Common Application Summer 2022 Refresh and Rollover

Common Application Summer 2022 Refresh and Rollover

By Brittany MaschalJun 30, 2022

Each year on August 1, Common App launches the refreshed application with updated information, including any new questions and new colleges. Students will need to sign in and refresh their Common App accounts for the new cycle. 

Many colleges change their questions from year to year, so if students started working on responses to college-specific questions, they will be deleted. 

For more details about how account rollover works, be sure to reference these Solutions Center articles for first-year and transfer students, as well as tips located in the CA application guide.

Mark your calendars for the system refresh dates:

  • The first-year application will close to applicants and recommenders at 5 pm ET on July 28, 2022.
  • The transfer application will close to applicants and recommenders at 5 pm ET on July 29, 2022.

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The Purpose of & How to Tackle College Specific Essays (Supplemental Essays)

The Purpose of & How to Tackle College Specific Essays (Supplemental Essays)

By BMC BloggerJun 21, 2022

The supplemental essays (or “supps” as we call them) are a chance for you to “supplement” your personal statement (aka the Common App essay) with more information about who you are and what makes you tick. Although many supps ask you to write about seemingly straightforward topics, like your extracurriculars or academics, they are not merely an opportunity to rehash your résumé or the activities section of the Common Application. They are, like the personal statement, an opportunity to tell another deeply personal story—not to brag about your brag-worthy accomplishments. Remember: it is stories, not accomplishments, that will make your application memorable.

For your essay to count as a story, it needs to tell a narrative that charts personal progress and change. Maybe your résumé is full of community service, and though you love it now, when you started, it felt like a chore. Tell that story. Maybe you played piano for ten years only to quit in tenth grade so you could devote more time to your real passion—computer science. Tell that story. Maybe you founded a club, and no one came to the first meeting, but you decided to keep going, and now you have a small but devoted core group. Tell. That. Story. In other words: Tell the unvarnished true story, even if that story isn’t neat or pretty. Those are the best stories!

Although supps present a valuable opportunity to make yourself even more memorable to your favorite schools, they also present a daunting amount of work: the majority of schools require at least one supplemental essay, and some, like MIT and Wake Forest, ask you to complete five or more. Many students we work with end up having to complete, on average, ten to fifteen sets of supps, or anywhere from eight to twenty additional essays. This is an insane amount of writing, and it can seem especially challenging because the prompts for these essays appear to vary greatly from school to school.

Don’t be daunted. You don’t have to write twenty unique essays!

Over the years, we have identified four types of essays that admissions officers most commonly look for. The students we work with write, on average, these four essays that they are then able to adapt and repurpose for different word counts and prompts.  They are:

  • Academic and Intellectual Interests
  • Community and Identity
  • Creativity
  • Impact and Influence

And following our method, you can do this too! In The Complete College Essay Handbook, we provide:

  • An overview of the type, with writing advice
  • Sample essays to show you how it’s done at different word limits
  • Both obvious and less-obvious prompts, so you can get a sense of the ways colleges phrase each question
  • A brief brainstorming questionnaire targeted to that type

We also show you how to adapt your essays for higher or lower word limits and how to repurpose your essays for the few prompts that fall outside of the four types. Using our methods, you’ll be able to maximize your time by writing fewer, but more effective and widely applicable, supplemental essays.

Get a copy today (paperback or ebook option), or if you are interested in working with us 1:1, reach out via email!

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Volunteer Opportunity – Support Ukrainian Youth

Volunteer Opportunity – Support Ukrainian Youth

By Brittany MaschalJun 13, 2022

Volunteer Opportunity!

ENGin is a nonprofit organization that pairs Ukrainian youth with English speakers for free online conversation practice and cross-cultural connection. They work with students aged 13-35 and volunteers aged 14+.

ENGin pairs English learners with volunteers from around the world to conduct weekly online speaking sessions. Every learner and volunteer is screened to ensure their fit for the program. Participants are then matched based on preferences, interests, and availability to ensure an effective and mutually enjoyable communication experience. After a match is made, ENGin supports learners and volunteers throughout their participation in the program with tips, resources, and problem resolution.

Read more here. 

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Thoughtful, Authentic, Effective College Essays

Thoughtful, Authentic, Effective College Essays

By BMC BloggerJun 06, 2022

The college essay is fairly simple to write but often made more complicated than it needs to be. The goal? Clear, concise, effective. Nothing fancy, nothing that should take more than a few weeks, max. 

Effective essays: 

  • Demonstrate authenticity and thoughtfulness
  • Bring the writer to life on paper (but are not an explanation of their whole life)
  • Are excellent in topic, style, and grammar

We are gearing up for a summer busy with college essay support, so our students can start senior year with peace of mind, less stress, and having already completed most of their essays. 

If you know a rising senior who would benefit from our guidance and who might want to work with one of our essay experts, contact us to schedule a consultation.

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College Admission: Data, Transparency, And Match

College Admission: Data, Transparency, And Match

By BMC BloggerJun 03, 2022

Does it matter whether Princeton was ranked the number one or number three university in the country this year? Do you really care if Stanford’s overall admit rate was 3.95% or 2.16%? What does it mean to you if the University of Pennsylvania denied 94.32% or 95.74% of all applicants?

