How to Write Common App Essay Prompt 5 | 5 Tips and Tricks
Summary
TLDRThis video script offers five essential tips for crafting a compelling Common App essay. It emphasizes sharing one's personal journey, revealing emotional intelligence, focusing on writing rhythm, narrowing the essay's focus, and including an intriguing introduction and a simple conclusion. The script also suggests using the conclusion as an introduction if it captures the essay's essence better, aiming to connect with the reader and showcase personal growth and understanding.
Takeaways
- 😀 Share your personal journey in the essay, highlighting key moments rather than every detail.
- 💪 Reveal conflicts and how you responded to them, showing your character and growth.
- 🧠 Showcase emotional intelligence by acknowledging your strengths, weaknesses, and self-awareness.
- 📖 Focus on the rhythm of your writing, using a mix of short and long sentences to keep the reader engaged.
- 🎯 Keep your essay focused and personal, selecting a specific aspect of your life to explore deeply.
- 🔍 Include an intriguing introduction to capture the reader's attention and a simple conclusion to signal the end.
- 📚 Use your essay to demonstrate self-motivation, empathy, and social skills, which are important for college life.
- 🤔 Reflect on how you handle failure and what you've learned from it, as this shows resilience and growth.
- 📈 Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that led to personal growth and new self-understanding.
- 🌟 Your essay should reveal your humanity and emotional intelligence, connecting with the reader on a personal level.
- ✨ Consider using your conclusion as your introduction if it captures the essence of your essay more effectively.
Q & A
What is the main purpose of the video script?
-The main purpose of the video script is to provide tips and strategies for writing a better Common App essay.
What is the first tip for writing the Common App essay according to the script?
-The first tip is to share your hero's journey, focusing on personal experiences and how you responded to various situations without going into excessive detail.
Why is it important to reveal conflict in the essay?
-Revealing conflict is important because it shows how you responded to challenges or problems, which helps to reveal your character and emotional intelligence.
What does the script suggest about showcasing emotional intelligence in the essay?
-The script suggests showcasing emotional intelligence by demonstrating self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills, as these aspects can help reveal who you are as a person.
Why is the rhythm of writing considered more important than word choice in the essay?
-The rhythm of writing is considered more important because it helps to maintain the reader's interest and engagement, whereas fancy words might not be used properly and can detract from the message.
What does the script recommend regarding the focus of the essay?
-The script recommends keeping the focus narrow and personal, selecting one specific aspect of your life to write about, and making it very personal to reveal your true self.
What is the significance of having an intriguing introduction and a simple conclusion in the essay?
-An intriguing introduction captures the reader's attention and makes them want to read more, while a simple conclusion serves as a stop sign, indicating the end of the essay without adding more material.
What is the bonus conclusion tip mentioned in the script?
-The bonus tip is that sometimes the best introduction can be your conclusion, especially if you have a strong understanding of your essay's purpose by the time you write it.
How does the script relate to the idea of discussing an accomplishment, event, or realization in the essay?
-The script relates this idea by emphasizing the importance of discussing the process and personal growth that resulted from such experiences, rather than just the accomplishment itself.
What does the script suggest about the role of failure in personal growth?
-The script suggests that failure is a normal part of life and personal growth, and discussing how you recover from failure can be a powerful way to connect with the reader and show your resilience.
What does the script imply about the reader's perspective on the essay?
-The script implies that the reader is looking for a personal connection with the applicant, wanting to see their humanity, emotional intelligence, and the ability to overcome challenges.
Outlines
📝 Crafting a Personal Common App Essay
The speaker offers five tips for writing a compelling Common App essay, emphasizing the importance of sharing one's personal journey and experiences. They suggest focusing on key moments rather than every detail, revealing conflicts and how one responded to them, and showcasing emotional intelligence by acknowledging personal growth and self-awareness. The speaker also mentions the importance of a strong call to action and the potential for conflict avoidance to be a learning experience.
🎯 Enhancing Emotional Intelligence and Writing Rhythm
This paragraph delves into the concept of emotional intelligence, advising students to demonstrate self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills in their essays. The speaker also addresses the rhythm of writing, cautioning against the overuse of complex vocabulary and advocating for a natural flow that includes a mix of long and short sentences, drawing an analogy to Nike's impactful marketing slogan 'Just Do It'.
🔍 Focusing on Personal Growth and Resilience
The speaker discusses the significance of narrating personal growth, especially in the face of failure. They encourage students to reflect on how they recovered from setbacks and the lessons learned from such experiences. The paragraph highlights the value of recognizing and overcoming failure as a critical component of personal development and a trait that colleges seek in their applicants.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Hero's Journey
💡Conflict
💡Emotional Intelligence
💡Rhythm of Writing
💡Narrative
💡Self-Motivation
💡Empathy
💡Focus
💡Introduction
💡Conclusion
💡Personal Growth
Highlights
Tip 1: Share your hero's journey in the Common App essay to reveal personal growth and experiences.
Avoid oversharing; focus on the narrative's key moments to illustrate your story within the 650-word limit.
Show conflict and your response to it to demonstrate character and personal qualities.
