end of the day for two questions. Who are you? And why should you go here? They may ask in a million different ways, like who would you like to meet, live dead, or fictional? But what they're really asking is who are you? And why do you want to come here? So when you look at a question, you can think about it a million different ways, but the underlying questions come back to that. Who are you? And why here? Why do you want to come here? And who are you? These are the two questions out of every single question you get, however the worded they're asking. And what the schools are looking for are why here? They want to see if you've done your homework. Are you giving a canned response like 99.43% of the students, or are you part of that 1%? Less than 1% who are tailoring your short answers to identify a particular need for that school? Highlighting your opening statements and the strengths that you bring forward and. And showing how you're that student. This is where you get your mileage, your short essays. Hammering these points home and making your points persuasive is going to get you into the front door. Okay? Short essay answers are where you're going to open the door. Your big question essays are going to get you halfway there because everyone's writing about this, you're writing about this, and you're doing it in a way that's going to make people love you. Answering your short essays that answer these questions compellingly in a way that identifies the needs, particular needs of the schools and. And how you're going to fill that need is going to get you the rest of the way. At the end of the day, what they're looking for is why are you the best fit for them? So you want to make sure you do that in the essays. The last point on essays. When I was in high school, we had a group. We always had these meetings where the students would come together and the faculty would talk about different points. Devotionals. And at one of the devotionals, our dorm head came in and our college guidance counselor came in, and nobody else was there. It was just our dorm, like, where's everyone else? And the stern look on our dorm head's face and our college counselor's face underscored that it was not time to joke around, that this was a serious conversation. And the college counselor, who's still there and I love him dearly, said that we had a problem with Sloan's essay. Sloan is a student in my dorm who lived down the hallway. And he started explaining. The counselor explained that they had received a phone call from Wake Forest University where Sloan was applying, and that there was concern about the essay that he had submitted. And he goes, they had sent me the essay back that Sloan submitted. And he started reading the essay, and it sounded pretty good to me. And then he got to some point in the essay where he started using language that was highly inappropriate. And then the essay picked up where it originally started and started flowing nicely. And Sloan looked perplexed, angry and upset. And so did my friend Kevin. Kevin was Sloan's roommate. And before the counselor could finish, Kevin said, it was a joke. It was a joke. He said, well, what happened was Sloan was out of the room. He was working on his essay. And I put in some funny things in the middle, but I thought he would actually go back and read it and catch it and delete it. And evidently Sloan didn't he got back, printed it out and submitted it to the college without doing a final read. I tell this story. Thankfully Wake Forest caught it, realized there must have been some mistake and notified the school. Sloan ultimately got into Wake Forest, but the story always reminded me every time I submit something, whether it's to the Supreme Court or an email to you guys, I reread it and I reread it again, I think of Sloan. So before you submit any essay, read, reread, proofread, have somebody else read it, make sure that it says what you want it to say, that you need to make sure that the final product that goes out the door reflects the quality that you want to bring to that school. Remember Sloan Evans story in everything you do going forward when it comes to writing. Alright, in the next video next week we're going to talk about the next step in the college admissions process.