Hack the College Essay

eBook

Chapter 1 – Write the Essay No One Else Could Write

• If someone reading your essay gets the feeling some other applicant could have written it, then you’re in trouble
• AOs have limited time and most applications are stuff that looks the same
  • After reading your essay, will the AO know something specifically about you? Or will you be indistinguishable from all the other applicants?
  • Even if they remember the essay, would they remember you as the author?
• “In war, it helps not to know your enemy personally. If you don’t know them, it makes it easier to shoot them if you have to”
  • The more you know about the enemy, the harder it is to shoot them
  • You want the AO to get to know you
  • If they read the essay and have a specific picture of you in mind, its hard to reject you
• If everyone tries to write what the AOs want to hear, they will all sound the same. They try to impress with intelligence, accomplishments, vocabulary, maturity, deep thinking, and more
  • Trying to do this makes you indistinguishable

Try this: write a page of an essay and then go to the top and reread. For each sentence, think: is this something someone else could have written? If so, cross it out and keep reading. Keep writing till you find those sentences

Chapter 2 – Writing is Easy and Fast

• Don’t make it complicated
• Steer clear of Big Ideas and Truths
• They aren’t looking for Truth, Transformation, Maturity, or Life itself
• They are looking for an individual personality

Try this: Use clear, simple language. Avoid big or fancy words that make your essay sound less personal. Write as you speak to maintain authenticity.

Chapter 3 – Thinking = Talking = Writing

• “The way I tutor the college essay is simple. I get you talking. I do that by asking you questions, saying things that surprise you, and getting you to think in new ways. We talk about your adventures and experiences, or a picture on the wall, or just about anything.”
  • If you talk about things in very general ways, I ask what you really mean: Like what? Like when? For example? And if you make a claim, I ask why you think what you think. Often the answer is something you’re reluctant to say. Or it may conflict with something you said five minutes ago. I’ll call you on it and ask you to explain. On and on we go, talking about whatever comes up.
  • And then— when I hear something so personal, so particular, so true that no one else could have said it, “Write it down,” I say. “Word for word. Now, keep writing. Don’t overthink it, just write down the story you started to tell me, just like you were still talking.” Next thing you know, you’ve got a draft of your essay right in front of you.

Try this: just write, don’t try to translate speech to writing, don’t try to improve anything. Not wanting to write something down is a good sign that you should. Don’t think of a topic or a theme. Focus on what sounds different or uncomfortable instead of brilliant and insightful. Don’t outline and organize, just write.

Chapter 4 – Don’t Sweat the Prompts

• The goal of the essay is to just write something that only you can write about yourself
• Don’t try to write an intro and a conclusion and everything
• Talk about yourself

Chapter 5 – Stick to Your Facts

• Students often think, “I want the admissions committee to think I’m the kind of person who X.”
  • They generalize to sound like a kind of person instead of sounding like themselves
  • They tell a story of the kind of person they want to appear to be
  • You don’t want them to think you’re the “kind of person” who loves to learn, for example, even if you do. That person could be anybody
    • You want them to think you are you, and you do that by telling specific facts from your own life
• The subject of the essay is you, so tell it from your own perspective

I dropped the tip of my foil below my opponent’s bell guard, cautiously advancing while searching for a vulnerable target. Proper distance, perfect hand position, and relaxed shoulders are what I have in mind as I find the open flank and accelerate into a lunge. Beautiful, I think to myself, until I realize that I’ve missed completely and have been hit on the counter attack. “Nice action,” my coach comments from the sideline, as he paces around the rickety, musty building. “But don’t miss.”

• This could be written by anyone
• The details seem made up. Do you really believe that the narrator thought to herself “beautiful!” after her lunge but before she noticed that she missed? Was the building’s musty smell really on her mind? Don’t be fooled by “polished” writing.
• Too many essays adopt the voice of the disinterested observer, a fly on the wall who has no stake in the story. People think they need to be objective. Why would you want to be objective?
• Just tell what happened. Don’t outsmart yourself by hunting around for details that aren’t relevant to you, or dramatizing details because you think they sound great

Chapter 6 – Don’t Try To Be Deep

• A good essay reveals your honest way of thinking, without trying to impress the reader
• Essays that try to explain your great moral transformation or found truth are bad

Living on a farm with relatives afforded me the chance to mature as a person and to learn the importance of personal responsibility.

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Living in Ipswich Gardens with my stepdad Luke, I learned the hard way about needing to pull my own weight: if you don’t water the lettuce in June, there is literally no salad at dinner in August.

