Eight College Essay Pitfalls to Avoid #dadchat

The Top Eight Essay Pitfalls - Essay Edge from Nelnet Marketing on Vimeo.

There are lots of mistakes that can be made when writing an essay or personal statement, but some tend to occur more often than others. In the video above, we take a look at eight of the most common places where people tend to have problems when writing pieces like this. Check it out and learn how to avoid issues like these.

Book Review - The Art of the College Essay

About the Book
“You can do this,” Glancy tells us. “I’ll show you how.” Face-to-face with a blank page and the pressure of writing the most important essay of their lives—the college essay—students often encounter what successful writing coach and college admissions expert Gabrielle Glancy refers to as that which shall not be named—writer’s block. "Everyone tells you what you should do—tell a story; start in the middle; show don’t tell—but no one tells you how to do it," Glancy explains. Using examples from essays that got students into the colleges of their choice, The Art of the College Essay shows what makes great essays great—and then tells you how to write one. Glancy provides a clear, highly readable, student-tested guide to writing college essays that are so powerful—so gripping, authentic, and real—that the Ad Com can only say yes. Helpful appendices list up-to-date college essay prompts, winning adjectives, grammar tips, trouble-shooting suggestions, and a step-by-step breakdown of the process.



My Take on the Book
What was great about this book was that the author was able to take a student from start to finish creating great personal statements/essays that can be turned into any college. As someone who has worked in College Admission for over 15 years, the writing of our candidates has become more and more challenging, so strong statements always put a smile on my face. That being said the author approaches this topic in a fun way that will engage any student. I found myself even motivated to get out some paper to write up a statement myself! I would also say that even though this book is geared toward the college essay process, the skills the author is teaching transcends this and can really be used for any writing endeavor!

Book Review - FERPA: Clear and Simple

About the Book
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) compliance has always been challenging due to complex regulatory language and exposure to risk. However, institutions that do not comply are in jeopardy of losing federal funding. Accessible and user-friendly, FERPA Clear and Simple clarifies the regulations and provides a ready reference for compliance and problem solving. This need-to-have guide offers critical and relevant material (including the 2008 Amendments) from a new perspective to help staff in student affairs, academic departments, and administrative support positions understand and comply with FERPA guidelines.


My Take on the Book
As a college administrator this is an amazing book that walks you through every aspect of understanding the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). As someone that deals with students daily, I need to be able to maneuver around this act too and sometimes it is a bit unclear. This book completely cleared up so many points that I was a bit hazy on. The book is an amazing resource that I know that I can come back to whenever I need to to better understand what I need to know for the situation that I am dealing with at the point.

The authors of this book have provided clear explanations and examples that you can easily put to work at your own institution. I know for me I have already shared this with my colleagues at my university and I know that I will be keeping this in my own professional library for the foreseeable future!





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Book Review - How to Prepare a Standout College Application

All opinions expressed in this review are my own and not influenced in any way by the company.  Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. Please refer to this site's Disclaimer  for more information. I have been compensated or given a product free of charge, but that does not impact my views or opinions.

About the Book
Demystifying the process of completing a college application is what How to Prepare a Standout College Application is all about.

Written by two former admissions officers at top universities and current admissions coaches this book is a must-have for preparing a winning college application. The authors reveal the mystery behind what college admissions officers are looking for and show applicants how to leverage their credentials, stand out in the over-crowded applicants' pool, and make a genuine, memorable impression. This is the book that will help the college-bound get off the "like many others" pile and onto the acceptance list.

Includes instructions and examples for every component of the college application, from writing the essay to answering questions like "Why do you want to go to College X?"
Shows how to avoid underestimating the importance of critical features on any application
Includes the latest information on the Common Application 4.0 and corrects outdated, holdover advice still stressed in many other books

This book is filled with step-by-step advice that students and parents can use immediately and will refer to again and again.

About the Authors
Alison Cooper Chisolm heads the  college admissions consulting practice at Ivey Consulting. She came to private consulting after working in admissions for more than 10 years at three selective universities (Southern Methodist University, University of Chicago, and Dartmouth College).

Anna Ivey is the former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process and make smart choices about higher education. You can find more college admissions tips in their book How to Prepare a Standout College Application (Wiley, August 2013), and follow them on Twitter @IveyCollege.

