You know that admissions officers will not spend more than six or eight minutes on your college application, right? My name is Andy Lockwood. I want to tell you a little bit about part of the application, the part that we get the most questions about, and that is the college essay. So how do you write a good college essay? That's a question I get a lot in our virtual mailbag. Let me answer that in a very short way. So first of all, let's talk about what the essay should not be. Don't worry if your essay is not quote unquote original because that's impossible. Most admissions officers review something like a thousand applications each year. And in that six to eight minutes, they're looking at the essay. They're looking at the transcripts, the recommendation letters, the extracurriculars and so on and so forth because they review a thousand applications. applications each year, and many applications have two or three essays attached to them, chances are that whatever topic you're writing on, they have seen treated before. So it's okay if it's not original. However, the essay does have to be interesting. And what I mean by interesting is it's gotta be revealing. It's also gonna capture their attention. And it's gotta tell something about yourself as if you were doing a college interview. Most colleges don't have admissions interviews anymore. because of these applications that have flooded in, thanks to common application, thanks to test optional policies. So that's why it's important to understand the purpose of the personal essay and how to write a good one. So how do you engage your audience? Well, you open with a first sentence that is the equivalent to a headline in like a tabloid, something that gets their attention. And it might be something along the lines of, you know that admissions officers spend only six to eight minutes reviewing your application. theoretically, should make you want to learn more. If you're still watching this, then I guess it worked, right? But it doesn't have to be some sort of overly dramatic lifetime movie type of opening statement and then a crazy dramatic story. It's okay to go small. You can write about everyday topics. But the point of this essay, the personal statement, is to reveal something about you, maybe a transformation. I used to be like this. Then this thing happened. And then here's what happened next, before and after. Whatever you do, don't make it general and don't fail to offer that insight. Here's another thing, and I'll close with this. Your essay, I'm talking to kids now, needs to be written by you. It's okay if you use ChatGPT to give you a draft or something, but ultimately the essay has to be edited and brainstormed and conceived of by the students. It's gonna sound like the student wrote it. So like I said, it's okay to use ChatGPT for drafting. It's not okay to use MomGPT to write the whole thing. And I certainly wouldn't show it to five different people because when you write by committee, you lose voice. The voice is sort of cliche in college essay writing, but it's an important one because the essay needs to be revealing to the admissions officer, again, in lieu of a college interview. So think about the essay as conversational, as if you were talking to a buddy of yours after class. For older people, it would be as if you're having a conversation at a bar, but for underage people, that's not a great example. And then you clean it up a little bit. So make sure it reads well and it sounds conversational. Here's my final, final tip. After you've drafted it, read it back to yourself. You will hear things that don't quite sound right or things that you want to expand on, and then you can go back and start over again. The best essays are not written. They are rewritten multiple drafts, sometimes four or five times. If you want more help from us, from Lockwood College Prep, we have a summer bootcamp, depending on when you're watching this, that might be timely for you. And we also do one-on-one college advising. So the information for all those programs is on our website, LockwoodCollegePrep.com. Thanks for watching. And I hope you found this to be helpful.
