When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner鈥檚 pick, a wood-carver鈥檚 gouge, a surgeon鈥檚 probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year. — Annie Dillard, From The Writing Life. Harper and Row, 1989.
What you write now in your personal statements and essays will determine tomorrow. Don鈥檛 stop short of inspiring work. It could help open the door to your dream school.
Some colleges and universities provide specific questions to direct your essay writing. You may be asked to offer your views on a particular topic or issue. (鈥淚f you could change anything in the world, what would you change and how?鈥� or 鈥淒escribe an experience that changed you.鈥�) Others leave the essay top…
If you鈥檙e an admissions officer, a typical day might look something like this: over your mug of morning coffee, you鈥檙e peering at a stack of hundreds鈥攎aybe thousands鈥攐f applications from all over the world. SATs, GPAs, and other acronyms are standards to consider in determining the strongest candidates. After the numbers are crunched, who will catch your eye and hold your interest? Sometimes even the straight A student/captain of the hockey team/organizer of a program at a homeless shelter won鈥檛 make the cut鈥攗nless, of course, he or she knows how to paint his or her own self-portrait in the most flattering light.
For the applicant, the application doesn鈥檛 have to be daunting鈥攐r a chore. Think of it as one of life鈥檚 rare opportunities to design your own image. Applying to college can really stress you out…