Write your way in : crafting an unforgettable college admissions essay

Select an Action

Title:

Write your way in : crafting an unforgettable college admissions essay

Author:

Toor, Rachel, author.

Series:

Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing.

Summary:

For all the anxiety that surrounds the college admissions process, one part of the application lies completely within a student s control: the essay. In this book, Rachel Toor writing instructor and coach at all levels from high school to senior faculty, and former admissions officer at Duke University shows that the key to writing a successful application essay is learning to present an honest portrait of yourself.

Contents:

Introduction: the quest for the special secret sauce -- What you need to know before you start writing. Steal, steal, steal: learning to read like a writer ; Craft your "I": thinking of yourself as a character ; Sex, drugs, and Palestinian statehood: finding a topic ; AMANDA + JIM ; Aboutness: an essay is often about something other than what it's about ; ADAM FINDS HIS PIRATES ; The hole in the donut: writing about the hardest thing ; Tell us about your world in two hundred words: The short answers ; EMMA'S SHORTIES -- Getting it down on the page and then cleaning it up. Shitty first drafts: the importance of allowing yourself to write badly ; Seeing again: revision means re-vision ; Don't try to hook the reader like a trout: the opening lines ; PEYTON'S ANKLE ; Danger! Some moves not to make ; Semicolons are like loaded guns: mechanics matter ; My little bag of writing tricks: some tips -- Conclusion: getting it done.

Physical Description:

169 pages ; 23 cm.

Subject Term:

College applications

Universities and colleges -- Admission.

Essay -- Authorship.

Publisher:

The University of Chicago Press,

Publication Date:

2017

ISBN:

9780226383750

9780226383897

Publication Information:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Call Number:

YA 378.1 TOOR

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003302075	Young Adult Nonfiction	378.1 TOOR	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Writing, for most of us, is bound up with anxiety. It's even worse when it feels like your whole future--or at least where you'll spend the next four years in college--is on the line. It's easy to understand why so many high school seniors put off working on their applications until the last minute or end up with a generic and clichéd essay.
The good news? You already have the "secret sauce" for crafting a compelling personal essay: your own experiences and your unique voice.
The best essays rarely catalog how students have succeeded or achieved. Good writing shows the reader how you've struggled and describes mistakes you've made. Excellent essays express what you're fired up about, illustrate how you think, and illuminate the ways you've grown.
More than twenty million students apply to college every year; many of them look similar in terms of test scores, grades, courses taken, extracurricular activities. Admissions officers wade through piles of files. As an applicant, you need to think about what will interest an exhausted reader. What can you write that will make her argue to admit you instead of the thousands of other applicants?
A good essay will be conversational and rich in vivid details, and it could only be written by one person--you. This book will help you figure out how to find and present the best in yourself. You'll acquire some useful tools for writing well--and may even have fun--in the process.

Author Notes

Rachel Toor is professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University in Spokane and is a former college admissions officer at Duke University. Her books include Admissions Confidential: An Insider's Account of the Elite College Selection Process and a young adult novel about college admissions, On the Road to Find Out .

Reviews (1)

School Library Journal Review

Gr 9 Up-Most high school libraries can use more books on how to tackle the college admissions essay-this book should be a first purchase to fill that need. Toor's style is friendly, funny, and genuinely compelling, exhorting students to go deeper with their writing even (and especially) when the stakes are high. Toor doesn't just tell readers to do better, she lays out useful tricks for how to get it done, interspersing her practical advice with well-selected supporting quotes from various writers including George Orwell and Amy Poehler, and examples from the many students she's coached at essay writing over the years. The format is perfectly suited to the content, short enough that even the most avoidant student might consider checking this out. Chapters are composed of manageable chunks and build nicely on each other; by the end readers will feel more confident and know more about the personal essay form. Hand this to English teachers and newspaper advisors who will be grateful for a tool for general classroom writing instruction. The author talks to readers like the adults they will soon be, with chapter titles like "Shitty First Drafts" and "Sex Drugs and Palestinian Statehood." Toor, currently a creative writing professor in Washington and a former admissions officer at Duke, previously wrote about the admissions process from the other side in Admissions Confidential: An Insider's Account of the Elite College Selection Process. Here, she adds value by telling students what admissions teams are excited by and what they simply can't stand to read one more time. Extra attention is paid to that most daunting of steps in the admissions essay writing process: choosing a topic. VERDICT A highly recommended work for upper teens considering college or wanting to improve their writing skills.-Miriam DesHarnais, Towson University, MD © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.