Level Up Your Common App. In One Weekend
Why Level Up Your Common App?
Think of holistic college admissions like the balance of a scale: some items boost weaker aspects of an application; other items can drag down stronger ones. You may want to mitigate lower grades or test scores, for example, by highlighting your outstanding activities. Or perhaps you were so busy helping your family during COVID, that you only had time to focus on grades and testing and didn’t have time to do activities. These are things you can make clear in the way you write your Common App.
Some Students Don’t Take Full Advantage Of The Common App. Itself
What always makes me sad is when I encounter students who are talented, smart, engaged, but whose awesomeness doesn’t at all come through on their Common App. because they
don’t avail themselves of all the opportunities the Common App offers.
don’t take the actual writing of the Commmon App. – essentially, the presentation of themselves – seriously enough.
How you write the Common Application is almost as important as what you write.
How You Can Level Up Your Common App.
As I recently told one student “admissions committee readers (Ad Coms) do not have time to do a Star Trek-ian Mr. Spock, mind meld with you!” They can’t intuit your achievements, decipher non-obvious acronyms such as API (Application Programming Interface), know about cool things you forgot to include.
Here are a few tips to help you Level Up Your Common App. Some may seem obvious, but let’s just say based on a few applications I’ve seen recently, these things need to be said…
1) Don’t reinvent the wheel; Google stuff.
Obvious, but I’m saying it anyway. No one, including me, knows everything about every aspect of the incredibly non-transparent U.S. college admissions process, but “I don’t know how to...” is not a good excuse in the internet age. In addition to learning basically anything and everything about filling out the Common App., you can research specifics for your “Why Us” supplements. ANY STUDENT OR PARENT CAN LOOK UP THIS STUFF. Here are a few examples of what you can learn:
how to combine activities to free up a slot or report multiple leadership positions within one activity.
lists of great action verbs for making the descriptions pop.
if/how to use the Additional Info Section & COVID prompts. (See more below.)
what a college is known for academically + it’s culture, courses, clubs, etc.
2) Don’t Neglect Your Activities Section.
I’ve often worked with students who’ve done some really cool and impressive things, but they don’t seem cool and impressive because of how the students organized and described them in their Activities Sections. (This merits a post of its own, but for now, I like these posts on it by the College Essay Guy and Shemmassian College Counseling.)
A few of my own tips….
Use action verbs as you would on a resume.
Write your activities in a doc first: Word, Google Docs, Excel etc. Then finalize it and paste it in.
Brag, yes, but don’t lie/misrepresent. You will have interviews and you will be asked to talk about your activities.
3) Write The “Optional” COVID Prompt.
Sure, it’s optional, but I agree with U.Chicago alumna/Stand Out College Prep counselor Bethany Goldszer’s advice on writing the COVID prompt which you can read here. I also like the College Essay Guy’s post on how to tackle this prompt even if you haven’t experienced a significant hardship.
4) Use The Common App’s Additional Info Section.
Don’t know what the Additional Info. section is? See #1 above, or read Shemmassian College Consulting’s advice on that.
5) Proofread.
Another in the should be obvious category, and yet… Ad Coms will forgive small mistakes here and there, but a Common App. rife with errors indicates either a) you didn’t care enough about your work to bother or b) you’re not as intelligent as we know you are!
Use digital spelling grammar checks as a start, but spell check doesn’t catch everything, including homophones (if you don’t know what that is, see tip #1) and correctly spelled words that are used incorrectly.
The Common App DOES NOT HAVE A SPELL CHECKER. Proofread outside of the Common App and then paste in.
Proofread off a paper copy and reading essays out loud helps.
Ask one or two (not more) trusted, detail-oriented people, to do a proofreading pass for you once you are all done and after you have proofed your work.
6) Use correct and consistent punctuation.
If you’re uncertain how to use punctuation, see tip #1.
7) Random Do’s and Dont’s
It’s National Honor Society, not Honors (btw, colleges don’t care that much about NHS.)
High school is two words.
It’s “piqued” my interest, not peaked nor peeked!
Commas go inside quotation marks.
Limit overused words such as “passion”
Avoid parent-wrote-this signaling words such as “plethora” (even if your kid would use this word).
Speaking of such as…. it’s “such as” not “like” for… “At Veridian College I would take courses such as…. “
Don’t use “big” words if you’re unsure how to use them. Incorrectly used “big” words come across worse than ordinary words used correctly.
Additional typical Common App mistakes here.
8) Read my posts on essays and supplements.
You can read my posts on college essays and supplements, but here are a few quick “no no’s” for the Why Us supplement:
I want to go to _______ so I can ski and I hear you have good food in your dorms.
Because I love______ (California, warm weather, New York City, the food….)
Because you are academically strong (All schools believe they are that)
NB: I cannot take on any additional EA/ED applicants - especially this late in the game. College application work is very demanding. Because there’s a lot at stake academically, emotionally, and financially, I take the time, care of your student and give 1000%. If you’d like my help for EDII or RD, please reach out, but know that I only work with a handful of students for the same reasons I just mentioned. (And no, that’s not some marketing B.S. thing; my primary work is helping kids with the ACT/SAT. I just weirdly enjoy helping students with their college apps.)