The Uncommon College Essay Book
An Approachable Guide to an Intimidating Process
BRAND NEW GUIDE FOR 2025! Write a College Essay That Gets You Accepted Using a Time-Tested Approach from the Leading College Essay Expert.
It’s no secret that the college application process—especially the personal statement—can feel overwhelming. That’s why Stacey Brook, renowned essay expert and the founder and chief advisor at College Essay Advisors (CEA), created The Uncommon College Essay: An Approachable Guide to an Intimidating Process. The book offers students and parents a clear understanding of the essay’s purpose and potential, along with a structured, step-by-step approach to help transform a daunting task into one that is not only manageable, but maybe even (dare she say?) fun.
In this guide, Stacey walks readers through her signature Uncommon College Essay Approach, a four-step process designed to turn essay anxiety into essay success. She covers:
- The Backwards Brainstorm
- Freewriting Your Face Off
- Story Sculpting
- Polishing to Perfection
Step by step, Stacey breaks down her strategies and suggestions with detailed explanations, engaging exercises, real college essay examples, and (fair warning!) a generous dose of parenthetical asides. (She just can’t help herself.)
Using this guide as a reference, readers will gain the tools and confidence to tackle everything from the Common App personal statement to those tricky (and seemingly endless!) school-specific supplemental essays.
But beyond mechanics, Stacey focuses on what really matters: helping students tell authentic, surprising, uncommon stories that show admissions officers who they are, not just as students, but as people. That is why Stacey and her Uncommon College Essay Approach have helped applicants gain acceptance to a wide variety of schools—from the Ivy League to the Big Ten to liberal arts institutions and more—for over twenty years.
With Stacey’s guidance, students learn how to craft essays that rise above the ordinary—essays that reflect their strengths, passions, quirks, motivations, and the intangible qualities no transcript or résumé can capture.
It’s time to get to work and transform your personal story into an essay no one else could write. The kind that gets you noticed–and accepted–by the school of your dreams!
About the Author
Background
Stacey Brook is an accomplished writer and admissions expert who has spent over two decades helping students conceptualize, edit and refine their college essays. During her college years, Stacey discovered she had both a knack for consistently reinventing the creative personal statement and a perverse love of bridging the gap between stressed-out teenagers and their parents. She received her first exposure to the admissions process in the Dean’s Host program at Boston University’s College of Communication, serving for two years as the program’s coordinator. She has a degree in Communications/Public Relations and, fittingly, has always viewed the college essay as an exercise in personal branding.
Expertise
Stacey has since spoken at schools around the world on the subject of the personal statement and has advised thousands of students through the process of composing winning college essays. She currently advises a select number of students each year through College Essay Advisors, and is dispensing her college essay expertise to applicants around the world via her book, The Uncommon College Essay: An Approachable Guide to an Intimidating Process. Stacey’s writing has also been featured in publications including The New Yorker, Teen Vogue, Oprah, Condé Nast Traveler, and more. She lives in New York, NY where she spends most of her spare time eating her way through the city like it’s her (second) job.
College Essay
Stacey’s own college admissions essay involved a contrived The Wizard of Oz metaphor comparing her life journey at 17 to the yellow brick road. Though it successfully secured her admission, in retrospect she kind of wishes she had hired an essay consultant.
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What People Are Saying
“College application essay.” Those three words can inspire terror in teens (and parents alike). The Uncommon College Essay, is a fantastically useful book that will help you overcome those fears and stresses–enabling you to shine. Stacey Brook should be applauded for her ability to take a high-stakes, potentially overwhelming challenge and demystify it, piece-by-piece, illuminating it as the tremendous opportunity it is. The Uncommon College Essay is at once wise and insightful, while remaining compulsively readable, even fun! Brook’s sentences–because they are clear and concise, elegant and entertaining–don’t just tell you what makes a great essay, they show you. And her playful tone makes for a stress-reducing, frequently-inspiring coaching session. This is the book we all wish we had when preparing to apply for college. It should be required reading for anyone beginning this process.
– Jay Phelan PhD, UCLA Department of Life Sciences Core Education, co-author of The Secret Syllabus. A Guide to the Unwritten Rules of College Success
I served on numerous acceptance and scholarship committees for over 30 years at Boston University. The personal essay was often a deciding factor about which qualified applicants were accepted at our highly competitive university. Stacey Brook has impressive experience on advising students about this key aspect of college admission. With that professional background, excellent writing skills and a playful sense of humor, Brook has published a definitive book on the topic. From structure to substance, the book offers prospective college students detailed, step-by-step information on the process of writing an effective personal essay. Along the way, Brook provides invaluable examples of the genre, including examples from her own life experiences. Highly readable and relatable, Brook’s The Uncommon College Essay is now a recommendation on my list of writing resources.
– Dorothy S. Clark, retired writing professor/master lecture and writing program director. Boston University College of Communication
Stacey Brook turns the college-essay gauntlet into a guided treasure hunt. With her four-step Uncommon College Essay Approach—from ‘Backwards Brainstorming’ to ‘Polishing to Perfection’—she shows students (and their parents!) that every lived moment can sparkle on the page. As a mother, I’ve watched her steady guidance turn anxious, uncertain teens into confident, inspired writers whose essays still sound wholly like them—just sharper, braver, and far more memorable. In a world of cookie-cutter templates and AI quick fixes, this book is the next-best thing to having Stacey in your living room, demystifying a process that too often feels opaque and high-stakes.
– Dana Suskind, Professor of Surgery, University of Chicago/parent of Yale and Tufts students
Stacey helped all three of my children turn their scattered ideas into clear, memorable essays written entirely in their own voice. This book contains all her secrets, which helped gain my children admission to Duke and Northwestern, packaged in her witty, engaging style.
– Lisa Landsberg, parent of Duke and Northwestern graduates