College Essays

Welcome to From Carpool to College, a show for parents who are trying to get ahead or just keep their sanity while navigating the college planning landscape. Hey, thanks for joining us today. We're going to talk about the college essay and I am not going to do much talking. Tara. I know she's making a face. It's okay. Well, Tara, you're that expert. You got it. So Tara's going to shed some light. So parents need not be scared. So what do our parents? And our parents are all over the place, not like they are, but they're different age groups, the kids are different grade levels. So we know we have parents who are ambitious and their kids are still in middle school. No judgment, no no judgment, getting ahead of the game. We love it. We have parents whose kids are in high school, ninth, tenth, eleven grade. So Tara's gonna tell us a lot about the essay and hopefully you guys will just get the big picture of what's up. So, Tara, what do our parents need to know about the essay? Well, first of all, when you have a child that is getting ready to either go through the application process or you feel that they're you know, starting to think about it a little bit. The college essay sometimes gets pushed, right, so other things take its place. I like push, like procrastinating, yeah yeah, oh yeah, like put off, like mom, I'll do it later, uh huh. Yeah, it happens. And you know, a college tour whatever. There's other things that take its place because I think that they're easier to get started with. Yeah, conversations with your guidance counselor whatever it may be. So before we even jump into anything, my first piece of advice is start talking about it early. Yeah, because it doesn't have to be evil, something like, oh, we're you know, what do you want to write about? What is what do you think your essays should be about? Just start bringing up those bigger picture items, things like what's your favorite memory, what is something that you think you how do you think you've changed or grown? Just general things, not saying that that's what you're going to write about. That may not be your topic, of course, but it is going to create conversations, right, and that you need to start somewhere, right. But the essay itself shouldn't be a scary thing. It's something that is. Says the English teacher, right, but. It shouldn't be. It's it's an opportunity, that's what it is. That's to me. It is such an opportunity because even when I during my early days, I was never the best test taker, and I always loved the projects or things where I could write to explain what I was trying to say versus stand test, multiple choice things of that nature. So I always look at the essay as a way that you can really kind of shed some light on who you are as a student, as a person, and it's really a place that the college application and everything else, it's the only place where. You can really do that. It's not taken from transcripts, right, So you don't want to write about things that you can find into transcript exactly because they're already there. So you want to explore something new and different, and that's really going to show something unique. So a lot of people in our business call the essay the soul. It brings the soul into the application, and I think that's a really good metaphor. It's a good visual and as you said, we're not writing about things that are blatantly all over our application. We want to give the college admissions counselors a little slice of who we are and are authenticity. So so, in thinking about all of the essays that you've helped students write, is there anyone This is like choosing between children or. Your favorite song. You can't do in your mood exactly, So I'm putting on a spot that's okay, give me an example of just like one of the top essays that stick out and don't read it, but just no, no, no, I mean we could pull it up, but whatever, you know, just give us a give a listeners a little glimpse of exactly what a typical college essay is about. I think examples are going to be good for parents. Yeah. Well. The other thing, too, is there are different types of essays, right, And this one in particular that comes to mind the minute you asked me to pick one is about shoes. Shoes, of course it is. This is This is coming from Tara, who originally applied to what school right out of high school? FI t F I T right, come on, Tara. So when we had the student come to us, she wanted to write about shoes, and I was so excited I couldn't wait to hear it. But I was really kind of nervous because I didn't know where we were going to go with that, and I thought, we have a lot of work cut out for us. I'm not sure how I'm going to break her heart because you can't just write about your favorite shoes. You can't do it. No, But it was much more than that, and she. Oh, wait a minute, Yeah, I write about your favorite shoes if you're like uber metaphorical. Well exactly. But for a sixteen year old, it's tough, tough. It is tough tough. But she did it. She did it, and she wrote about So just to backtrack a little bit, when I meet someone a student that I'm working with for the first time, sometimes Tracy will give me a little bit of background, a little bit of history, and sometimes I go in kind of fresh to the meeting. And this particular student, I didn't know too much about her because I think we were kind of meeting her at the same time, I remember correctly, And so when she said this, I right away because I'm very nosy, you know, being mom teacher and working as a college essay Oh, you're. The doula of college essays. You helped these kids. Birth their essays, so tons of questions, you know, going back and forth, back and forth. And then when she explained her idea and she gave us her draft