Common App 2017-18 How to Write a Great College Application Essay

Common App 2017-18 How to Write a Great College Application Essay After a year of stability, the Common Application essay prompts have changed again – I think for the better – based on surveys of 5000 teachers, students, counselors and colleges. This year brings some wording changes and a brand new prompt – and an old, previously discarded question that has been brought back to life. Significantly, the now â€Å"old† Common App prompts have not changed a lot – which makes sense since 90% of survey respondents reported that the prompts already worked well. Ideally, the new ones will work even better. Let’s take a look at the 2017-18 Common App prompts: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.  This prompt has not changed, and I think that’s a good thing. Many college applicants have some aspect of their lives that’s meaningful and important enough to share with the admissions committee. This question provides a welcome opportunity to do so. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced a challenge, setback or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Obstacles we encounter† and â€Å"a challenge, setback or failure† replaced the previous â€Å"failures† and â€Å"failure.†Ah, this prompt is so much less confronting, and so much more welcoming, to students who do not consider that they have â€Å"failed† but certainly have faced challenges in their lives. Not everyone is too evolved to see failure as an opportunity. And why require a failure to give students the opportunity to write about lessons learned? I like this change. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?â€Å"Questioned† was added to â€Å"challenged†; â€Å"prompted you to act† was replaced with â€Å"your thinking†: and â€Å"Would you make the same decision again?† was replaced by â€Å"What was the outcome?†I like this change because, while few youngsters have gone against the grain in a meaningful way, many of them have had thoughts that go against a belief or idea. The new prompt does not require students to have taken huge risks or to be activists. It just requires them to have opinions. Furthermore, they do not have to answer a yes or no question about whether they would take the same action in the future. Why require students to fortune tell like that? Instead, they can talk about what happened and naturally examine their role in that outcome. Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma-anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.  This was a completely new prompt two years ago, and it provides an exciting opportunity for students to display their intellectual prowess or emotional intelligence. No changes for next year! Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization, that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. This is a fairly old prompt with a fresh take. Interestingly, I predicted that it would be deleted or changed significantly last time I wrote about the Common App prompts, as I saw the danger of clichà ©d answers talking about Bar Mitzvahs and Eagle Scout projects.Here’s what changed: The words â€Å"formal or informal† were deleted, and the word â€Å"realization† was added. Even more significantly, instead of asking about something that â€Å"marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family,† the prompt now asks for students to delve into their own growth and understanding of themselves, their relationships and the world.Both changes reveal admissions committees’ clear preference for introspection and self-understanding. I’ve been saying for years that the com mittees want to see self-awareness and a focus on personal growth, and this preference could not be clearer than from the changes in this essay question. Describe a topic, idea or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?  This brand new prompt is another opportunity for applicants to explain how their brains work, what makes them tick, and how they explore their intellectual interests. I believe it’s a way for the admissions committee to discover how engaged a student would be in both intellectual and extra-curricular pursuits. It will be a great option for any students with passion and curiosity! Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.  While there was a â€Å"topic of your choice† essay question in the past, it did not suggest submitting an essay the student has already written! This choice fascinates and scares me. With the emphasis in all the other questions on sharing so personally, why open things up to essays on Huckleberry Finn? Why give this easy out to students who can just slap an essay into the box that they wrote for an English class? I bet this question in its current form won’t last long.Also interestingly, when the â€Å"topic of your choice† question was eliminated, there was very little complaint. But after a couple of years, people want it back. We’ll see what the feedback is in the future. It doesn’t really seem necessary, as the instructions to the Common App encourage students to use the prompts to write about anything they want:â€Å"What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response.† As Scott Anderson, Senior Director for Access and Education at The Common Application, points out in The Common App Essay Prompts Are Changing. Here’s Why It Doesn’t Matter, there’s really only one question in the Common App Essay: â€Å"Write an essay on a topic of your choice.† The Common App Essay has provided you direction, and your job is to take it and create your story. If your child is applying to college and wants support on writing a great response to the Common Application Essay questions, contact The Essay Expert. Remember, approximately 26% of all college applicants hire an admissions consultant, and your child is in the same pool as they are. You might also enjoy some of my other articles about college essays and admissions.

