Your friends are lovely. Please ignore them.
If you’re a junior, and especially if you’re a senior, it’s hard to get away from discussions about the college application process. This can be reassuring, right? You’re all in it together: you, your friends, your parents, your friends’ parents, your grandparents, your parents’ friends, friends of friends…
You get it. Everyone has something to say about the process, and each one of those very well-intentioned people has the potential to stress you out. But remember, this time is about you. It’s about exploring and applying to colleges that are the right fit for you and that make sense for your family. So guess what? You have permission to tune those voices out.
Here’s how to identify and manage your reactions to the voices that aren’t helping you to stay calm and focused:
The Deadline Announcer. You know this person. She is your friend. She’s smart and keeps a paper calendar and is always on top of things. So unsurprisingly, every time you see her in the cafeteria, she’s listing deadlines like a walking, talking Common App. “SAT registration is September 10...Early Decision is November 1st...Regular decision for Boston College is January 1st…” And it can send you into a tailspin of worry if you’re not careful.
How to deal: Set reminders on your calendar for important due dates, but keep in mind that there are really only a few important ones: early decision, early action, and regular decision. If you’re planning on taking the SAT, the College Board has all the information you need about when to take it and where. So when the Deadline Announcer gets going, just let her go. It’s making her feel better. The dates don’t change, and you already know what they are.
The Snooper. The Snooper has two motivations: to find out where everyone is applying to college and to announce the top schools that he is applying to. “I’m applying early decision to Brown, but if I don’t get in, I’m applying to Bowdoin and Middlebury. William and Mary is my safety school. Where are you applying?”
How to deal: remember, students can apply anywhere they choose, and even the best high school students in the country will get rejected from some schools. The Snooper might get rejected from William and Mary and get into Brown. But here’s the other thing: he may not be applying to any of these schools. He might just be feeling pressure from his parents, or he may not have done much research on great schools that aren’t those brand names we’ve all heard of. Give him a “that’s great for you” followed by, “I’m still deciding.” Because even if he’s your best friend, you don’t have to tell him or anyone where you apply to college. Part of becoming an adult is learning what you should share and what’s just for you. The college decision? That’s all yours.
The Personal Essay Expert: This friend is trying to help. Truly. They’ve worked with a tutor or obsessively Googled successful college essays (don’t do this!). “It shouldn’t be about your dog, your sports career, or your grandmother… It can’t mention Covid...It can’t be about personal trauma....It has to be about personal hardship...It has to have a metaphor...It cannot have any grammar mistakes…”
How to deal: This is a hard one. Everyone has something to say about the personal essay, including parents, coaches, and other people who know you well and want you to get into the college of your dreams. But keep this in mind: the personal essay is called “personal” for a reason. It’s supposed to reveal who you are to admissions readers. You, the person with a good sense of humor. You, who drove your little brother to school every day this year. You, who raises chickens in your yard. You, who taught yourself to knit. You, who will be an amazing member of the college community.
Your personal essay is personal to you. Keep it that way.
The Enthusiastic Alumni: this might be a cousin, parent, or family friend. This person loved their college so much they cannot even conceive of why you’d want to go anywhere else. “Northeastern was the best four years of my life. You really should apply. No place can give you that kind of career prep, and in the middle of Boston! You can’t beat it!”
How to deal: Nod. Smile. Say, “I haven’t checked it out (even if you have) but I will.” The best thing you can do is appreciate that kind of enthusiasm and try to find a school that makes you feel that same way.
The Freelance College Counselor: This final one is difficult because everyone wants to help you find a college once they find out you’re in the search process. And these people can sometimes be helpful early on when you’re exploring potential schools. But once you’ve narrowed your list down, these are the voices that can make you second guess yourself, leaving you to wonder if there’s some stone you forgot to turn over, some perfect school you haven’t explored.
How to deal: Take a deep breath and have some confidence in yourself. If you began the process of exploring colleges during junior year, have been working with your guidance counselor or professional counselor, and have narrowed down your list according to region, size, culture, and likelihood to be accepted, your list is just right. For each of the 4,000 colleges in the U.S, there is someone who knows someone who had a good experience there. You cannot climb down every rabbit hole. By the time you reach September of senior year, you need the confidence to say, “I’ve done the research and I have the right list.”
