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How to Title a College Essay
Too many busy high-school seniors worry about how to title a college essay. You have way more important things to do! Do college essays need titles? There are so few easy answers in the college essay world—it’s nice when one really is easy. Do I need to write a title for my college essay? In a...
A Letter to Parents with Good Intentions
Dear Parents of High-School Juniors and Seniors I know you want to help. I know you can’t stand to see your child stressed and anxious, can’t stand to see them wasting time, ruining their chances, and risking their futures! Take a deep breath. Let’s start with, Nothing they do (or don’t do!) is...
Admissions & the ADHD Brain: Don’t Do It Later
One of the top reasons all students procrastinate on writing assignments Admissions & the ADHD Brain —school assignments and college essays—is their resistance to commit to the time. It’s that seductive voice in the back of your head that whispers, “You don’t have enough time right now. There...
Admissions & the ADHD Brain: First, We Get Started
The college application process could not encourage procrastination more effectively if that were its explicit design. The deadlines are months and months away, the process is confusing, the number of tasks seems to be constantly expanding, and on the whole—it’s dull. The reward is almost a year...
Chat GPT is Not Going to Save You
ChatGPT is not your friend. It did not come to save you from work. When people say, “I know what I want to say, I just don’t know how to say it,” they see ChatGPT as the answer. They tell ChatGPT what they think they want to say, and then ChatGPT “clarifies” it for them. There are so many problems...
Triggering Your Editor: How to Write Tough Stuff
Why is it so hard to start your college essay? Why does it suddenly feel like you have absolutely nothing to say? You try to bring up stories—even one!—from your life and draw a complete blank. If so, know that you’re not alone. One very real possibility is that in trying to be truthful, and tell...
How to End Your College Essay: 12 Strategies To Finish
End Your College Essay Getting started is the hardest part of any project, and that includes college essays. But once your desire to end your college essay is to be finished overwhelms your inertia and you start getting words on the page, the second-most...
But How Do I Start? My Go-To Trick for Writers of All Ages
Trick for Writers I’m writing right now with one of my best friends. She has a draft due to her publisher in a week. She has been avoiding it for months. She explains to me what the chapter she is working on is supposed to be about, and as an extension, why she can’t figure out where to start or...
Tricks from English Class: The College Essay As Literature
You’ve probably already noticed that most of what you’re doing in high-school English is not going to help you write your college essay. Whether it’s a five-paragraph essay or poetry analysis, it’s neither the structure nor the style you need. But that doesn’t mean the study of literature can’t...
Top Ten Success Resolutions for Striving Students 2024
Are you ready for a fresh start? In two days, you’ll wake to a pile of 366 brand-new days. Of course you didn’t have to wait for the new year to make changes in your life, but now that it’s at your doorstep, perhaps you want to consider ways that you can make 2024 better than 2023—and more...