Michael Faraday, Inventor of the Electric Motor

Michael Faraday, Inventor of the Electric Motor Michael Faraday (born Sept. 22, 1791) was a British physicist and chemist who is best known for his discoveries of electromagnetic induction and of the laws of electrolysis. His biggest breakthrough in electricity was his invention of the electric motor. Early Life Born in 1791 to a poor family in the Newington, Surrey village of South  London, Faraday had a difficult childhood riddled with poverty. Faradays mother stayed at home to take care of Michael and his three siblings, and his father was a blacksmith who was often too ill to work steadily, which meant that the children frequently went without food. Despite this, Faraday grew up a curious child, questioning everything and always feeling an urgent need to know more. He learned to read at Sunday school for the Christian sect the family belonged to called the Sandemanians, which greatly influenced the way he approached and interpreted nature. At the age of 13, he became an errand boy for a bookbinding shop in London, where he would read every book that he bound and decided that one day he would write his own. At this bookbinding shop, Faraday became interested in the concept of energy, specifically force, through an article he read in the third edition of Encyclopà ¦dia Britannica. Because of his early reading and experiments with the idea of force, he was able to make important discoveries in electricity later in life and eventually became a chemist and physicist. However, it wasnt until Faraday attended chemical lectures by Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London that he was able to finally pursue his studies in chemistry and science. After attending the lectures, Faraday bound the notes he had taken and sent them to Davy to apply for an apprenticeship under him, and a few months later, he began as Davys lab assistant. Apprenticeships and Early Studies in Electricity Davy was one of the leading chemists of the day when Faraday joined him in 1812, having discovered sodium and potassium and studying the decomposition of muriatic (hydrochloric) acid that yielded the discovery of chlorine. Following the atomic theory of Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich, Davy and Faraday began to interpret the molecular structure of such chemicals, which would greatly influence Faradays ideas about electricity. When Faradays second apprenticeship under Davy ended in late 1820, Faraday knew  about as much chemistry as anyone else at the time, and he used this newfound knowledge to continue experiments in the fields of electricity and chemistry. In 1821, he married Sarah Barnard and took up permanent residence at the Royal Institution, where he would conduct research on electricity and magnetism. Faraday built two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation, a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire. Unlike his contemporaries at the time, Faraday interpreted electricity as more of a vibration than the flow of water through pipes and began to experiment based off of this concept. One of his first experiments after discovering electromagnetic rotation was attempting to pass a ray of polarized light through an electrochemically decomposing solution to detect the intermolecular strains the current would produce. However, throughout the 1820s, repeated experiments yielded no results. It would be another 10 years before Faraday made a huge breakthrough in chemistry. Discovering Electromagnetic Induction In the next decade, Faraday  began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. These experiments would form the basis of the modern electromagnetic technology thats still used today. In 1831, using his induction ring- the first electronic transformer- Faraday made one of his greatest discoveries: electromagnetic induction, the induction or generation of electricity in a wire by means of the electromagnetic effect of a current in another wire. In the second series of experiments in September 1831 he discovered magneto-electric induction: the production of a steady electric current. To do this, Faraday attached two wires through a sliding contact to a copper disc. By rotating the disc between the poles of a horseshoe magnet, he obtained a continuous direct current, creating the first generator. From his experiments came devices that led to the modern electric motor, generator, and transformer. Continued Experiments, Death, and Legacy Faraday continued his  electrical  experiments throughout much of his later life. In 1832, he proved that the electricity induced from a magnet, voltaic electricity produced by a battery, and static electricity were all the same. He also did significant work in electrochemistry, stating the First and Second Laws of Electrolysis, which laid the foundation for that field and another modern industry. Faraday passed away in his home in Hampton Court on August 25, 1867, at the age of 75. He was buried  at Highgate Cemetery in North London.  A memorial plaque was set up in his honor at Westminster Abbey Church, near Isaac Newtons burial spot.   Faradays influence extended to a great many leading scientists. Albert Einstein was known to have had a portrait of Faraday on his wall in his study, where it hung  alongside pictures of legendary physicists Sir Isaac Newton  and  James Clerk Maxwell. Among those who praised his achievements were Earnest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics. Of Faraday he once stated, When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time.