At May First, we’re not just here to help you build your list and write your personal essay. We’re here to give you the confidence to say, “I’ve got this!” Send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com or call (617.851.9975) and let’s get started.
Activities!
For many students, the Activities section of the Common App feels pretty high stakes. And it’s true, admissions officers do invest time in reviewing your activities to help give them a more clear sense of who you are outside the classroom and how you’ll contribute to the college community.
But as with most things we talk about in our blogs, the activities list shouldn’t be cause for stress. Instead, see it as an opportunity to introduce yourself in a cool way: by giving them a peek into your actual life.
Overview
The Common App allows you to list up to ten activities, ranked in order of their importance to you, from among the following categories:
Arts or music
Clubs
Community engagement
Family responsibilities
Hobbies
Sports
Work or volunteering
Other experiences that have been meaningful to you
In other words, whatever your interests are, the Common App has a place for them. And for each activity, there are 9 fields where you can provide some detail:
Activity type (this is a drop down menu, so easy enough);
Position/Leadership description (no more than 50 words);
Organization Name (no more than 100 words);
A description of the activity, including what you accomplished and any recognition you received (no more than 150 words);
Participation grade levels (check box: 9th grade, 10th grade, etc);
Timing of participation (during school year, all year, etc);
Hours spent per week;
Weeks spent per year;
8. Indication of whether you plan to continue the activity in college (yes/no).
If you’re like my own kids, this list can be anxiety producing. How should you rank them? What if the thing you care about most makes you look boring or selfish? Here are some ways to reframe some common worries:
I only do theater.
Maybe...but we bet there’s more to it than that. You may be involved in theater in your high school and in a summer program (2 different activities!). Maybe you mentor younger theater students (and, if you love theater and are a sophomore or junior, you might want to think about it). Maybe one of your hobbies is going to see one professional theater performance a year. These are all activities that tell a story about who you are. But don’t forget about the activities you engage in outside of theater. You may be an avid reader or work in a coffee shop or care for an elderly relative in your home. These help to round out an admissions counselor’s understanding of who you are.
I do too many activities to list.
There are worse problems to have! When you’re a person engaged in a lot of activities, you first want to write them all out in a separate document. Next, group them by type so that you can think about the relationships among your activities, then rank them within those smaller groups. You’ll begin to get a picture of which are the most meaningful to you, and you can narrow the list from there.
Who has time for activities?
If you’ve spent most of your high school years focused on academics or maybe an after school job, don’t worry. You still have room to develop a meaningful list. This is where the broader categories come into play: Family responsibilities, Hobbies, Work, and Other experiences that have been meaningful to you.
Students with family and work responsibilities have a great opportunity to demonstrate that they are able to balance school with other demands. Students with interesting hobbies (kayaking, video game playing, D&D, running, traveling) can use the activities list to show they will be unique members of the college community.
How am I supposed to rank my activities?
Ranking is probably the most tricky part of the activities list, but it’s manageable if you approach it intentionally and honestly. Of course, your volunteer work seems like it should come first, but if you spend 10 hours a week on a TikTok account devoted to cake-making, guess what? Cake-making comes first. And that account says something meaningful about you: that you’re creative, tech savvy, committed, and that you will definitely be good roommate material!
We’d love to help you with everything from your activities list to college list building. Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s get started!
Using your voice.
In the blog post Let’s talk about grammar! I counseled students to “Talk like you!” when it comes to writing the Personal Statement. Here’s a little more on what that means.
“Never use the first person in a formal essay.”
Sound familiar? In my 20+ years as a college professor, I’ve heard hundreds of first-year students repeat this common rule of thumb.
The problem is that it’s not really a rule. In fact, there will be many times in your college and professional careers when writing in the first person is acceptable and necessary. Still, many high school students are told not to as a way to prevent them from slipping into informal language and to help them sound more authoritative.
What often happens as a result is that students lose trust in their own voices. They begin to write in another voice altogether, one they imagine their teachers or professors want to hear.
I call this The Newscaster Voice.
