Shaping Your Narrative
Useful college application advice from grads of Yale, USC, NYU, and Berkeley.
Shaping Your Narrative
College Application Tips from College Essay and Goals Coach Patricia Noonan
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Patricia Noonan—a writer, essay coach, and Brown University educated coach—talks with Leonora about her approach to college essay strategy and handling common challenges for students and parents. Find Patricia here: https://www.patricianoonan.com/teaching
If you have questions or topics you'd like us to discuss on future episodes, email us at hello@seeingbeyondadmissions.com
Hi, welcome to Shaping Your Narrative, the College Admissions Podcast. I'm Leonora, and today I am here with my colleague Patricia Noonan, one of my favorite people to collaborate with. Patricia is a leadership, performance, and narrative coach who draws on her background in storytelling as an actor, writer, and educator to help people find their voices and make the meaning of their experiences. With over 20 years as a professional actor and a certification in leadership and performance coaching from Brown University, she brings both creativity and rigor to her work. She partners with students and adults alike to tease out, shape, and articulate their stories so they resonate authentically with themselves and with the audiences they hope to reach. She has guided the students in crafting compelling college essays that reflect who they are and what they value for 15 years. And she's also helped me make sense of my goals a little bit. So thank you for that, Patricia, and also for being here today. I'm super excited to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, so just to get started, um, can you tell us a little bit about your your background? We know that you are an amazing artist and coach and you work with a lot of different people. How did you get started with coaching and with with college support?
SPEAKER_01Sure. Um, well, I guess I'll start with how I got started with stories, maybe. I I was always um ever since I can remember, I was always performing and writing stories and creating plays for my siblings and classmates and devouring books. And I was very, very lucky to uh go through the Quaker education system thanks to my parents' jobs. And I had great teachers that encouraged us to, you know, write our own stories and kind of make things from a very young age. And uh from there I was fortunate to go to Boston College and I double majored in theater uh and English slash creative writing there and really fell in love with story structure and performing. And then I got to work as a professional actor all over the country. And uh while I was doing that, I about 15 years ago now, I was in a dressing room uh in New York. I was doing a new musical, and you get to know your dressing roommates pretty well in the long run. And one of my fellow actresses, her daughter, was applying to college, and she knew I was a writer, she knew I was kind of a nerd about story structure, and she kind of said, you know, do you think you could help my daughter, like with this process and with her her story and trying to find that? And I did and I loved it, and it was a really great experience. And then, you know, soon they were recommending me to friends, and then I was helping other people, and then you know, it spiraled from there, and I worked then with a a really cool organization that sadly no longer exists. Um, you know, didn't make it through COVID, but it was a teaching artist organization that brought arts to students um or enhanced arts education to students all across New York, especially upstate New York. And I saw an opportunity to develop kind of college essay workshops for kids to like marry my love of art and story with this very real kind of structural thing that all juniors and seniors have to deal with. And so I learned a lot by doing, and I've been helping students in that way ever since.
SPEAKER_03How fun. That sounds really great. Um, and when you work with students in a workshop setting like that, like about how long is your workshop and how does that, you know, what are what are the kind of the main things you try to hit? Because I imagine you have to do a much more accelerated version of what you would do in terms of a one-on-one with a student.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Yeah, great question. I mean, I think in the workshop setting, like that particular workshop that I've done a lot, I kind of call it more like jumpstart your college essay because it's more about like the intro and getting the ideas going than like rather than you're gonna leave with it done, because it is a process. So I lead students mostly in that initially through some like brainstorming exercises as a group to kind of get them thinking so that they'll leave with a lot of ideas, and then we um break down like the structure of the personal statement and how to approach that, and then they can start to see maybe some of where the brainstorming they've already done can fit into that structure, and then I introduce the ideas of supplements. So it's kind of more of an overview. I guess usually it's about you know, two hours. Sometimes I've done a little longer if parents want to join in for a QA. And one fun aspect uh that actually has also gone into my uh performance and leadership coaching with adults is that sometimes students and sorry, adults and teachers will want to take the workshop as well and have these aha moments and kind of start to construct their own personal narratives. And it kind of hit me like, why are we only doing this when we're 17 and 18? You know, why don't we check that like we grow and we change? So what are our values later? Who who are we now? Like how what would what would be that personal statement we'd write when we're 30, 40, 50, 60?
