Team Signet: The College Essay

In today's episode, I sit down with Signet's College Experts: Joanna Graham, Jasper Nighthawk, and Satia Marotta. We explore the latest trends in college admissions, discussing what has changed in the landscape and what students can do to stand out. Whether you're just starting your college journey or you're deep in the application process, this episode is packed with information you won't want to miss. Tune in and get ready to navigate the path to college with confidence!

Bio

Joanna Graham is one of Signet’s top admissions consultants. She has decades of experience in the college admissions and standardized testing space, having worked as an admissions interviewer and application reader at Georgetown University and then as an independent admissions consultant in the DC area. Joanna received her Bachelor’s degree in Language & Linguistics and Sociology from Georgetown University. Joanna stands out because she is a current member of the Board of Governors at Georgetown, she spent nearly a decade working at the Graduate Management Admissions Council and she volunteers at a variety of athletic and military organizations such as Dog Tag Bakery, Team Red White & Blue, the Ironman Foundation, and the Pat Tillman Foundation. Clients and students love Joanna because she is kind, well-accomplished, and encouraging, she is an avid athlete and has completed nearly 40 marathons and ultramarathons and 2 Ironman triathlons and she is a proud mother and dog mom!

Jasper Nighthawk has been working at Signet since 2016 and has tutored for over a decade. He specializes in writing (specifically college essays) and academic coaching, and he graduated with an AB from Harvard College and got his MFA from Antioch University LA. Jasper stands out because he is a practicing poet and author, he loves sports, cooking, writing, and his pet cat, he works as the University Storyteller of Antioch University, editing over a hundred articles a year, hosting an award-winning podcast, and crafting the story of that institution, he previously worked for seven years as a Poet in the School, and he has lectured on creative writing at both UCLA and Wesleyan. Clients and students love Jasper because he is calm and kind and he is encouraging and adaptable.

Satia Marotta started working for Signet in 2018 and has many years of tutoring experience. She holds a Bachelor of Science with High Distinction from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and a Master’s of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology from Tufts University. She loves research and teaching. Satia stands out because she worked as a Graduate Writing Consultant at Tufts and as a Peer Academic Coach at WPI, she is an avid fiber artist and enjoys crocheting, weaving, and quilting. She even spins and dyes her own yarn, and she is a diligent bullet journaler and has been working on her doodles, hand lettering, and handmade papermaking skills. Clients and students love Satia because she is warm, enthusiastic, and intelligent and she takes an organized, concise approach to her tutoring

2024-2025 Common App Essay Prompts

RSVP here for our webinar on Executive Function Coaching for High Schoolers on July 25th.

Access free resources and learn more about Sheila and her team at Signet Education at signeteducation.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilaakbar/.

Transcript

Joanna Graham: 0:00

You know when, when I talk to students about the personal statements, I describe it oftentimes as sort of the flagship, it's sort of the flagship product within this portfolio that they're submitting. Because when you think about it, your application really is very much like a jigsaw puzzle. You have all of these elements, you have grades, you have clubs, you have titles, you have all of these things that you've done, test scores, potentially letters of recommendation. Everything needs to fit together nice and neatly, but there needs to be one central element that sort of anchors everything together, and that really is the personal statement.

