This will come as no surprise: Yale University is consistently ranked among the top universities in the world. It accepts the Common Application, Coalition Application, and QuestBridge Application, all three of which require a personal statement essay plus additional Yale-specific short answers and a Yale writing supplement. This prestigious Ivy League school prides itself on…
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How to Project Confidence, Professionalism, and Positivity in Your Essays
So you’ve sat down and brainstormed, and you’re now ready to hit the ground running with your essays. Great! You might be wondering how to best convey your reasons for pursuing graduate school to the admissions committees. What kind of tone or approach should you use? A good rule of thumb is to project three…
How to Get a U.S. Student Visa – Even When There Are Complications [Episode 589]
Show Summary This week, we hear from Marla Schechter, a US immigration lawyer with 20+ years of experience. Marla shares her expertise on various topics related to obtaining a visa for studying in the United States. She covers the process of obtaining an F-1 visa, the advantages of studying in a STEM-certified program, the H-1B…
Do’s and Don’ts for Your Application Resume
Your application resume is usually the first opportunity for admissions readers to get to know you and learn about your experience and skills. Because of the number of other application components they need to review, most admissions committee readers will read your resume quickly. So, not only do you have to make a great first…
Tips for Answering the Common Application Essay Prompts
Tips for Answering the Common Application Essay Prompts 2024-2025 Whether you are applying to be a first-year student or a transfer student, you will find that many undergraduate universities and colleges use the Common Application. There are more than 1,000 Common Application member schools in the United States, Canada, European Union, United Kingdom, and worldwide….
Should I Use AI for My MBA (Grad/College) Applications?
My answer to this question used to be a hard “No.” But now, it’s “Yes! Kind of.” We’ve gone through an admissions cycle during which applicants used AI tools such as ChatGPT, CoPilot, Gemini, and others with both positive and negative outcomes. Some colleges, graduate schools, and MBA programs might even have essay prompts soon…
Make the Most of Your Common App Activities Summary
Your high school extracurricular activities are of great interest to the college admissions committees. Whether you played sports, volunteered at an animal shelter, played in a band, or were part of a religious or community youth group, such involvements show the adcoms what matters to you and where you have chosen to invest your free…
Highlighting Your Leadership Experience in Your Application
Mike knew that an intern on his team was struggling with speaking up on client projects, so he mentored the individual throughout the summer and encouraged them to take on a key role on a final presentation. Amy worked part-time throughout college but still found ways to volunteer as a Big Sister, all while earning…
How Personal Is Too Personal In Your Application Essays?
The personal statement is your chance to stand out and make an impression on the admissions committees. How can you make your essay original? How much should you tell? And at what point are you crossing the line into TMI? When I applied to college, I wrote a personal statement describing some challenging family circumstances…
The Diversity Essay: How to Write an Excellent Diversity Essay
What is a diversity essay in a school application? And why does it matter when applying to leading programs and universities? Most importantly, how should you go about writing such an essay? Diversity is of supreme value in higher education, and schools want to know how every student will contribute to the diversity on their…
Can You Use the Same Personal Statement for Different Schools?
There are some common questions we admissions consultants hear often from college and graduate school applicants: “I’m applying to six schools, and each one requires essays/personal statements. A lot of the content will be similar! Can I reuse the same essay for different schools? How can I keep the quality and not burn out while…
Four Tips for Displaying Teamwork in Your Application Essays
Teamwork – and its close cousin leadership – are highly prized by graduate programs and universities. But if you haven’t worked in a team on any regular basis, don’t worry! You’ve probably got a number of examples of teamwork in your back pocket that you didn’t even realize were there. Consider the following four ideas…
Admissions Tip: Be Yourself!
Psst! How would you like to know the one thing that admissions committee members really want from applicants? Here it is: they wish – sometimes they even dream – that applicants would stop writing what they imagine the adcom wants to hear. Instead, they want candidates to just be themselves, presented articulately, of course. We…
Four Ways to Highlight Your Strengths in Your Application Essays
One of the most important pieces of advice you will ever learn regarding your personal statements and application essays is this: Show, don’t tell. It’s a classic writing lesson, and you’ve probably heard it before, perhaps many times. But how do you actually “show, not tell,” in your essays? Simply “telling” is ineffective, because it…
Writing an Essay Lead That Pops
How many times have you sampled the first few lines of a book and decided, “Nah, this isn’t for me”? Whether you picked the book up in a store or library, or downloaded free sample online, you probably made a pretty speedy decision about whether it would hold your interest. The human tendency to rush…
Writing Your Career Goals Essay
Check out all the blog posts in this series: Your career goals essay demands a laser-like focus. A personal statement, by contrast, allows for some flexibility in its content, though you can – and often should – discuss your career goals. But a career goals essay has a particular and packed agenda. In fact, the…
Finding a Theme for Your Statement of Purpose
Check out all the blog posts in this series: All effective essays have a distinctive theme, and it can take time and careful thought to identify what yours should be. If you go back to the essays we examined in the previous post in this series, you will see that the public health program applicant…
Starting Your Application Essay: Three Tips
If you haven’t yet read the other blog posts in this series, go ahead and check them out: Once you have reflected on the questions that helped you identify and develop your essay theme, you should have a clear path to writing an effective essay. Here are three essential steps to help you achieve that…
Revise and Polish Your Application Essays
Check out all the blog posts in this series: You’ve completed your first essay draft – this is a great milestone! Outstanding essays are not sprung into the world on the first try, however, so now it’s time to revise and edit. Here’s how to get the job done: 1. Let your essay rest for…
The Resilience Factor: How Flaws and Failures Can Strengthen Your Application
A speaker recently told a story about traveling in Asia, where he saw a stunning emerald. Enchanted by the stone’s beauty, he decided to buy it on the spot. He returned home and took the emerald to a jeweler for appraisal. The jeweler began examining the stone through his magnifier, and as he did so,…
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