Are you a West Coast counselor who knows the University of California Personal Insight Questions inside and out? Or a Midwesterner with a handful of students applying to the UCs each season? Or somewhere in between? Regardless of how many of your students dream of California, you are probably familiar with the UCs’ insistence that PIQs are nothing Read More

By now, many of your students have probably written multiple drafts of at least one application essay. But how do you get to the finish line with minimal stress? Step away from that proverbial red pen.   At Wow, we don’t edit. Rather, we review. We respond to first drafts with detailed questions, not marked-up Read More

We’ve given you a lot of resources tips about writing personal statements over the years. Before the school year ends, we’d like to leave you with some sound advice to help you guide your students on the one supplement that poses challenges for all sorts of students. I am talking about the Why College X, Read More

Everyone talks about how hard it is to write once you are in College. The first paper you are assigned can feel daunting with the array of different advice from different sources you will receive. How can you know whose advice to trust? Is it much more difficult to write an essay? The reality is Read More

-In and out in an hour? Or do you spend weeks mining for jewels among your students’ experiences?   Do you think brainstorming ideas is all about finding a unique story? Or are you trying to help students identify an effective topic? We’re in the quick and effective camp.   Why? Because drawn-out, elaborate brainstorming Read More

Last year, a counselor from Atlanta asked me what advice to give a student who wanted to use his personal statement to show colleges that he “gives 110% to everything he does.”  She knew it was a cliché. But is that bad? Nope. Not really. I told her it was okay and explained why. Phrases Read More

There’s a lot of advice out there when it comes to the college essay. We know all about it. We read it. We hear it. Some share templates for writing stand-out college essays. (Email templates are useful; essay templates don’t work!) Others promise that if your students answer a bunch of specific questions, they’ll be Read More

Last month, I had an interesting conversation with our intern, Sammy, a bright and delightful University of Michigan junior and English major. He’s a voracious reader who likes to write, too. (Full disclosure: He’s also the son of my business partner, Susan Knoppow). As part of his job, Sammy – who was a Wow student when Read More

By now, you’ve surely done several reviews of your students’ college essays – first those early apps and now regular admissions. Whether they are in the content, structure or polish phase of the essay writing process, it’s important to review slowly. At Wow, our message is the same for Common App personal statements, UC Personal Read More

A few months ago, my heart sank when my sweet and very hard-working student told me his high school counselor did not like his college essay. He loved his story about acing a final term paper in Honors English after failing to answer the prompt in his first draft. He had showcased how hard work and Read More