SPEAKER_02That sounds really fun. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Like even just as like a, you know, they have those corporate team building kind of things and stuff, you know, just to kind of get everybody focused on what their what their priorities are and what their passions are.
SPEAKER_01Totally, and all the different ways something can manifest. Because, you know, I've done that workshop, say, with a room full of teachers or teaching artists, no, no students, just adults. And even though everyone in that room is the same noun, ostensibly, teacher, so like why or the values behind the way they show up as a teacher are each unique as unique as every individual there. So like everyone's fingerprint is so different, and they can all like kind of see that in themselves and also in their colleagues. And it's a good reminder for college students or students applying to college that even if you think you are, you know, boring or something, because I'm a I want to be a doctor, and so many other people do, I want to be an environmental scientist, and so many other people do, the reasons behind you wanting to do that are as unique as your fingerprint versus anybody else.
SPEAKER_03Right, which is the whole process of like identifying that is like that's kind of the the core of this entire process, anyway, right? Is how to how to talk about your why.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03If if you if there are like students listening who are just, you know, are at the beginning of the college application process time of year right now. They're probably gonna finish their AP exams and then be like, oh my gosh, what do I do? Or um, or parents who are looking to guide their students through their brainstorming processes. Where would you recommend that they start? What are the kinds of things that you would tell them to think about when they're just trying to sort out what where to start, even?
SPEAKER_01Sure, yeah. I just want to acknowledge how daunting it is because this is a very acute time and moment in your life, and there's a lot that you're juggling with the APs and the tests and junior and senior year. So, my my best piece of advice first is just to start now. You know, this is springtime. Get the lay of the land as soon as possible so that you can kind of start to see what is ahead of you. I think, you know, sometimes students understandably the overwhelm trans uh translates into, I don't want to look at this, I don't, I wanna, I'll deal with this this summer, I'll deal with it this fall. But the sooner you start, even if your college list is in flux, you get a sense of the schools that you're aiming at. What are the supplemental essays they have, and starting to see the patterns? Oh, these two have a community essay, these two have some shared things, and you can get a sense of how much is ahead of you so you can break it down. And I think parents can help with that a little bit. Um, I love to have students be in charge of that process, but you know, a parent could have have some fun tag teaming with a student, you know, creating that that college list. Um and in terms of the brainstorming, uh, I'll give one thing for a parent and one thing for a student. I think sometimes um, you know, any time in our lives, but especially when we're 17 and 18, it's hard to see ourselves like what res non-resume values we have that are so unique about ourselves. So if you're a student, I'd recommend maybe making a list of people that you admire, and then very specific three or four things for each of those people of why you admire them, and then looking for patterns. So you might really admire Lynn Manuel Miranda because he's creative and innovative. Someone else might admire him because he's ambitious and he's a social activist who gives back to his community. Often the things that we admire in someone else are like the things that we actually are. So when you start to see those patterns emerge in who you admire, that can give you a clue of what those things are you want to write about. And then for parents, I would say it can be a great gift to give your child to sit down and write a list of like you know, five to seven things you see in them that you love about them that their resume or test scores aren't gonna show. Like you love that they're kind, you love that they are uh creative, you love that they are a great collaborator, you love that they are a you know, an experimenter. And maybe, you know, a little detail or two of why you think that or a moment you remember when they did that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I think um one thing that parents are amazing for is recognizing the things that we overlook in ourselves, you know. I think they really like they notice things about us that maybe we take for granted. Um, that's just a part for them a part of the joy of being our parents, you know. I think it's true for even for adults too, you know. And and I think when I'm talking to a student and and trying to find the things that they might be overlooking, I think the parents are like the best place to go because they've like known you your whole lives. And um, and so they they notice those things that you don't necessarily notice, and also the the activities that should go on your resume that you think are no big deal, but actually are things that you've done that are you know