• it might reveal a truth about responsibility but it relies on a specific place and a specific vegetable and a specific family member

Chapter 7 – Explore the Other SIde

Who’s more powerful, ten-year-olds or their parents?

That’s a silly question. Obviously adults are more powerful because they call the shots. Parents force kids to do homework. They drive the car and have the money to buy groceries.

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1. Parents force kids to do homework to make them smarter, which makes kids more powerful.
2. Driving is a burden, and it’s better to get driven around by chauffeurs known as parents.
3. Parents have to buy groceries to feed their kids; if not, the government would take their kids away.

Working at a local food program last summer, I saw first-hand how hunger ravages the least fortunate, and that the time to help is now.

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I have to admit, when our school organized “Free Lunch in Eureka Park” I was looking forward to knowing that I had done something good for people. I expected to see smiles on grateful faces. Instead, I got glares! The homeless who live in and near the park were mad because if word got out about the free lunch, they would have to defend their “sleep spots” from newcomers. They did not want our food.

• “I could never say that, it would undermine my whole essay.” ~ that might actually be what gets you in
• Many of the best thoughts are cut out during editing
  • When we talk candidly about our experiences we explore the other side naturally
  • When it comes time to “polish” the essay, these thoughts get cut

Chapter 8 – Use Small Words

• If you were trying to explain to someone exactly why she should not shoot you, would you risk using big fancy words? Would you risk using words that might mean something a little different to her than they do to you? No way, because a mistake like that could cost you your life!

Chapter 9 – Embrace Cliché

• Instead of original, think personal
  • Instead of trying to be new, just make sure your experiences and thoughts are so personal and so true that no one else could have written them
• You just gotta read the book for this chapter

Chapter 10 – Fail

• Accomplishments tend to sound the same, making them risky essays
• Failure is personal
• Don’t try to tell deep reflection from failure, it will be visible regardless

Chapter 11 – Make Something from Nothing

• You can also talk about dreams and ambitions and things you could not do

The idea of playing sports as a kid was not as appealing to my parents as it was to me. They were happy to have me back from the field and into the Kurdish fold at home. This was nothing new: when I started pre-school I couldn’t speak any English, only Farsi, and I always felt like I was missing out on something the other kids were doing. Sports were part of that mystery to me, a mystery I wanted to solve.

The answer to my mystery came in the form of a book. When I read Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, I saw someone else enthralled by baseball the way I am. Billly Beane, manager of the Oakland Athletics, is also alone in the baseball world, because he manages his team very differently from major league powerhouses like the Red
Sox and Yankees. He prefers taking chances with young players, while their stock is down, rather than paying a mint for veteran stars. In 2002 no one knew who Nick Swisher was—until Beane drafted him in the first round!

Instead of focusing on homeruns and stolen bases like higher-market teams, Beane invented a new method of assessing potential he called the On-Base Percentage (OBP). Although considered crazy at the time, his success quieted the critics, and this measure of how many times a player reaches a base, either by walk or hit, has become standard for evaluating talent. Beane shows that there is more than just one clear-cut way to manage a team. This seems true with just about everything—we can’t assume the best ways are already figured out.

I never got to experience the cliché of going to the baseball game where my father teaches me about the rules. What I did get to experience was the opposite of that: I was taking my father out to the ball game. I was teaching him the rules, and how to sing “Take me out to the ball game.” I’d never seen anyone actually need to follow the lyrics on the Dodger’s Jumbotron, but I could tell he was doing his best, and that he was willing to be bored for an afternoon to make me happy.

The game I see is different from the one my father sees. He is mesmerized by players running around the bases and catching balls, but I keep careful track of the pitch-count and watch OBP stats as they shift before our eyes. Although my father doesn’t know who Billy Beane is, I like that Billy was willing to distance himself from the league to create the best team. And I also think Beane might like how I found my own way to love baseball without playing little-league in Beverly Hills.

Chapter 12 – Tell a Secret

• Questions:
  • What’s the one thing most people don’t know about me?
  • What’s the one thing I always avoid telling people about myself?
  • What’s the one thing about me that surprises me the most?
• “Zev is a great squash player, and he wants to play in college. He wants to write about squash. I tell him to write about something else, because the one thing they already know about Zev is that he’s a great squash player. But he wants to write about squash. Well, why paddle against the current? When people have an obsession, sometimes there’s more there than meets the eye. I start asking questions.”
• Don’t share something that makes people feel icky, or makes you look crazy, or dangerous, or risky to have as a roommate or in a college freshman class.

Chapter 13 – Care

• Read the book

Chapter 14 – Make it Clear

• Best chapter