One of the hardest things for students—for people!—to do is separate the quality of their process from the randomness or disappointment of challenging outcomes. This is why Deal or No Deal always drove me nuts: You didn’t make the right choice because the next case was worth $.01; it was either the right choice in the moment or it wasn’t! All we can ever do is the best we can with the information we have available to us; we can’t justify bad decisions by good outcomes, just as we can’t condemn good decisions that resulted in bad outcomes.

You need guidance on Brown’s four supplemental essays. We’ve got advice. You and this blog are a perfect fit!

Before you get started, remember that while these are all short responses, they’re still essays, and all the essay rules apply: develop engaging openings and strong conclusions, and provide examples and specifics so that you are showing rather than telling.

So you’re interested in applying to Wellesley College? And why wouldn’t you be. Very few other colleges have the student opportunities and impressive alumni of this women’s college.

Love Reed. It’s a phrase that is sprinkled throughout campus, adorning buttons you’ll find on student backpacks in the fall and senior laurels in the spring. In order to Love Reed, however, you must first get to know it. The experience at Reed is different from the experience elsewhere on measures of intellectual engagement, academic rigor, and closely held traditions of weirdness. As an applicant, this is something for you to make a serious effort to learn before you apply, both because it’ll make you a better informed applicant and because it’ll help you craft a thoughtful response to your essay.

Whether you’re just putting the finishing touches on your college essay, or you’ve yet to put pen to paper (alright, finger to keyboard…), if you’re college applicant, you need to check out the latest installment of our video series, We Can Explain.

The University of Maryland is one of the five colleges and universities that accepts only the Coalition Application. And while they require a student to upload a response to one of the five Coalition Application essay prompts, UMD also ask students to reply to five additional, or “supplemental,” fill-in-the-blank questions as well.

So you want to be a Duck!  What inspires you and motivates you to join the University of Oregon community, and what will you contribute to campus? Why is it a good fit for you? All things to consider as you dive into your University of Oregon application.

So you’ve decided you want to be a part of Nova Nation, but the only thing standing between you and your dreams of cheering on the Wildcats in Finneran Pavilion is the Common App and a supplemental essay.

You might assume that college essay supplements are merely an opportunity for a college to learn more about its applicants; that they are known to students only after they’ve made a decision to apply to a particular university; that they are rooted in some important academic or cultural aspect of the institution with which they are associated. For nearly every college, you’d be right.

But not so for the University of Chicago.

The Princeton supplement is one of the most varied in terms of tone. One prompt asks for a long, thoughtful response, while the others are brief and informational rather than introspective. Let’s start with those short ones!