Sheila Akbar: 0:42

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the last episode of the season. We kind of line up our podcast season with the academic year, and school is out and it is summer, so we got one more really good one for you before we take a quick break and we'll be back in August, and today sharing with you a panel discussion I did with a couple of my awesome colleagues, Joanna Graham, Satia Marotta and Jasper Nighthawk, and they are really representative of the team that that I've built here at Signet. We've got strategists, we've got writing coaches, and they're all just super thoughtful people, and as you'll hear in our discussion, we all just love working with teenagers and helping them uncover these amazing stories about themselves. So really excited to share this with you, and I think it'll be a really great introduction to what kind of writing is needed on the college application. How is it kind of evaluated? What role does it play in the entire application process, but also some really practical stuff around you know? What do we make of these prompts? How do we start brainstorming, what kind of role should a parent play in this process? And how do we revise and then how do we keep everything organized? So take a listen, and I'll see you on the other side. Today, we are here to talk about the college essay, which I know drives everybody a little bit crazy. It feels like a lot of work, and work that your student has probably never had to do before, so it feels unfair in that way, and we've all been dreading it, probably for the last year, and now it's time to actually get started. So I'm glad you're here. We're going to try to give you as much practical advice and kind of ways to sort of orient yourself to this project that hopefully will put some of these worries aside and give you some tangible places to get started. So the essay is the place where your student can stand out in their college application, right in a sea of other applications where the GPA may be similar, the specific courses may be similar, even some of the leadership might be similar. The essay is really where the student's unique voice can shine through. And it's such a huge opportunity to make that impression that really sets them apart from the rest of the competition. So this is a tremendous opportunity with a lot of potential, but you kind of need to know, what are we trying to do so that you can make the most of it? And to be clear, we believe every student has this potential within them already. They may need some help uncovering it, articulating it, maybe even focusing a little bit and sometimes bringing in a thought partner to work with them on this can be really helpful in excavating that potential and helping them get it on the page. So today I've got with you a couple of my esteemed colleagues, and I'll tell you a little bit about each of them. We have Joanna, who's a former Georgetown admissions officer. She is a consultant at Signet, and that means she kind of works from the strategic level of helping students develop their candidacy, build their college list, and decide kind of the strategy of the essays, how are they going to tie everything together, and what's the story that you're telling to a college I have Satia, who, along with Jasper, is a writing specialist at Signet education, and they're both, you know, very highly educated, very talented writers, and they also have a lot of experience coaching students through this process in a way that helps them feel comfortable exploring topics that they might not have really thought deeply about before, and getting words on the page and, you know, eventually structuring it into a beautiful essay that's that's polished and says exactly what they wanted to say. And so at Signet, most students who work with us work with both a consultant and a writing coach or a writing specialist to kind of bring this whole thing together. So you get to hear from a lot of really amazing people today. And want to orient us a little bit to what are we talking about here. Most of you've probably heard of the college essay. We like to call it a personal statement. Sometimes it's the personal essay or the common app essay. The common application is a very popular application platform that over 800 schools use, and if you're using that platform, your personal statement will go to all of the. Colleges that you're applying to, there's some universities have their own application system, Georgetown, University of California, places like that, where you might have a slightly different structure of essays, but for the majority of colleges, you're going to have one main personal statement, and really that's meant to be about the student, and really kind of getting under the surface to understand their character motivations, how they think, and these sort of intangible qualities that make them unique. And again, it goes to all the colleges. So it's not meant to be speaking to one specific college, but if you've built your college list right, there are going to be resonances across all of the colleges on your list that your personal statement could really speak to in that way, be relevant and compelling to all of the colleges that the student is going to be sending this to. And that's 650 words. We'll talk about the prompts in just a second. 650 words may sound like a lot, but really it's like one page, single spaced, and that's not a lot of room to try to encapsulate all of these unique qualities about your student. And you also want to remember that the admissions officers are reading these things quite quickly. They're going through 1000s of applications, so they're probably going to spend like two to five minutes on the personal statement. So it has to have an impact, right? And we're going to talk today about how you can make sure it does have that. Then we have our supplemental essays. So not every college has these, but many selective colleges do, and these are essentially shorter, more specific prompts that ask about how the student is a match for the school. So it might be like, Why are you applying to this school, or respond to our mission statement, or how are you going to contribute to our campus? And so these do need to be unique to each school, but students will know themselves, hopefully, and will understand you know their academic interests or what they're looking for in their college. So there may be parts of these essays that they can reuse across all of the different colleges, then they'll have to tailor it to fit the exact parameters of each school. So we are going to talk about both of these different essays in today's session, and it's important to know you don't want these to overlap whatever you've said in your personal statement you don't want to repeat again in your supplemental essay, right? These are really potent opportunities, as I was saying, for a student to really stand out, so you want to make the most of that space, all right. And the last thing I'll share, before we get into our questions kind of boil down for us, like the four pillars, maybe we'll call them college essay writing, and we do think about these things separately. When a student is writing often, they're kind of doing all of them at the same time, but when you're working with some kind of coach or an expert, will be thinking about each of these things. And I encourage you to think about how this plays out for your student. And I've just listed some questions here that can help orient you to what are we talking about for each of them. So the first is strategy. On a higher level, how does this essay highlight who the person of the application is? And a lot of admissions officers will say the essay really brings that student to life. It brings the whole application to life. So how can that essay serve that purpose? And then we also want to think about what are the particular values, strengths or qualities we want to make sure the essay conveys because it's not apparent from their extracurricular list or their list of transcripts, or it might not be something that the teachers are all going to be talking about in their recommendations, but we know this is something really special about the student that absolutely must be conveyed to the colleges with the application. That's kind of the strategy level, the content level of that is, how do you demonstrate all of those things? Right? The name of the game is, show, not tell. So you want to be finding stories where a student has demonstrated that quality, or even learned that strength or developed that value. And that's how you really convey the information, is through the stories. And what content in that regard would showcase the kind of way the student thinks and how they see the world, because that's what's going to help a college understand who the student's going to be on their campus. Then we have style. So I like to think of this as we have a toolbox, and how can we use those tools to create compelling, coherent and concise essay, right? 650, words. We can't waste any of those words. We need to make sure the pieces all hang together and that it resonates with the reader, right? And there are lots of ways to do this. You can use dialog, you can use flashbacks, you can use flash forwards, you can use, you know, a third person narrator. You can do all sorts of things. And that's where having someone who really knows the craft of writing can be very helpful conducting this or completing this project with your child. And then finally, we have voice, and voice is tied in a little bit with style, but we really want to make sure that the students you. Unique voices coming across. Now this could be showcasing elements of their personality and the stories they're telling. It could be their specific choice of vocabulary or sentence structure that just reflects the way that they talk, even though the essay needs to be, you know, slightly more elevated than conversational. It doesn't have to be super formal. And how can we use that voice to create really memorable connections with the reader, because at the end of the day, that's what you want. You want the admissions officer to remember your student and feel like they know them in some way. And the best way to do that is to tap into that really differentiated individual voice. Okay, I've been rambling, and we're going to go into our questions and what I would love to do is have Joanna tell us a little bit about the purpose of the personal statement, and really how admissions officers tend to look at this when they're doing the evaluation process.

Joanna Graham: 10:56

Kayla, it's a pleasure to be here. You know when, when I talk to students about the personal statement, I describe it oftentimes as sort of the flagship it's sort of the flagship product within this portfolio that they're submitting. Because when you think about it, your application really is very much like a jigsaw puzzle. You have all of these elements, you have grades, you have clubs, you have titles, you have all of these things that you've done, test scores, potentially letters of recommendation. Everything needs to fit together nice and neatly, but there needs to be one central element that sort of anchors everything together, and that really is the personal statement. And so to give you an example, you know, my background is in marketing and branding, and so I tell my students that if you think about sort of the elements of building a brand, you think about expertise, purpose and authenticity and expertise. Those are the things that you're good at, and that's the stuff that shows up in your grades, in the test scores, in the letters of rec. It's purpose and authenticity that is given a place to shine in the personal statement, because that really is an opportunity to talk about, what are the things that get you out of bed in the morning, what drives you, what makes you uniquely you. It really does allow you to become a much more three dimensional person to the admissions committee and allows you to stand out. So you know, schools probably are getting 10s of 1000s of students who love computer science and maybe play soccer and have joined chorus and maybe fill in the blank other organization. The way that you start standing out, you start adding those layers. So you know, if computer science is something that you're really good at, but maybe it doesn't necessarily get you out of bed in the morning. Maybe it's going out and cleaning up trash on the beach, because you recognize that saving the planet and the environment is something you really are drawn to and driven about. Maybe overlay that with the fact that part of what makes you uniquely you is that you care about the small little things. You care about, the things that you care about doing, the things that no one's asking you to do, and just sort of showing up. Now that's starting to give you a little bit more of a personality. And so admissions officers are looking for all of those elements in the personal statement. They want to understand the student behind the grades, the student behind all those test scores. And it really is a wonderful opportunity to what I always tell students to show, not tell. And you can demonstrate that through storytelling, through all these wonderful techniques that Sheila and my colleagues are going to chat about sort of this afternoon.

