The New York Times has a blog called "The Choice." It's all about the college admissions and financial aid process. There are eight high school seniors who are blogging about their college searches...you can check it out here.
The University of California, Berkeley has a website that gives some guidelines for writing the personal statement, or college essay. The ideas they share are relevant for all personal essays, I think. They even have an example essay that they've broken down in structure...explore the links!
Lastly, for now, the online and print magazine Teen Ink has a College Guide section. Teen Ink publishes the writing of teenagers from all over the country. Check out this link, to see a whole lot of example college essays. Honors seniors, please read a few of them, and choose one that you think is especially strong. We'll talk about it in class; for now, go ahead and post a link to it below, with a reason why you've chosen it.
After reading a few college essays, this was my favorite:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/3274/I-Am-a-/
I really liked this particular one because the author doesn't start off by bragging about herself and explaining all the reasons why she would be a good for for the school. Instead I really liked how she told a story about how she is a teenager that is judged and judges other teenagers, as we all tend to do in high school. She used simple sentences but she came off really intelligent and passionate about how she would live to prove the people who have judged her wrong.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/45498/The-Bitter-and-the-Sweet/
ReplyDeleteI liked this essay because of the connections she made between the bitter sweetness of candy and her personal life and then college. She starts of describing, in great detail, dark chocolate and then goes to explaining her life and the conflicts that she faced. She then ends with saying she and her family got through the domestic violence and being homeless and getting back on their feet which has made her the strong women she is today to take on college.
This was the essay that I had chosen that stood out to me:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/18061/Better-Barbie/
I enjoyed reading this essay because it wasn't like a typical college essay that was boring and just tried to explain to many things that did not make sense to the reader and no one could relate to. This one was about a girl and her love for barbie's when she was a kid. I really liked how she related it back to her childhood with her sister so we got to know her more and how she grew up. And she did a nice job transitioning from that into talking about her adventures of a kid into the adventures shes had throughout her high school career. Another thing that I noticed that this author did very well was how she used a lot of interesting and fun vocabulary to make her story sound even more interesting. That to me was a very smart move because she knows that many college essays will be read and she needs something different and fun to stand out and draw the colleges into her essay. When I start to write my college essay, I will take into consideration and how she used certain words and transitions to help me with mine.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/3534/The-Person-Who-Influenced-Me-The-Most/
ReplyDeleteThis student choose to write this essay about the person who influenced her the most and she chose her aunt. I could relate to this article because the person that I look up to the most is my aunt and this past year she let me live with her. In this essay she talks about how her aunt is dying and her last dying wish is that her niece will go to Israel like she had planned. An essay like this will touch anybody that reads it and everyone has at least one person in their life that care about dearly and want to see succeed. I can see why this girl would choose to focus her entire college essay on someone that changed their life because it is something that is straight from the heart making it the easiest thing to write about.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/128959/A-New-Friend-and-Perspective/
ReplyDeleteThe article I enjoyed the most was, “A New Friend and Perspective.” In the beginning of this essay, the girl conveys her arrogant attitude towards spending time with her grandmother. However, as the story progresses it becomes apparent that she grows to adore hanging out with her grandmother. I liked this story especially because I love hanging out with my grandmother and listening to all of her stories. I learned to appreciate spending time with her as well; much like the author of this story. I liked that the girl had a very busy life and didn’t think she could fit her grandmother in. However, as it turns out she is able to coordinate her Grandmother into her hectic schedule. Thus, this essay shows her maturity since she is able to gains gratitude towards the family she has been given. I think I like this essay the most because it is meaningful and honest and really portrays how appreciative the girl is of spending time with her grandmother.
