Last year, applicants around the world became the first to experiment with a brand new college application platform. Intended to be a full-service competitor to the Common App, the Coalition Application provided students with a fresh new interface and, of course, a new set of essay prompts to grapple with.
Class of 2022 – it’s about that time. The first milestone in your college application journey has officially arrived. Today the Common Application released their 2017-18 essay prompts. This reveal comes with a heaping helping of good news, most of which relates to the fact that the prompts have not changed all that much from last […]
High school juniors…it’s your turn up at bat. 2017 will be the year you reach an extremely important milestone – applying to college, which of course means writing your college essay. AHHH! PANIC! Wait, no, don’t. Because if you’re reading this post, then you’re already WAY ahead! We here at CEA say that the most […]
Let us be the first to say it. CONGRATULATIONS! You made it through the 2016 college application season. With most major deadlines approaching in just a few days, finally you can breathe. All the stress releases with the click of the “submit” button. Today, we’re here to tell you that it’s your time to sit […]
How did it come to this? It’s the last week and you still have essays left to write. It happens every year and you are not alone. Bolt the doors. Throw your phone into the ocean. You are on college essay lock down. You still have time to walk yourself through the basic paces of […]
The day has come… almost. Regular decision deadlines are just a few weeks away, and soon it will be time to kiss those admissions essays goodbye and send them off into the wide world. They grow up so fast. After spending so many hours laboring over each individual application, it can be hard to let […]
A popular format for supplement questions is short answers. Don’t confuse these with the why, activity, community, or oddball essays. These are an entirely different beast. These little critters provide a different kind of creative challenge for aspiring college-goers. Take this set of short answer questions from the 2014 Yale application: “What excites you intellectually, […]
The Oddball Essay is a supplemental essay type that mines for information about not only who you are, but also how you think. Colleges are interested in the way your mind works so they can determine if you’d be a good fit for their campus community. Are you easily led down a rabbit hole of […]
The Community Essay is a standard supplemental essay type that mines for information about your social habits and favorite causes. Since you will become a member of whichever college community you choose to attend, it’s not surprising that admissions is curious to learn more about the communities you are already a part of and the […]
At one time, not so long ago, the Common App asked all applicants for a brief description of their most important extracurricular experiences. When that requirement became optional in 2013, many individual colleges took it upon themselves to issue a similar prompt as a replacement. The activity essay is an excellent opportunity to expand beyond […]
We thought so.