Sheila Akbar: 13:06

Thanks, Joanna. And now I kind of want to open up to the group, because, as I mentioned, the stories are the most important part. And I want to hear some stories from all of you. Your favorite parts, maybe most memorable essays that you've worked on with students, and some of the transformations that you've helped facilitate through the writing process. Satia, how about we start with you?

Satia Marotta: 13:26

Absolutely, thank you. I think one of my favorite stories was a student who was going into robotics, and the reason she got into robotics was because she was a fencer, and so she during the pandemic, wasn't able to practice in the way that she wanted to. And instead of saying, Oh no, I guess I'll take up jigsaw puzzles or something, instead she's like, I want to design a robot where I can practice this. And that was her entire journey into joining the robotics club and discovering that, oh, this is a bit disorganized, and they're not a lot of people that look like me. It wasn't a very gender diverse space. And I don't like the way this is organized in that I want to be on the mats with the rest of the robotics club operating the robot and programming and doing all these things. And the way that the entire team was structured was very much about a single person who had all the information and everyone else kind of just cheering them on. And so her story evolved into this amazing narrative of, like, being a first year student showing up in high school and being like, Hey, I think we can do more. I think we can do better. And her spending time during the pandemic creating reference material so that everyone could know how to operate the machine, and ending kind of with the story of, like, I have a prototype, like I built a robot that I can it's not great, but that's more than a lot of folks are doing. And part of what I think is also really funny about this story is a little bit of a side that may appeal to you. Is that deep into the process, we're like, polishing it, her mother reached out and was like, you know, this is great, and also maybe it should be about violin. And we were like, wait, what? And she was like. Yeah, like you were, you drew the violin and you did. America's got town, like, why are we talking about that? And it was, like, such a really good contrast to see, like, how a parent sees their student versus how the student sees themselves and what's important to them. So like, we did end up sticking with the robots, but it was just like, a really amazing experience to see her be like, Mom, no, I haven't played the violin anymore. Like, I want to talk about robots, and that's where we landed. And she landed in a really great spot. And it kind of was just one of the more unique stories I've encountered in my tenure at Signet. And it's just a really lovely story.

Jasper Nighthawk: 15:32

Satia, I love you sharing that story. And the kind of the the sigma between what the parent thought the story was and what the what the child was leading with, and Joanna, when I was hearing you describe, you know that this is the way that students are able to express their uniqueness, their unique qualities, to become more than their test scores and their CV. I think that that can sometimes be really intimidating to students and to parents, because it's like, you have, like, Sheila said 650 words, you have this one shot. And I've definitely had a number of students come in and be like, okay, so you should know, I'm not interesting at all, but don't worry, I'm going to make something up. And I mean, transparently, that's not a great, not a great approach to creating a compelling piece of writing. Also, it definitely overestimates your ability to con other people and and underestimates other people's like, Bs, alarms. But what I love, one of the things that I love kind of like you echoing Satia stories when is when a student comes in and they're like, I'm pretty sure I want to tell this story, and sometimes I struggle to know why they want to tell the story. So last year, I was working with a student who was like, the story that I want to tell is I got a summer job working at a golf course, and I was so good at it, I would drive the golf cart and I'd talk up the guys who I was caddying for, and I got to know dozens of guys, and isn't that interesting? And I had to, I had to say, like, I'm definitely interested why you want to tell this story, but I don't know that you've unpacked it enough to figure out why it's interesting. And so we just kind of kept talking about it. We did some exploratory writing, and eventually it kind of came out that over the pandemic, he had developed a really intense video game dependency that he was dealing with a lot of stress in his family, and he had kind of set himself to go work at this golf course this summer, and he left his video game rig at home, and it had opened up like this new vista for him. His grades had all gone up, and he had kind of overcome that social anxiety. And as we kept working on it, the, you know, the golf course, course part became like three sentences. But it turns out he was pointing at the right thing. This is what matters to me, like satire, like you were saying, like, no, no, the America's Got Talent, the violin thing, that's not it like he knew what the story was, but he hadn't sat with it long enough, and I was, I was glad to hold that space for him.

Sheila Akbar: 18:08

I love that story so much. I think it's so representative of like, what can happen in the best of all possible cases, right? Like you allow a teenager to believe in themselves in a very real way. And it's so empowering. I really love it. Joanna, before we move on, any stories you want to tell?

