100 Successful College Application Essays
Wednesday, 17. March 2010
- ISBN13: 9780451207135
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
These are the essays that helped their authors gain admission to Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Wellesley, Colby, and other outstanding schools-followed by invaluable comments by experts in admissions, placement, and college counseling at some of the best learning institutions around the country. This helpful guide includes:
€ 100 complete essays with professional commentary
€ Examples of essays on common topics (family background, athletics, work experience), as well as the more offbeat
€ Essays on the immigrant experience by foreign-born students
€ A “What Not to Do” chapter from a top college counselor
€ and moreAmazon.com Review
The essay is the one part of the college application that allows an admissions committee to get a glimpse not only of what you are (grades, scores, club member), but of who you are. “Applicants are constantly advised to ‘put their best foot forward,’” says Fred Hargadon, the dean of admissions at Princeton University and a contributor to this book. “But I must confess that I always liked the ones who put both feet forward.” That doesn’t mean that your essay needs to shock. It means you must put everything you’ve got into it. It means that “if you think the college might receive even one other essay like yours,” according to Brooks School college counselor William K. Poirot, “rewrite it.”
The bulk of this book, as its title promises, comprises 100 examples of successful college-application essays. There are those who believe that reading essays will make you a better essay writer and those who don’t. But reading these essays–and the experts’ comments on them–will help you figure out what you want to write and how best to write it. From the essays included here, one surmises that the narrower your focus, the more effective the essay, as long as your narrowness doesn’t cross over into insignificance. What matters most is not what you write about (these essays take on late-night TV game shows, self-induced baldness, the picture on a bag of Goldfish crackers, a family drive on the New Jersey Turnpike, and even a seven-inch plastic Godzilla), but what you do with your subject matter. –Jane Steinberg
Anonymous Says:
I read this book at my career counsellor’s office. It was indeed a wonderful book, I tried to order it but I could’nt get it as the online ordering facility was not working. I also tried various book stores but could’nt find a copy of it.
Rating: 5 / 5
Anonymous Says:
the woderful essays inspire you to write your own!!! comments from admission officers help a lot and show that one essay can be viewd very differently
Rating: 5 / 5
K. Tint Says:
The essays are seperated into topics (eg. Applying to College, work experience, coming to america), and each include good essays.
The book includes essays of the admittants to top tier colleges (Ivies), and some second tier ones. Interestingly, there are no essays from MIT! (No surprise though, considering the rivalry betwene MIT and Harvard — the book was organized by Harvard newspaper)
Overall, great book.
Rating: 5 / 5
Sarah Carnes Says:
Before I bought this book I thought my essay was pretty good until I bought this book. Then I knew that I could make my essay even better just by just following the essays in the book. I didn’t even think I needed to get a guide book for my essay because I thought it was pretty good already without help from an essay book. But apparently this book worked really good because I did not get deferred from college! I got into my first choice just by using this book and I recommend it to anyone even to those who do not think they need a guide book for their essays because they think their essays are already pretty good like I thought mine was.
BUY THIS BOOK!
Rating: 5 / 5
Happy-go-lucky Says:
I bought this book for the purpose of studying the art of essay writing, as I like to hone my writing skills.
At first reading, I thought this book deserved my five star rating – until I visited some websites, those specializing in custom essays. I found some examples of custom essays very similar to a few in the book. Even some life stories were similar as well. This, I was incredulous by plagiarism. I visited essay websites, purposefully for studying others’ styles of essay writing, also for the pleasure of reading literary works.
Now, there is a plethoria of custom essay websites where cheating students can actually buy essays and pass them off as their own.
The amount of cheating by students is appalling. My goodness, cheating is far more rampant than I thought. Here is the worst piece of information I discovered. Students are not the only ones buying custom papers. Professors and executives too are cheating; they commission others to write essays/thesis for them. How unethical!
As I read more online about plagiarism by students, I learned that some students cheat for a variety of reasons. A few deserve my sympathy, however unethical their cheating is.
Some cheating students are downright lazy. Of others, some are struggling arduously in their studies but are plaqued by Writer’s Block, poor diction, poor grammar, etc. They resort to cheating, many of them being put under duress by their over-ambitious, disparaging parents who all want them inside Ivy League universities.
To poor students, if any of you are suffering from bouts of Writer’s Block like I once did, I suggest you to try sentence-composing techniques and plenty of practice of them. Sentence composing techniques can, in fact, help remedy Writer’s Block. I overcame mine. So can you.
There are plenty of books on sentence-composing techniques, sentence variety, etc. Amazon has them all.
While practising sentence-composing techniques, allow your imagination to run wild, indulge in daydreaming – anything to loosen up your mind, to free your imagination.
To those of you, potential cheaters inclusively, with poor grammar, poor diction, whatever your limitations, do yourself a favour: buy self-aid books or borrow them from libraries. Meanwhile, use the internet. Study whatever .
Rating: 3 / 5