How Strong Is Your College Application Essay?

Possible quiz outcomes:
GOOD: This essay could use some more attention before you send it off
BETTER: This essay needs some fine-tuning
BEST: Sounds like you did a great job editing this essay!

Here are the best answers to the questions in this quiz, along with explanations of each question.

Question 1 (Is your essay typed?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: It’s great to start out with scribbled notes, but when you type up your draft, you can edit and count words more easily. Plus, colleges require the application essay to be typed.

Question 2 (Have you run it through a spell checker and grammar checker?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: “I would think it foolish of a student not to have an essay proofed for spelling, grammar and syntax by someone competent to do so.”– Jeffrey Brenzel from Yale. Brenzel said this in 2007, but since then, spell checkers and grammar checkers have improved dramatically. So read carefully, ask someone else to read your essay, AND use a spell checker and grammar checker.

Question 3 (How many times did you read your essay out loud to yourself?)
Best answer: 1 or more times
Explanation: Go to your room. Close the door. Take off your shoes and sit back. Now, read your essay OUT LOUD to yourself. You’ll notice the boring parts (delete them!) and the parts you can’t wait to get to (expand on them if you can.) Pay attention and have fun! Mark up the essay after you read it, then make the edits.

Question 4 (How many times have you edited your essay?)
Best answer: 3 or more
Explanation: Mistakes reproduce while you are sleeping! Let your essay “marinate” overnight, and look at it in the morning with a fresh eye. Each time you edit, look for something different. Start with the big stuff and work down to single words. The first time, edit for structure. The second time, bring out exciting and revealing details by increasing the amount of sensory information, self-insight, and quantifying. The third time, work on finding descriptive verbs and precise nouns.

Question 5 (Did you delete or move any paragraphs or sentences?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: Can you improve your draft by deleting the first sentence or paragraph? Start off with a revealing and intriguing first sentence and paragraph, where the reader learns something positive about you. Chronological order is not necessarily best for college essays (because then readers have to get to the end to visualize you as a teenager. It’s often best to start with the present.) The end of the essay should give the reader more information about you, not just sum up what was said. And don’t bury important information in the middle of a paragraph—move it to the first paragraph or first sentence in a paragraph for maximum impact.

Question 6 (Did you pick your best topic for your essay?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: If you are not sure, take the quiz “What is Your Best College Essay Topic?” (http://www.essaycoaching.com/quiz/)

Question 7 (Have you asked an adult with good judgment to read your essay and then tell you what he or she learned about you where he or she was confused or curious to learn more?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: A college essay is challenging for all teens, because teenage brains are still developing. “It’s sort of unfair to expect teens to have adult levels of organizational skills or decision-making before their brains are finished being built.”— Dr. Jay Giedd, neuroscientist. So it’s wise to select an adult with good judgment to read your essay. A parent or a teacher can read an early draft. For the strongest feedback, consider an adult you admire who does not know you well, because that person can more accurately simulate an adult college admissions officer who has never met you.

Question 8 (Have you made any changes to your essay based on what your adult reader said?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: The first question a college admissions officer will ask him or herself is “What have I learned about this student?” If your point isn’t clear to your reader, edit to make the placement of important sentences more prominent, add details, and delete sentences that don’t reveal positive information about you.

Question 9 (How many times is sensory information (words involving what you've seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched) included in your story?
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: Have you heard the expression, “Show, don’t tell?” To “show,” use details to create specific visual images in the mind of the reader, because we remember images much longer than we remember words (http://www.brainrules.net/vision?scene=). Here is a line that “tells”: “I am a hard worker.” What is this person doing to be a hard worker? Building houses by himself? Reading for five hours at a time? We don’t know. Instead of saying, “I’m a hard worker,” one student wrote, “I bag groceries 20 hours a week at Busch’s grocery store to save money for college.” Another wrote, “I shovel for my elderly neighbors to keep their driveway and sidewalks clear, but no one asks me to.” Both lines SHOW those students to be hard workers.

Question 10 (How many times do you reveal self-insight (your thoughts or feelings) in your story?)
Best answer: 5+ times
Explanation: Self-insight involves words like love, wondered, surprise, elated, curious, excited, anxious, tentative, impulsive, planned, endured. Self-insight will show the reader why you make the choices that you do, why an event was important to you, and how you changed from challenges. When you combine self-insight with sensory information, you can create some powerful sentences. Self-insight can relate to choices you’ve made (for example, to study ballet) and situations that you are simply a part of your life (such as being a middle child or living in a small town.)

