Full Description

1. Writing your essay doesn't have to be stressful.
Every fall, thousands of aspiring students just like you spend hours staring into a computer screen, searching for a clever opening line or a life-changing experience. It doesn't have to be that hard!

2. Counselors want to learn about you-and that's all!
A good essay does not need to be a literary masterpiece, or a scholarly treatise worthy of Albert Einstein. The best essays come from high school students being themselves, with all the depth, wit, charm and quirkiness you bring to your daily life.

3. So let your best come through!
College-admission experts Edward B. Fiske and Bruce Hammond give you all the advice you need for an application essay that will open the door of the college of you choice. Fiske Real College Essays That Work includes samples from both great and not-so-great writers, and describes how to take your essay from initial draft to final submission.

Real essays on these topics and more:
o Athletics
o Arts
o Race and cultural experiences
o Personal growth
o Family
o Travel
o Humor

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why Couldn’t I Just Write about
Things That Make Me Happy? -

Part I: Writing a Great Essay -
Chapter 1: What Makes a Great Essay? -
Chapter 2: Rescue from Writer’s Block -
Chapter 3: Crafting a Narrative -

Part II: Real College Essays That Work -
Academics -
Science and Science Fiction -
Hobby or Interest -
Athletics -
The Arts -
Camp Counseling and Community Service -
Racial or Cultural Differences -
Politics and Religion -
A Significant Experience -
Humor -
Family and Relationships -
A Moral Dilemma -
Personal Growth -
Travel -
Why I Love First Choice U. -
Appendix: The Search for an Opening Line -
Acknowledgments -
About the Authors -

Excerpt

1. What Makes a Great Essay?
Mention that you’re writing a college essay and you’ll probably get an earful of advice:

• “Write about your trip to Mexico,” offers your mom. “You can show that you’ve broadened your horizons.”
• “Community service always looks good,” says Dad. “Talk about your work with Habitat for Humanity.”
• “Write something funny,” advises your best friend. “They love essays that make them laugh.”
• “Make yourself stand out,” says your guidance counselor. “In a pile of one thousand essays, yours should be the one they remember.”

If you’re lucky, you won’t hear all of the above—at least not all at once. But the odds are good that you’ll get some of it, particularly the one about making yourself stand out. How, exactly, do you accomplish that one? Have you scaled Mount Everest? Overcome a terminal disease? Saved a toddler from a burning building?
Of course not. Neither have 99.9 percent of the rest of us. The best essays are seldom about a dramatic event or “significant experience” that changes the author’s life. Real people don’t get hit by lightning and suddenly realize that they should live their lives differently. Human development is a step-by-step, day-by-day process that happens almost imperceptibly.

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