Joanna Graham: 18:29

You know, I think there's students always ask, you know, like, what are the no nos? You know? Like, there have to be, you know, there have to be things that are too cliche and so similar to Satia and Jasper. You know, I've had students who have come in and said, I really want to talk about how when my lacrosse team lost the state championship, it was just the most devastating thing in the entire world that happened to me, and my life ended. And I always have to take a pause and remind myself, you know, we were all 15, 16, 17, ones, and at that moment in your ecosystem, that I mean that may be the end all be all. But you know, very much like Jasper's story, you know, I think it's important to give students the space to process some of that, because I also think that so many of these children are so over scheduled, they're so hyper focused, you just have to move on from one thing to the next. And so many of them have oftentimes not had a chance to really think about the impact that these events have had on them. And so while, you know, I while I think there, you'll hear a lot of folks say that stay away from things that could feel cliche about losing a state championship for this student in particular, we really dug into to try to understand why this was such a big deal. And I found out it wasn't that he was captain of the team or was even particularly good. He actually wasn't even a starter on the team, but it was so devastating to him, because his role on the team was like he was the hype person. He was the one who made everyone feel good, and he was the one who gave everyone a reason to believe. And in his mind, he saw it as a personal failure that he had not done his job appropriately in lifting people up to believe that they could be successful and that, you know, and I won't go into too much more detail, but it was more about really discovering what's at the root. The state championship loss was. Just the way it manifested. It was, it was sort of the vehicle, and to Jasper's point in his story, it ended up, it ended up being just that. It was maybe a two sentence footnote, almost. But the but the story ended up being much more focused on how he really derives energy, and how he sort of grew and felt good when he made other people feel good. And that, I think again, going back this idea of showing, not telling. I think that was really powerful to show that this is the kind of person he would be on a university campus. He's that he would talk about. He talked in a subsequent essay about how, you know, he's that person is going to run around with a red clown nose on during finals week and handing out cookies and making people feel good, because that's how, that's how he feels his own cup. And that's the kind of person I think a lot of schools would want to have on their campus, lifting others up. Lifting others up.

Sheila Akbar: 20:43

So fantastic. I just love hearing these stories, and I'm sure you, you see us, we're smiling so hard because we like this is the stuff that fills our cup. We love working with teenagers to excavate these stories and help them see just how amazing they are. All right, let's go to Jasper, and let's talk about the prompts a little bit, and I'll put the link to the Common App prompts so you can look at them. But Jasper will tell you, they're very open. Jasper, what do you think?

Jasper Nighthawk: 21:11

Yes, that. That is the first thing that I always say when I'm sitting down and looking at prompts with students. Students have almost always looked at the prompts before. Have some ideas and like, what I always say is these prompts are here to help you. They are like, nobody is quizzing you. Nobody is is gonna grade you on how well you stacked up against other people who answered that prompt. They are absolutely a gift from the common app people to to students. And the reason that that is is that a lot of times when we think about presenting our own stories, we start from like things that will paint us in a really good light, or maybe things off of our CV that are that are impressive and to the point of helping people actually get to know you, helping people root for you. That actually is not always the best approach. It's much better to like show, don't tell. And having worked with these prompts for a lot of time, I've noticed that most of them, I mean, let me just say at the outset, the seventh prompt is as open ended as any prompt has ever been. So even if you deviate from one of the prompts a little bit, it always is okay, but looking at the other prompts that are a little bit less open ended, a lot of them have this same pattern of something happened. So it's like you encountered an obstacle, or you questioned or challenged a belief, or somebody did something for you that made you happy, and but then they they generally ask a couple of questions, because then it asks you, what did you do in response? What action did you take be out of this external stimulus or this event that happened, you did something in response. And then it usually has this third part, which is like, now that you're looking back on it, like, what lessons did you take away? And I think it's really useful when framing stories of like personal personal growth or something that reveals something inside you to show you encountering an obstacle or wrestling with an idea. But I think it's also really important that that thing that happened is is usually framed by these questions as being something in the past. So sometimes students come in and they have an idea for an essay, and it's something that is still going on or that just started a month ago. And I often say, like, well, look at these prompts, like they're not really asking, like, what's this thing that you got excited about last week? Not that that thing you're excited about last week isn't going to impact your life massively. That may be the thing that decides the entire rest of the course of your life, but it's not. It's not digested enough with these stories that we're telling. It's often really useful if we have already kind of gotten to the end of that story, even though that can feel like, Oh, well, this happened like three years ago. It's like, well, we're gonna get you today thinking and processing this, so you're gonna be in it this current you, but also that actually can show like a full cycle of problem, wrestling with the problem, resolving the problem, or the idea, and kind of integrating it into the self and then reflecting on it. So I that's a pretty useful model to me to kind of make sense of these questions that that on their face can look like they're, you know, kind of a scattershot bunch of different ways that it's going.

Sheila Akbar: 24:34

Thanks, Jasper, that's really helpful. And then staying in on the practical mode. Satia Like, how do we choose a topic? What kind of brainstorming do we do? Like, it feels overwhelming. So where do we where do we begin?

Satia Marotta: 24:49

Yeah, sometimes there being so many possibilities. Can be like, Oh no, where do I start? And so a lot of things that I could like to keep in mind my students is one. This is a marathon, not a sprint. So I need you to pick some. Thing, like, to Jasper's point, not that you really loved last week, because I don't know if that's going to be the story in two months, and we're still going to talk about this essay in two months, I need to talk about something that you love or that has mattered to you and has impacted you in a really deep way, so that when we're still editing this essay in a few weeks, you're not just, like, so upset that I even have to bring it up. So that's one of the very first things I'll just ask you. It's like, what do you love? Like, what love? Like, what clubs are you and how do you spend your time? What do you geek out about? Because we all have those things. And then also, there are other exercises that we can do, like, bring free objects to us and tell me the story of them and why they're meaningful to you. Or, like, who in your life has inspired you and why? Like, What changes have you seen? And to echo Jasper's point, I feel like a lot of these essays are these stories of growth, of adaptability for someone so young, of like developing that self awareness that they maybe haven't had to demonstrate before in their writing classes. Usually it's like, I read this, this book, and now I have some thoughts, and I'm going to share them with you, but that deeper level of reflection, of like, how has this changed my perspective, or how is this going to influence how I move forward, hasn't happened yet, and so I try to get them thinking about the things that they're going to just want to tell me about, and we can kind of pick through the story that has that nice arc of beginning, middle and end and and that's why I'm here today, and that's why you need me on your campus. And often it's like, it's not always the big things, to Joanna's point, it's not always like the devastating loss. Like, sometimes it's like, I had one student who started her essay about a worry doll that, like her mother had given her when she was very small, and she just kept it because when she was anxious at night, she was able to tell it her worries and go to sleep, and it's like, that's like, a small thing, but it spoke to her culture, it spoke to her connections, and it spoke to the fact that, hey, I now know this about myself. I'm an anxious person. Here's how I'm managing that, and how I'm still able to get up and go, in her case, like, perform on stage in front of my entire school. I'm at this, like, dance recital kind of thing. And those stories are just so impactful. It's not always the really flashy things like Jasper say. It's not always like, and I won this huge trophy and this prize, and I'm like, the all star, it's like the moments, not necessarily stuff you make a memoir about.

