12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
There are better essay books, July 17, 2004
This review is from: Accepted! 50 Successful College Admission Essays (Accepted! Series) (Paperback)
It's an all right book, but I have to be honest, when people hand you 50 essays with no feedback, it's pretty hard to tell what was so great about the essays. There were a couple in there that I thought weren't good at all, but there's no information why it was considered good. Also, they tell you some information about the writers of the essays and from the sound of it, most of these folks were going to get in no matter how crappy their essay was. They seem to have outstanding stats already, so that's a bit discouraging.
I think their "Get into any College" has better help on the essay than this book. Or you should get "On Writing the College Admissions essay" by Harry Bauld. He really gives you the honest truth about everything, and helps you get started.
From my experience with the college essay though... Reading these essays won't affect what yours will be like because you realize there really is no perfect recipe for the perfect essay. These make you inspired because these kids are so outstanding, but other than that, it's hard to try to fit your own life into other people's essay writing styles. These books are only good because they tell you what you SHOULDN't write about, so you should only buy the most: one book on it. Like all college essay books I've read the main message is: BE YOURSELF. like i said, try the other books i mentioned, but this isn't the best. it's a kind of book i'd let my friends borrow or i'd give to someone, but i wouldn't tell them to go buy it themselves.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect companion when writing your admission essay, May 18, 2002
This review is from: Accepted! 50 Successful College Admission Essays (Accepted! Series) (Paperback)
As the title says this book shows you how to write a successful admission essay. There are 50+ successful essays inside this book and they are helpfully organized by topic. All of the essays are well-written (no surprise!) and are really inspirational when you are writing your own essay. The other part of the book that is helpful are the interviews with admission officers. They help to put the essay into perspective and don't seem shy about telling us what they are looking for in our essays. I used this book when writing my college admission essays and I was accepted at all of my colleges!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful resource and inspiration, August 20, 2010
This book is wonderful for explaining the fundamentals of a successful college essay. I found it really helpful and very easy and somewhat entertaining to read (yes, I'm a dork). The book was very well organized and easy to find what I wanted to read. The first 70 pages give good advice on how to write a successful essay and behind that are 57 essays that were successful.
There are 8 chapters in this book.
Chapter 1 was about the essay itself. It just explained why colleges require essays, how they use them and told how important it is. I already knew most of the stuff in this short chapter, but I think it was important and a good introduction to the book.
Chapter 2 explains the basics of what an essay should include. It was very helpful as I was unsure of many things that it explained. Basically, it shows many questions that you are likely to face- I had been unsure of what to write about and what they would ask. It also explains a basic guideline on how many words to use. I found this to be helpful as I am a perfectionist when it comes to these details.
Chapter 3 just tells you how to pick a topic. It is pretty useful and also tells what topics you should stay away from. That part was pretty humorous and somewhat helpful.
Chapter 4 talks about writing style, strategies and the subject. It also gives the 25 worst mistakes made on essays, which I found to be helpful. I actually went through the list when I finished my essay to make sure that I hadn't made any of them.
Chapter 5 talks about how to recycle a good essay. It kind of made sense but was sort of confusing at the same time as I didn't even know that you should change up an existing essay. But it was helpful for if I ever need to do that.
Chapter 6 is question and answer with admission officers and it's pretty interesting to read. I enjoyed it and found it interesting, though not as helpful as some of the other sections were on actually writing the essay. It more explains how they read it and what they look at in your essay.
Chapter 7 is the essays themselves. Very interesting and advanced essays, with a number of different topics. Before each essay, there is a paragraph about the student which is interesting to read and after the essay, the book discusses why that essay worked. The essays are very varied in subjects, which is good and none of the essays are really similar. They are arranged into topics which was very useful as I know which topics I want to write about and which ones I don't. The essays were also a good inspiration to me and some of the topics inspired me to write about some of my own similar experiences.
Chapter 8 just tells you basically that you can write a good essay and how to make final decisions on the essay.
All in all, this book was a very helpful source and really helped me along the way. It was easy to read and interesting- I actually enjoyed reading it. Although I may not be able to write an essay that is as good as the ones in this book, it helped me to write much better than I would have before reading this. I would suggest this to any high school senior (or junior) who is having trouble figuring out what to write about.
The section about topics to avoid was slightly humorous, and some of the topics were obviously not appropriate. However, some of them were things I had considered writing about, and I'm glad it told me not to- they were too common. The 25 most common mistakes were definately mistakes I can see students making, and I used that as a guide while writing my essay. I also found the section that had questions and answers to be interesting to read and somewhat helpful, though not as much as the other sections. The 57 essays featured in this book were phenomenal and gave me some great ideas. They were organized by section which was very helpful as I knew I may want to write about family and overcoming obstacles, however not books or math and science.
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