Cory M. Franklin - A Guide to Writing College Admissions Essays

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom

Copyright 2021 by Cory M. Franklin, Suzanne Franklin, Linda Black, Paul Weingarten

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Franklin, Cory M., author.

Title: A guide to writing college admissions essays : practical advice for students and parents / Cory M. Franklin, Suzanne Franklin, Linda Black, Paul Weingarten.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: This book is a handy, readable manual, which deals with the practical problems students face when writing their college admission essaysProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021005837 (print) | LCCN 2021005838 (ebook) | ISBN 9781475858761 (cloth) | ISBN 9781475858785 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: College applicationsHandbooks, manuals, etc. | Universities and collegesAdmission. | Exposition (Rhetoric)

Classification: LCC LB2351.5 .F73 2021 (print) | LCC LB2351.5 (ebook) | DDC 378.1/616dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005837

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Four authors mean more dedications to people we love.

From Cory and Sue: For Shana, Celia, Jeff, Sam, Neta, and Charlotte And for James and Sabina Jean

From Linda: For Rich, Maddie, Carlie, and my mom Aggie

From Paul: To Marla and Elizabeth, who never cease to inspire me

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short or that he avoid all detail and treat his subject only in outline, but that every word tell.

Professor William Strunk, lead author of Elements of Style

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one youve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Every year thousands of panicky high school students confront these questions and others like them, hoping to impress college admissions officers who are harder than ever to impress. Students and parents know the stakes are high. A teens college admission may be riding on this essay. No wonder students often approach the college essay with dread: What to write? How to present yourself without looking like youre trying too hard or stretching credulity?

These students seek help from parents, teachers, peers, siblings, and private tutors to improve their essaysand their odds of acceptance. Many students succeed because they craft memorable essays that stand out as funny or insightful or poignant.

But thousands of others grind out works that fall flat. Reasons? Thats easy. Lifeless prose that reveals little of a students personality. Threadbare or hackneyed themes that admissions officers have seen a zillion times before. Writing riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors.

Avalanched under increasing numbers of applications, colleges look for quick ways to sort the Acceptances from the Waiting Lists from the Rejections.

That is why you are reading this book.

First a disclaimer: College admissions officers work in mysterious ways; test scores, legacies, and demographics all play a role in whether a student is admitted. Today, some universities and colleges receive more than fifty thousand applications for a limited number of positions. This guide to better writing doesnt guarantee a spot at Stanford or Vanderbilt. Nothing can do that. A great essay is usually not enough by itself. But the college essay is a vital part of that process, even though admission committees are notoriously reticent about what they are specifically looking for in an essay or exactly how crucial the essay is to the application. This varies from school to school. The essay is certainly more important at some schools like the University of Chicago, which emphasizes its own out of the box essay questionsfor example, compare Plato and Play-Doh or Find x. In addition, as greater numbers of schools adopt test-optional or test-blind policies, which minimize or eliminate the need to take the SAT or the ACT, the college essay will definitely assume greater significance.

In this book youll find suggestions on what to write (and just as important, what not to write) and vital tips on writing approach, grammar, and usage. This guide isnt just for college-bound students. Its for anyone at any age who wants to write better, clearer, crisper.

This book is a team effort. Two of its authors are college counselors with more than twenty years of experience helping students gain acceptance to their first choice of college. In the process, they have read thousands of college essays. And they have the psychic scars to prove it. The other two authors are writers, one a former senior editor, writer, and member of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board and the other an intensive care physician turned essayist with four books to his credit. They have used their collective experience to create a manual that will help students write excellent college essays.

This book is meant as a guide for students facing the 650-word Common App essay and the supplementary essays that many schools require as part of their admission applications. With more students applying to college and those students applying to an ever-increasing number of schools, the college admission process is far more competitive than ever before.

If there is one point of unanimity about the college admission essay it is this: that it must be authentica true reflection of the writers character and personality. Colleges take great pains to learn who you are and one way, perhaps the most important way outside of a live interview, is the essay. The essays content and style reveal much about who the writer isin some cases, even more than the live interview.

There are excellent reference websites such as Grammarly, style guides such as Elements of Style and The Chicago Manual of Style, and videos for writers. Most skilled writers know when to use these references. The authors of this book recommend their use. This book is meant to complement rather than replace them because most high school students lack the experience to know when and how to use those aids effectively. The value of this book is its additional advice to the writer about content and style.