have value, but you just kind of you know, it it's you know, I mean, if I think about me as a teenager, like last week I went over, I have um an elderly neighbor who loves gardening, and I also love gardening at this big vegetable garden. And I have made my I've moved parts of my vegetable garden into the easement in front of my house to share fruits and vegetables with the community, and there are signs up, please take some, you know, because I have so much that I can't eat it all. And one of and his wife um stopped me and said, you know, my husband's always talking about inviting you to come over and and help him garden because their backyard had gone into disarray. And so last week I I carved out a couple hours just to go help clean that area up to um to help, you know, move some of my my fruits and vegetables that are getting too big from my yard into theirs, and then you know, we can kind of work together, and that's the kind of thing like most people wouldn't put on a resume. But if I were applying to college and I were doing this, you know, once a month, I would definitely I should put that on the resume, right? Like this is a thing that like shows who you are and like what you spend your time doing, even if it's not an organized activity through any, you know, school, club or church or whatever, it's still how you spend your time and what it reveals about who you are and what you care about. Um, and I think parents are like really good at identifying those things, or even you know, sometimes noticing like the big impressive thing that the student did that they didn't think was that big of a deal, you know? Like that they were at an internship and they created a new initiative and they're like, Oh yeah, no, I just did that.
SPEAKER_02You know, and the parents are like, no, no, you helped them like create this new part of their business while you were working there. And they're like, Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_03And they just totally don't even recognize how how big and cool that is, how much how meaningful like some of the things they do are. Um you you mentioned um avoidance, uh, which is one of one of the things I wanted to ask you about, or like more, I think, I guess for parents and students alike. I mean, for parents, it can be helpful to have a heads up about the kinds of behaviors that that might manifest, right? And also for students, maybe recognizing them and yourself and kind of catching them and figuring out ways that you can respond more productively than what maybe your natural stress response instinct is. Um, what what are some of the common stress responses that you see from like the overwhelm of this process and and how do you think about them? I guess how do you think of that about them as you're coaching students through it? But then also how would you think about it if you were trying to guide your child, which obviously is a different dynamic.
SPEAKER_01Um well, in terms of how to how to approach it uh through the process, one thing I try to do towards the beginning of the process is just to get really clear with a student I'm working with, or I I think I would ask my child this, you know, like, what is it that you're excited about in college? Like what, like let's let's start from the place of like, what is all of this kind of for or that you're excited about? Because once you get in the weeds, you know, you're writing these essays, you're gathering test scores, you're taking the SATs or ACT, it's very stressful. And I have I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. It's very hard, and it's hard to balance that with school. And and I think that, you know, we need to acknowledge that. And if you have a clear sense of kind of the bigger goal, like I'm doing this so that I can fill in the blank. Like I'm, you know, if you have that vision and you get clear with that with your child of what it is, you know, when you're in moments where it's hard or in the weeds, it's like, oh, we're we're doing this so we can like, you know, go study, you know, ribosomes at Duke or something, you know, it's whatever it is, you know. Uh and or I'm going so I can like go be in a room full of like the best musicians in X City and you know, hone my skills on the bassoon, or I'm doing this so that I can finally like discuss the books I've been dying to discuss with my peers and ex-professor. Um I think starting from the the bigger why beyond the process uh and having like that shared knowledge of what it is is is useful. And then with like the stress responses, uh I mean I think shutting down is a big one, which can translate into seemingly like I don't care about this, or um, I don't care, uh this is stupid, um, I don't understand why I have to do this. And I think uh in terms of how I'd approach that, I think there's a little bit of maybe just listening and acknowledgement in that yes, this is hard, and it is a hard structure. It's a lot, it's become a process that asks a lot of us or a lot of students when they are already in a very challenging year or two of school. And currently that is the structure that we are working in. So, how can we like make this the best for ourselves? I will reiterate that I think one of the biggest antidotes to the shutdown is getting started because I think the longer you wait and don't open the Pandora's box of how many essays are on the other side