Storytelling - The Key to a Good Application Essay

Level 4 - Highly Selective

Welcome back! We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Before we get started, we have received some questions about scholarships.

While scholarship searches should be individualistic, we will provide a few scholarships with upcoming deadlines.

If you have service background specifically focused on fighting hunger, the Stephen J Brady Stop Hunger Scholarship may be one worth checking out. It is due December 5th.

If you are interested in engineering or computer science, Amazon has a scholarship that may be useful for you. Applications are due December 15th.

And finally, for those with STEM interests (specifically space-related), You can apply for the National Space Club and Foundation Keynote Scholarship. It is due December 4th.

Now onto our main piece today.

Working with students and their applications helps us to understand overall strengths and weaknesses associated with individual applicants and the overall college applicant pool. 

No doubt COVID has impacted student applications and capabilities, but our focus is less on wholesale impact (i.e. Everyone was impacted by COVID and therefore have the same things to overcome) and more so on relative trends that can be exploited.

In other words, what do we see in the overall applicant class that provides indicators of winners and losers that can be leveraged moving forward?

One common trend we see is that there is a distinct advantage for individuals who can write. 

Specifically, those who can tell stories. 

Before we proceed, this is NOT an indictment against teachers - no one is suggesting that teachers have failed students.

But it is an indictment against the curriculum, and more specifically, the limitations of that curriculum. 

In a world where most courses are designed to prepare students for state and federal required educational standards, there are limits to what can be taught in classrooms. That creates deficiencies and limits in what students can do.

But the good news is that you can use those limitations to make yourself stand out.