Has your kid still not finished their college application essays? Are you worried that this will ruin the holidays? Our neighbor had to cancel their travel plans last Christmas because of these stupid essays. Don’t let that be you!
Here are eight shortcuts that you can use to get your kid to finish the essays in record time. I handed this out at my son’s school, and everyone loved it, so I’m posting it here.
1: Get Organized
Before your child starts writing, you two need to get organized. Make a list of all of the different choices of personal statement topics that are required for the various applications. In all likelihood, you will only have to write one or two different prompts. If there are numerous different topics, however, there should be a fair amount of overlap between different essays.
2: Brainstorm
Before doing any writing, you and your son or daughter should begin with a brainstorming activity. What you’re going to do is to create a timeline of their life from birth to the present. Get a couple of pieces of 8.5” x 11” paper and tape them together lengthwise to make a very long sheet of paper. Draw a line on the far left side and write their birthdate. Draw another line on the other side of the timeline and write “today.” Jot down 25 different significant or interesting events from their past. What you are doing here is creating an autobiography for your kid.
Other good things to include are a special trip or travel experience, receiving a meaningful object, a memorable book or film, a fun event, a challenge that your child encountered, or a proud accomplishment. There are no right or wrong answers for this activity. The goal is to come up with at least 25 different memories.
3: Choose the Best “Hooks”
The next step will be to determine which of these memories you and your child find most interesting. You are coming up with a list of the best “hooks” for the personal statement. So what is a hook? It is a way of grabbing the reader’s interest while also revealing something interesting about your character. By approaching the personal statement in this way—by creating an autobiographical timeline—you have generated a list of hooks that are unique to your kid. This is what will allow your child to write an interesting personal statement.
4: Choose the Prompts
Now you need to determine which essay prompts to answer. On the Common Application, for example, you have five different options for the main essay. What you need to do at this point is narrow down your list to what questions you need to answer. How do you decide—if you have a choice—which prompts to tackle? The best way is to review your list of your favorite hooks and determine which ones lend themselves best to the essay prompts. Once you have assembled the topics for the various personal statements, type up the topic for each personal statement and include the word count.
5: Story Board
Let’s take a story that we all know and think about why we all find it so fascinating. The Harry Potter stories are so captivating because they have all of the elements of an intriguing story. First, the stories focus on the main character, Harry, who has a gloomy past, growing up as an orphan. His life changes dramatically, however, when he turns 11 and finds that he is to attend a boarding school for witches, Hogwarts. Second, the story has a fascinating setting in the world of Hogwarts. Third, the books focus on a central conflict that Harry has with his nemesis, Voldemort. Fourth, this ongoing conflict leads to many suspenseful moments as they go head-to-head with one another. Finally, there is a resolution at the end of the final book when [spoiler alert…] Harry finally defeats Voldemort.
The goal is for your child to write answer the prompts while also highlighting these five features of a good story: character, setting, conflict, suspense, and resolution. This isn’t as hard as you may think. Your child is the main character. In all likelihood, you have also developed a list of events that inherently contain conflicts from your timeline. Examples of these conflicts could include all sorts of things: a bad decision that s/he later regretted, a time that s/he accomplished something that no one thought they could pull off, a time when s/he had a disagreement and learned something about their character, a time that s/he faced a tough challenge, or on a lighter note, maybe they experienced a conflict that ended in a funny way. The point is to write about an issue that reveals something about who you are.
Now, you and your kid will do some storyboards. Storyboards are ways of organizing a series of sections of an essay. To storyboard the personal statement, the first job is to write down everything that you two can think of for character, setting, conflict, suspense, and resolution. You should start with conflict first since it is the center of the whole story. Try to be as descriptive as possible. For example, when you are describing the setting of the event, try to capture everything that you would have picked up with your senses. What do remember seeing, hearing, smelling, or feeling?
6: Awful First Draft
Once you and your kid have completed these storyboards for the various essays, it’s time for them to write. Using your storyboard as a jumping off point, you kid needs to begin a free write. A free write is when you write prose (i.e., sentences and paragraphs) continuously for a period of time. In this case, they should be able to kick out a 250- to 500-word essay in 20-30 minutes, depending on how quickly they type. The easiest way to begin a free write for a personal statement is to tell the story in a chronological way. Start with the beginning of the story and write down every idea, keyword, quotation, observation, or piece of evidence.
Remind your kid to stay relaxed as they are doing this free write and just let the words flow out onto the screen. It is also important that you just keep writing during this process. Tell them not stop to fix typos, or to rack their brain trying to remember one specific piece of information. The goal, rather, is to spill out everything related to the story.
7: Outsource the Feedback and Editing
The last step is to outsource proofreading and copy editing. Head over to www.fiverr.com and do a search for copy editing and proofreading. Find someone with high marks.
When you find a few highly ranked editors, send each one a message. Here is a template:
“Hi!
I am writing to see if this is a job you would like. I need some help with my kid’s college application essay. The essays are a total of [how many words]. I need some editing as well as some feedback. I am looking for someone who can provide editing and also give me some information about the following things:
- Is the central conflict clear?
- Does the essay ultimately reveal something about the main character? What does it reveal?
- Are any sections irrelevant? Are any sections repetitive?
- Does the end of the essay (resolution) link back to the initial conflict?
Is this something that you are interested in doing? What would the fee be? How long do you anticipate that it will take to complete?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Best,
Me”
This might cost you a bit more than five bucks. Just consider it your “argument avoidance fee.” Once you have a good editor lined up, send off the essays.
8: Finish Up
When the essays come back, they will be cleaned up in terms of grammar and writing. Make sure your kid reviews the essays one more time to address any of the issues that the editor came up with. Give your kid a tight deadline (bribes might need to be involved) to get ‘er done.
There you go. Essays are done, and the holidays are not ruined.
I’m just too much of a perfectionist…