Description

Developing an essay writing strategy: (1) Students are provided with a copy of Their Stories Vol I: Inspiring Essays of Students from Challenging Backgrounds, which is a collection of high-quality essays that resulted in the profiled students being offered admission to such selective schools as Amherst, Caltech, Duke, Georgia Tech, Williams, Swarthmore, University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, Vassar, and Northeastern, and to such HBCUs (together with full scholarships) as North Carolina A&T, Claflin, Dillard, Benedict, Spelman College, and Xavier University of Louisiana. Students are to use this text to review the role of a résumé in developing career or college-bound strategies. (2) We require the student to provide a desired college list; scholarships to which the student plans to apply; and to write a narrative essay describing their high school experiences, in which they provide insight into each area reflected on their résumé. (3) We then review the student’s essay; college/scholarship list; and profile across the 3 pillars of scholarship, leadership, and service. This review will be performed within the context of the holistic reviews conducted by college admissions and scholarship reviewers. (4) We recommend an essay writing strategy to highlight the student’s strengths, accomplishments, family/community relationships, and ability to overcome obstacles to contextualize the student’s life experiences and incorporate various non-cognitive variables considered by many college admissions and scholarship reviewers. (5) We provide 3 reviews and 1 round of editing for their 650-word personal statement.

Note: Writing high quality essays is difficult for even the most academically accomplished students. While students may find ChatGPT helpful, AI cannot generate a high quality personal essay based on a student’s unique experiences or reflective of the student’s writing stye, voice, and ability as reflected in course grades and SAT/ACT Writing scores.