Reveal emotional intelligence by accepting your work-in-progress status and self-awareness.
Demonstrate self-regulation and the ability to adjust actions based on past experiences.
Express motivation, whether self-motivated or influenced by others, to display drive and ambition.
Convey empathy and understanding towards others' situations as a sign of emotional maturity.
Highlight social skills and experiences in overcoming social challenges.
Tip 3: Focus on the writing rhythm rather than complex vocabulary for effective communication.
Use varied sentence lengths to create impact and maintain reader interest.
Tip 4: Keep the essay focused, narrow, and deeply personal to connect with the reader.
Consider writing the essay as a form of therapy to reveal intimate thoughts and fears.
Tip 5: Craft an intriguing introduction and a simple conclusion to frame your essay effectively.
Use a strong opening sentence to capture the reader's attention and entice them to read further.
A conclusion should be straightforward, signaling the end of your narrative without adding new information.
Consider using your conclusion as the introduction for a compelling start to your essay.
Discuss personal growth through an accomplishment, event, or realization to show self-understanding.
Recognize and articulate the lessons learned from failures as part of your personal growth journey.
Show resilience and the ability to overcome challenges as a key trait for college and life.
Transcripts
so you need a little help writing the
commonapp essay huh
well if you give me five minutes i'm
gonna give you
five great tips they're gonna take and
make your essay so much better
at the end of that i'm gonna give you a
link that's gonna show you how to make a
good essay great
so let's get started
the first tip to writing a better common
app essay is to share your hero's
journey
so this is a personal question right
there all of these topics are asking
something about you how you've responded
what did you do all of that so you got
to share that with them
but don't share too much we don't need
to know every step in how you bake a
cake
we just need to know that hey i gathered
the ingredients i mixed them i put it in
the oven
and then at the end i got this awesome
thing right
that's your story you only have 650
words so we don't need every detail
we just need an idea of what happened so
that you use that
right the story is the vehicle takes you
from one thing to the next
we need to see how that went so we
really get an idea of who you are
best way to reveal who you are reveal
some conflict
all of these topics lend themselves to
showing some sort of conflict
but most importantly it's not the
conflict it's how you responded
right so cta call to action
was there something that you felt
compelled that you had to step up
a kid was getting bullied there was a
problem with a teacher or a coach
there was an issue at school and you
felt the need to to rise up and
do something right to make it better
that's a great one
was there a time where you avoided
conflict hey you're just a teenager
you're growing up
it's okay to reveal that you need to
learn more
and this was a terrific experience
because i screwed up
i shrunk from the conflict but now i'm
going to know
next time i see that i'm going to know
how to react or finally
hey i lead a conflict-free life and
that's a problem
because i recognize that i haven't done
enough
growing and that i need an experience
like college
to put myself into these small
situations so that i can grow
so that when i go into the workforce and
out into my life i'm ready to go
so make certain that you reveal your
conflict
tip number two is to showcase your
emotional intelligence
so this is a fancy buzzword that's been
going around lately
and this emotional intelligence is you
understanding
who you are and what you have so
as i mentioned earlier you're a work in
progress
and you're and it's okay to accept that
in fact showing that your work in
progress
is revealing your emotional intelligence
as is recognizing your self-awareness
there are kids smarter than me their
kids better than me i'm also better than
some kids
right so knowing where you fit into that
world is
showing some level of an emotional
intelligence self-regulation
hey was there a time where you uh you've
took the call to action but maybe you
went too far you were too aggressive you
did too much
okay i recognize that all right i'm not
going to do so much next time
or gosh i didn't do enough and then i
beat myself
up over it for for weeks months or years
yeah so you overdid it okay so now as
you're getting older you're regulating
so that's a good level of emotional
intelligence to reveal in your essay
motivation listen i i have to
self-motivate sometimes sometimes
i'm human i need someone else to
motivate me and then i'm also really
good at motivating
others right another critical element
empathy one of those things that happens
as you get older you've
had more life experience you recognize
that there are times
where you're going to see a situation
that you've been in that now you see
someone else and that you can help them
and then finally social skills a college
is a very social place
and so this is gonna be a place that
you're gonna want to say
i've gone through i've had some
struggles with with
friends but i've figured out how to do
that and work through those problems
and now i'm in a real comfortable spot
those are going to be all
great issues to show to exhibit
your emotional intelligence
tip number three is to focus in on the
rhythm of the writing
all too often and i've seen this for
years of teaching english
that students when they want to spice
something up they throw in a big fancy
word they run to thesaurus
often a horrible choice because you
don't actually know how to use that word
properly
so what i tell people is that your
rhythm is more important than word
choice
and if it's good enough for nike it's
good enough for you so too often
students will write long sentence long
sentence long sentence long sentence
well imagine if we were just to go in
and vary that up
and maybe you put in a short sentence
there to start something off just boom
hits them right out of the gate
then you go through and you talk about
the story and then maybe instead of
having a long boring last sentence
we put in another short one and if we
think about nike
right one of the greatest marketing
slogans ever is just do it
so if you take a look at a nike
commercial maybe there's a little short
snippet
then they're going to talk about the
athlete's progress and everything
they've done