waiting for you, the scarier it gets. And just being able to look at the lay of the land of what's ahead can start to get that overwhelm down. And once you have a little bit of the lay of the land, it can be as simple as what is one tiny thing I can do today? Maybe that is I ask my parents for five adjectives today of what they see in me. I research the supplements for one school I know that I want to go to. Um, so I think that's that's one. Another one is perfection, like the crippling aspects of perfectionism. Like I can't put anything on the page until I know it's perfect, until I know exactly how it's gonna go, until I am sure this is the best idea possible. And what is so amazing about the technology we have right now is that we can delete so easily. So I really try to get my students using word, and you can choose whatever you like, like first draft, rough draft. I like saying bad version because it immediately gives us permission to write something terrible, like bad version of my idea is this, and write it down because there might be like one sentence worth saving. So I I like to get in the practice of introducing vocabulary like bad version as soon as possible. And for students who like really like the actual writing, the thought of writing, either typing or handwriting, is in itself paralyzing. Um, I think voice memos or like talk uh talk-to-text app of choice can be great, like brainstorming out loud, having something that translates that into text for you. So you can look at the story you just told or the ideas you just spewed, and then find little gems in that. It can be a way to get around the dauntingness of a blank page, too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's a great idea. I know um, you know, I I know those like really fantastic personal statements seem so amaz 'cause they're so pithy and creative and they weave in so many things, and it can feel like impossible when you haven't started yet to get to something like that. And it's really easy to lose track of the fact that like nobody starts like that. You know, like everybody's essay just starts from a bunch of things cobbled together, and the more time you give yourself with it to sit on it and you know, pick that one sentence that's really great. I mean, ultimately with those those kinds of essays, you've whittled down to those one great sentence that you got out of two paragraphs of ideas almost entirely. Like that's you know, you kind of you've written probably like four or five times as much as what you ultimately end up with by the time you're done, but it it gets condensed down and rearranged, and new brainstorms like elevate a paragraph with another layer of you know, metaphor or another thing that you realized connects in that you can actually pull in later, and that only happens with time. So I think you know, the the this is stupid thing that you mentioned, I think is like also an interesting uh response because it's not entirely untrue. It's it is it's it's a very, you know, it can feel like a very affected process and it's it is kind of most of us who aren't extremely self-congratulatory feel uncomfortable talking about how great we are, right? And a lot of this is like highlighting the things that are great about you and talking about them and presenting them in a way that somehow is, you know, simultaneously celebratory and humble. And, you know, um it just it's a it's a it's a dance that doesn't. Feel very authentic, and yet you'll hear so many people tell you that this should be authentic, that the most important thing is that your application be authentic. And it is, in fact, like very inauthentic in a lot of ways. It should feel it should feel honest. But it it's not it's not very natural for a lot of people to kind of talk about themselves in this way. And it's certainly something that most people haven't done before, especially if you haven't gone through a rigorous application process for anything else, you know, which most people don't go through a rigorous application process until this point in their lives. So it can feel very inauthentic as you're trying to get to that authentic feeling product.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a lot of people by age 17 have not done this kind of personal narrative, have not usually had to write about themselves in this way. Um I agree that like there's a lot of truth in the this is stupid. And I just want to reiterate that the ability to wrap words around your experience and tell the story of who you are is a fantastic life skill that will serve you well beyond the college process. Not and not just for someone who wants to be a writer or go into a field that requires a lot of writing. That is a skill that will help you, you know, get your idea across to get that grant to fund the scientific research, that to pitch your idea to a VC that's going to fund your startup, to, you know, communicate your TED talk to a bunch of people or like run for office, you know, and and change the world that way. So I think I think maybe remembering that this is a skill that is will go beyond these six to nine months of this intensive work. So it doesn't feel like I'm just doing this for to clear this one hurdle or jump through this one hoop is maybe helpful. And also just something I love about the word authentic is that like it comes with a word that means genuine, and it also