Customer Reviews

100 Successful College Application Essays (Second Edition)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I purchased 3 College Essay books (100 Successful College Application Essays, 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, and Essays That Worked), and have the following comments... I believe that the Harvard book has the best suggestions on how to write an essay, along with the best commentary/critique. However, the essays are a bit too polished. I think for 90% of prospective college students, their essays would be more like those in and patterned like those in Essays That Worked. For varied ideas on essays, the 100 Successful book gives some good ideas, but I believe many of the essays to be subpar. I did each book to have some interesting general reading, especially if one likes "short stories"... or if one is interested in 17 & 18 year olds, and what goes thru their minds.

This book has lots of college essays that could be used for reference when writing an college essay. However, it's too concentrated on Ivy League schools and not other competitive schools. The comments that are suppose to be reviewed by college counselors and admissions officers are poor. Most of them just explains that they are creative. It does not comment much on how the author should redo or learn from their mistakes and do this thing. Not as informative as they claim to be.

There are a few gems here, but for the most part, these essays are the same well-written but dry, uninventive slop every other high school senior dribbles out: how the abroad student haf a Life Changing Experience! how an athlete Crossed the Finish Line! how when pet Fluffly croaked it was a Formative Experience! If you really want insight into how to write a well-crafted, unique essay, with sounds suggestions, seek out the great book by Harry Bauld.

This book starts off with informative advice from Admissions counselors. The book, however, did not focus on admissions to average Graduate Schools. It seemed to appeal to new college students, ivy-league admissions, and essays for financial award contests. I was disappointed.

There are many books devoted to the "How to write a college admissions essay" topic, but after all these years this book continues to top our list (along with our very own application and essay kits).

We've read almost every book remotely related the college and graduate school admissions process, and most of them will prove to be a waste of your money. This book, however, is well worth its cost.

We strongly encourage all students applying to college to read this book. We know because we're the admissions essay authority.

This book offers endless examples of what kind of meat the colleges want current applicants to serve. It takes the scare factor out of what to write and helps the imagination for content kick in. I'd recommend it for serious college applicants.

The essays come from people who have made Yale and Harvard; of course, it has good essays! Not only that, but they are pretty recent and they come with commentary at the end of each essay!

While the example admissions essays in this book are plentiful, I found only one or two of the essays in the book actually helpful for me. I spent (read: wasted) a lot of time digging through many of the essays in this book that just did not resonate with me at all. Resources like Acceptional.com are much more helpful for finding specific example essays that can help you craft your own essay.

I bought this book for the purpose of studying the art of essay writing, as I like to hone my writing skills.

At first reading, I thought this book deserved my five star rating - until I visited some websites, those specializing in custom essays. I found some examples of custom essays very similar to a few in the book. Even some life stories were similar as well. This, I was incredulous by plagiarism. I visited essay websites, purposefully for studying others' styles of essay writing, also for the pleasure of reading literary works.

Now, there is a plethoria of custom essay websites where cheating students can actually buy essays and pass them off as their own.
The amount of cheating by students is appalling. My goodness, cheating is far more rampant than I thought. Here is the worst piece of information I discovered. Students are not the only ones buying custom papers. Professors and executives too are cheating; they commission others to write essays/thesis for them. How unethical!

As I read more online about plagiarism by students, I learned that some students cheat for a variety of reasons. A few deserve my sympathy, however unethical their cheating is.
Some cheating students are downright lazy. Of others, some are struggling arduously in their studies but are plaqued by Writer's Block, poor diction, poor grammar, etc. They resort to cheating, many of them being put under duress by their over-ambitious, disparaging parents who all want them inside Ivy League universities.

To poor students, if any of you are suffering from bouts of Writer's Block like I once did, I suggest you to try sentence-composing techniques and plenty of practice of them. Sentence composing techniques can, in fact, help remedy Writer's Block. I overcame mine. So can you.
There are plenty of books on sentence-composing techniques, sentence variety, etc. Amazon has them all.
While practising sentence-composing techniques, allow your imagination to run wild, indulge in daydreaming - anything to loosen up your mind, to free your imagination.

To those of you, potential cheaters inclusively, with poor grammar, poor diction, whatever your limitations, do yourself a favour: buy self-aid books or borrow them from libraries. Meanwhile, use the internet. Study whatever .

The essays are seperated into topics (eg. Applying to College, work experience, coming to america), and each include good essays.

The book includes essays of the admittants to top tier colleges (Ivies), and some second tier ones. Interestingly, there are no essays from MIT! (No surprise though, considering the rivalry betwene MIT and Harvard -- the book was organized by Harvard newspaper)

Overall, great book.