Reading your kids essays?

mathmom
Sat, 20 Jul 2013 19:31:20 +0000

We read both kids’ essays. Older son had a terrible time getting started, I finally suggested that he let one of his time wasting activities (writing a program that sampled college essays posted on line as exemplary essays) be the start of his essay. He ended up writing something that was not bad for an engineer. It showed his sense of humor, but it also had a just the facts middle that could have been vastly improved, but wasn’t.

Younger son had an essay that I thought was pretty good. He showed it to his AP Euro teacher who had a reputation for being very good at judging essays. He said it was good enough for most of the schools on his list, but not good enough for Georgetown. (Which required something very different anyway as they weren’t taking the Common Application.) He ended up writing something totally different, that I thought was sort of crazy. It didn’t get him into Georgetown, but a slightly altered version of it did get him into U of Chicago. I know I made some suggestions, but the voice was definitely that of my kids. I know my younger son asked for some advice on how to cut one essay down to the suggested word count.