College Bound Mentor

College Bound Mentor works as a high school English teacher at a school for students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. She graduated from The George Washington University with a Master’s Degree in Secondary Special Education and Transition Services in 2013. Discuss how your disability has made you the person you are today. Emphasize how it has made you stronger, think outside the box, or overcome adversity. Do not focus on the things you cannot do or highlight your weaknesses. Acceptance into college is dependent on your strengths and academic abilities. For instance, if you’re applying to Cornell’s School of Hotel Management, you might describe how you’ve been collecting hotel brochures since you were a child in the hope of one day opening your own. That, combined with your desire to be on a large, rural campus with deep ties to the surrounding town â€" and work every job possible in a student run hotel â€" made you know Cornell was the school for you. This essay is about your relationship with the school, not solely the school itself. In fact, it’s really more about you than the college â€" how and why you will thrive there. To that end, use the space to explore why you’re a mutual fit. You may not always have a choice of your essay topic. However, you will always have a choice on exactly what you write about within the topic guidelines. Your passion about the topic will show through your writing and make your essay stronger. Your motivation to write will become stronger if you are excited about the topic. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, please share your story. Your essay should consist of three parts - an introduction , body and a conclusion . Create an outline, decide where to include examples and write your first draft. I know this sounds absurdly simple, but it really does make a difference to be as relaxed as possible when you sit down to write. Combining your larger reasons with the specific details paints a clear picture of why this is the right college for you. Use the details to ground the bigger-picture aspects of your story. Don't worry about making it perfect; just let your ideas flow. You can fix mistakes and improve your writing in later drafts. Admission committees will have just read through your application; the last thing they want to do is read another form of your information, achievements and extracurricular involvement. The essay is a supplement and it should act as such. Your application will be full of information that illuminates dimensions of you and your abilities, but only the essay gives you a vehicle to speak, in your own voice, about something personally significant. Choose something you care about and it will flow more naturally. Allow yourself plenty of time to write the essay. Talk to at least one adult about disclosing your disability in your college essay. Make a list of the keys to a good college essay, then list why they are important. Generate a list of adults that can help you with the writing and application process. Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. To identify key ingredients of a good college essay. It can be especially helpful to use a story or anecdote (just not, “I’ve had a Yale sweatshirt since I was 10”). If I had to assign the MVP of the college application essay, it would be the very first sentence. There are supplementary essays for some schools, in addition to the common app essay, that are just 300 words or less. If you think about it, that’s only sentences or so.