The Newscaster Voice is not yours, but it’s something you’ve kind of heard before. The Newscaster Voice uses unnecessarily complicated words. The Newscaster Voice will never use one word when five are available. The Newscaster Voice is fussy and formal, and when students use it in their writing, essays inevitably become what is called stilted, which means stiff or unnatural.
I’ve spent a lot of my career convincing students that their voices are worth hearing, and this is especially true when it comes to the Common App Personal Statement. My advice to students is this: your writing should sound like you. Not you hanging out with your friends, but a more cleaned up version of you.
So how do you do that?
Use words you know. This is not the time to bust out the thesaurus. Even if you use the right word in the right context, you might choose one that’s out of fashion or too formal for someone your age, and this can be jarring for readers.
Avoid turns of phrase that you don’t use in real life. Same advice as above. Some phrases that sound like they should be part of The Newscaster Voice’s repertoire are actually tricky on the page. In which? Of which? To which? These phrases have three different meanings. Unless you use them regularly in your writing, skip it ...which brings me to a question I ask students all the time when they’ve written something a little confusing...
How would you say this? Trust yourself. You communicate pretty well. Write it the way you’d say it out loud. You can clean it up later.
Tell it like it is. Ask yourself, did I really feel like that? Was that my genuine reaction? Sometimes students exaggerate their responses to situations and events. Did you gasp? Really? Are you a gasper? Or did you freeze? Did you clench your jaw? Do you not remember? This is your story. Be honest with yourself and with your audience.
The best thing you can do in your Personal Statement is be honest. That means dropping The Newscaster Voice and being you. It’s who the admissions officers want to learn about, and as we’ve told you before, you’re kind of a big deal.
Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let us help you find your voice.
Let’s talk about grammar!
Really? You read that and you’re still here? Okay…
I love grammar. A lot. I taught my first college class when I was 25-years-old. I was scared. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew grammar. Grammar was a concrete set of rules that no one could mess with. I may not have known how to make students better writers, but I could make them better grammarians, and no one could argue that I was messing that up.
I wasn’t exactly the best teacher back then.
The truth is, most people don’t know their misplaced modifiers from their split infinitives, and this includes college admissions readers. Still, most students beginning their personal essays get hung up on essay format and grammar, when really these are the finishing details. The things to give attention to at the end.
Remember, admissions officers already have your grades, test scores, and transcripts. They know what kind of student you are. They’re not judging your ability to write a perfect essay. They’re trying to get a better understanding of what kind of person you are and how you’ll fit into their college community.
Your application details reflect you, the student. Your personal essay reflects you, the human, and most humans aren’t grammar experts, so relax. Don’t let the technical stuff get in the way of your ability to tell a great story about who you are.
Some tips for pushing past writing anxiety:
Don’t think about grammar and structure. At least not in the first few drafts. The most important thing is for you to get things out of your head, and worrying about technical stuff is putting the cart before the horse.
Talk like you. Ever had a teacher say you shouldn’t write the way you talk? What they probably meant was, write like a classier version of you. You with a suit on. You without cursing or saying “like.” But of course you should write the way you talk because you talk pretty good -- I mean well. You’re applying to college, aren’t you?! Most importantly, as a college student and later, a professional, you will find that your professors, clients, bosses, and colleagues expect your authentic voice, both in person and on paper.
Be you. Always.
Read it aloud. You may not be a grammar expert, but you are exposed to a lot of speech and writing that adhere to the basic principles of good grammar. In fact, when you speak, you probably adhere to those principles too, so when you hear something that sounds off, weird, or wrong, it probably is. If your own work trips you up, stop and change it, or maybe circle it and come back to it later. Better yet, read it out loud to a parent or a friend. They can help identify things that sound awkward and help you brainstorm solutions.
It’s easier to hear a grammar mistake than to see it.
Forget the 5 paragraph essay. It’s a great tool for elementary and high school writers, but it’s not useful for an essay like this. The personal essay is just that -- personal. Think about it like a conversation between you and someone who wants to get to know you better. Tell them a story about yourself that helps them get there. It doesn’t require a thesis statement and three distinct details in three distinct paragraphs. It requires something honest, specific, and representative of the awesome person you are.
We’d love to help you with all the stages of the personal statement. Email us at info@yourmayfirst.com or give us a call (617.851.9975) and let’s chat.