Question 11 (How many times did you quantify information (use numbers describing length of time, date, age, size, distance, dollar amounts, group size, or repetitions) in your essay?
Best answer: 5+ times
Explanation: People remember quantities and numbers, and numbers also help the reader picture your story. Picture “I spoke to a lot of people” versus “I spoke to twenty people” or “I spoke to three-hundred people.”

Question 12 (If someone were to read the first sentence in each paragraph, would they still learn a lot about you?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: The first sentence of each paragraph is a powerhouse, with a heavy impact on the reader. Don’t waste that power. Create strong and revealing first sentences. Each should help the reader get an inkling of what will happen in the paragraph and also reveal something about yourself. Put all of the first sentences together to hopefully form a mini-college essay that reveals your point about yourself.

Question 13 (Is your essay likely to make a college admissions officer feel uncomfortable about meeting you?)
Best answer: Probably not
Explanation: A college admissions officer will likely feel uncomfortable reading about a teen who is angry, pitiable, selfish, considering unethical or illegal acts, or lacking humility, compassion or common sense. Eliminate “Red Flags” — words that make you feel uncomfortable because they are too personal, emphasize your weaknesses, give the wrong impression, or distract people from the big picture.

Question 14 (Will an essay reader learn at least one thing you feel good about (an achievement and/or strong personal quality or passion)?
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: College admissions officers know your grades and may also know your extra-curricular activities. But they can’t know HOW you study (In the library? With flash cards?) or WHY you love to play the trombone or WHEN AND WHERE you first realized you love to debate. That’s what you can reveal in your essay.

Question 15 (If a friend gave your essay to one of your teachers and said "guess who wrote this?” could the teacher guess correctly?)
Best answer: I think so
Explanation: Your teacher should be able to guess because the essay is written in your voice—using your favorite phrases, your sense of humor and your energy levels. Your essay should be identifiable because the details reveal the way you act and think.

Question 16 (How do you feel about your essay?)
Best answer: Great!
Explanation: You should feel good about your application essay before you submit it. You can never be sure about the reader; you can only be sure about the writer—you. So edit, edit, edit, and send it off when you feel like you’ve done everything possible to strengthen it.

Question 17 (Would you like to learn more about how to improve your college application essay?)
If you answered “Sure, Why Not?” to this question, check out www.essaycoaching.com
No one was born knowing how to write a college application essay. Essay Coaching works one-on-one and in workshops with students and families to help you strengthen your essays and your writing. Essay Coaching does not write any essays. You do the writing. Write debbie@essaycoaching.com

Quiz and this document are Copyright © 2016 Debbie Merion of Essay Coaching.

Possible quiz outcomes:
GOOD: This essay could use some more attention before you send it off
BETTER: This essay needs some fine-tuning
BEST: Sounds like you did a great job editing this essay!

Here are the best answers to the questions in this quiz, along with explanations of each question.

Question 1 (Is your essay typed?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: It’s great to start out with scribbled notes, but when you type up your draft, you can edit and count words more easily. Plus, colleges require the application essay to be typed.

Question 2 (Have you run it through a spell checker and grammar checker?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: “I would think it foolish of a student not to have an essay proofed for spelling, grammar and syntax by someone competent to do so.”– Jeffrey Brenzel from Yale. Brenzel said this in 2007, but since then, spell checkers and grammar checkers have improved dramatically. So read carefully, ask someone else to read your essay, AND use a spell checker and grammar checker.

Question 3 (How many times did you read your essay out loud to yourself?)
Best answer: 1 or more times
Explanation: Go to your room. Close the door. Take off your shoes and sit back. Now, read your essay OUT LOUD to yourself. You’ll notice the boring parts (delete them!) and the parts you can’t wait to get to (expand on them if you can.) Pay attention and have fun! Mark up the essay after you read it, then make the edits.

