“Hey,” I began, “you have cow eyes. I know that sounds like a bad thing but have you ever looked into a cow’s eyes? They are so deep and brown and beautiful. I’ve looked into a lot a cow eyes because I’m from Wisconsin.” This dialogue segment is from Malcolm Conner’s winning “Modern Love” College […]
It’s time to start brainstorming for your college essay! If you find the prospect of brainstorming to be far less fun than a.) sleeping outside b.) tattooing your tongue or c.) bathing in hot chili oil, don’t despair. We have six stellar suggestions for how to make brainstorming not only effective, but even (gasp!) fun: […]
The whole point of writing a college essay is to differentiate yourself from other applicants and place yourself ahead of the pack. For this reason, many students shy away from writing about common college essay topics. CEA’s Founder and Chief Advisor, Stacey Brook, believes this doesn’t have to be the case. Stacey recently published an […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
There are certain schools, like the University of Chicago, who have always taken special pride in developing craft questions for their applicants to answer. In recent years, more schools are jumping on the bandwagon, luring students to their applications with questions like “What does #YOLO mean to you” (Tufts, 2013). This is both fun and […]
Students, we hear the sniffle in your voices. We see the feverish looks on your faces. It’s the final month before the regular decision deadline, and you’re thinking your college admissions essay might not be in the healthiest shape. The topic has been complaining of blurry vision, something about your introduction is making you itchy, […]
Procrastinators, you know who you are. You’re the ones who waited until December to start your college essays and spent 15 minutes frantically scouring the internet before you landed on this post. You have a month (maybe less) before the deadlines start to hit and you don’t know where to start. First, just take a […]
Black Friday usually entails going to the mall, waiting in long lines, and spending all of your hard-earned money. However, for this year’s college and grad school applicants, it means FREE essay advice, all day long. This is the Black Friday Deal you won’t even have to leave the couch for. So get comfy, log on […]
We thought so.
