Usually, around this time of year, my mind is on things other than college admissions essays. This–and a vacation to Mexico–explains the lag time between my last post and this one. (That and a healthy dose of good ol’ procrastination too). I haven’t even weighed in on the changes in the SAT, but my feeling is that the written word and good vocabulary will always count for something so let’s just move on. Anyway, traditionally, the first three or four months of the year is when I focus more on my college marketing work–right now, I’m writing the viewbook for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute–and less on my college essay coaching. So far, however, the start to 2014 has been quite atypical as there has not been much of a hiatus on the college essay front. This year, I have had a significant number or transfers and students applying to graduate school, which has meant, in several instances at least, working with people who are fully adult (let’s say over 30).

The graduate school essay (and, to a lesser degree, the transfer essay) is less about coming up with some marvelously original concept, as you need to do with the Common App personal statement, and more about giving your life and your academic career a really smart retrospective and packaging. This is not easy for anyone to do, and I find  that a bit of narrative flourish at the beginning can really make a difference for the writer and ultimately for the reader (i.e. the graduate school admissions counselor). So, for instance, I had an adult student, working as a banker, who wanted to go into a top-notch international business program. We worked together to review his accomplishments and one of the things he was most proud of was creating a kind of microloan program at his bank. We opened up his essay with a one-on-one exchange with the recipient of such a loan, and that bit of narrative, which felt immediate and fresh and very human and related, was an excellent idea. The rest of the essay, which naturally covered his past accomplishments and his future aspirations, all went much easier once he got that narrative hook down. The upshot? Harvard has invited him in.

I’m very pleased to be working more than usual with this population–but very pleased too that I got that beach time on the Caribbean!

It’s still not over and here are some of the acceptances that my students have received within the last 24 hours:

• 2 to Princeton
• Stanford
• Cornell
• Yale
• Dartmouth
• UPenn

Congratulations to them–and a round of applause for all of you students who have given it your best shot this season. Even if you were disappointed today, who knows what great news tomorrow might bring?

Right now is real crunch time for a lot of my students. They are waiting to hear from their early decision choices and are trying to get more essays done in case those dreams don’t come true. (And, as we know, dreams often have a habit of not coming true, so a little prudence is definitely called for). As I have always found with my students, however, neither they nor their parents take out their anxieties on me. When I first began doing this work, years ago now, I was a little worried about that. Would I be dealing with very entitled students and parents who thought they were owed something they were not? I am pleased to report that I have never, in my hundreds of associations with students and parents, ever encountered anyone like that. I suppose the fact that these families know they are not acquiring “bought essays” is the reason. I make it clear from the start that I don’t write for students. I help students do their best writing. That means that we are involved in a highly collaborative process that results in mutual respect and often very warm feelings. It is an intimate process to hear about people’s private thoughts, dreams, concerns, disappointments, triumphs–the stuff of these essays–and I feel honored to be trusted with all that.

I also find myself often in awe of my students. Not only for their energy and commitment and stamina, but also, in many cases, for the breadth of what they’ve done. They have patents and businesses and research accomplishments; they create visual arts and fiction and poetry and music. They juggle sports and community service with staggering workloads that they perform at exceptionally high levels. And those who may not be so accomplished often strike me as genuinely interesting, thoughtful, complex, and worthy human beings.

So here’s to you, students, as you near the end of this grueling admissions process. May your dreams come true, but please know that there are so many great schools out there and I see kids all the time who are thriving and growing in schools you may not even have heard of. It’s a big world with a lot of surprises. Be open to that.

The second edition of my book, Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Steps, has just been favorably reviewed on the website of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC):

http://www.nacacnet.org/research/PublicationsResources/BookReviews/Reviews/Admission/Pages/Conquering-the-College-Admissions-Essay-in-10-Steps.aspx

They cited the following:

Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Steps is a helpful tool for any high school senior who needs a little guidance in writing his or her personal statement.  The book breaks down each step in an easy to follow manner and only provides the essential information.  Gelb is relatable and gets to the point quickly.  By using the steps described in this book, students can achieve a winning personal statement.

Thank you, NACAC!

As always, this is an extremely busy time of year. I work long hours from now until New Year’s, but my work is nothing compared to the work that I see my students taking on. They are so dedicated and some of them are quite driven. For the most part, that drive is coming from them, as they take on the hardest courses, the biggest academic burdens, tons of activities, and now all these essays they have to write. Of course, I have my share of procrastinators, and so I’d like to remind those folks who have that tendency that you can help nip it in the bud with a few easy behavioral modifications:

1) Request and respect deadlines. Asking a procrastinator to respect a deadline is sort of like asking a jewel thief to respect a safe, but it’s worth a try. I actually have some students who ask me to set deadlines for them. It’s not my inclination to do so, and I’m always a bit surprised when I hear this request, but when I do, I’m happy to say “Tuesday” (or “Thursday” or “Monday”). And I find that these students, who know their limitations, do a pretty good job of respecting these deadlines.

2) Set goals for yourself. You have to write a 650 word essay, which is not exactly Atlas Shrugged, but, even so, you’re procrastinating. If you’ve spent weeks looking at a blank page (or computer screen), now is the time to set yourself a quota. Write 25 words tonight. That is attainable–and it will feel good once you do it. You can build on that feeling as you move forward.

3) Don’t be too hard on yourself.  Everyone procrastinates for some reason or other. If you spend a great deal of time berating yourself for being a procrastinator, then that is time spent away from the work you could be doing…and, hence, it is just another form of procrastination.

3) Reward yourself. If you’ve met a goal, give yourself a treat. Make it commensurate with the goal, to create a “reward system.” So then, writing 25 words means that you get to play a video game for 10 minutes. Writing 100 words means a half hour on the video front. (Chocolates, TV, texting–choose whatever works for a reward).

All right then. Back to work for me!

Here on the East Coast, we’re having a real blast of summer before all the leaves fall and we start to focus on apples, pumpkins, and getting the house in shape for winter. I am also marking the change of season by the volume of calls I’m getting from nervous students and parents who wished that they had gotten their essays done before the start of school. Oh well. That would have been nice. But there’s still plenty of time.

Thinking back over the students I worked with in these last few months,  I have come to see that one very nice ingredient I haven’t talked about much is humor. I had several students this year who actually wrote quite humorous pieces. Now if you think of a college admissions counselor reading hundreds of overly earnest essays, you can imagine that person’s relief–and interest–when something comes along that is actually funny. And, of course, funny stuff can be just as brilliantly revealing about a person as anything else. There is, to be sure, such a thing as great comic literature: Eudora Welty’s The Ponder Heart, John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Cervantes. Well, your college admissions essay is probably not going to scale those heights, but it can still be amusing and profound at the same time, as in the vein of Welty and Wilde.

The thing about humor, however, is that not everyone is capable of it. I believe that virtually everyone is capable of writing a decent college admissions essay–my book, Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Steps, is premised on this conviction and that may explain why it  has been so successful–but not everyone can do humor. And if you can’t do humor, don’t do humor. You know if you’re funny. Your family and friends think so. People laugh at your jokes. If you have never thought of yourself that way and can’t remember a time that you ever said anything that anyone else ever laughed at, then you’re probably not very funny. But that’s okay. Not everyone has to be. If you are funny, however,  maybe you want to try that direction, at least in part.

Didja ever hear the one about the rabbi, the priest, and the minister? Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.

If you weren’t at yesterday’s CollegeWeekLive presentation and would like a video crash course in the college admissions essay, go to:

 http://event.reg.meeting-stream.com/sl/integration/auth.aspx?EnrollmentKey=APKeccd6816c5354e869aeb93dae0eddbf8