For many folks, the college admissions interview is the first big interview you go through on your way to adulthood and the idea of selling yourself to the interviewer can be nervewracking. Still, for some top colleges, the admissions interview is an important part of the application process and you can’t avoid it if you’re hoping to land a spot in the incoming class.
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Well, you’ve submitted your college applications and now you’re sitting around wondering what to do while waiting for decisions to come out. Truth to be told, there’s a lot you can do after submitting your applications ranging from starting a financial aid application to sending thank you notes to your letters of recommendation writers.
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CommonApp has announced that the essay prompts for 2019-20 will remain the same as last year’s.
Common App cites feedback from counselors determined that “the existing essay prompts provide great flexibility for applicants to tell their unique stories in their own voice.”
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As an admissions professional, I sometimes get asked the question, “For someone who is white and middle class, how can I write about how I will bring diversity to my school?” Well, let me tell you. It’s possible to do and it’s possible to do it without treating the diversity statement as a throwaway part of your application.
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As a professional admissions coach and on-again, off-again application reader for a large university, I often get asked the question: what are colleges looking for? Meaning, what kind of traits do colleges look for in the students they admit? Well, the answer is long, but not really that complicated.
While the most popular college admissions application is the Common Application, over a 100 colleges are now using the Coalition Application, a competitor to the Common App first announced back in 2015.
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The Common App is available for students to apply to more than 800 schools (private, public, large and small). An essential part of the Common Application is the Writing component which includes the Personal Essay section. Most, but not all of the 800 colleges that use the Common App, require the Personal Essay to be included in your application for submission. So, with all most all colleges you apply to, you can be sure a personal essay, or more commonly called the personal statement, will be a part of it.
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Tone is more than how you write, it’s how you write it, and the tone of your personal statement can significantly impact your college application. Your choice of words, level of formality, and the writing style you choose to use comprises your writing tone and can reveal a significant amount about how you view yourself, your academic/career path, and your community.
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