shares a root with the word for author. So like there is there can be an element of choice and creativity and building and structure in authenticity, in that we are still genuine, yet we are building a structure to how we're presenting that truth about ourselves for our audience. So it can still be authentic with a structure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And there is as hard as it is to believe, there are humans on the other side that are going to be reading these essays who really want to root for you. And our job is in part is to give them a reason to root for us. Um, I remember I got to actually meet one of the women that read my college essay when I uh because I I was very lucky to go to I got a scholarship to BC, but part of the process of getting that scholarship was they like brought 50 some of us to the finalists to the school to like do these extra writing essays on the spot and interviews and things. And one of the people I interviewed with was the woman, one of I'm sure many women who read or people who read my application and the way she talked about my essay. And it really was my essay and the authenticity of it and the specificity of it, I think, that like put me in that group because I was a theater kid. I wasn't, I wasn't going to going into deep scientific research or you know, some of the other things my amazing like the fellows that ended up in my cohort ended up doing. And it was so cool and affirming to be like, oh wow, an actual person read this and it made her root for me. And and that's why that's a big reason why I'm in this room right now. Um that's gonna be true for every essay that y'all write. That people are going to the real people are going to read them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, and and the the heart and humanity of them. I think you know, it often gets lost because there's so much pressure on students to get all the best scores and all the perfect grades. And um it often gets lost that like your humanity actually matters quite a bit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And like the the human elements and the vulnerable, imperfect elements of those essays are actually the things that that can resonate most. And I I also think that you know that that exercise that you mentioned of identifying the why of white, like why you want to go to college, what you want to do there, is really helpful because I encounter a lot of students who have who are not necessarily served very well by the high school process, by by high school. You know, just the way that it's set up, it's so by by comparison, so restrictive, right? It's very, you take these classes, it's very formulaic, you have to do this at this time. It's so structured and dictated, and there's so much so many rules, and so you know, it doesn't fit a lot of people. Um, and I think, you know, for some of the some of the students who are discouraged by the time they get to this point, it can be very helpful to actually look at what college looks like and feels like and see that like once you get past this very structured thing that feels very confining, it's freedom. You know, you get to like take the classes that you want and do the things that you want. And you know, there's there's so much more room to explore and really enjoy learning and not be, you know, forced into a bunch of the things that don't feel like they really fit you. Um so okay, so in terms of actually um getting started on the the caps and the supplemental essays, what are some of the the strategies you use? Um I know you mentioned the the uh kind of facing the blank page strategies. Um so maybe let's talk a little bit about like identifying what is what is the right topic for the personal statement and and versus supplemental essays and what goes into the essays and what doesn't.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Um Well, I think in terms of uh the personal statement, I do often like starting from some version of the question like, what about you do you really want the admissions office to know that they're not gonna know about you from like your resume, your grades, your test scores, your activity list, right? We know they're gonna have that information. So, like what other colors can we paint with here? And to me, that that boils down to usually values, right? You know, collaborative, creative, like, you know, all those things that we talk about. And and I, you know, I mentioned some of the ways I like to brainstorm that, getting ideas from people that love you, like your parents, a teacher giving you a list of five to seven, your friends, um, looking at people you admire, uh, thinking back to like one or two moments in the past four years where you have like felt the most alive and the most yourself, and like what were the things that you were doing there? Not literally like I was, you know, doing this specific activity, but oh wow, I was collaborating, I was leading, I was linking together ideas, I was learning something new, I was experimenting as a way to solve a problem. I was like leading by listening and sitting back and creating space for others. So starting to find the patterns that way rather than starting from the story. Because our job then is to take those like five values or so and find a story from our lives, ideally from the past four years, that brings to life those values. So