The topic of this week’s blog may seem absurd at first glance. But students often come to us with drafts of their college essays already completed, and when we ask them which prompt they’re responding to, they shrug and say they didn’t know they had to respond to a prompt.

This happens so frequently that we started to suspect something was going on - and then we discovered that some most popular college essay websites explicitly suggest: “don’t read Common App prompts.” This is terrible advice for any kind of writing, and in almost all cases, it will guarantee that you’ll write a mediocre college essay. Here’s why.

We recently interviewed a former student, Will C., on his experience working on the Common App and supplemental essays. David was accepted to study engineering at UVA in Fall 2024, so we thought you might be interested in his responses.

We’re suspicious of the current boom in college counseling. We feel that something very wrong is going on when parents are paying huge sums for this service (as opposed to purchasing a service with a discrete educational benefit). Of course, if you’re having trouble picking schools, it might make sense to meet with a college counselor once or twice, and if you haven’t grown up in the US, it’s certainly a good idea to get some advice on the college application process. But the current situation is over the top, and it’s the exact wrong message to give to teenagers. Here’s why we discourage you from investing huge sums in a college counselor, and urge you to get expert help with your college essay (usually at a fraction of the cost) instead.

If you’re applying to college this year, you may be worried that you’ll avoid working on your college essays until the last moment, when it’s too late to write something impactful. This is an affliction known as “college essay procrastination,” and it’s extremely common among high school seniors. We understand why! Writing is challenging in the best of circumstances, but now you have to come up with a compelling essay that will play a large part in determining where you go to college. It’s no wonder students get freaked out and have trouble getting started.

That’s why we’ve assembled three of the most effective tips we recommend for our students. Each one covers a different part of the college essay process.

We’ve already given a lot of advice on this blog on how to approach the UC personal insight questions. The short version is: the UC PIQs are different from other college essay prompts. You don’t have time to dazzle the reader with long anecdotes from your past. Instead, you should respond to the question directly, get to the point quickly, and provide specific detail for any points you make.

But we also advise students to go through the prompts carefully and determine which ones are most applicable to them, so this week, we decided to provide some tips on the prompts themselves. Here are our thoughts on the UC PIQs, one by one.

We recently interviewed a former student, David B., on his experience working on the Common App and supplemental essays. David was accepted to study at Duke University in Fall 2024, so we thought you might be interested in his responses.

When you apply to college, you submit your test scores, your GPA, and your extracurriculars list - and the whole aim is to excel. Did you nail the SAT? Did you get good grades at school? Did you participate in enough extracurriculars?

But the college essay is different. The aim here isn’t to excel or boast about your achievements; it’s to tell a unique story. That’s why the single most important piece of advice anyone can give you when it comes to college essay writing is to avoid clichés. You may have a great GPA and SAT, but if your college essay sounds just like everyone else’s, the college admissions officer reading your file will immediately lose interest. If you’re wondering, “how can I make my college essay stand out?” check out our three top tips.

If you’re applying to any of the University of California’s ten campuses this cycle, you’ll need to respond to the UC Personal Insight Questions (PIQs). Each of these questions is slightly different, and in future posts, we’ll provide specific advice for each one. But for now, here are our four main tips on how you should devise your overall strategy for the UC PIQs.

We recently interviewed a former student, Daniel L., on his experience responding to the UC personal insight questions. Daniel was accepted to study computer science at many UCs, including UC Berkeley, so we thought you might be interested in his responses.

Every year we read hundreds of college admissions essays, and we often feel like a broken record in our sessions. That’s because most of our students make the same mistakes when they write their college essays, and our goal is to set them in the right direction. So to save a bit of time, here are the five dos and don’ts of writing college essays.

Here’s one of the most popular pieces of internet advice about college essay writing: If you’ve experienced a major challenge in life, you should use a narrative structure - that is, you should tell your story from start to finish. If your life has been basically normal and drama-free, you should use a montage structure and come up with a clever concept that brings several experiences together.

The montage essay is very popular, but we’ve basically never seen one we liked, and we’ve decided to explain why. Here are the three main reasons we strongly discourage you from using the montage structure for a college essay.

Every year, high schoolers come to us just before their college application deadlines, desperate for help with their college essays. They often have excellent GPAs, and they’ve spent many months preparing for the SAT or ACT – but they’ve left the college essay to the last minute.This year, we’re offering a solution. Our early bird webinar helps students start thinking about their essay topics long before the deadlines.

Here are three reasons you should consider taking our webinar, “Writing the Real You: Discover Meaningful and Authentic Essay Topics that Colleges Will LOVE.”

It’s always easy for us to identify top students because they approach their college applications in the same way: They take as many AP or Honors courses as possible, and they get perfect or near-perfect grades throughout high school; they do significant test prep and “crush” the SAT/ACT; they build an impressive list of extracurricular achievements that they showcase in their resumes.

Top students excel at everything they undertake, which is great. But there’s a problem here. The same skills that mean excellence in every other area can actually lead high achieving students to make a critical error when they write their college essays. Top students don’t necessarily write top college essays.

As you start thinking about applying to college, you’re probably wondering how much you should focus on your admissions essay. This is understandable because the essay is unlike every other part of the college application. The GPA and SAT/ACT are objective scores; the essay, on the other hand, seems vague and subjective. Do college admissions officers pay attention to college essays at all?

The answer is yes, but not in the way you think. Here are a few things to note when you find yourself asking: how much does the college essay count?