Common App Prompts

Within the next two weeks, the deadline being the first day of midterms,  I would like you to hand in a printed version of your essay, double-spaced, as close to the 650 word limit as you can get it.

You may write ANY of the common app prompts, but, eventually, I'd like you to try them all. 

Hopefully, the discussions we've had and the essays we've read will have helped you "load your gun" to the point where you are ready to shoot and hit your target.  The exercises we've done so far, along with workshopping, are designed to show you the dynamics of tone, structure, voice, and theme. 

Please avoid cliche' topics (or at least make them interesting), and always think about "what do I want my admissions officer to think about" when they compare your essay to the rest of your application.  Will they want to meet you? 

CLICK HERE FOR COMMON APP ESSAY TOPICS

A "unique" college essay...

Thread-like wound.

 My grandfather collects furniture.  He restores it.  He knows everything about it, and loves the story of wood.  One day, he sent me an envelope and asked me to correct his writing:

When valuing the quality of wooden furniture on the practical level, the flexibility and the hardness of the material are most important. The aesthetic quality, which becomes more important as the furniture becomes expensive, focuses on the beauty of the grain of the wood and the clean surface of the wood. A crack in the furniture is unexpected, but deadly and could ruin the furniture.

“Let’s go to the sauna, HanMin.”

My father interrupted me for our Sunday morning ritual.  We would go to the local sauna. We would scrub each other’s backs, get refreshed, and return home after eating popsicles together.

“The water isn’t very hot this time, HanMin.”

                  As we have always done, my father first scrubbed my back and I turned to scrub his. Then I noticed the difference in the father who I remembered, and the man he actually was. He had lost more weight, his back had become stooped, and his fingers twisted from long hours of work.

                  My father had a crack.

“Dad, start exercising. You have to take care of yourself.”

“Okay I will, HanMin. Don’t worry.”

                  The cause of my father’s crack was me. At least I thought so. I was suffering from the competiveness and a busy life of boarding school.  I wondered if I pushed my agony and sorrow onto people near me. I sometimes blamed my parents for my troubles. I spent my time vaguely, between work and play.  I knew I was being selfish, but I thought my vanity lay in love. I also had crack in myself.

“HanMin, take a cab to go home. I have to go to work.”

                  After coming home, thinking more about my father, I felt the crack grow inside me. Who was I? My vanity seemed to go against the grain of those around me. I was too resistant of accepting myself for who I was truly being.  Maybe not who I truly am.  Who could I be if I was more realistic and honest with myself? How could I fix the crack in my father’s health? If I could fix my own, I could fix his.

When wooden furniture became cracked, our ancestors covered the furniture and stored it. From the cold, arid atmosphere of winter, the wood would dry and from the hot humid weather of summer, the wood would reform and reshape itself.

                  Admitting my naivety was harder than I thought. Though I could say that I was young, understanding and admitting my faults from the heart, it seemed unreal. My father was once young like me.  He also had a father.  Did they go to the sauna as well? I recalled all those times during the summer and winter breaks. We would go to the sauna every week and have long conversations. The topics sometimes offended me or him, but we both knew that those were necessary. The heat and humidity of the sauna tempered and raised me.

                   If the furniture survives its trials, then the wood finds its original figure, and the crack is left as a thread-like wound - a glorious mark of its growth. Then, though it has the same quality as other well-made furniture, it is considered as exceptional furniture.

                  My life had been a continuing sequence of avoiding and hiding from myself and the reality. I was afraid. However, after realizing who I am, how my father loves me, I have tried to change myself. I now know that there are friends, teachers, and my father behind me  - who will always give help and support even when I face the ugliest and hardest truths. I now know that I have to carry myself, and though I should not follow the errors of my life, I have to keep them, be responsible for them, and love them.

                  The crack in me has been found, and is turning into a scar. My father has quit smoking and started exercising. My family seems tighter. I am becoming more self-aware.

Then, though it has the same quality as other well-made furniture, it is considered as exceptional furniture.  The artistry is a wonderful accident, that gives the wood the quality of art.

My grandfather’s words are also my father’s words.  I hear them in him.  I hear them in myself.  There is nothing I can change on paper to make them better.  I can only learn to listen to them more. 

                 

Tone Essay vs Story Essay

As said before, I would like you guys to recognize how an essay "without a plot" can be just as effective as one where a protagonist rescues a child from a burning house. Here is one of the "favorite" essays from the 13th wave. This version is FAR too long, but we can see how the style and diction that the writer brings is engaging.  It meanders and transitions very effectively.  Have a looks and leave a comment on how you feel about it.

 Eighteen 

Eighteen. What a special number! In Chinese, the word “Eighteen” can be pronounced in a way that means “prosperity,” and in the same way building floors with the number four are considered unlucky, eighteenth floors are more expensive because they are considered lucky. In Northern China, however, floor number 18 is avoided because apparently Chinese hell has eighteen levels, far more cost efficient than Dante’s Italian hell of thirty three floors (one would assume then that all eighteen floors ought to be avoided). You’d think it’s a contradiction that one number could mean both prosperity and hell in Chinese. In Korea, pronounced slurred, “Eighteen” is the equivalent of the Korean f word.

