College essays

[Anonymous]

My child is in junior year, doing okay in school with some high B’s and mostly A’s on rigorous courses. DC’s essay writing skill is so bad and is asking for some help to learn to write better before college apps. Any recommendations to help him improve?

[Anonymous]

Have them write a draft and share with their English teacher and ask for help. The teacher will likely be happy to help and they may even develop a relationship that allows him to ask the teacher for a recommendation.

Share drafts with writing coaches like Writopia to get guidance.

Have them read some of the sample great college essays that are on the internet to get ideas. Brainstorm ideas and discuss.

Start early writing drafts and have him hone in on his unique offering (experience as a mentor, etc.). If he needs more experience, as a junior, he still has time to volunteer or enhance his ec's that he'll write about.

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much

[Anonymous]

Stay away from writing what everyone writes: recovering from a sports injury or generic overcoming adversity. Have him brainstorm 3-5 topics unique to him.

[Anonymous]

He still has quite a few months ahead. The most straightforward is to develop the habit of reading articles he likes in sources with good writing. 😉

[Anonymous]

Yeah, but he is asking for some classes as he says not able to self drive

[Anonymous]

He is a poor reader too, any recommendations to read?

[Anonymous]

Don’t use English teachers. Their feedback is almost always bad or neutral. They don’t know what makes a good narrative style impactful college essay.

It’s not anything with a thesis or with perfect sentence structure and topic sentences. It’s persuasive, personal style writing. Short and long sentence sentences. Sometimes sentences without a verb. Declarative. Every English teacher would barf at some of the best essays.

A great personal essay sounds like a conversation with the kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, but he is asking for some classes as he says not able to self drive

There are a lot of personal essay writing workshops that are held in the spring and summer with all of the big name College Counselor firms. Search college essay writing workshop.

[Anonymous]

For all three of my kids (all accepted ED to t15s) it took a couple tries to get to the essay that popped, so they each wrote 2-4 different draft essays. They worked with me and an outside cc to get the narrative to be cohesive but we also really tried to maintain the magic of their original voice. For my reluctant writer, it helped that he was writing about experiences that he truly loves.

I agree that not all English teacher advice is worth following. One of my kid’s strongest teachers had advice that would have made his essay boring and generic, good for an English paper but not for a personal statement.

I also agree that it’s best to try to avoid the overdone topics, grandparents, sports, service trip etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For all three of my kids (all accepted ED to t15s) it took a couple tries to get to the essay that popped, so they each wrote 2-4 different draft essays. They worked with me and an outside cc to get the narrative to be cohesive but we also really tried to maintain the magic of their original voice. For my reluctant writer, it helped that he was writing about experiences that he truly loves.

I agree that not all English teacher advice is worth following. One of my kid’s strongest teachers had advice that would have made his essay boring and generic, good for an English paper but not for a personal statement.

I also agree that it’s best to try to avoid the overdone topics, grandparents, sports, service trip etc.

PP above adding that completing the essay before senior year was a huge boost to their process. It sucked to work during a busy summer but was worth it for balancing an even busier fall.

[Anonymous]

OP, clearly, you aren't a native English speaker so you won't be able to help your child. My advice: hire someone.

[Anonymous]

“ some high B’s and mostly A’s on rigorous courses” assuming there is AP English, AP history of some type should require some writing. Not sure how the kid can get high grades if you can t write essays.

[Anonymous]

If you child is looking to close a gap in academics I would start with asking him to connect with a trusted teacher and share that he has identified this as an area of academic weakness - but wants to work aggressively to fill in areas before he starts college and ask the teacher to help him create a plan.
If it was my kid, I would start with reading. Listen to an audio book a week and write a book review. It is only through lots of practice will your child improve. After doing this for 8 weeks, I would move onto reading 1 article a week that is long format from something like the NYTimes or an academic source and write a summary of what he learned from the article. Do this task, 1 article a week, through the end of the school year.
Over the summer, take a course for writing the college personal statement.
Writing is about practice. You are not going to get better unless you put the work in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, but he is asking for some classes as he says not able to self drive

Look for online classes for homeschoolers targeting college essays. Homeschooling parents write a lot of reviews. I found some a couple years ago that sounded good for about $300. These had live classroom sessions online and instructor personal feedback on essays. They were not essay coaching or review per se. They were classes on writing essays. I did not go forward since my kid did not want to take the class that I found. Here is an example of something similar.

https://aphomeschoolers.com/course/appessay1/