Sheila Akbar: 27:14

I love that anybody have something to add to that Joanna or Jasper?

Jasper Nighthawk: 27:19

I was gonna just jump in with another example of a student who I was working with who it was something really small, sort of like you were saying Satia, but he was just, like, really interested in space, and was like, interested in maybe working in aeronautics, or really gifted science minded person. And I mean, it's not always where you like, keep pushing, and it reveals something deeper. But he pretty quickly, was like, you know, the real reason I like space is that, like, I have ADHD diagnosed, and when I think about, you know, the theory of space, time and, like, solve equations in that that have to do with this, I am able to focus for hours at a time, and it feels really good. And I use that actually in like my math or my English classes, I'll, like, write down an equation or solve some equation for, like, a body in orbit, and that'll help me focus and so, kind of, like your student addressing anxiety, like knowing enough about themselves to know that they have a tendency towards anxiety and to have kind of developed a skill. I feel like that kind of self awareness is is such a gift in anybody who you might work with or have as a student, and I sometimes caution students against writing about their experience of depression or something that might set off an alarm bell in somebody doing admissions like, oh, we already have a mental health crisis on campus. This student's telling us they have a mental health problem. But I think that if it's the right story and it's told the right way, it can only help your application.

Joanna Graham: 28:56

I couldn't agree more, Jasper. I was just going to add to that. I think there's certainly exercises you can do with students to also start teasing out some of them, because for for every student who is incredibly self aware and knows these things, there are probably 10 or 15 who come and go. I don't know what's special about me or or it's the Hey, I'm good at comp sci, and I'm a pretty good soccer player, and I've been playing the piano for 15 years, but only because my mom made me asking for a friend, right? But you know what I will say. So one of the things that I have students do is, you know, I mentioned, sort of the idea of expertise, authenticity and purpose. And so I have my students go off and do an exercise where I ask them to write down two or three things that they are really good at, and to think about, what are the things that you believe you're good at, versus, what are the things that people tell you you're good at? And then the next step of that is for the purpose part, because I think this can be tough. I think Satia, you had mentioned this earlier, this idea of, you know, what do you do in your free time? So I always ask students, because, you know, again, every student's dramatically over scheduled. They tell them, let's imagine you have a free day. So you wake up, you don't have any classes. You have no responsibility whatsoever. There's no part time job, there's no siblings, there are no chores, there's nothing you have a genuine free day. So. How are you going to spend your time? And it's always amazing to me to see number one, how many kids will fumble with this, because just the thought of having a free day is completely foreign. But when you actually get them to start thinking about, how would they choose to spend their time if they had that luxury, it's incredibly telling, because you start looking for these themes, and that's really what you'll start to see here, is that when you layer on this idea of authenticity, I ask students, go and ask people in four different circles in your life what three words they would use to describe you. So ask your best friend, ask a teacher, ask a coach, ask your parents, ask a sibling, because chances are, you know, you're probably going to get some variation on those words. Because, I mean, let's be honest, we all are, I think, especially as teenagers, we're all slightly different versions of ourselves depending on who we're interacting with, but you'll start seeing those themes, and I think that's where a coach can really come in handy, whether it's a strategist or a writing specialist, because being a third party or someone who knows the student but is also a little bit removed, we can sort of see those themes and those threads and start kind of tugging on a little bit more. So okay, so I see that you are an extrovert with your family. You're an introvert in this particular situation, but the common thread at the end of the day is you really enjoy doing nice things for people, and you don't like you don't feel compelled to get the credit, like you really are just a giver or you, or you like to show up. And so what is so let's, let's dig into that a little bit further. And so I love when students, I love giving students the opportunity to start again, sort of discovering a little bit more about themselves, even if they're not always able to do so organically on their own. And I think again, the personal statement is a great opportunity to do some of the soul searching. And quite frankly, I think that a lot of the things that students discover are going to help them, not only on their application, but also as they go off into college and go into their adult life. Because these are really, for some kids, I think these are really sort of Earth sharing revelations sometimes.

Sheila Akbar: 31:43

So in the interest of time, I want to pivot. We'll come back and talk about the supplemental essays, because I think a lot of the same things apply, it's just with a much more specific prompt and purpose of articulating the match. But let's talk about, like, the role of a parent, right? I mean, you gave us an example of a parent coming in trying to, like, bulldoze a prompt through, or a topic through. But you know, there are productive roles for parents to play in this process, and I'm sure everyone here would love to hear about that. So Jasper, what do you think? What role could a parent play here?

