Over the course, you will do writing exercises designed to prepare you to write their admissions essays, as they consider larger conceptual questions about how applicants represent themselves in their admissions materials. To do this, the class will analyze sample essay questions taken from actual applications, to develop an understanding of what admissions officers are looking for in successful responses, and will read and analyze examples of successful admissions essays to discover what makes them particularly effective. Finally, you will draft personal statements/admissions essays of your own in response to common prompts, workshop your drafts with other students, receive feedback from their instructor, and revise your essays in response to the feedback that you have received. At the end of the session, you will have a polished second draft of a personal statement of the sort that they could use on their admissions essays, as well as a thorough understanding of the process by which they can effectively and successfully produce additional personal essays, throughout the college application process and beyond!
By the end of the course, you will have learned:
• How to represent themselves effectively and strategically in their college admissions essays.
• How to conceptualize, draft, and polish a personal essay — from initial self-reflection all the way through final revisions.
• How to make use of the various components of college applications in order to make a persuasive case that one ought to be admitted.
Additionally, each student will develop a series of potential frames for their admissions essays, from which they will draft, workshop, edit, and revise one full essay of the sort that might be used on a college application by the end of the course.
(Online sessions of the course will be mostly asynchronously, and interaction with the instructor and other students will take place primarily in written form, supplemented by a few optional live class sessions each week.)
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Online sections of Pre-College courses are offered in one of the following modalities: Asynchronous, Mostly asynchronous, or Blended. Please review full information regarding the experience here.