Reply to How to tell teen her essay topic sucks?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "How to tell teen her essay topic sucks?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Use a bad news sandwich:

“You’ve worked really hard on your essay but I’m concerned the topic doesn’t fit the rest of your application. You should either add more vulnerability or pick a new topic (or whatever). It doesn’t highlight what makes you an awesome & unique candidate for their school.”

It is ultimately her journey so if she’s like “suck it, old lady”, I’d drop it. [/quote]

I agree with this. I had to do this with my DD, who sounds similar: very high stats, not used to getting much critical feedback. The angle I took was to validate her reasons for writing the original draft and then talk with her about purpose of this essay - to give the AO's a sense of connection with you as a person and window into qualities you possess that they'd want in a member of their community. We are close and don't usually have much conflict, but there were some tears and anger over this feedback, as well as resentment over the prospect of doing more work. But she ultimately accepted the feedback and and worked through a couple more drafts, more frustration, and then spun out a killer essay on her third try. The added benefit is that she has now carried this learning forward for her supplementals and is much more willing to go through some drafting and reworking of those.

That said, if she'd just told me to back off after hearing the initial feedback, I'd have dropped it![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics