Overwhelmed with college admissions?

The college admissions process can be confusing and cumbersome. What are the college admission requirements? What should your personal essay say? What schools fit your checklist? What should your test scores be?

InstaEDU now has professional college admissions counselors!

Whether you’re struggling with formatting your personal statement or just want advice on how to tackle the process— we have you covered.

Meet some of our college counselors:

Bob P.

“I have been working with students for the last 18 years. I love my profession and love helping students.” 

Monique S.

“I am able to explain many of the tricky, technical languages that many colleges use in their application process.” 

Connect with a college counselor now.

Tutor Talks: College Essay Help from Princeton’s Peter G.

Summer is officially over, which means the return of school work, extracurricular activities, and after-school jobs. For rising high school seniors, there’s also the looming task of writing college admissions essays. Today we’re back with more college admissions essay writing tips, this time from Peter G., a student at Princeton and InstaEDU college admissions tutor.

Meet Peter: A Princeton student
and college admissions tutor on InstaEDU

On Getting Inspired

I think a lot of my college essay was written when I was not writing… [when I was] running on the track and feeling the turf beneath my feet or speaking Shakespeare for the first time and finding the iambs surprisingly similar to that turf. These natural curiosities and innate observations were swirling around in my head when I sat down in my quiet room to set these ideas on paper. I began thinking of an igloo I built one winter with my dad when I was a little kid, remembering how safe and warm it felt within its walls. I couldn’t stop thinking about this igloo and feeling it again. Then, I began writing — anything, everything that came to mind, realizing in reverse the reason why this igloo was on my mind. It was a place where I felt the same warmth I experienced while reading, the flow of iambic pentameter, the connection of meeting someone’s eyes when acting.

Focusing on a Core Idea

My essay was all about valuing subtle connections, however small: person-to-person connections and connections between ideas. That feeling of connection I had with my father in the igloo was itself linked to others in my mind — how it felt to speak verse, for instance. I was writing about the universally connecting experience of empathy that makes us human. I didn’t state this outright, though, but rather let the images within the essay express what I was trying to say. This felt much more natural. Even after editing the essay many, many times, I chose to leave it like this, only adding one sentence near the end as a summation of the essay’s discovery. I chose to follow this summation sentence by once again bringing it back to the personal, describing the igloo and my father’s face, experiencing that feeling of warmth and happiness on the page through the act of writing.

The Surprise of Writing

And this was the most pleasant surprise of writing the college essay. I had always felt uncomfortable writing about myself. Through writing this essay, though, I discovered that the best way to write about oneself is not to write about oneself. Through describing a central image, the igloo, I was able to write in my own voice, see it through my own eyes.

Closing Advice

My advice to applicants writing college essays would be to settle on a central image — a person, place, object, historical event, anything, which is of great importance to them. For instance, write as much or as little as feels natural about a significant person in your life. Then, write about a significant place. Next, write about an object. These may all wind up in the same essay even. At the very least, you will get a feel for the unique format of the college essay which requires you to write about yourself without writing about yourself. Starting this process early is very important. Common App prompts don’t change that much year to year and you can fit these topics into any essay prompt. The more specific and personal you can be, the better. The more personally you write, the more you will begin to experience again what you recount and in so doing, reveal your own unique perspective.

Princeton snow triangle sculpture

Epilogue to the college essay story

I chose to attend Princeton in the fall and encountered many a triangle made of snow outside the dormitories. (For those who aren’t Princeton folklore buffs, these snowy creations were inspired by Princeton Triangle Club, a musical group which once featured F. Scott Fitzgerald). Every time I passed a snow triangle, I would think of home and that igloo from years ago.

If you’d like to read Peter’s college admissions essay, you can find a read-only version of it here.

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If you’re looking for more college admissions essay writing help, stay tuned for more posts in the Tutor Talks series on college admissions essay writing — coming throughout this fall on the InstaEDU blog. And make sure to get in touch with Peter G. and our nearly 2,000 college admissions tutors on InstaEDU for one-on-one college essay writing guidance. Be sure to follow us on Instagram @instaedu_tutoring and on Snapchat at ‘instaedu’ to unlock more Tutor Talks content.

Tutor Talks: College Essay Help from UCLA’s Kate K.

August is here and that means it’s just about time for rising high school seniors to start thinking about (and working on!) their college admissions essays. Why start now? It can be difficult to work on your essay once school has started since college essays compete with school work, extracurricular activities, and part-time jobs for your time. That’s why in a new series, we’re giving you behind-the-scenes access to some of InstaEDU’s expert college admissions tutors — how they approached the essay, challenges they faced, and a look at the essays that got them admitted to their dream schools.

This week, we’re excited to feature rising UCLA senior Kate K. an InstaEDU college admissions tutor.

Kate in her high school cap and gown in her small hometown of Three Rivers just south of California’s Sequoia National Park

InstaEDU: How early did you start writing your main college admissions essay?

Kate: I started writing my college admissions essay the summer before I applied to college.

InstaEDU: That’s great that you started early! What was your approach to starting to write your essay?

Kate: I knew the essay needed to communicate who I am as a person. I started thinking about what makes me, well, me. What am I excited about? What is a defining characteristic about myself? Once I answered these questions, it was easy to continue writing.

InstaEDU: So what was your essay about?

Kate: I wrote about how growing up in a small, rural town (a defining characteristic about myself) made me who I am today — someone who loves natural history and science.

At the age of 9, Kate already loved spending time in the wild outdoors near her home

InstaEDU: What do you think the main take away or theme from your essay was?

Kate: The main theme of my essay was passion. I wrote about how, in the beginning, I wasn’t passionate about my town — I hated being in a small town, I took it for granted. Then, as I grew up, I realized I loved the life sciences and wanted to pursue it in the future. My new passion was all because I was surrounded by nature as a child.

InstaEDU: What did you learn through the college essay writing process?

Kate: Writing the college essay really made me think about who I am and what I like about myself. I learned about what fascinates me, what makes me jump up and down with excitement, and I have been chasing that down ever since identifying it.

InstaEDU: What’s one thing you wish you knew before you submitted your college admissions essay?

Kate: I wish I knew that it isn’t about how well you write or what’s happened in your life that makes an essay good. What makes an essay good is having a strong topic and following it throughout the paper. Identify what you love. Talk about what you love. Talk about why you love it. Talk about how it’s made you who you are. If you show you are a passionate person about the world, well, colleges love it when people get excited about things because they know that they will stick with it.

InstaEDU: What tips would you offer students who are starting to try and figure out their essay topics?

Kate: What makes an essay stick out to people is you identifying what makes you, well YOU, and what kind of person that makes you. If you like sports, awesome, write about that, but also you need to bring it around and talk about how it makes you more of a team player or a competitive person (in a good way). If you like playing your oboe, fantastic! Write about what you love about the oboe, but also how playing the oboe takes a lot of practice and you are now a more dedicated individual because of it. You get the picture, I hope. Also, don’t use the synonym option in Microsoft Word. Don’t try and sound smarter or like someone else. You have to communicate who YOU are as best as YOU can. Often times if you try and sound smarter, it can come across as dispassionate.

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If you’re looking for more college admissions essay writing help, stay tuned for more posts in the Tutor Talks series on college admissions essay writing — coming throughout this fall on the InstaEDU blog. And make sure to get in touch with Kate K. and our nearly 2,000 college admissions tutors on InstaEDU for one-on-one college essay writing guidance. Be sure to follow us on Instagram @instaedu_tutoring and on Snapchat at ‘instaedu’ to unlock more Tutor Talks content.