I chose this essay because not only was it entertaining, but it was also about a very small moment in this girls life rather than the usual catastrophic experiences that people write about. I think that the way that this is written is sort of unusual in a really cool way. I like that the author writes it from the perspective of a little girl but still uses a really mature writing style. This essay was simply written about a girl, her Barbies, the adventures that they had, and what the dolls meant to her. The simplicity of this essay combined with the complexity of the language and concepts provides for an extremely well written essay. At the end of this text, the author does a phenomenal job of wrapping everything up and explaining why this seemingly miniscule topic helps to define who she is and why she should be accepted into Brown.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/18061/Better-Barbie/
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/45498/The-Bitter-and-the-Sweet/
ReplyDeleteI chose this essay because it was all about overcoming obstacles , which this girl has without a doubt done. I plan on writing my essay about overcoming obstacles as well, making this essay stand out to me personally. The experiences she describes are traumatizing, especially at the young age she faced them. One of the things that the University of California, Berkeley guidelines to writing essays wrote was that it is critical to avoiding complaining about anything and I noticed that even in her circumstances she did a great job of doing just that. She was also very descriptive in her writing, almost putting the reader in her shoes when describing the frequent problems between her mother and step father. Overall, I thought this essay showed the best writing skills, growth, and experience from a student my age.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/47607/Where-Do-I-Belong/
ReplyDeleteThe essay that I thought was the most creative was the one called, "Where Do I Belong". The essay starts with the image of an ant climbing up pink tiles in a person’s bathroom and falling off once it dips into the grout cracks. Every time the ant fell, he would crawl back up the wall again and again. The author of the essay came to the conclusion that the ant was just trying to get home. Later he talked about going to his old home country and how out of place it made him feel. He continues to talk about how he has to let go of some of the homes that he has had in the past, and to find new ones as he moves onto college. He also talks about how his mother felt right at home when she returned to her home country. Everybody has different definitions of home, and everybody has different preferences. I chose this essay because I think I relate to the topic of moving on to newer homes and experiences because right now I’m a little nervous, but I know that it will be alright in the end.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/3274/I-Am-a-/
ReplyDeleteThis was my favorite essay because she started the essay off by being very honest. She didn't say that she was the best fit for the college at first, she stated how she is a typical teenager that judges and is judged. I really liked how honest she was throughout her piece. She also was herself, she didn't use long and wordy sentences, she used simple sentences that got her point across and made her sound very smart anyway.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/45498/The-Bitter-and-the-Sweet/
ReplyDeleteEven though I read many sample essays to get a better feel for what they should sound like, my overall favorite essay was "The Bitter and the Sweet." I loved the way the author started the essay off, it grabbed my attention because I was curious why she was talking about chocolate and how it applied to her life. As I continued reading, I enjoyed how honest the author was about her life. Although the author went through a lot of tragic events, she was able to reveal how it shaped her as a person. She was able to focus on the positive side of it all instead of complaining about her past. I also enjoyed reading, "Better Barbie" because the author was able to focus on something very simple that happened in her childhood and relate it to characteristics about herself. I thought the way she started it off by explaining how she was a pretty ordinary girl was very clever because it showed how although she was ordinary, she was also very unique in her own way.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/45498/The-Bitter-and-the-Sweet/
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading the essay, "The Bitter and the Sweet" because it really grabbed my attention when I read it. This essay really explains the girls struggles that she endured living with a single parent who was barely able to put food on the table along with a stepfather that drove them nuts. I felt that the girl who wrote the essay was very strong willed and had a mother who was very encouraging and taught her to not worry about all of the commotion going on in her life and to only focus on the important things such as her education. I feel that I am able to relate to this story in the sense that I have divorced parents and it was a difficult experience for me t go through even though it happened at an earlier age that the girl who wrote the essay. I am not able to relate to her in the way that she was able to focus on school and the happy things in life. For me, I dwelled on the fact that my parents were getting divorced and had a very hard time focusing on my schoolwork because I was too busy worrying about what was next to come for me. I thought that the girl really explained her struggles throughout her life as well as painting a very visual picture for the reader so the could feel what the writer was telling them.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/3498/Dance/
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the essay called "Dance". This essay caught my attention because when I read it I was able to relate to it. She shared how she was put in dance at age 8 and it has been an important part of her life and will be forever. She has put a lot of effort into being a dancer and how it has helped her grow as a person. I liked this essay a lot because I could say the same thing about cheering and I think this essay could be used with any sport and the majority of high schoolers do a sport but to show how pasionate you are about something you love is very important.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/47607/Where-Do-I-Belong/
ReplyDeleteIt was very hard for me to pick one essay out of so many. I had to make a decision,so one of my favorites was "Where do I Belong." The beginning of the essay pulled me in. I liked how it was a story about something so simple and weird but then became about himself/herself. It also had a deep meaning to it. I really liked this essay and it made me think alot about what my college essay could look like. It opened my eyes on what college essays look like. I thought they were all boring and sophisticated.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/3293/Who-Am-I/
ReplyDeleteI read a lot of the essays but the one that pulled me in was the"Who am I" essay by Julia R. I liked how she talked about all the struggles and that you are never too old to find out who you are, also that its ok to not know something or have a set decision on something. I can relate to that because i know some of my decisions but some of the things i still don't know what i'd do or what to do. She talks about even thou she doesn't have set decisions or doesn't know how she feels about something she knows who she is and i believe that because you can know who you are but not know what to do or how you feel about a certain topic.
http://www.teenink.com/college_guide/college_essays/article/47607/Where-Do-I-Belong/
ReplyDeleteThis essay, titled, "Where Do I Belong," seemed noteworthy because of its connection of a seemly small and insignificant story to a bigger, personal story. The author starts off by telling a story about an ant in her room climbing on her wall. She describes the ant as out of place. Then she moves on to tell a story about visiting her homeland where she feels disconnected from. Once she gets back to her home in Florida, she again feels out of place. Her connection to the story of the ant adds another layer to her story. Its that small detail that makes the story extremely unique. There are probably many essays about people feeling out of place and trying to develop their identity, but that is probably the only essay that includes an ant. This essay will definitely stand out.