Question 4 (How many times have you edited your essay?)
Best answer: 3 or more
Explanation: Mistakes reproduce while you are sleeping! Let your essay “marinate” overnight, and look at it in the morning with a fresh eye. Each time you edit, look for something different. Start with the big stuff and work down to single words. The first time, edit for structure. The second time, bring out exciting and revealing details by increasing the amount of sensory information, self-insight, and quantifying. The third time, work on finding descriptive verbs and precise nouns.

Question 5 (Did you delete or move any paragraphs or sentences?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: Can you improve your draft by deleting the first sentence or paragraph? Start off with a revealing and intriguing first sentence and paragraph, where the reader learns something positive about you. Chronological order is not necessarily best for college essays (because then readers have to get to the end to visualize you as a teenager. It’s often best to start with the present.) The end of the essay should give the reader more information about you, not just sum up what was said. And don’t bury important information in the middle of a paragraph—move it to the first paragraph or first sentence in a paragraph for maximum impact.

Question 6 (Did you pick your best topic for your essay?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: If you are not sure, take the quiz “What is Your Best College Essay Topic?” (http://www.essaycoaching.com/quiz/)

Question 7 (Have you asked an adult with good judgment to read your essay and then tell you what he or she learned about you where he or she was confused or curious to learn more?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: A college essay is challenging for all teens, because teenage brains are still developing. “It’s sort of unfair to expect teens to have adult levels of organizational skills or decision-making before their brains are finished being built.”— Dr. Jay Giedd, neuroscientist. So it’s wise to select an adult with good judgment to read your essay. A parent or a teacher can read an early draft. For the strongest feedback, consider an adult you admire who does not know you well, because that person can more accurately simulate an adult college admissions officer who has never met you.

Question 8 (Have you made any changes to your essay based on what your adult reader said?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: The first question a college admissions officer will ask him or herself is “What have I learned about this student?” If your point isn’t clear to your reader, edit to make the placement of important sentences more prominent, add details, and delete sentences that don’t reveal positive information about you.

Question 9 (How many times is sensory information (words involving what you've seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched) included in your story?
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: Have you heard the expression, “Show, don’t tell?” To “show,” use details to create specific visual images in the mind of the reader, because we remember images much longer than we remember words (http://www.brainrules.net/vision?scene=). Here is a line that “tells”: “I am a hard worker.” What is this person doing to be a hard worker? Building houses by himself? Reading for five hours at a time? We don’t know. Instead of saying, “I’m a hard worker,” one student wrote, “I bag groceries 20 hours a week at Busch’s grocery store to save money for college.” Another wrote, “I shovel for my elderly neighbors to keep their driveway and sidewalks clear, but no one asks me to.” Both lines SHOW those students to be hard workers.

Question 10 (How many times do you reveal self-insight (your thoughts or feelings) in your story?)
Best answer: 5+ times
Explanation: Self-insight involves words like love, wondered, surprise, elated, curious, excited, anxious, tentative, impulsive, planned, endured. Self-insight will show the reader why you make the choices that you do, why an event was important to you, and how you changed from challenges. When you combine self-insight with sensory information, you can create some powerful sentences. Self-insight can relate to choices you’ve made (for example, to study ballet) and situations that you are simply a part of your life (such as being a middle child or living in a small town.)

Question 11 (How many times did you quantify information (use numbers describing length of time, date, age, size, distance, dollar amounts, group size, or repetitions) in your essay?
Best answer: 5+ times
Explanation: People remember quantities and numbers, and numbers also help the reader picture your story. Picture “I spoke to a lot of people” versus “I spoke to twenty people” or “I spoke to three-hundred people.”

Question 12 (If someone were to read the first sentence in each paragraph, would they still learn a lot about you?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: The first sentence of each paragraph is a powerhouse, with a heavy impact on the reader. Don’t waste that power. Create strong and revealing first sentences. Each should help the reader get an inkling of what will happen in the paragraph and also reveal something about yourself. Put all of the first sentences together to hopefully form a mini-college essay that reveals your point about yourself.

Question 13 (Is your essay likely to make a college admissions officer feel uncomfortable about meeting you?)
Best answer: Probably not
Explanation: A college admissions officer will likely feel uncomfortable reading about a teen who is angry, pitiable, selfish, considering unethical or illegal acts, or lacking humility, compassion or common sense. Eliminate “Red Flags” — words that make you feel uncomfortable because they are too personal, emphasize your weaknesses, give the wrong impression, or distract people from the big picture.

