Recently, New York Times columnist Ron Leiber asked students to submit college admissions essays related to “money, class, working and the economy,” and was rewarded with 66 entries to comb through alongside Harry Bauld, the author of On Writing The College Application Essay. Together, the two men selected four essays they found both compelling and […]
We here at CEA are motivated folks who work with may of the country’s most ambitious pre-collegiate minds, so we understand as well as anyone that students on a wait list for their dream school would want to proactively affect the outcome of a college’s final decision. Last week the New York Times published an […]
“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” -Stephen King
Even when we talk about how it starts, our students are sedentary. You’re going to sit down and write that essay. An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal suggests that we should all be doing our work standing up, or at the very least, sitting up straight. The advisors at CEA should take some lessons […]
The Columbia essay controversy is already dying down, but one response to the leak of 70 recently accepted students’ self-posted was particularly notable. A few days following the internet ambush of the public Google drive that housed these winning admissions scripts, Noah Samotin, one of the Class of ’17 contributors, published a piece in teen […]
Trust us, we know it’s hard: we love the internet just as much as you do. Disconnecting yourself from that wi-fi connection can feel as unnatural as swimming fully clothed or spending Saturday night at home watching a Lifetime movie with your parents. Still, if you allow yourself to work internet-free for an hour or […]
Long before the Internet provided a platform for the mass critique of a seventeen-year-old applicant’s painstakingly polished prose, writing the personal statement has been a process fraught with tension and self-doubt. But as several new additions to Columbia University’s class of 2017 recently discovered, even after your essay secures your admission to the school of […]
Have you ever kept a journal or a diary? It might be time to pick up those collections of private thoughts, wince through your pre-teen love poems, and give it a good read. So much happens to us throughout our adolescence, it is easy to forget the small events that impacted our goals, motivations and […]
The New York Times’ Learning Network recently published an exercise asking teachers to lead their high school students through exploration of and practice for the new common application essay prompts. In addition to encouraging directed free writes, the activity encourages the use of columns from The Times as models for content, and The Choice Blog […]
We thought so.