that's how I like to start. Um and then I like to, you know, think about it as a hero's journey, right? So we you are the hero of this essay. And you can look into you know Joseph Campbell's work on the hero's journey, you can look into other thinkers' works on the hero's journey, or you can think about the heroes that you love in movies and books. And one of the most compelling things about any great hero story is that we get to watch them grow and change, and then we get to watch them take that growth and change, integrate it, and put it to work in some way in their community in society. So I think some of the common mistakes I see in essays is that, you know, maybe we say the hero's journey, you know, we have we get to know someone where they started, you know, with their background, there's some sort of challenge or call to action or growth moment. We get to learn how they grow, then they come back from that and they get to put that to work in their community in some way. And then we conclude beautifully with a way looking, you know, see now we see the world differently than the person who started the essay. One of the biggest, I don't know if mistakes is the right word, but maybe like pitfalls I see is that students kind of write essays sometimes and they're stuck in the challenge. There's like we've we've kind of equated authenticity with the most challenging things. And the hero's journey that they write gets stuck just in the challenge part, and we don't get to the real growth and we don't get to the impact. There is nothing wrong with t writing a very personal, beautiful story about a challenge in your life. It is just not necessarily the most effective thing for a college essay because the audience for this essay is someone that wants to know who is the person that will be walking on my campus. And for that, we want to tell a story of we're not in the mid of a challenge, we're not currently still in the middle of, and we haven't made sense of yet, but something that we've kind of integrated and has made us who we are today, our kind of hero origin story to this moment at age 17 or 18.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, so I think that's that's one big like pitfall I've seen.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. The way I think about that is um trauma happens to us, bad things happen to us, and we don't have a lot of control about that. It doesn't have a lot to do with who we are, but how we respond to it and what we make of it, that's what shows who we are. And if we haven't had time to have that processing and synthesis and response, that then turns it into something productive in some way. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't have to be that, you know, it didn't matter or you're better for it. I hate that that line of thinking that I'm better off because of some horrible thing that happened to me. Right. But the way that you respond to those things does does indicate a lot about who you are, and that's what's gonna teach the reader about you and show the unique personality traits that you're gonna bring to a new community.
SPEAKER_01Sure, sure. Yeah, and you can always go back and if you've made your little five to seven values list, you can check, you can kind of test it against that and say, like, if I tell this story, am I showing these parts of myself? Because you get the 650 words to it, doesn't mean that that story about this traumatic thing isn't important to tell. It just may not be like the color you want to paint with for your cats in this like painting you're creating of yourself.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, I think another pitfall is maybe an essay in which a student is talking about someone they really admire, or whether that be a parent, mentor, grandparent, or thinker, or anything like that where they stop being the star. I think you have to remember this is you are the star of this essay, you're the hero. I think it's it's really effective to see you in community with others at some point in your essay, especially in maybe like paragraph four, like in that here's how I've integrated things and here's how I'm bringing them back to my community, and that can be defined as a person, a school group, a huge community, you know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, but I think that's that's another pitfall. And then I think another one is just not thinking you're interesting enough and going on TikTok and looking at how other people are opening their essays and oh, I want to do this because this sounds cool, rather than trusting that like what you come up with that only you could come up with is going to be interesting because it's your fingerprint. Yeah, and uh not kind of starting from this place of what you think other people want to hear.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, one thing that Soliana often says is um that we take for granted the most interesting things about ourselves because they're so normal to us, which I think is it's very often true of students that they're they just think kind of the stuff that's the most interesting and cool about them is like not a big deal. And it's actually really fun for other people to learn about because it's unique to you and it's usually the stuff that you've been doing your whole life that's like actually that that is your fingerprint, you know.