Eighteen. Although tempting, I won’t go into the mathematical significance of the number since every number seems to have at least five mathematical labels apart from its actual name – to name a few, composite number, semi-perfect number, heptagonal number, abundant number, Harshad number (eighteen qualifies all six labels apart from the lesser know “eighteen”). You try looking for significance in a number, and you’ll find one too many.

On the 6^th of May, I turned Eighteen. It was a dark, foggy night when my cell phone exhibited four consecutive zeros. Just a few seconds ago I was seventeen and celebrating Children’s Day. Now I was suddenly a very marriageable age. My roommates brought out a cake they had bought for me and sang “Happy Birthday” while I looked down at a candle-less chocolate cake. After they finished, I awkwardly murmured my thanks and hugged them. Then we sat around waiting for each other to take a bite of the sumptuous cake, only all of us were too full and too aware of our weights. (Someone should have told us that the 6^th of May is also International No Diet Day.) The cake was stowed away for another day.

Ironically I usually have more fun on other people’s birthdays than on mine, especially if the “other person” happens to be a deity or semi-god. On Buddha’s birthday, for instance, is school-less. I don’t think anyone could ever give me such a wonderful present as a No School Card unless my friend happened to be a dictator (who could make my birthday a national holiday), or a Korean Dalai Lama (who would announce that recently discovered, unforged, ancient scriptures revealed that Buddha was actually born on the 6^th). I also have more fun on Jesus’s birthday because not only do we get several school-less days, but Jesus also bestows us with seasonal films on TV that aren’t copyright-elapsed C-list movies, a benevolent fictional white bearded man who doles out free stuff, and 50% Christmas leftover sales on Boxing Day. In fact, my birthday is the national holiday in Bulgaria because the 6^th of May is also the Bulgarian St. George’s Day and Army Day. No doubt George deserves a whole day to himself as well as a figurine on monastic shelves because he speared to death some reptile that was probably just an obese, mutant iguana. If not, dragons have become extinct, and today he would probably have been arrested by PETA.

It is comforting to know that I share my birthday with Sigmund Freud, Tony Blair, Orson Welles, and King Sejong, the creator of Hangeul. It is not comforting to know, however, that since Hangeul Day has already been abolished from the status of public holiday to one of 350 or so days that aren’t distinguished, there is little chance of success in a petition to the government proposing Sejong be honored along with Buddha and Jesus.

However, by some stroke of luck, I didn’t have school on my birthday. By some stroke of negating bad luck, it was because I had the AP Literature exam on my birthday, during which I read a poem called, “To Sir John, On His Coming of Age.” Thus I spent my first marriageable morning comparing poems about coming-of-age and analyzing Charlotte Bronte’s rite-of-passage novel Jane Eyre. What a wasted morning! Were I in one of the countries in the world that isn’t one of ten that has a drinking age higher than eighteen (and Korea happens to be one of those miserable ten), the morning could have been spent experimenting with drinks that aren’t orange juice or milk for a change. Were I in England, I would be at the polling station, voting for whichever party that would give the hottest prime minister to outflank James-Bond-candidate Putin – From Russia with Love? – and topless Obama in red boxers at the next G8 meeting. Were I in one of those countries where eighteen is also the age of consent – ah, never mind.

Eighteen. I can legally get a driver’s permit. Next year, I suppose I’ll be writing about how I’m legally allowed to purchase films rated 19 and access adult rated websites and videos blocked by search engines for under 19 – not that I would, but it’s the thought that I’ve been newly enfranchised with another right that counts, even if it is not of much use. However, now that I’ve turned Eighteen, which seems more than just one year of a step from seventeen, but a giant leap from angst-ridden middle teenage-hood to mature late teenage-hood-nearing-adult-hood, I don’t look forward to more birthdays to come and instead look back at all the birthdays that have passed, and with them, all the years that have passed. “Lines have formed on my face and hands,” not suddenly on the morning of my eighteenth birthday, but for quite some time in a gradual process, yet it seems that you only stop to notice age overtaking you when the occasion arises to look in the mirror, not to straighten your hairclip or apply lotion but to actually look for an aged face. This occasion was my eighteenth birthday, and how old I felt! I felt as if the last time I had looked into the mirror properly was when I was ten-years-old and was experimenting with mom’s wrinkle cream.

I was stepping into an entirely new world of adults, a new contender in the competitive business of match-making, a new potential candidate for every bachelor who has already been slighted by every eligible female in the pool, a new customer for alcohol companies targeting 18-year-olds by showing celebrities getting drunk on TV ads, a new constituent whose vote could have (along with many other 18-year-olds disenfranchised because they moved to Korea) overturned the hung parliament in the 2010 British general elections which took place on, yes, the 6^th of May. Here I was, a novice in many ways, but still, I felt old. With every birthday, I feel old.