Jasper Nighthawk: 32:15

When I started doing this work, like a decade ago, I would sometimes parents would be like, I want to sit down on one of the sessions, and I would, I would be like, a little concerned, but I've come around to really feeling like parents are often their child's best advocate, and they know their kids so well and are so often see the good, where the child has a more ambivalent relationship with their own abilities. And so I think that the parent can really help. Sometimes, I've had students when generating ideas like, what is the story? I'll say, like, go ask your parent, like, what are three of the stories that you think say the most about me? And I think that they can be really useful. Then. Now I would say there, there does exist, like the helicopter parent, as subkines described, or just somebody who has some reservation or a disinclination to let their kid kind of go off on a journey of writing without being constantly supervised. And I think that, in my experience, that is almost always the reason why they've come to work with Signet is that they know this about themselves, and so they're hiring somebody to create a buffer and hold some space for their kid to find their own story. So then I try and do that for myself, but I always think that there's a magic moment, especially when a kid has found maybe something about themselves that they maybe didn't know or hadn't expressed as clearly before. And when they bring that, that essay back to their parents and say, like, Mom, will you read this? That is often like the sweetest moment that said, I did once have a student who wrote her whole essay about her family home burning down when she was a freshman in high school, and they were all in the house, and they like all got out. Their pets were all okay, but they lost all of their possessions. And throughout the whole engagement, the parents would occasionally hop on the call and be like we saw the latest draft. And just so you know, this actually didn't have any impact on the kids. We managed it really well, and it was, it was all okay, so I don't really know what she's writing about here, and I kind of ended up being a little bit of the interpreter to be, like, actually, I think you should just read what's happening and kind of trust this process as she's and I think this is a little off topic, but sometimes whenever you're doing writing, tutoring or teaching, you end up in a role that is somewhat therapeutic, where you're helping hold space for somebody to explore a story. And I will, I have, on a few occasions, just recommended, like you should actually have a therapist. I'm not trained to work with this, but on many occasions, you know it can, it can be wonderful to get to tell your own story. In your own words.

Sheila Akbar: 35:01

That's really great. I think the trust is really a key piece of this. And I really encourage parents to have explicit agreement with their student, their teenager, about when they are going to look at the essay, what kind of feedback they are going to give at what stage of the writing process. And parents, you just really need to know that the first stage of this, your student has to be really vulnerable and be okay trying things on and not feel like everything is up for evaluation yet, because we've got months before the deadlines, right? We're still going to be working on this. And so sometimes that critical feedback is not that useful at the beginning, but suggesting ideas might be right, without poo pooing, whatever they're working on, but then later in the process, that's the place for you know, this phrasing may be a little clunky, or maybe we can elevate the language here, or something like that, right? So there's different kinds of feedback that you want to give at different points in the process. And to that end, I'd love to hear some of the ideas about revising essays, right? There's one thing to come up with the topic and to start writing, right? We know the first draft is going to be your worst draft. It's supposed to be it's going to get better from there. So how do you improve it? How do you go about revising this thing? Satia?

Satia Marotta: 36:13

Yeah, absolutely. And also, I'm guilty of it myself. When I was in high school, there was a lot of essays I wrote the night before, and revision is not a thing I did. So step one is talking to students and being like, this is not a last minute exercise. This is something that we are going to be talking about for a long time. And revision means that we're going to be taking a step back, emotionally in some ways, and then critically looking at it and seeing, is this clear, is this persuasive? Is this making the argument that I am adaptable and fun, and that you want me on campus because I'm really smart, and I'm going to change the world when I get older. I'm going to, you know, run for president, or whatever they're going to do, and that it's going to be very iterative. And so I love the pillars that we showed earlier, because really what we're doing as we revise is that in the early stages we're really going to be seeing does this tell a coherent story that someone who's reading very quickly, and probably loved reading these essays two weeks ago and now is 2000 in and maybe doesn't love them as much is really going to speak to they're gonna be able to pick it up really quickly a lot of times in the revision process, someone has kind of like a big story that they wanna tell, but it requires a lot of nuance, and then they don't have nuance that they can offer in 650 words. And so kind of like Jesper story earlier, like, it's like, Wait, where's What is the story here? Like, what is the actual narrative? So early on, we're just getting on, like, what are the big points that we have to hit? What are the arguments that we're making, and how is each paragraph going to hit those? And then we're really rereading it. We're talking through it. We're questioning every word choice, every image to see if it's conveying what we want. And also, are there images that we could use that might express the point we're trying to make in fewer words. So like in my background, I study metaphors. That is literally my dissertation is on I love metaphors. And so one that just popped into my head with a student was that her art teacher took away her eraser because she kept erasing and doing it over and erasing and doing the same line over because she felt like she couldn't draw a perfect flower. And her teacher took away that eraser to say it is perfect the way you drew it, like it is your style. It is your interpretation. It is heart. Make the mistake and keep it moving. And so it was like the story about earning back her eraser, which, like, that's an image that packs so much into it. And so how can we express these ideas in ways that are easy to pick up, that are accessible to anyone? And then eventually we're going to get to commas and like, split infinitives and all the things that like, personally, I don't recommend a student have to memorize. We have so many other tools to get at all the grammar rules, but it's very, very iterative and collaborative and sometimes fun. Like, that's the other thing. Like, I know we are moved on from this question, but like, I think parents can help us embrace this as, like, a fun process. It's the beginning of going to college that's huge. And so, like, not always treating it as this, like really, really really high stakes thing that we have to take seriously. I've had parents comment to be like, Who are you talking to? I'm talking to see it. It's teaching you, right? Yes, and it's still fun. Like, so that's something take away from it.

Sheila Akbar: 39:15

That's great. Maybe I'll ask one more question of the group here, how do we know when we're done with an essay. Joanna, do you want to chime in?

Joanna Graham: 39:23

Yeah, I think that that's that's such a tough question, because I think if you, especially if you are the parent of a high performing child, they're going to tell you that it's never going to be done. It's never going to be perfect. And I think that's actually when, when you get to a point in the process where, and this is where I think of, you know, an outside South Side party can help, where it feels like you're starting to sort of circle the drain a little bit, where you're just your words, nothing, the same words over and over again. I think it means that the content is set and that you're admitted is okay, getting it out the door. I I always ask students at the very beginning of an engagement, when I first meet them, to send over the. Standard things like their transcripts and their test scores. But then I also ask them, send me a writing sample. Send me a paper that you've written in the last six months, and it needs to Ideally, it should be one that's not perfect. I don't want a 100 paper. I want a paper that really reflects sort of who you are as a person, what your writing style is. And I always kind of tuck that away to just give me a sense of what is that students what is that student's voice? What is their style? And I think for me, at least personally, that's that's really helpful in the process to sort of know when to say we're done. Because I think there is you do get to a point of sort where you're having diminishing returns, where you start polishing to the point where it doesn't sound like a student's voice anymore, it starts to sound like someone else's. And that, I think can be just as detrimental, if not more. So so I think the, you know, the answer is, it's a bit of a self awareness exercise. But I think this is especially where a third party can really come in handy to really sort of be able to say, to tap them on the shoulder and say, Hey, we're good. We're good. We have to put the pencils down. Or, if you like to, if you like Top Chef, it's, you know, time's up and the hands have to go up.

Sheila Akbar: 40:55

So, right, right. Well, I want to open up for questions. I definitely have more things that we can all talk about, but attendees, if you want to put your questions in the chat or come off mute, you're welcome to ask any questions you want about any part of this writing process, and while we're waiting for some questions to come in, I wonder if we can talk a little bit about how to keep everything organized, and how to build some accountability into this process, and what kind of timeline you might recommend? Satia, I saw you nodding vigorously, so I'm gonna let you answer

Satia Marotta: 41:28

I love spreadsheets. So we have a lot of spreadsheets where we're keeping track of which schools the students applying to, what are the due dates when we wanna have drafts and what are the prompts? Because this is definitely an eco friendly process. We want to reuse and recycle as much as we can. They don't need to write the same essay, like for all these different schools, we want to make sure we have pieces that are core, that we can tweak a little bit. And so keeping all that organized in a spreadsheet and then really asking the student like, what works best for you? I've had students who are like, I want to meet once a week and I don't want to hear from you in the interim. I have other ones who are like, of a text message. I would love if you could review the draft in advance. It's all very tailored to what that specific student thrives with. And that's, I think, the easiest timeline. But we do start in the summer before a regular decision in early action.

Sheila Akbar: 42:14

Yeah, I think just having a timeline is a good idea. Like, let's start there in the basics. But yeah, you can get really fancy with your spreadsheets. Kalpana asks, What are clear things that make an essay seem inauthentic? Are there generally things to stay away from, or is everything okay as long as the student generally believes in it, and maybe you meant genuinely believes in it, because I think we want genuine, not general belief. Jasper, what do you think?

Jasper Nighthawk: 42:38

Yeah, I'll jump in and say that I think authenticity is kind of an imaginary idea that doesn't really exist in the real world. All writing is, to some degree or another, a performance. And the question is, does this performance, when you read it feel like you the student? And I've definitely sometimes worked with a student just once or twice, and I never really get to know them enough to really know if, if that is being achieved. But certainly, parents generally can tell like this sounds like my kid. I see my kid here. This does or or like, was this written by chat GPT, which is my favorite new writing insult.

Sheila Akbar: 43:21

Okay, let's avoid that one. We get some other great questions here. Do you think all essays have to have a story? Can this too seem too canned? Remember back a few years ago where there was a trend with these essays with a hard story or coming of age event that they've overcome?

Joanna Graham: 43:37

I think that was the, well, that was the called the trauma essay, right? Yeah, from a couple years ago. We're talking about perfectly imperfect people. So there isn't a nice, clean beginning, middle and conclusion. It's not a fairy tale where, because the story, the fact of the matter is, the student story is still being is still being written. But I will say, I do think that there needs to be some sort of narrative piece within an essay, because I have had students who have tried to do some some more abstract things, where they want to talk about a handful of things, and this is what I sometimes start calling the kitchen sink, because the essay becomes a dumping ground. It's just they want to throw everything in there. And after a while, when you start adding these things, it it's not necessarily cohesive. So I do think you need at least a core idea, again, that doesn't have to be a nice and neat story, but there needs to be something that ties it all together. So I talked a little bit earlier about themes, and maybe it's, maybe it's a theme that has maybe two, two parts to it, maybe a third, depending on how efficient you are with words, but, but there should be some sort of unifying element, because even if it all makes sense sort of in in the students head, it's not always going to manifest itself out that way in the essay. And it's really important to realize, you know, Sheila, you had mentioned this earlier. You know, mentioned this earlier. You know, on average, admissions officers are spending two to five minutes on applications. I think the other deep, dirty secret that I will share from my days of reading applications is that, in an ideal world, I tell every student this, you want to believe that the admissions officer reading your application is reading at 9am on a Monday after they're well rested and they have a cup of coffee. In their hand, and the world is wonderful. But the reality is, is they're probably going to be essays that they read, applications that they read at three in the morning after they've had six Red Bulls, and all they want to do is go to bed and so but they're still going to give that application. It's due, it's moments, but you need to be you need to be thoughtful in terms of the potentially, the mindset of the person on the receiving end, and that part of that part of that is just luck of the draw. So the more that you can do to give the reader something that they can easily follow, and that feels, again, consistent with the rest of what you're presenting in your application. That is, I mean, you're just doing yourself favors at that point, so just make sure that you're you're trying to help the reader and help the admissions officer who's on the receiving

