Table Of ContentPRAISE FOR ALAN GELB’S APPROACH
“Alan Gelb has done the impossible: he’s created a sane and simple process for
crafting a knock-your-socks-off essay! His guide is perfect for high school
students facing the most important document they will ever write. The student
still has to do the work, but Gelb’s approach reduces the stress.”
—DONALD ASHER, author of Cool Colleges and
Graduate Admissions Essays
“Alan’s guidance in the process of writing my college essay was invaluable. Not
only did I end up with an immensely superior product than I would have without
his help, I also learned, with Alan’s help, how to mine the depths of my
experience to find a meaningful narrative and then convey it with a clear,
coherent structure. I got in early decision to Columbia University with that
essay; I am forever indebted to Alan for that.”
—JOSH FREED, admitted early decision to Columbia
University
“Taking an ordinary essay and helping to mold it into an extraordinary one is
what Alan Gelb does best. [He] helped transform … my essay into a final draft
that could stand out amongst an elite crowd.”
—MEGAN S. STEVEN, PhD, one of Alan’s first
students, was admitted to Dartmouth for undergrad and
was awarded a Rhodes scholarship; she is now a faculty
member with the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience,
Dartmouth College
“Alan Gelb saved us by working with our daughters to help them understand
what works in a college essay. My daughters’ admissions to Brown and
Macalester were enormously helped by his advice.”
—JANE HIRSCHMANN, parent
Copyright © 2008, 2013 by Alan Gelb
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com
Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
A previous edition was published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, in 2008.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gelb, Alan.
Conquering the college admissions essay in 10 steps : crafting a winning personal statement / Alan Gelb.
— Second edition.
pages cm
1. College applications—United States. 2. Universities and colleges—United States—Admission. 3.
Exposition (Rhetoric) 4. Essay—Authorship. I. Title.
LB2351.52.U6G448 2013
808.06′6378—dc23
eISBN: 978-1-60774-367-5
v3.1
For Noah and Nathaniel, my sons and guinea pigs
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface |
Acknowledgments |
Introduction |
STEP ONE: Understanding the Narrative |
STEP TWO: Finding Your Topic |
STEP THREE: Point of View |
STEP FOUR: Getting It Down |
STEP FIVE: “Big Picture” Editing |
STEP SIX: Second Draft |
STEP SEVEN: Self-Editing |
STEP EIGHT: Third Draft |
STEP NINE: Pulling It Together |
STEP TEN: Finishing Up |
Appendix 1: Real Student Essays |
Appendix 2: The Big Essay Picture |
Appendix 3: For Parents |
Appendix 4: New for Teachers |
About the Author |
Preface
I want to tell you a little bit about how I came to do this kind of work. I live in a
small rural town in upstate New York where the high school is adequate—not
more, sometimes less. Both of my sons aspired to go on to selective four-year
colleges. They were good candidates—highly ranked in their classes, with
excellent scores on their standardized tests and solid achievements that attested
to their special talents. As I said, their high school offered them the basics but
not much more. One “extra” that was not present was the kind of intense college
preparation provided by exclusive private schools and affluent suburban high
schools. When the time came to apply to college, kids around here were pretty
much on their own.
Unlike my boys, I did not grow up in a small rural town. I went to high school
in Scarsdale, New York—one of the most pressured public high schools in the
country with one of the best college acceptance rates—and so I knew something
about the process of getting into the school of one’s choice. As a professional
writer, I also knew how to craft an essay, and so, when my sons had to work on
their college applications, they were lucky to have an in-house coach.
My older son wrote an essay about growing up in a community where he felt
“different”—he was one of only two Jewish kids in a graduating class of 120—
while my younger son wrote a piece about the burnout he had experienced as a
competitive athlete. Both of my sons got into their first choice colleges.
I soon found myself helping quite a few students in our town, and I enjoyed
this contact. I got to know about them in personal and often very moving ways,
and I had the satisfaction of seeing them learn some valuable lessons about
writing. As the years went by, and as I worked with more and more students, I
realized that my approach to this assignment was quite original in its attention to
the narrative form and so I decided to collect my theories in the book you’re
about to read.
Since its original publication, I have coached many more students, all over the
world, and have kept up a blog for more than three years on the subject of the
college admissions essay. My older son Noah—my original guinea pig in this
work—now joins me in working with students. Many teachers have told me that
they use this book in their classroom, so I have created a Teacher’s Guide (see
this page) to make the book even more teacher-friendly. Now this revision offers
the opportunity to make a useful book even better. It also proves that revision is
an absolutely critical part of the writing process, something we’ll be talking
about a lot more as we go on.
Since this book was first published in 2008, a great many of my readers have
told me how useful it has been to them and that is very gratifying. I hope that
you too will learn valuable lessons as you read and digest this book and will
come away with an original, authentic college application essay that will help
you stand out from the pack.
Acknowledgments
I deeply appreciate the interest of Ten Speed Press in publishing this book. I
would like to thank Aaron Wehner, who first paid attention to it, and Melissa
Moore, who did such a fine job editing it. Emily Timberlake has been my editor
on this revision and her help has been invaluable. Thank you as well to the
students who allowed me to reprint their essays. I would also like to express my
gratitude to all the students I have worked with over the years for allowing me to
learn from them, and to my wife, Karen Levine, for always supporting me in my
writing career.
Introduction
If you’re looking for an instruction book on how to write the college application
essay, don’t worry—there are quite a few excellent ones on the market. In fact, if
you have all the time in the world, I suggest you check out as many of these as
you can. Chances are, they’ll all contain some useful ideas. But if you’re pressed
for time—and what high school senior isn’t?—then you can feel confident that
the book at hand is your fastest and surest way to produce the kind of application
essay you’re after.
How is this book different from all the others out there? First of all, it has
been pared down to the essentials. I’ve coached a great many students through
this process and know that it doesn’t make any sense to choose the first semester
of the senior year as the time to “share secrets from college admissions
counselors” or “sample essays from great writers like E. B. White, George
Orwell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.” This is the time when you want to focus
exclusively on that which is absolutely critical, eliminate anything that feels like
padding, and simply get the job done in the best possible way as fast as you can.
To that end, I’ve organized this learning process into a ten-step system. I’d
like to say ten “easy” steps because “easy” is such a persuasive word, like
“new,” “improved,” and “best ever.” But the truth is that some of these steps are
not that “easy.” That said, none is insurmountable. If you follow this book in its
logical sequence, you will arrive at your destination—a well-turned college
application essay designed to linger in the minds of those who read it.
This book is different from others on this subject in that it focuses entirely on
process. As I said, I will not be offering any extraneous material, like “secrets”
from admissions counselors at Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. Such secrets are
enticing, but ultimately do little to help your cause. What will help is to truly
understand the elements of a well-constructed narrative, which is what this book
will be teaching.