   


My Take on the Book
I have worked in college admissions and higher education for the past 15 years and I am always looking for great books that demystify the process of entering college, as I too wrote my own book on this too. This book takes a little different tact and makes the reader consider the application and what helps to make them stand out from other applicants. As a past College Admissions Officer, I have to say that I know that for many colleges this is important, as colleges are more and more utilizing a holistic approach to admissions. What this means is that there is not just one way in which they are admitting students (GPA or test scores alone), but instead they are looking to have a diverse group of students with a diverse group of experiences that are coming into their academic institution. Thus, it becomes very important to consider these issues as a student as you enter high school and start to make choices that will follow you to your college search and application process.

This book is written in such a way that it makes it easy to set yourself up well to do just that. The book is clear and to-the-point and filled with practical advice that will assist all students with making the right decisions for their future.

The book also is a complete resource and you can tell that it is filled with amazing information that has been collected over time as the authors easily show their ease and expertise in the field itself.

All-in-all this was a great book that shares intimate knowledge of the college admission process and is definitely a book that any high school student or parent should check out today!


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Book Review - What You Don't Know Can Keep You Out of College

All opinions expressed in this review are my own and not influenced in any way by the company.  Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. Please refer to this site's Disclaimer  for more information. I have been compensated or given a product free of charge, but that does not impact my views or opinions.

About the Book
In the tradition of The Gatekeepers, a veteran counselor provides the missing key to the college admissions door with insider wisdom about how admissions committees think, and the thirteen fatal mistakes that can ruin an application.

When Don Dunbar was a college counselor for Phillips Academy, Andover, in the 1980s, he got to sit in on the meetings where the nation’s top colleges decided whether to admit his students. Prep school counselors no longer get this kind of astonishing access, but in those meetings, Don discovered a little-known key to college admissions that still holds true today. Many applicants look alike, based on their grades, test scores, and extracurriculars, so colleges want something more: They want applicants with character.

Most of us know what character means, but not in the way that admissions officers define it. Admissions officers have tremendous integrity, and to them, character equals what a student will contribute to his or her community, good or bad, over the next four years. Don explains the concept of character in terms that high school students can understand, using examples from his thirty years of working with kids. He shows readers how to avoid the thirteen fatal character mistakes that even the brightest students make when applying to college and democratizes the admissions process, making his advice available to all students.

My Take on the Book
This was a book that was filled with a ton of advice particularly on how to write essays and how to do your best in the college interview process. Being someone that works in higher education, I found the advice to be sound. I will say that fewer campuses are using the on-campus interview lately, but that being said, the information shared is still good.

The author also talks about some of the mistakes that many students make in their applications and this information is also accurate from what I have seen in applications in the past and currently.

The book is written in such a way that all readers can understand and it is practical enough that you can see what needs to be done to prepare yourself well for the college application process.

Much of the information that is shared is done so through prose and not lists as you may find in other books. While I do not think this is negative, with today's generation of college bound students reading this, some lists would probably have helped to streamline the most important information.

Overall, the book gives the reader some great insights into the selective admissions processes at some institutions. From what I can tell through reading this and knowing colleges out there, the person that will most benefit from this is probably going to be considering a liberal arts institution - as these are the ones that I know that are still heavily using essays and interviews.

Book Review - Is College Worth It

About the Book
Explores the answer to a critical question: Should we keep sending our kids to college?

The American system of higher education comprises some of the best universities, teachers, and students the world has ever seen. Millions of students around the globe want nothing more in their life than to attend an American university. However, many of America’s colleges and universities today have serious academic, institutional, and other performance problems, and it is quickly approaching a crisis point, if it’s not there already. Despite some excellent colleges and quality programs at many colleges, too much of higher education is wildly expensive. Students often graduate having learned little, or don’t graduate at all. They are indoctrinated with liberal politics and subjected to all types of non-academic distractions. For these reasons, many students would be better served exploring other educational alternatives.

In Is College Worth It?, William J. Bennett and David Wilezol assess the problems of American higher education at various levels, from runaway costs to inferior academics to poor graduation rates to political indoctrination, and propose serious reforms and alternative methods for improving higher education so that it better serves our students.

