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Surprisingly, feedback is a big pitfall in the essay-writing process. As essay coaches, we’ve seen essays go off track all the time — the issue is that…
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Here’s the secret to the Common App’s Additional Info section: have students write the Additional Info section last → it is a space for anything at all…
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We need to get students to stop treating the Activities List as an afterthought. Admissions officers definitely don’t. Thanks for reading The Apply…
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This newsletter will take you through 4 easy steps for getting students to write a killer “Describe an Activity” essay (ie: most college supplemental…
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December 2022

‍Applicants tend to do poorly on “Why Us” essays — filling them with platitudes; showing only a cursory level of research (ex: praising US News…
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November 2022

In last week’s newsletter, we discussed the #1 thing people miss in their essays. Spoiler alert: students tend to write about what happened to them, not…
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College essays are not the place to "just tell your story." It's not that “tell us your story” is wrong. It’s just severely misleading. If you’ve read…
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Take this week’s newsletter with a grain of salt. The choice of essay prompt matters little next to getting students to brainstorm their experiences and…
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October 2022

Two weeks ago, our newsletter shared how (surprisingly) important the Personal score is to students’ chances of admission. We followed-up last week with…
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Most college applications read flat. We know students aren’t the same. But it sure seems like it from many applications: similar academics, similar…
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Most students underestimate the power of their essays to get admitted. As we shared in last week’s newsletter, they usually think academics mostly…
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September 2022

In our last newsletter, we discussed how colleges score applications. Here, we’re doing a deeper dive on the Academic Score – an evaluation that…
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