Trust the College Essay Process

In our weekly staff meetings, we always discuss student wins and challenges. No matter how many years of experience we have with the Wow Method, we’re always learning.

Here’s some insight from David Bersell, who has been with us for more than seven years, has worked with hundreds of students, trained countless IECs and school counselors, and supervises training for our team of coaches.

This week, a student surprised me. She was someone who had a hard time talking about her ideas during the brainstorm. After talking for over an hour, and exploring additional topics and characteristics, we eventually agreed on a clear theme, based on the idea that she had the most to say about.

She wrote a short first draft and brief responses for the content exercises, where we ask the student to write outside the essay and consider new openings. While I was a little worried about how the essay would turn out, I kept her moving, and tried to be steady and encouraging in my emails.

She wrote a much stronger second draft but still stopped before the end of her story. I gave two rounds of feedback, and she was able to add a paragraph each time. We got to an effective and genuine essay in four weeks, and it was a nice reminder: don’t write off students who aren’t the easiest or the highest willingness or ability.

I was still able to help my student share who she is without much additional thought or effort.

I’ll say it again (and again, and again, and again): Trust the process!

You can download a free copy of the ten-step Wow Method here: https://wowwritingworkshop.com/wow-method-free-download/

Susan Knoppow is CEO of Wow Writing Workshop. She can be reached at susan@wowwritingworkshop.com