of how she wanted to write her essay, it was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. So what did she do with it? So I remember this kid, I remember the zoom that we had with the mom and the daughter. Yeah. Yeah, So she wanted to write about shoes because she had over one hundred pairs of shoes and she's she was a little bit on the petite side, right, so she had lots of high heels and different things and they were all for certain events, which then gave us when she wrote about them, like a slice into her the different experiences that she had. So the shoes represented who she was. And then on top of that, the shoes also represented a situation that was going on with her mom at the time, who was suffering from a terrible illness who couldn't walk, and she incorporated that into her essay. And it was so good that she wrote. About that, because that really kind of put a totally different spin on it. Or I don't even want to say spin because that sounds, you know, a little insensitive. That's not really no, I. Know what you mean, but it was a different in all things. We want our different students, right, We want our students and our clients to be authentic, right. So and when they get real, like when they pull that curtain back and it's like, this is my real life. This is not BS, like, this is what I live with every day, and it's very sacred and it's very vulnerable. It's very special. Yeah. Yeah, So it was great. And she wrote about how shoes not only do they represent part of who she is, but they also represented the ways in which she was able to help her mother because her mother was unable to walk. Oh god, and so the shoes were a metaphor for helping her. Oh amazing. Yeah, it was great and it was great, and it tied in so well and it just really showed. Yeah, this student represented her. Yeah, completely sounds awesome. Yeap. So what do you have, Tracy? Oh god, I've probably helped students write. I'm talking thousand. I've been doing this for a long time. I don't know that it's so strange because I don't feel, I don't feel or look as old as I am. But I've been doing this for a long time. I've got thousands of students. I got thousands of students Terrrist. So it's a lot of things. I could think of some that are amazing. My favorite one is this kid Peter, and he was a big Mama luke. He was a football player at a high school that I was the school counselor. I also did like NC DOUBLEA eligibility, so like I worked a lot with the kids who were getting recruited. So this kid was getting recruited for Franklin and Marshall Small Liberal Arts College. D three. He wasn't you know, he's just he was a. C student and best kid. This kid he wrote, and I always get choked up thinking about it. He wrote. So the college essay there's different prompts. So parents, like back in our day, backing our day when many of us parents, our only experience with the college essay is our own experience, and the nineties were. A long time ago. The world is a lot different then, and so were college applications. So today the college essay is written on like a word doc or a Google doc, and the kids cut and paste it and they throw it into a text box on like the last page of their common app and there's like seven different prompts that they can answer. To, and one of a is write about whatever you want. Right, So typically, like you know, the prompts, you know, I don't know why they don't just say write about whatever you want for everything, but they do give They do give a little uh like guidance like guidance, yeah, nudges, and they are helpful. So the prompt, the question he was answering was describe a time where you feel like your childhood ended and your adulthood started. And he wrote about how he lived. So where he lived in Essex County in Jersey. He lived along the floodplain of the Passaic River. And we had one of these superstorms. It wasn't I don't know if it was. It wasn't Sandy. It was like after Sandy hurricane. For those of you who are not Jersey, well, you know her. Everyone knows Hurricane Sandy. Right, does everyone Hurricane Sandy? I hope. So it was disaster. It was a freaking disaster anyway. So there are a lot of places in our whole country, you know, living on a flood plain of a river. But in the high school district I was working at, a lot of kids were affected by the Oh yeah, it was Hurricane Sandy. It was by heavy rainfalls whatever. So he wrote about a time that it was Hurricane Sandy and his basement, which was his man cave. He had his Xbox down there, he had his weightlifting bench on one side of the basement. The other side the parents like subdivided to make a space for his grandmother who was in hospice. Right, so grandma is down there on one side of the basement and all her stuff. They evacuate her. He goes downstairs to try to like like water is now spilling weeping through the walls, and he goes downstairs. This is his essay he talks about. He starts it off with I opened the basement door and saw a foot of water quickly climbing and all all of my video games and all my stuff from my man cave floating in the floodwater from the Passaic River. And then he get chocked up. I do it all the time. This is so bad. He talks about how he had to look. He looked at his grandmother's stuff and he decided to take his grandmother's stuff, like, look, this is ridiculous, him crying, Okay, okay, but this is like such a good essay. So he picks up the stuff that all Blanco's grandmother and he let all his man cave stuff just stay. Just stay in front of way. How awesome was that? And let me tell you, it wasn't like a a high brow essay. It was like it was very simple grammar, like if you ran it through the program, like so Tarahn I and it were teachers, so we could run. You can do this on Microsoft on word you can find out the grade level. You can just scan it and hit tools and do grade level. Like the grade level that he wrote was probably like tenth grade. Grade level wasn't like rocket science. It was so beautifully done that But but what a reat story. Yeah that's my favorite. Yeah that's really that's a big one. Yeah, that is a big one. It is a big one. But not everyone so so okay, wonderful story. You're crying over here. I love it so fat and not to sound insensitive or to like bring you back to reality. But not everyone has those experiences, I know. So that's where sometimes we run into a little bit of like some tension, right, because the students sometimes feel like they have to experience that, right, and it doesn't have some kind of trauma. Listen, I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking, and you just step away from the topic of COVID. We can't go there. Oh no, there's actually a whole separate section. You can't go there. No, we can't go there. So, yes, you've been through it and you were worried if you had toilet paper, But we can't go through that anymore because, if you know, everybody wrote about that right after, and it's just nobody wants to read about that now. Everyone wrote about it so much that the common app created a new section that says, if you were affected by the COVID nineteen pandemic in a way that was like profound and you know, life changing, please write about it here. And that's for the extreme cases like you've asked a parent, yeah you were homeless or I don't know, but we were all freaked out and our lives turned upside down. Yeah, so that's for sure. Not all the essays that I'm going to share with you. The topics are as wonderful as PiZZ Okay, okay, So I had one just two years ago, and it was like when the kid said, it's I'm like, what are you going to write about and he's like, oh, I don't know. I think maybe like baking cookies with my brother. I'm like, okay, so okay, maybe we're gonna be metaphorical. So he sends me, he shares the doc with me, and basically it's about burnt cookies and piggyback rides. I think that's the name of what he that's like a title he gave it, and they don't have to have a title, but that's what he titled it. I'm just like, oh boy, Well it was a very raw at first, but we worked with it and basically he talked about giving his developed. I'm not gonna cry, No, I'm not. Okay, wait, there's a trick if you like blow out. My friend taught me this, who was a guidance counselor who like, when we're in like really dicey counseling sessions and we don't want to cry, we like blow out hang on. Okay, So his little brother who's developmentally delayed, he would give him piggyback rides, and he ended up using his essay to talk about have like the burnt cookies that they made one day and they were playing together he lost track of time. But how that was a metaphor that like, hey, life's not perfect. It's about the experiences and you're gonna oh no, you're gonna burn cookies. But right, So he ended up getting into Princeton. Oh he didn't go though, no way, no, he didn't go. I know he didn't. He ended up going to Rutgers Pharmacy okay school, and they gave him a full ride, like the five year program. So yeah, right interesting. A couple more really fast. I had a kid just this year wrote about, oh god, how he plays the piano and he hates it. His parents always made him play it for years, and his parents made him go to a Senior citizen center and played the piano and he went begrudgingly, and then he says while he was playing, he was like angry. He was like all pissed off, and he said he talks about his bad attitude. Yeah, he's like, he goes and he goes into it. He's like, oh, so angry at my parents. I resent having to do this. So he then talks about he goes into going in there and just playing and no one, there's no one there, and then all of a sudden they start coming in and these like these little old gerry at chicks from the Senior Citizen Center. It was like it was like a nursing home and they're all coming in and he's watching their faces and he's seeing how music connects people. Oh it's good. That's really good. I know. He ends up and he's another one. He got accepted to the University of Chicago, but he ended up. Where's he going. I think he's going to Stevens Institute. Oh my gosh, we had do you did you share this client with me? I don't think you did. I had a little wise ass student. He was awesome. He's one of my my, my son's friends. And he wrote his essay about parking in the teachers law illegally. Oh funny hm, But see like a simple thing, that's what I mean. Right, And he ended up getting detention, his first attention in his life. But he talked out how he made it about risk taking. When we think about our kids and the stupid things they do and the bad decisions they make, like when my son Joey decided to steal a shopping cart and all the police surrounded him and he almost got arrested. Those are those are essays? Are those teachable moments? Yeah, they really are? Those are the essays? Yeah, absolutely, and. Even over the simplest thing, but it just shows something about the kid. Right exactly about the student. You want to just show that authenticity and I learned something or I'm good at something and growth. Yeah yeah, so yeah, those are my those are my faves. I mean, I had a kid this year who wrote about his I wrote down his title. His title first essay was being smart and spectromy Oh and he's on the spectrum and he is very high functioning and loves talking about his neurodivergence. And it's tough because we don't want the kids. You know, their identity formation is very amplified during these years, and it's easy to talk about our dyslexia. It's easy to talk about our. Central auditory processing disorder, it's easy to talk about our neurodivergence, our tuat's our ADHD. But he spoke about it, and we don't want to just be that like, you know, you have ADHD, you are not ADHD. So we have to be careful when we write about these things, as you know that we're not just saying like I am x or Y, this is not how I'm to find So he wrote about it and it wasn't wasn't really that good. Frankly, it wasn't the best. It wasn't very interesting. Right, and he's gone to GW. Oh wow, it was his heart amazing, got onto Villanova, Stevens, Rutgers and GW. Where else I can't remember, but yeah, he's going to GW. So again, they don't have to be They're not the next Pulitzer Prize. That's it, right, that's it. It's a story. It's meant to show something. I guess that's what we always try to talk about, is why, right, Why and what's the purpose right of this? Obviously, for the most part it's a requirement. There are some schools that are actually essay optional, yeah there are, but it's an opportunity, right, And I think that the why is it's a way for them just showcase who they are, right and be able to explain that that you can't really do through SAT scores. Right, because there're so much more now. I'm seeing a lot of students and my professor friends talk about this too, and college admissions reps. Talk about it. In a lot of workshops about the use of AI. Oh yeah, yeah, So what do you want parents to know about the use of AI when it comes to the college essay or just you know, writing on college applications in general too, because there's more than the writing on a college application in many cases or supplemental essays that sneak up on you and you have to demonstrate interests like why us, why do you want to go to Franklin and Marshall? Tell us why you want to go to Muhlenberg, Why this? So? Why do you want to study how to train animals? Whatever? So? What's up with the AI so much? But I think three key things to remember. Number one, that it's expected that you may use AI when you're going into those like final stages of revision in more of a way to catch mechanics, right, grammar issues, spelling issues, maybe a little bit of the organization. What's that app? Is it grammarly? Grammarly? Yeahah, Grammarly is a form of AI. Yeah it is. So. Grammarly can actually interface with the common app and you'll see it in the little textbox because it's in the bottom right corner. It'll be like green or like grammarly picked up such and such. So yeah, that's yeah, that's totally prevalent. Okay, yeah, so definitely for mechanics. The next point about AI is to just say, like it's important that you, as a parent and also the student do research for whatever schools that they're thinking of applying to, because some schools do have very specific AI policies and it gives exactly what you can and can't use it for. So you kind of don't want to blow your chance to get into a school because you decided that you wanted to, you know, have AI give you the draft of an essay, right, yeah, we don't want to do it. We're going to have some professor friends of mine in and I want to talk to them about that too, because they're seeing a huge challenge. I almost said problem. It is a problem with the overuse of AI and professors and teachers. We do have the software to scan and it can tell us exactly what AI, what it is, where it is, and they could even find it on the web, not as like plagiarism. They can, but the AI, they'll give you a percentage I think. Right, yeah, yeah, but I don't think that it's something that you need to lock up about and say no, absolutely not. I think for those revisions, certainly the students should revise it, but it doesn't help to run it through a program that can help as well. Oh totally. And because if you're looking at it over and over and over and over again, there might be something that you miss. Oh yeah, I did a I attended a workshop with either Georgia Tech or University of Georgia and that the title was using AI in the college application process. And they talked about the essay and they said the same exactly what you're saying, Like, we anticipate our students using we know students using AI. Yeah, and we know that they're going to run an essay in some way, shape or form through it. However, they can tell when it's AI, and they expect students to modify that skeletal framework to make sure it reflects them authentically. So yeah, they know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do well because they use it. Yeah. Right, The colleges are using AI to scan your application, So there's that. That's that's true, Yeah, for sure. So I think that just to give parents some takeaways. So I'm a parent of a junior, I know your kids already are through and they're accepted into those wonderful schools. But being a parent of someone who is in the process of everything, I always like to have, well, what can I do? Right, Because we talked about revision. It's used for policies, policies, and also to make sure that you're authentic. Oh yeah, yeah, authentic right. So so so as far as parents go, what they can do to kind of help out right and say, you know, we did that one episode on Hands On, Hands Off, So you have to walk that fine line of how much support you want to give. But I think starting off with having a conversation is great and just make it about on your car ride to wherever you're headed, right, and just start to talk. Carpool the carpool, that's. Right, that's right, And you know, sometimes something can come up and you might hint, oh, this might be your college essay, this could be something great that you could write about, or maybe that's too much for your child, So you have to kind of know, but definitely think, you know, bring up some memories, think about you know, just having those conversations is important. You can certainly work with them on brainstorming ideas and also drafts and get really kind of helpful in that way. But it doesn't have to go that far either. And they do have that junior assignment right at the end of their junior year where they are required to usually write something yeah, and sometimes that is completely not really workable as a college essay, and sometimes it's something yes, sometimes it's something. Tell them also create a file of leftovers. I always call them the leftovers because it might not be a full college essay, but it might get them thinking about something that turns into their essay. And if not, maybe it'll be a supplemental and if not, maybe it's some other assignment. But don't throw out your writing, don't get rid of it, keep it in a leftover pile because you never know leftover file of when it can be used. Oh right, because the kids all have the Google drives from ninth, tenth, eleventh grade, right, they can go back and look at their grades. Steah, that is a great idea and it's hard to I'm just thinking about my own experience with Joey and Alex and it just depends on their mood too, yes, because if they're in a stinky mood like forget it. I don't even want to talk to them. I don't want to look at them, right, But our. Kids don't listen to us, right, And that's why Tarat and I and we have our small practice. We end up telling our clients the same things that parents are telling them, but they listen to us because we're an outside third party. Yeah, so, Terry, you work with a lot of kids on the essay process. What is your process if you could just pull back the curtain a little bit, don't give away your secret saws because you are the essay whisperer. However, what do you do with the kids? Well, again, back to the fact that I'm very nosy, right, So I'm when I originally meet the student, I have lots of questions. We can't even open a document or start anything until I know a little bit more about them, right, and then we go from there. So it depends. Then they can show me if they have certain drafts or whatever. But sometimes they come with nothing and sometimes. Those are the best essays. And then sometimes they come with something and you know, we can work to really shape it into a great essay. But it's all about having them dig deeper because I think that a lot us stuff that they're looking at looks just like everyday things and everyday situations, but they're actually some of those things are gems, right and they they're hidden in there, and it's just having someone to kind of point them out and say, well, do you think that this might show something about who you are? You know, what you're about, what. Your passions are, your interests, and and then go from there. And I would say, the other thing that comes up a lot is, oh, I heard you can't write about this or write about that. I don't know that I agree with that fully. I think that you can write about anything you want to write about as long as you. Have a really really good way to say it, right. So, but then you know, we go through back and forth and sometimes students need a little bit more handholding than others, and sometimes they know what they need to do and they're on it and we before you know it, have a final product. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. Well, thank you Terr for being our resident expert essay whisperer essay do my favorite thing I wish. I can't wait till we go to video because Taris will like so big right now, it is her thing. And it's funny when she works with clients, she'll text me, oh my gosh, I just had the best i'll have moment with a kid. It was the best. Can I call you? Then she'll call me and she's like, oh my gosh. And it goes to the whole process and it is great. It is the witnessing the self discovery. It is really a special, a special thing. And parents, sometimes your kids just won't let you in and that's just that's completely developmentally appropriate. It has nothing to do with you. They are pushing away, and unfortunately the timing sucks because this is when they do need us as parents. And sometimes it does help to make sure they're doing their essay at school for their junior their junior year English class project, or getting you know, getting an outside consultant just to kind of just jostle them alt a little bit into thinking about how they're going to express themselves. So thank you Tara, so much. Thank you, We appreciate you, and thanks for tuning in to from Carpool to College. I'm Tracy Amadeo, Tara Harritz, and we'll see you next time. We won't see you, we'll hear you. You'll hear us. Yeah, that's it, thanks Chris. Oh yeah, Chris, go back at eighteen fifty and take out. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, we'd love for you to be a part of our growing community. Please share and follow our show. For those who want to support us further, join our Patreon site. Your support helps us create high quality content and great episodes. Plus, our Patreon members get exclusive perks like bonus episodes, early access, and behind the scenes content that we think you're just going to love. And now for some legal stuff. The content of this podcast is for informational and educational entertainment purposes only and is provided as is, with no guarantee of accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or outcomes. I could keep. Going, but I will spare you, and I will post this entire legal disclaimer on our website www. Dot Academic MENTORINGLLC dot com under podcast. Tara and I are so glad you joined us today on from carpool to College. See you next time. Something like that. Yeah, done's good. Okay, Chris, make that pretty please? Pretty please? Make it pretty please.