Question 14 (Will an essay reader learn at least one thing you feel good about (an achievement and/or strong personal quality or passion)?
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: College admissions officers know your grades and may also know your extra-curricular activities. But they can’t know HOW you study (In the library? With flash cards?) or WHY you love to play the trombone or WHEN AND WHERE you first realized you love to debate. That’s what you can reveal in your essay.

Question 15 (If a friend gave your essay to one of your teachers and said "guess who wrote this?” could the teacher guess correctly?)
Best answer: I think so
Explanation: Your teacher should be able to guess because the essay is written in your voice—using your favorite phrases, your sense of humor and your energy levels. Your essay should be identifiable because the details reveal the way you act and think.

Question 16 (How do you feel about your essay?)
Best answer: Great!
Explanation: You should feel good about your application essay before you submit it. You can never be sure about the reader; you can only be sure about the writer—you. So edit, edit, edit, and send it off when you feel like you’ve done everything possible to strengthen it.

Question 17 (Would you like to learn more about how to improve your college application essay?)
If you answered “Sure, Why Not?” to this question, check out www.essaycoaching.com
No one was born knowing how to write a college application essay. Essay Coaching works one-on-one and in workshops with students and families to help you strengthen your essays and your writing. Essay Coaching does not write any essays. You do the writing. Write debbie@essaycoaching.com

Quiz and this document are Copyright © 2016 Debbie Merion of Essay Coaching.

Possible quiz outcomes:
GOOD: This essay could use some more attention before you send it off
BETTER: This essay needs some fine-tuning
BEST: Sounds like you did a great job editing this essay!

Here are the best answers to the questions in this quiz, along with explanations of each question.

Question 1 (Is your essay typed?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: It’s great to start out with scribbled notes, but when you type up your draft, you can edit and count words more easily. Plus, colleges require the application essay to be typed.

Question 2 (Have you run it through a spell checker and grammar checker?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: “I would think it foolish of a student not to have an essay proofed for spelling, grammar and syntax by someone competent to do so.”– Jeffrey Brenzel from Yale. Brenzel said this in 2007, but since then, spell checkers and grammar checkers have improved dramatically. So read carefully, ask someone else to read your essay, AND use a spell checker and grammar checker.

Question 3 (How many times did you read your essay out loud to yourself?)
Best answer: 1 or more times
Explanation: Go to your room. Close the door. Take off your shoes and sit back. Now, read your essay OUT LOUD to yourself. You’ll notice the boring parts (delete them!) and the parts you can’t wait to get to (expand on them if you can.) Pay attention and have fun! Mark up the essay after you read it, then make the edits.

Question 4 (How many times have you edited your essay?)
Best answer: 3 or more
Explanation: Mistakes reproduce while you are sleeping! Let your essay “marinate” overnight, and look at it in the morning with a fresh eye. Each time you edit, look for something different. Start with the big stuff and work down to single words. The first time, edit for structure. The second time, bring out exciting and revealing details by increasing the amount of sensory information, self-insight, and quantifying. The third time, work on finding descriptive verbs and precise nouns.

Question 5 (Did you delete or move any paragraphs or sentences?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: Can you improve your draft by deleting the first sentence or paragraph? Start off with a revealing and intriguing first sentence and paragraph, where the reader learns something positive about you. Chronological order is not necessarily best for college essays (because then readers have to get to the end to visualize you as a teenager. It’s often best to start with the present.) The end of the essay should give the reader more information about you, not just sum up what was said. And don’t bury important information in the middle of a paragraph—move it to the first paragraph or first sentence in a paragraph for maximum impact.

Question 6 (Did you pick your best topic for your essay?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: If you are not sure, take the quiz “What is Your Best College Essay Topic?” (http://www.essaycoaching.com/quiz/)

Question 7 (Have you asked an adult with good judgment to read your essay and then tell you what he or she learned about you where he or she was confused or curious to learn more?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: A college essay is challenging for all teens, because teenage brains are still developing. “It’s sort of unfair to expect teens to have adult levels of organizational skills or decision-making before their brains are finished being built.”— Dr. Jay Giedd, neuroscientist. So it’s wise to select an adult with good judgment to read your essay. A parent or a teacher can read an early draft. For the strongest feedback, consider an adult you admire who does not know you well, because that person can more accurately simulate an adult college admissions officer who has never met you.