About the Authors
Dr. William J. Bennett is one of America’s most influential and respected voices on cultural, political, and educational issues. Host of the top-ten nationally syndicated radio show Bill Bennett’s Morning in America, he is also the Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute. He is the author and editor of more than twenty-five books.

David Wilezol is the associate producer for Bill Bennett's Morning in America. He is also a 2012 Publius Fellow of the Claremont Institute and currently a graduate student in Greek and Latin at Catholic University in Washington DC.

My Take on the Book
As someone who works in higher education I am a proponent for continuing one's education whether it be in a four year undergraduate setting or in some other alternative setting. I went into this book wondering if it would be a diatribe of reasons for not going to college. Especially with the name of the book, and with the media hype recently about a supposed lack of jobs out there. I was pleased to find that the book however was a well laid out argument to truly explore all of the options that may be available to you based on what you might want to study as well as the costs attributed to that dream as well. The book provides some practical advice for anyone thinking of continuing their education, and while some of the data that they present in my view could be looked at in various ways, the information provided within is still invaluable, and the idea of being a savvy consumer is even more relevant in today's higher education race. This is definitely a book I would recommend to anyone looking at continuing their education after high school as it will make you think about your options in a very different way!

All opinions expressed in this review are my own and not influenced in any way by the company.  Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. Please refer to this site's Disclaimer  for more information. I have been compensated or given a product free of charge, but that does not impact my views or opinions.

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Book Review - If I Knew Then, What I Know Now! College and Financial Aid Planning From A Parent's Perspective

About the Book
College and the financial aid planning process should start as early in a child’s life as possible. It can be a frustrating and complicated puzzle, and parents often have no idea where to begin or how to help their children get through it.

If I Knew Then What I Know Now! College & Financial Aid Planning From A Parent’s Perspective (Pendium Publishing) by Cynthia Hammond Davis, is the true story of her struggle to find help putting all of the pieces of the college search, financial aid, scholarships, athletics and extracurricular activities together.

After experiencing first-hand how complex this journey can be, Davis decided to combine her findings and include them in a book to help other parents and students with early college awareness. This book acts as a priceless guide to help parents understand their role as well as offering basic tips on how they can assist their children through the process as efficiently as possible.

Want to know where a lot of scholarship money can be found? Want to find out how your child may be able to attend an out-of-state college while paying in-state tuition costs? Want advice that will save time during the college admission process? Answers to these questions and more can be found in this book – outlined in a short, simple, and to the point approach.

Davis believes that there is nothing to prepare parents on how and where to begin and they struggle through trying to help their children, just as she did, and it was through trial and error she learned how to get to the right information. In her instructive book, she is very candid about mistakes she made along the way in hopes of helping other parents avoid making those same mistakes.


Cynthia Hammond Davis is a College and Career Advisor, Founder/Executive Director of The Light of the City, Inc., a nonprofit organization, and President of CollegeAndCareerAdvice.Com. She is the radio talk show host of her own Saturday morning talk show, “The College and Career Information Hour,” and an in-demand public and motivational speaker.


As a college and financial aid advisor since 2001, she has helped many parents and students get through the process, resulting in their receiving scholarship offers that total over $1 million collectively each year. What Cynthia Hammond Davis does, she does with the passion of someone who truly cares about her work and about helping students to become tomorrow’s professionals.

College is one of the most expensive things parents can plan for their children and now they don’t have to waste countless hours doing their own research – Davis has done it for them. All they need to do is read the book!


My Take on the Book
As a college admissions professional, I have read many books and written one myself, so I am always looking for other books that will make the college selection and planning process easier for parents and children alike. This was a great book that brought together the great experience of the author with practical tips that can help many parents to de-mystify the college preparation process. There are some wonderful hidden gems within the book, and what is best is that the book itself is short and to the point so you are not having to sift through 300-400 pages trying to find exactly what you need, but instead the book is laid out in an easy to follow and understand way that makes perfect sense! All-in-all this was a great book for anyone looking to start the college planning process.


All opinions expressed in this review are my own and not influenced in any way by the company.  Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. Please refer to this site's Disclaimer  for more information. I have been compensated or given a product free of charge, but that does not impact my views or opinions