and then the final scene is just maybe
those three words just do it
again good enough for nike good enough
for you
tip number four keep your focus narrow
and personal
so you have seven essay topics to select
one and you've got to write 650 words
650 words goes by pretty quickly when
you start really getting into
all of these other aspects that we
talked about so make certain that you
only pick
one specific narrow part to focus in on
in your life whatever that is
and make certain that you make it very
personal you really need to reveal your
soul
so make this essay as personal as
possible
and think of this as therapy you want to
tell these people things that you would
be bashful about telling your friends or
your parents
now you're not looking to shock them but
you're really looking to tell them hey
this is what i'm afraid of or this is
what i want to do
any of these things are all going to be
the best way to make your essay personal
tip number five make certain you include
an intriguing intro
and a simple conclusion
you need to capture their intention
right that is the most important thing
so you've always been taught oh have an
attention getter have
something a hook that's going to go
through and really grab the reader's
attention
well it doesn't have to be that fancy it
could actually be just the carving up of
the words that you've selected
and then you position that first so it
leads the reader to want to read more
that's all you need to do you don't need
to shock them you just need that first
sentence
to capture their attention and have it
be interesting enough to read more
so sometimes taking a sentence from the
middle of a paragraph
and putting out at the very beginning
leads this oh it's an intrigue what am i
going to do
so after you've captured their attention
you write their story you need a very
simple conclusion
but make certain whatever you do do not
add more material to your conclusion
a conclusion is just a stop sign it's
letting the reader know hey i'm all done
as a reader we want to be fulfilled and
we want that
strong introduction the story and then
that conclusion
all right your bonus conclusion tip for
today's video
sometimes your very best introduction is
your conclusion
so this is the thing that i've learned
from years and years of
reading and editing papers from my
students that when you start your paper
out
you don't really know where you're going
and as you start writing and you start
having all
of these different ideas towards the end
you really have a great idea of what
your essay is about and you write this
killer conclusion
well what i've seen is the very best
introduction that we can have is to take
that conclusion
move it from the bottom to the top and
now you've got this killer introduction
but you've left without any sort of
conclusion that's okay
again a conclusion just needs to let the
reader know you're all done
and you're just summing up it doesn't
have to be this awesome thing
but if we don't capture their attention
in that first couple of sentences
there's a good chance they may not read
further
okay so now that you have some
strategies and tips on how to write a
better essay
let's dig into prop number five discuss
an accomplishment
event or realization that sparked a
period of personal growth and a new
understanding of yourself
or others so as with all of the prompts
what you write about is really not as
important
as the process for what you went through
how you felt any sort of struggle that
you came across
that's what they want to see they want
to they want to see that you can reveal
that you're human
right you're in that touch with that
emotional intelligence that that's so
critical for these essays
so discuss an accomplishment um yeah
i set the school record we my team won
the section
championship okay big deal a lot of kids
do that
but um what was the understanding of
yourself once you did that
was there more pressure put on yourself
after you set that record or in the
attempt
to set the record did you put tremendous
pressure on yourself did you recognize
how motivated you could be
what happens if you had a failure along
that way you had
a bad game a bad race in the midst of a
very big piano recital
you just blew it right you froze how did
you recover from that
this is all this concept that really is
it's
sparked a per a period of personal
growth
and so you have to recognize failure
is a wonderful teacher so we all
like to have the success stories but if
we think about
and we talk about this hero's journey we
think about all the
i use disney movies because they they've
got a lot of this
but we see the hero fail
and then we see the hero doubt him or
herself
and then we see the the hero kind of
struggle to get back in the game and
then all of a sudden
the hero succeeds right you know there's
a big
there's a big level of success
at the end now that's fantastic
if you have that big level of success
right that's a uplifting movie
but you know what's just as fantastic is
that you recognize that you're not a
success yet
but you're not going to stop trying
you're going to keep on going
success is your goal
but you're still in the middle here you
still are doing things that you still
have to keep working
and that this is a never-ending story
and that hey i tried i failed i got up
you know famous proverbs and almost
every single
um nationality is
fall down seven times get up eight right
so
hey this was my period of personal
growth is that i recognized
failure's normal failures everyone's
going to fail we're human
but it's what did i do how did i come
back and
beat that and what do i now get this
sense of i can accomplish anything
and the reason that's so critical is
that when you get into college
you're going to have a failure you're
going to you're going to
have you're going to blow an assignment
you're going to have a bad project
you're going to
screw up a test hopefully not a class
but if that happens you've got to
recover
you might have a bad roommate or have a
bad relationship in the class
excuse me you know with your teacher or
or whoever
and what did you do
how did you recognize how to overcome
those steps
so revealing all that is what's going to
give you
this personal trait that the reader is
going to be able to connect to
and they're going to say this is the kit
i want on my campus
okay thanks for checking out my video
this was just
a start this is a great way to improve
your essay
but if you want to take your essay from
good to great make certain that you
check out the essay that i have on how
to write a great common app
essay good luck
you
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