Freewriting

Freewriting We can tell when the student’s voice is missing; the colleges can tell too. There is a funny article in “The Daily Beast” by Kristina Dell that shares the anecdotes of college admissions counselors from this year’s record batch of applications. Many of the anecdotes revolve around silly or even comical things students do during the course of the college admissions process. The majority of these anecdotes are drawn from ridiculous mistakes college applicants make in their college essays. If you were to take bets on the percentage of essays read by college admissions personnel, I’d guess that it would be in the high 90’s. An essay is an important part of sharing who you are with a school. With increased competition for admission, the essay has become an important factor in consideration of your admissibility to a school. So if a school requires an essay it is VERY likely to be read. For many students, finding an objective evaluator who is not a relative to help edit the essay is the best bet. Having a degree in English and being a published writer of college planning articles, and having edited hundreds of essays for students, I would be happy to help you too. It is okay for a parent to review a child’s essay; it is not okay for a parent to take over a child’s essay, tell her what words to use, what story to write, what message to send. There is no way to determine a typical scenario regarding a college’s method for reviewing applications. In all cases at least one admissions officer will look at your essay. College admissions officers tell us time and again that too many essays come to them sanitized. They want to read a genuine story written by the child in the child’s words and the child’s voice. When parents get too involved, the stories do not sound genuine. When a parent gets too involved, the story does not sound like an essay written by a 17-year-old student. if admissions people are so burned out and bored with reading applications with less than brilliant essays then i suggest they find another line of work. however, the book is well written, humorous at times and filled with absolutely essential information for kids trying to get into competitive colleges. so, just keep repeating to yourself that knowledge is power and most of the time the truth really hurts. We have found that students write better college essays in less time with feedback and editing from someone who is experienced in offering guidance. Each of member of our professional writing team is a U.S.-based native English speaking professional. It becomes a difficult balance for the student, and that’s why it’s so hard to complete their college essays. There are so many other things making demands on their time, energy and resources that the essay often falls by the wayside until the deadline is very, very near. If a school has a writing section in their supplement to the Common Application you can rest assured that ALL of that writing is evaluated by admissions officers. Do your best and assume that it WILL be read and that it WILL have a bearing on your admission chances. At that point, the stress of knowing the essay must be written in such a short time and yet be of high quality can cause the student to have writer’s block and just not know where to start. This kind of stress can cause students to procrastinate the work even further or just plain give up. When parents get involved in the nitty gritty of a college application, some families find conflict arises. If your situation is one where parents can offer opinions that are helpful and if you are the kind of student who is open to listening to suggestions, then surely parents can be good editors. Further, if you have parents who know grammar and writing conventions and can recognize flaws, go ahead and ask parents to help. the problem is that the author will leave you infuriated at what a sleaze bag, crap shoot the whole college admisssions process has become. the chapter that describes a fictious late night conversation between two admissions officers will make your skin crawl.