Mastering the “Why this College?” Essay
After pouring their heart and soul into the Common App essay, students often run out of gas by the time they encounter any remaining supplemental essays. While supplemental essays may ask you anything from “What makes you happy?” (Tufts) to analyzing a Kermit the Frog…
Changes to Common App Essay Prompts for 2017-18
This week, The Common Application essay prompts underwent their most substantive changes since 2013. While two prompts remained unchanged, three were revised, one was introduced, and one oldie-but-goodie was resurrected. The team at College Transitions will walk you through the changes and tell you what…
Five Essay Topics to Avoid
We would never unequivocally tell an applicant that any proposed college essay topic is off limits. Great writers can take the most mundane, banal, and generic topic and transform it into a captivating composition. However, in our experience reading thousands of college essays, we are…
The Common App: Get Those Words on That Page, Part II
In our last post, we covered how to brainstorm and prepare to write. Our advice was to: Tell a compelling story. Write something! Write anything! Don’t beat yourself up! These things take time. Write down or record random thoughts. Now let’s consider some suggestions for…
The Common App: Get Those Words on That Page, Part I
In recent posts, we provided a few strategies for brainstorming and mapping your admissions essay. In this post, we’ll cover some strategies for turning an idea into an essay. Tell a compelling story. Rather than writing an analytical essay like you would for a class…
Fishing for an Effective College Essay
One of the most memorable essays I ever read was written by a student we’ll call Sam, a rising high school senior from Massachusetts. He had written at least a dozen drafts trying to rehash his impressive résumé as a computer science whiz, and despite…
Revising the “Toy Story Method” of Essay Writing
A few weeks ago, I wandered across a blog post titled “How Understanding ‘Toy Story’ Can Get You into College.” As a lifelong Pixar fan, I was intrigued by the title and eager to see how the author advised college-bound writers to apply a well-known…
The optional statement is NOT optional
Too many students fail to complete optional parts of an application, and severely hinder their admissions prospects in the process. Optional statements demonstrate interest and provide an additional opportunity to showcase attributes that cannot be captured via a grade or test score. On the other…
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Downloadable Resources for your College Transition
