Some of your teens have applied to colleges via the Early Action (EA) or Early Decision (ED) options. Congrats! For those of you who have teens that are applying to college through the Regular Decision option (including CUNY Macaulay Honors College), I want to share a couple of my favorite college application essay resources.
Hopefully, by this point, your teen has had the chance to discuss college application logistics with his or her high school guidance counselor at an individual meeting. (If not, I would find out why not and how to make that happen if I were you.)
Regardless, it’s important for us parents to have a general understanding regarding the various college application parts also. This includes making sure that our teens know how to write a solid college application essay. I have skimmed several resources but I want to share my two favorite ones so that you can read and watch them for yourselves.
College Application Essay Resources
Queens Library Blog Post
Dr. Padurano of Crimson Coaching shares tips on planning and brainstorming the essay in How To Write A Great College Application Essay, a blog post on the Queens Library website.
University of San Francisco Zoom Replay
The University of San Francisco has some of the best college preparation admission events. I have been so impressed. The College Essay session (which you can view on their Dons Prepare Series Zoom replay page) is very informative.
The session is filled with general (not university-specific) tips. They covered the following:
- What the College essay is (specifically focusing on the Common App essay)
- The purpose of the essay – what’s it for and the role that it plays in the admission review process
- Fundamental tips on how to pick a topic / figure out what to write about
- Tips for writing the essay since it’s a very different type of writing than what many students have probably used in high school
(A little time is also spent talking about supplemental essays since they are also important.)
I hope that these college application essay resources are as helpful for your family as they have been for mine. Ready, Set, Write!
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(You can find more college planning information in the College Prep section of this site.)