The treat of my birthday was an email I received from a friend from England, with whom I last celebrated my birthday four years ago. She told me about school, and how they would be going to uni in the fall. She told me about my friends who seemed to be living a much more glamorous, exciting life in London than my breathtaking life in Sosa living next door to corn fields and a stinking milk factory. How good it was to hear from someone of my past! “I haven't forgotten your birthday (yay!) and nor have many people in school either. Over the last few days certainly a few people have told me that it's your birthday coming up,” she wrote. It was nice to know that I was remembered half way across the globe, especially since I was not remembered within a few feet radius.

And that was it. That was all I wanted. Not for people to remember my birthday because it’s St. George’s Day or International No Diet Day. Not for people to commemorate Sigmund Freud or Orson Welles. Not for Tony Blair to joke about going to the polls to vote out the party that kicked him out of office. What I wanted was to be remembered for my birth. Isn’t that what birthdays are for after all? Plus, Eighteenth birthdays are meant to be spent having a cosy celebration with close friends at the pub with a few friends or an early stag night. They are not meant to be spent taking exams in the morning and spending two hours in the afternoon writing essays about the significance.

I get the feeling that this time, next year I’ll be writing another reflection about how it feels like to be Nineteen. I’ll feel older, more mature, more grown up, just as I do today, but reading through this essay again, I realize that there is still much in me that is a child. If I myself, upon just reading through the essay once more, is able to realize that, there is little chance anyone else who reads this will not realize that underneath all the excitement is disappointment, all the flexing of muscles is fear of the future, all the seemingly careless sarcasm is a sensitive, childish heart. Yet even this insecurity, this innocent pretentiousness, this sensitivity, I will treasure, because I want to take a step at a time, and today, at Eighteen, I am still only Eighteen.

Happy Birthday, _______.

A perfect essay?

I tip my hat to Mr. Menard for suggesting this one.  You may know of Amy Tan. She's almost as impressive as E.B. White, and her essay, Fish Cheeks, is probably more useful to you.  It's 503 words, and it says a lot.  It's fun, it's fast, it's simple, and yet really dynamic. And when I googled it I found a version of it with some good questions/exercises below.

So do read it, and do think about it.

Fish Cheeks

By Amy Tan

~

Reading in order to write.

As I've said before, I think the act of reading is key to improving your writing.  It's like taking the right kind of gun powder and carefully pouring it down the barrel of your musket... until you are ready to take aim and shoot at your chosen target with utmost confidence.  IF you read the right stuff you'll find your fingers hitting the keyboard with a bit more ease.  I also think it is best not to wait.  Write as soon as you finish reading.  Challenge yourself to write something just as good (if not better) than that thing you just read.

The book I recently signed out from the library, called "College Essays That Worked," has advice from admissions officers in it.  One of them says every student should read a few E.B. White essays before they get started.  If you don't know who E.B. White is, then you didn't cry as a child when Charlotte the spider had to say goodbye to her best friend Wilbur, the pig, in "Charlotte's Web."  Mandatory reading for Canadian school children. 

I googled and found several essays he wrote for the New Yorker during the 40's and 50's.  He has a style of writing that makes use of a lot of synaethesia in an emotional way.  He definitely shows without telling.  His sentences roll along cadently, rife with images and sparkles.

What the critics say on Amazon about an anthology of his essays:
 
"What I like about White's essays is that they can be counted on to be insightful, amusing and well-written. White approaches an essay like a pleasant conversation....Anything and everything is food for thought, although you can be sure that White will broaden the scope of his topics to include the world at large. New York, he concludes, is a concentrated version of many worlds, "...bringing to a single arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader, and the merchant."


"Best of all, White's insightful commentary does not require intense concentration or endless analysis to get the gist of what he is trying to say. You can sit back and relax when you pick up a book of his essays, knowing you won't have to grapple with unfamiliar or awkward language. This is not to imply that you won't find yourself thinking about what he has to say. It's just that his approach is so matter-of- fact, easy going and accessible that you feel you've been invited to tea or are taking a leisurely stroll as the essay unfolds. I read White's essays the way some people read mysteries or romance novels. They are entertaining without being too demanding, and are a great way to set day-to-day concerns aside. Treat yourself to a good read."

"White has got to be one of the finest writers I've ever read, expressing in 5 graceful words what it takes others paragraphs to do. What other essayist expresses his thoughts and ours so unself-consciously, so economically and, yes, so magnificently? None that I have come across.This collection contains a mixture of period pieces from his years at the New Yorker magazine, including "Here is New York," and perceptive pieces on everyday events of life, such as "What Do Our Hearts Treasure?" Each essay brings a smart outlook toward life, an incredible ability to describe ordinary events vividly, and the melancholy and sentimental perspective that dominated White's life. This is undoubtedly the finest collection of American essays in the twentieth century."

 I encourage you to read a few of his famous ones.

E.B. White
This is New York (1949) Full Essay / Excerpts
Once More to the Lake (1941)
Farewell My Lovely (1936)


Note:  While digging around on the internet to find EB White's essays (which you are actually supposed to pay to read), I came across "a list of 7 things all writers should know" written by the one and only Kurt Vonnegut.   If you don't know who he is, you should.  He's also "one of the greats."  And this great put on his list that every writer should read EB White.  Here is Mr. Vonnegut telling it like it is: