Hey guys, my name is Gabe Gladstein
and I am the head of product development
at Crimson Education.
Today, I'm gonna be sharing a five tips
on how to approach application essays.
Limitless books have been written on this subject
more than you could ever possibly read
and trying to figure out what the best advice
or what the best tips are, can be really difficult.
So my goal today is to boil the essential things
you need to know into five critical tips
that will help you to crush your essays.
Tip number one, the 3-step experience format.
So when you're approaching the difficult task of outlining
your common app essay and trying to decide
what topic you're going to write on,
it might be a good idea to use a tried and true format
that we rely on at Crimson a lot.
And we call it the three step experience format.
So what you do is you ask yourself these three questions
and then you bullet point the answers.
The first question is what is an experience in your life
that matters to you?
That's meaningful to you?
It can be from any point in your life.
If it's in the last three to four years,
that might be ideal.
You'll have the most recent memories of it.
It'll seem the most relevant
but truly it can be from any time.
So what is the experience?
Describe that experience, give it a couple of bullet points.
What happened, who was involved in the experience?
Who did you talk to?
Second question is what did you learn from that experience?
To bullet point out, What are the things
that you took away from the experience
And how did you take them away?
So what happened during the experience
that led you to learn these lessons?
And then number three, why do those lessons matter to you?
What difference do they make in your life?
To who you are now, and who you aspire to be in the future.
If you answer all those questions
and bullet point out the answers,
you should have a very good outline for common app essay.
Tip number two, prioritizing insights.
So in tip number one, we talked about choosing an experience
that's meaningful to you.
Now, tip number two I'm gonna tell you why
the experience itself matters less than the lessons
that you take away from it.
So admissions officers don't care a ton if you've had
an incredibly traveled life.
If you've gone around the world
and you've experienced a lot of things
or if you've stayed at home and experienced things there.
They don't care what the experience is.
They care what you've taken away.
So the goal for you is to prioritize the insights
that you take away from the experience.
That how you talk about those in the common app essay.
One of the best essays that I've ever read
was about a student's field trip to a museum
and how the objects and things that he saw in the museum
actually kinda made him realize things
about his own culturally bifurcated identity.
It was amazingly insightful essay from what was really
just like a very simple experience that he had this one day.
So again, the key is to think about the insights,
the takeaways.
Tip number three, understanding insight.
So what is insight?
We talked about how important it is in tip number two
but how do you actually go about the process of reflecting
on an experience you've had in a common app essay?
We have a method for that.
The first thing to do is to ask yourself the question
how am I different now than I was before the experience?
In particular how am I a better person
or a more interesting person
or someone with different goals?
How am I different?
That's the fundamental question.
And then the second question and key to insight
is understanding how the steps you took along the way,
and especially the mistakes you made along the way
contributed to those changes.
So one of the things that we look to emphasize in essays
is how did a student's own miscalculations
or mistakes actually help them learn about themselves
and become a better person because the the capacity
to reflect on things that you've done wrong in the past,
that actually helped you learn.
Really it shows kind of a an intellectual curiosity,
a dedication a personal growth
that admissions officers really admire.
One thing I wanna add on that, when you're going about
the process of reflecting on an experience in an essay,
don't pretend in the essay like you've learned everything
that there is to know about that particular subject
even if that subject is yourself.
You don't need to act in the essay as though
you figured everything out, you are a finished person
and you're gonna be this way for the rest of your life.
In fact, admissions officers want to see that you understand
that college and other experiences are going to change you.
And you're open to that change.
You're open to learning more about yourself.
You're open to becoming a better version of yourself.
So one of the things that you might want to emphasize
in your essay is ongoing struggle or your challenge
to continue becoming the best version of yourself.
Tip number four, preparing for your why school,
supplementary essays.
So everyone always wonders how do I write
a why this school essay?
Why Harvard? Why Columbia?
Whatever it is.
How do I write it in a way that actually stands out?
Everyone's gonna talk about New York.
If it's Columbia everyone's going to talk about
the community at Harvard.
Everyone's, you know Harvard yard,
everyone's gonna mention the same thing.
So how do I actually stand out in that essay?
And one of the ways that people often don't realize is right
at their fingertips is actually interacting
with people on those campuses before you even get there.
Who do you have access to? Try professors?
Their contact information is listed on college websites.
It's all open to the public.
You can reach out to a professor any time.
You might be wondering, oh, what do I I say to them.
Try looking up a professor who has written or researched
something that is in your interest area,
read something they've written and write them an email
asking them about it, have an interaction with them.
You'd be surprised how many people actually in college
don't reach out to their professors.
So you have an incredible opportunity here
to develop a relationship and to actually
have a unique experience with somebody
on a particular campus that you can then later write
about in your why school essay.
It'll help you stand out.
Tip number five, writing about your extracurriculars.
So there are always going to be supplementary questions
on your college applications that ask you
to talk a little more in depth about how you spent your time
outside of school, or inside of school, but in school clubs,
things like that over the past few years.
And one thing that students are always wondering
is how do I distinguish what I talk about in those essays
from my activity list, which is in the common app,
you list those 10 activities that you participated in.
How do I actually go into more depth?
And so one of the answers that we encourage students
to pursue is drawing thematic threads
through their extracurricular profile.
And so obviously, if you actually did have a thematic thread
that kind of guided how you chose to spend your time
that would help.
But even if you don't, there are ways to connect activities.
For example, new, if you taught music at your church
once a week, and you also created an app at your school
that listed school events,
the common thematic thread may be education.
So you can kinda start to help college admissions officers
understand that you had this kind of driving force behind
the decisions you made, that choice you made
for your extracurriculars while you were in high school,
which helps your activities to seem less like
kind of a random list of resume items
and more like an intentional kind of motivated,
specific, unique thing to you.
Something that actually is an expression of who you are.
And that's kinda what you wanna develop
in those extracurricular supplementary essays.
Thank you guys for watching.
This has been my five essential common app
and supplementary essay tips.
I know writing these essays can be really difficult.
If you need more help, more personalized attention
on your essays, please check us out @crimsoneducation.org.
Can work with folks like me
and get that personalized guidance.
It will really help you crush your college applications.
In the meantime make sure to like and subscribe
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