By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. One of my favorite shows of all time, Breaking Bad, opens with one of the most unforgettable scenes in television. The main character, Walter White, is wildly driving an RV in nothing but a gas mask and his underpants, while his accomplice, Jesse Pinkman, lays slumped in the front passenger..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. Crafting college essays is frequently more an art than a science, and how you approach your writing process should represent your individuality in experience as well as thought. But it’s always nice when you can throw in a framework that takes away the anxiety of the blank page. Fortunately, the..
The essay is one of the most revealing pieces of the college application process. Not only are you expected to bare your soul in 650 words or less, but you’re also offering a window into how you think. Most of you do it subconsciously, which can lead to mixed results. When, however, you become conscious..
By Adam Muri-Rosenthal, Ph.D. Unlike the rest of your application—which is about telling colleges what you’ve done—the personal statement for the Common App is about telling them who you are. That’s a daunting task for anyone, but often what it really comes down to is helping admissions officers understand your personal qualities. For many—dare I..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. Perhaps you’ve heard of ChatGPT. Introduced in November 2022, it has been one of the greatest disruptions to our sense of selves as human beings in history. Its ability to use artificial intelligence (AI) to produce articulate and logical pieces of writing has thrown many people, especially professional writers, into..
By Dr. Adam Muri-Rosenthal, Ph.D. Allow me to begin this post with a vast understatement completely belying its content: writing college essays is hard. As I repeatedly find myself telling students, the college essay is a genre unto itself: peculiar, idiosyncratic, and for most students, entirely novel. It also demands that students produce something exceptional..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. To say that a lot has changed since March 2020 would be an understatement. I’m sitting here typing away on a flight between San Diego and Washington, DC, wearing an N-95 mask, and holding a portable air purifier on my lap. I got to the airport in an Uber that..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. One of my favorite writers is the master of the personal narrative, David Sedaris. He definitely knows how to open a story better than anyone else, but he also connects ideas in unexpected ways, touches on the right details, and makes you genuinely care about what he’s talking about –..
By Nora Lessersohn, A.M. In the past few years, social, political, environmental, financial, and medical crises have made it abundantly clear that one’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or disability status directly affect/s their health, finances, work, education, and ability to live life itself. In response, colleges have started to ask their applicants to..
By Nora Lessersohn, A.M. “It was a ____(adjective)____ and stormy night, and I was ____(adjective)____. My ____(noun)____ asked me if I wanted some ____(noun)____.” Remember MadLibs? The game where you fill in the blanks with adjectives, nouns, and verbs to make a funny story? Well, believe it or not, you can look to this childhood..