I read two kinds of college essays.

The first kind is a list of accomplishments dressed up in nice sentences. Here is what I've done. Here is why I'm impressive. Here is why you should want me.

It's the natural thing to write. Every signal a kid has received for four years says an application is a place to display achievement.

It reads as narcissistic. Not because the kid is. Because the form is.

The second kind shows a change. And it's the only one that reliably works.

Let me describe one, with the details stripped out because the young man is real and this happened to him as a child.

He was quiet. Withdrawn. He'd been treated badly enough by other kids that pulling inward was a reasonable response, and it had become who he was in public.

But there was one place, a community he belonged to outside of school, where he was somebody else entirely. Funny. Confident. Fully himself.

An older man there noticed, and said something that turned out to be the hinge of the whole story. You are a ...

The Common App gives your kid seven prompts to choose from. One of them is essentially "write about anything you want."

I don't recommend that one.

Here are the five ways I watch good kids lose a reader, in the order I see them.

One. Not answering the prompt.

A lot of high school English teachers will tell a kid to just write a college essay and they'll sort out the prompt later. The prompts are open ended enough that this seems harmless. It isn't. You still have to answer one of them.

And it's fine if that changes. The prompt that fits the first draft is often not the prompt that fits the fourth. Fine. But by the time it's submitted, the essay has to actually answer the question it claims to be answering.

Two. Not saying anything personal.

It's called a personal statement. I read a lot of them that could have been written about anybody.

Kids default into the register they use for school papers: elevated vocabulary, arm's length, analytical. That's the training. It's also the opposite ...

It's inevitable, every year, just as day follows night:

• High 90’s average
• National Honor Society member
• Varsity sports participant
• REJECTED from half their schools.

Why?

Because these poor kids never learned how to STAND OUT -- how to MARKET themselves.

Admissions officers have a different perspective than a sweet grandma knitting a blankie.

They’re skimming.

Judging. Comparing.

Tossing.

Your kiddo has mere minutes to grab their attention and sell them on their VALUE.

To answer the Invisible Question that's technically not on the Common Application, but in the hearts and minds of every admissions officer as they grind through 1,000 applications per year:

“Why are YOU different from the other 50,000 identical applicants you're competing with?”

That’s what I'm going to show you, Wednesday night: 

College Admissions Cheat Code
Wednesday, May 21
Register now → https://collegeplanningedge.com/

You will discover:

 The “Admissions Edge” strategy for turning a boring ...