hey Ethan saw your college essay guy here I've spent the last I don't know 10 12 years thinking about college essays and I'm boil down some of my most like useful tips in this video and at the end I'm gonna share with you two exercises that I feel like can help could you start it and set on the right path so check it out number one don't spend too much time obsessing over which common app prompt to choose so I see students doing this a lot they'll look at the different prompts and they'll be like mmm and they'll start obsessing over like should I choose prompt 3 or prompt 4 and I think that's actually not a great idea for a couple reasons first of all college admissions readers don't super care when it comes to the personal statement which prompt teachers like they don't care if you're choosing 3 or 4 what they're interested in knowing is number one can you write and number two will you make valuable contributions to their campus and if you can answer those questions you're doing great if you're really really wanting a prompt I love the prompt describe the world you come from and how its shaped your dreams and aspirations and the exercises that I'll talk about at the end will help you answer that prompt second and this is maybe the more important reason thinking too much about the prompt kind of puts you in the headspace of what this mythical they want and thinking about that to me is kind of like trying to get you know dressed for the day and you're like picking out a shirt and you're like should I wear a blue shirt cuz like statistically more people like blue I don't actually know if that's true by the way or should I wear like a red shirt cuz that's more like me and so thinking about they I think it's problematic the exercise that I'll talk to about the end will help get you more in really focus and focused on what you have to bring to the table consider being vulnerable in your personal statement and what do I mean by vulnerable I just mean that once the reader has finished with your personal statement they should not only know more about you but they should actually feel closer to you now you might be wondering do I have to be vulnerable if I'm gonna write a great essay is that like a requirement not necessarily having said that some of the most amazing essays that I've read do you have a quality of what I would call vulnerable and there are actually many different ways of being vulnerable so the first way is for example to reveal something about yourself that you feel like you might be judged for some students in the past have written about like mistakes that they've made things that they wish they could have taken or details about their family that they feel like you know might be stigmatized and that's sort of like the most common way but there are other ways to be vulnerable for example if you reveal something about yourself that is like in conflict with another part of yourself so let's say for example you really enjoy stability and you love routine and you have a bunch of post-its or you've got like a color-coded organizer that could show certain values things are important to you but you could also reveal that there are ways that you're interested in in spontaneity and adventure and like these two things don't necessarily you know work perfectly like sometimes these come into tension that's what I'd call like a productive tension and then maybe at the end of the essay like you don't tie it up with a neat little bow you end up sort of leaving some of that ambiguity that can be vulnerable especially to like not wrap things up in a neat little bow at the end of your essay a third way to do it and this is one of my favorite ways this is just like geeked out on something that you're like a huge fan of so if you love applied math talk to me about like what it's like seeing the world through applied math or through physics or how is the world all able to like connect back to chess or cupcakes or this thing that you love that maybe not everybody else loves and maybe you know you feel some type of way about that but vulnerability isn't the only thing that I think you need to do in your essay I think you should also illuminate in other words give us insight and another term that I use for insight is so what moments so how do you do this basically create an image or give us an example in your personal statement that shows some of your personal qualities but one student that I knew loved taking apart things in his garage and is so what mom it was because I believed that changing the threads on the stitching of the seats can add a personal touch and change a generic product into a personalized work of art so suddenly I go oh now I get another like value of that like aesthetic attention to detail is super important to you as well the examples you give are gonna show that you're able to be a visual storyteller able to be creative but those insights those so what moments are gonna show you're a critical thinker and I think it's really important to be both next engage the reader's imagination using all five senses so what do I mean by that the biggest photograph is that my family sitting in front of the fireplace drinking my brother's hot cocoa and listening to the pitter-patter of rain outside our window now just listen to those awesome details so she says the biggest photograph of course is that of my family so we can kind of go okay the biggest photograph obviously your family's important to her the biggest photograph is that of my family sitting in front of the fireplace so now we got the fireplace and we see we can feel that warmth of the fireplace and she says drinking my brother's hot cocoa which gives us smell and gives us taste and then she says and listening to the pitter-patter of rain outside our window so it like puts us in the environment with her with her family huddled in front of that fireplace and the three details that she mentions the fireplace brothers hot cocoa and the sound of rain were all things that were in her essence objects box which I'll talk to you in a minute about the ending of your essay should feel surprising but inevitable what do I mean by that well there should be something at the end that's somewhat unexpected but it shouldn't be so unexpected that it feels random it should have some quality of inevitability like we sort of saw it coming like every great movie we've ever seen to give you an example let's say the ending of your essay is like you want to become a doctor well don't say that in like a thesis at the start of your essay because it's gonna make for a really boring essay right if you say I've always wanted to become a doctor in fact all my family were doctors and I really loved anatomy class and I volunteered at a hospital and that's why I want to become a doctor it's like yeah we know that cuz you said it at the start right instead surprise us so another student the one that I mentioned who took things apart with his hand said you know as a kid I was always curious and I really loved taking things apart with my hands and I also loved helping others and I'm a you know I'm attentive to aesthetic details and oh I also love math and then he says you may think I want to be an engineer which is kind of where those headed but actually I want to become a dentist and in some ways all of these qualities curiosity helping others working with hands attention to detail will serve me in that future if it on the other hand feels like it's too obvious like oh they know exactly where I was going then you'll need to pull out some of those obvious details that lead to your ending I'm a big believer that your pre-work shouldn't feel like pre-work like when you're beginning those exercise to start your application that's the actual work of the application and here are my two favorite exercises for starting your application the first one's called the essence objects exercise and it only takes like 12 minutes and you can find how to do it in the link below this video it involves coming up with your essence objects so what is an essence object well it's a term I made up that basically involves imagining in your head a box with these objects each of which represents an important memory an important relationship or an important quality in your life let me share with you one of my essence objects so I have on my wrist two bracelets and I'll tell you about one of them this is a friendship bracelet that my wife gave me she gives me a friendship bracelet every year on my birthday and to me it represents our connection she is indeed my best friend she basically weaves it for me every year and like ties it on my wrist and I can't help but feel like when she's tying this friendship bracelet on that like we are remaking our connection another one would be like North Carolina basketball that represents my connection to my dad growing up he played a lot of basketball with me so that was like his love for me for you it might be like a microphone because that you know represents your connection to singing or it could be like a food that reminds you of your grandmother you know for me that would be like pork chops and lima beans so in this exercise it's like I said takes like 10 minutes you basically create what I call like a menu of potential essay topics and they're useful for describing the world you come from because I really feel like your personal statement should give a sense of the world you come from and how those have shaped your dreams and aspirations so in terms of your dreams and aspirations this next exercise the values exercise is going to help you get in touch with what's important to you and why it's important to you and how it manifests in your life so the values exercise which you can also find in the link below basically involves choosing your top 10 values in like three to four minutes and then giving a quick example at least in your mind of how that value manifests itself in your life having a sense of what values will carry with you into the future can actually be really useful and really empowering hope you enjoyed this video if you liked it give me a little like little thumbs up I'd appreciate it you can subscribe for more videos you can also find a link to my free guide to the personal statement below and for more go to college sa guy calm Thanks