Question 8 (Have you made any changes to your essay based on what your adult reader said?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: The first question a college admissions officer will ask him or herself is “What have I learned about this student?” If your point isn’t clear to your reader, edit to make the placement of important sentences more prominent, add details, and delete sentences that don’t reveal positive information about you.

Question 9 (How many times is sensory information (words involving what you've seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched) included in your story?
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: Have you heard the expression, “Show, don’t tell?” To “show,” use details to create specific visual images in the mind of the reader, because we remember images much longer than we remember words (http://www.brainrules.net/vision?scene=). Here is a line that “tells”: “I am a hard worker.” What is this person doing to be a hard worker? Building houses by himself? Reading for five hours at a time? We don’t know. Instead of saying, “I’m a hard worker,” one student wrote, “I bag groceries 20 hours a week at Busch’s grocery store to save money for college.” Another wrote, “I shovel for my elderly neighbors to keep their driveway and sidewalks clear, but no one asks me to.” Both lines SHOW those students to be hard workers.

Question 10 (How many times do you reveal self-insight (your thoughts or feelings) in your story?)
Best answer: 5+ times
Explanation: Self-insight involves words like love, wondered, surprise, elated, curious, excited, anxious, tentative, impulsive, planned, endured. Self-insight will show the reader why you make the choices that you do, why an event was important to you, and how you changed from challenges. When you combine self-insight with sensory information, you can create some powerful sentences. Self-insight can relate to choices you’ve made (for example, to study ballet) and situations that you are simply a part of your life (such as being a middle child or living in a small town.)

Question 11 (How many times did you quantify information (use numbers describing length of time, date, age, size, distance, dollar amounts, group size, or repetitions) in your essay?
Best answer: 5+ times
Explanation: People remember quantities and numbers, and numbers also help the reader picture your story. Picture “I spoke to a lot of people” versus “I spoke to twenty people” or “I spoke to three-hundred people.”

Question 12 (If someone were to read the first sentence in each paragraph, would they still learn a lot about you?)
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: The first sentence of each paragraph is a powerhouse, with a heavy impact on the reader. Don’t waste that power. Create strong and revealing first sentences. Each should help the reader get an inkling of what will happen in the paragraph and also reveal something about yourself. Put all of the first sentences together to hopefully form a mini-college essay that reveals your point about yourself.

Question 13 (Is your essay likely to make a college admissions officer feel uncomfortable about meeting you?)
Best answer: Probably not
Explanation: A college admissions officer will likely feel uncomfortable reading about a teen who is angry, pitiable, selfish, considering unethical or illegal acts, or lacking humility, compassion or common sense. Eliminate “Red Flags” — words that make you feel uncomfortable because they are too personal, emphasize your weaknesses, give the wrong impression, or distract people from the big picture.

Question 14 (Will an essay reader learn at least one thing you feel good about (an achievement and/or strong personal quality or passion)?
Best answer: Yes
Explanation: College admissions officers know your grades and may also know your extra-curricular activities. But they can’t know HOW you study (In the library? With flash cards?) or WHY you love to play the trombone or WHEN AND WHERE you first realized you love to debate. That’s what you can reveal in your essay.

Question 15 (If a friend gave your essay to one of your teachers and said "guess who wrote this?” could the teacher guess correctly?)
Best answer: I think so
Explanation: Your teacher should be able to guess because the essay is written in your voice—using your favorite phrases, your sense of humor and your energy levels. Your essay should be identifiable because the details reveal the way you act and think.

Question 16 (How do you feel about your essay?)
Best answer: Great!
Explanation: You should feel good about your application essay before you submit it. You can never be sure about the reader; you can only be sure about the writer—you. So edit, edit, edit, and send it off when you feel like you’ve done everything possible to strengthen it.

Question 17 (Would you like to learn more about how to improve your college application essay?)
If you answered “Sure, Why Not?” to this question, check out www.essaycoaching.com
No one was born knowing how to write a college application essay. Essay Coaching works one-on-one and in workshops with students and families to help you strengthen your essays and your writing. Essay Coaching does not write any essays. You do the writing. Write debbie@essaycoaching.com

Quiz and this document are Copyright © 2016 Debbie Merion of Essay Coaching.