News flash: these institutions are uber selective. You could be the most qualified student in the country with perfect grades and test scores, an exceptionally written college essay, glowing recommendations, and impactful community involvement, and still be turned down by the most selective colleges.

Brennan Barnard’s recent Forbes piece explores colleges’ lack of transparency and so much more. Give it a read!
The reality is, you are rolling the dice when applying to these schools. They could select a full class of new students, throw it out, take the runners up, and guess what…the overall profile of the accepted class would look nearly identical. In fact, schools with low single-digit admit rates could do this many times over. This you cannot control. What you can control is how YOU approach the college search and application experience, and the quality and usefulness of the data you seek.
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GenHERation® Exploration Camp at Hackley

GenHERation® Exploration Camp at Hackley

By Brittany MaschalJun 02, 2022

The future starts now! GenHERation® Exploration is an intensive summer program designed to inspire young women to think big and push the limits of what’s possible. During this immersive experience, students will learn from the most innovative companies in America, meet powerful female leaders, and participate in skill-building simulations. Throughout the week, students will connect with industry experts from Fortune 500 companies, tech giants, retailers, government agencies, and sports franchises as they collaborate on custom-designed challenges. Students will become trailblazers in their own lives and develop a toolkit for success to excel in the classroom, college, and beyond.

Students will refine the following skills throughout the program:

  • Communication
  • Public speaking
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Resilience
  • Leadership
  • Teamwork
  • Negotiation
  • Critical thinking

Aug 1-3 (3 days)
Full-Day 9am-4pm

Instructor
GenHERation® 

Grades
9-12

$500 – sign up here! 

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Summer 2022 Small Group Creative Writing Workshops

Summer 2022 Small Group Creative Writing Workshops

By Brittany MaschalJun 01, 2022

Small Group Creative Writing Workshop 

Do you want to expand your interest in creative writing, especially as you seek to pursue studying the humanities or other liberal arts majors in college? Are you looking for mentorship as you work toward opportunities to publish your work and/or compete in writing competitions? Join our creative writing workshop group this summer!

During weekly meetings, groups of 4-6 students will refine their understanding of the techniques that define each creative genre—fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. There will be two classes on fiction, two classes on poetry, and two on personal essays. Students will leave each class meeting with a new piece of writing, on which they’ll receive detailed, personalized feedback.

Course Structure:

  • The course consists of eight live sessions 
  • Each session is for 1.5 hours over Zoom
  • Each meeting will consist of a half-hour of lecture and discussion, a half-hour of in-class writing time, and a half-hour of sharing that writing for feedback from the instructor

Course Requirements: 

  • Students in grades 9-12
  • Submit a writing sample with the application
  • Have a strong command of the English language  
    • TOEFL score of 100 minimum

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Summer Writing Mentorship

Summer Writing Mentorship

By Brittany MaschalMay 24, 2022
We’ve got a new writing mentorship in addition to our college application essay offerings! Share it with all the writers in your life:
 
Are you a young writer beginning to craft your own poetry, fiction, or drama? A student planning to submit writing for competitions, awards, or prizes? A high school or college student who wants guidance on how to write compelling academic essays? Our one-on-one writing mentorship program will meet you wherever you are and help you develop into a more confident, polished, and effective writer.
 
If your interests are primarily in creative writing, we’ll workshop your pieces, develop a personalized set of writing exercises and prompts, and—of course!—discuss your favorite literary works and discover some new ones that can shape your own writing. Should you decide you’re interested in submitting some of your pieces to publications or contests, we’ll work together to move through the submission process from start to finish.
 
If you’re looking to become a stronger academic writer or essayist, you can expect a rigorous, customized combination of editing assistance and targeted exercises that focus on any specific weaknesses in your writing, whether you’re a beginner writer developing the fundamentals or an experienced one refining your style.
 
You won’t just improve the nuts and bolts of your writing—you’ll gain a mentor who can help you navigate your literary struggles, interests, and ambitions. For more info, write to hello@brittany.consulting. Let’s get writing!
 
 
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Will MIT change and challenge the test-optional movement?

Will MIT change and challenge the test-optional movement?

By BMC BloggerMay 05, 2022

Probably not. 

Great piece by Jim Jump if you are following the test-optional movement. A highlight:

There are, of course, some global reasons why test-optional policies will not go away. One is the decision by the University of California and Cal State systems to no longer use test scores in their admission processes. As a result, colleges that recruit heavily in California will have a hard time reinstating test score requirements. But students outside California may also rebel against colleges that return to requiring test scores. The Ivies may be able to get away with it, but two years ago, when the pandemic accelerated the number of colleges going the test-optional route, an admissions dean friend postulated that colleges farther down the food chain may find that students may simply refuse to apply to colleges that aren’t test optional.

Read it here in full!

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Sal Khan: Test-Optional College Admissions Adds Ambiguity and is Bad for Students

Sal Khan: Test-Optional College Admissions Adds Ambiguity and is Bad for Students

By Brittany MaschalMay 03, 2022

Interesting read if you are following the test-optional movement and related debates. Sal Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, a non-profit that partners with the College Board. Read the interview here. 

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