Sheila Akbar: 45:38

Yeah, and like Jasper mentioned, you really want them rooting for you, right? So you've got to give them something to root for, right? A reason, reason for them to root for you. I will also add that the reason we talk about stories is because, when we don't, students are often like, Here's a general life lesson. They like state it like a proverb, almost, and really well. But if you could put this in a story, when this at this actually happened to you, or how you learned this lesson, or, you know what, how you applied this lesson to your, you know, math, Olympiad team afterwards, then we take something from being generic that literally anybody can say and being something that only you can say, and revealing something about you. In particular, I often tell my students, you know, we kind of know we're done when if you were to print out your essay and it didn't have your name on it or any other identifying information on it, but you dropped it in the hallway of your school, everyone would know it was your essay, because it sounds like you, it feels like you. It just is you, right? It's a snapshot, but it's you. Great. Another question here is the essay about why a particular major, is that a good topic, or is that too old school? I usually recommend looking at the supplemental essays for your colleges before you choose because, again, you don't want them to overlap, and many schools do ask about an academic interest, and so you want to save that material for a supplemental essay and write your main essay about something else, right? But if it so happens that you're applying to colleges that either don't have supplemental essays or don't ask that specific question, then that's a perfectly good topic for your main essay. But looking at the prompts will also help Kristin asks, do the supplemental essays get updated or change when the common app updates between July and August? Yes, they do, actually, August 1 is when every college is supposed to have their updated supplemental essays in now, usually these things don't change very much year to year. Last year, we saw a bunch of changes, particularly in response to the Supreme Court decision barring race conscious admissions practices. So we did see some new questions and some things swapped out, or some wording changes. But usually what we end up doing is pulling last year's questions and having students start to brainstorm and write on those. Because once you start looking at these supplemental essay prompts, you'll see they're like six or seven main questions that they're really asking in different languages or different language, not languages, different wording of the prompt itself, and usually different length of question, but they're about the academic interest. Or why do you want to go to this school? Or how are you going to contribute on campus? Tell us about a meaningful extracurricular. Tell us about a time you had a disagreement with somebody, and how did you how did you manage it? Things like that. Oh, some really good questions, should a student include metrics to support the depth and reach of a program that they created? Sandy, this might be more appropriate for the Activity List section of the essay. Metrics are great there. But Joanna, do you want to chime in about including metrics in essay?

Joanna Graham: 48:35

Sure. I mean, I think there's certainly. I think it's important to remember that you know the essay again, these are personal essays. And so at the end of the day, I mean, there's certainly things that could strengthen the argument you're trying to make, but these are not research papers like a student would write for high school. And so what I usually encourage students to do is, if there are things they want to share, I've asked them about qualitative results. So if they've created a nonprofit, or if they've started a new initiative, what are like? What is the impact that's been created. Again, to Sheila's point, I think that the activity list is a great place to list all of those metrics, all of those numbers, but the essay is a great place to then talk about, sort of the softer, squishier stuff, you know, how did you how? What is the impact that you've had on on people? Because, again, I think this also then speaks, you know, as an admissions officer, they're reading this thinking about, well, this is, this is the impact you've had on people's lives, on communities. This is how you're going to show up in our community.

Jasper Nighthawk: 49:23

I would add to that that I think, like, specifics and details are so wonderful when we're reading anything. And so I think if you are taking as your topic, like, I had a student who, like, set up a TED Talk program at their high school, and they were, like, so excited about it, and so we did include, you know, there were like, 35 talks, and over 400 students attended. You know, those metrics were interesting, but they were also, like, one sentence worth. The others were specifics about working with people late at night, and you know, the one they were most excited about.

Sheila Akbar: 49:57

Thank you. Jasper, all right. If we don't have any other questions, I think we'll wrap up. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. We really enjoyed talking about our favorite students. I hope you enjoyed hearing about them. Take care, everybody. Okay, we could have gone on for a whole lot longer, but we had to end it somewhere. I will come back to you in August, in the new season, with more information on how to approach those supplemental essays that we only just kind of touched the surface of in this conversation. But August 1 is when the Common Application kind of refreshes, and all the colleges have updated their questions, and so that's a great time to start thinking about, how do you write those essays? So we'll do an episode on that in August, and I've got a bunch of other really great stuff planned for you. Then in the meantime, feel free to reach out. I mean, we're still open, and I'm still here, I'm still checking email, I'm still posting on LinkedIn, so feel free to reach out to me if you need some help, or if you need some advice, or if you just want to have some guidance about who to reach out to about some specific challenge that you're having that's one of my favorite things to do, is connect people to resources. The other thing I want to let you know about is we are launching a course this summer, and I may jump back in in July with a little more specific information about the course. But the course is about what really matters in college admissions, what the data looks like. How do you find that data, and then how do you apply it to navigating High School for your particular situation, your particular student and your particular goals? So that is a really powerful course, and I'm really excited to put out into the world. And you can check our website for more information on that, or my LinkedIn. And then another final plug that I want to do here before I sign off for the year is in July. July 25 we're doing a talk on how to make the most out of last year's mistakes. Really about reflecting on the last academic year, and how do you set your student up for success in the next academic year based on whatever happened last year. So we are going to talk about executive function coaching. We are also going to talk about how executive function coaching and the systems that we use there are not just for students with learning differences. Actually, everybody can benefit from outsourcing some of the things that you have to keep in your mind. Like, you know, your appointments, your tasks, when are tests coming up? When do I need to start working on a paper so that I'm not scrambling at the last minute to revise it and turn it in by the deadline? You know, all of those things are really useful to have a system for no matter what state your executive functions are in. And we'll be showing some really great stories about that and some tools and some places to get started. So that's july 25 keep your eye out for that. You can check the Signet events page at Signet education.com/events to get an early RSVP for that and find out more information. Okay, that's everything in my head. I'm gonna shut it down for a month. I hope you've enjoyed the season of the podcast. I would love to hear your feedback and requests for you know certain types of topics or guests. I really want to be able to bring you the content that you want to hear. So let me know, and please keep in touch. See you next time. Bye.