SPEAKER_01Totally, totally. And it doesn't have to be of course, like if you've done really cool things, and like you said, maybe parents can help reflect back to students things that they've done that are super cool that the student, you know, isn't is kind of writing off in a way, and also like one of my favorite takes on a college essay is this one scene from Ladybird, Greta Gor Gerwig's Ladybird. And Ladybird is like brings her college essay to sister someone, I forget the nun's name, and she's giving her feedback, and it's like, oh, like I can tell you really love Sacramento in the way you've written about Sacramento. And Lady Bird's kind of shocked because she doesn't think she loves where she's from. And she's like, No, I just like pay attention, and like the specificity comes from paying attention. And the nun says, Well, don't you think those are the same things? Like loving something and paying attention. And I think like as long as we are paying attention to these things in our lives and these moments, however quote unquote small they are, there are moments. And by bringing in that specificity and paying attention, I mean, one of my favorite essays was a student of mine who wrote about a haircut. And they used this haircut, they opened with like the moment they're you know, cold open that catchy thing at the beginning was them in the barber's chair, you know, freaking out about whether to pull the trigger on this haircut or not. And then they, you know, that was the camera zoomed in on them for that opening paragraph. Then the camera zooms out to give the background paragraph, and we learned that this student, you know, had been grappling with their gender identity and had been a ballerina and needed to have the long hair for the bun and like have this perfect look for the dance and all of that background. And then they pulled the trigger on the haircut, and then the challenge of paragraph three was you know, going back into school and the dance space with this, you know, navigating this identity and like how they grew through accepting themselves and starting to like challenge and change the dance community they were in. And then the fourth paragraph was like helping younger people embrace their own, you know, gender identity and expression. And and now, and then the at the conclusion was talking about how they like love their haircuts now and how they're doing a side shave or whatever. I mean, it was about so much more, but you know, that moment of it, they I remember when they pitched the idea to me, they're like, it's kind of dumb. And I was like, This is so interesting, this is so cool, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I have goosebumps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, we talked a little bit about mistakes that students make. What are some of the mistakes that you see parents make?
SPEAKER_01Ooh, good question. Um, I think maybe, I mean, I think a big mistake that I totally understand and have a lot of empathy for is kind of like showing up to maybe a conversation with your student, your kid, or like reading an essay and approaching if they've asked for feedback, giving feedback from a place of fear and having like fear lead the lead the conversation, because that can manifest as like pressure, or again, that perfectionism, or you know, needing it to be right and done maybe sooner than it is. Um so I think you know, I think it's very challenging. Of course, like we all want the best for our kids. And when something is out of our control when it comes to a kid that we love, that is incredibly scary. And I think maybe some of what is on our plate as educators and adults is like managing that and noticing when the fear is coming up and taking a breath and being like, okay, and maybe responding more with like open-ended questions or um starting with what you love about a draft before you dive into like what can be worked on and enhanced. Um, I think another big mistake is maybe that again comes from a good place is maybe trying to like do the work for the student. Um whether that's like I mean, as even going so far as writing it for them, which of course we don't want to do, but you know, pushing it so that it's more almost in a parent's voice than the student's voice. Um and not kind of like giving the student that space because this is a really important time where uh students can start to find and articulate their own voice often for the first time. Um and so I think uh I think those are some, and again, I I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but I think like another mistake is just like not starting sooner, just kind of um kicking the can down the road out of very understandable overwhelming fear versus like, okay, let's this is a lot, but let's sit down and start to look at like what this is gonna entail. Um because it is very, very different than when we applied, um, in terms of like the number of essays, and you know, some things are of course the same, and you'll have useful advice and insight for your kids, but there are it is very different than when we applied.
SPEAKER_03I think that is, you know, sort of you kind of like backed into another one of the mistakes that I that I see a lot is assuming it's the same, assuming that you know, like even since I applied, like if I look at my personal statement now, I know why it worked when it did. Like I had two different ones, and um, one was about astrophysics and one was about my goddaughter who had cerebral palsy, she was four at the time, and it was about like why I admired her. Um and the second one was so much better, and now I know why. But I also think that now it would have been a too much about her essay and not enough about me, you know. Yeah, um but it was a different landscape then. It was the you know, the the kind of style, the competitiveness, everything was different. Like I I hear a lot of parents worry that you know that the personal statement is trying to do too much, and they do a lot now, you know, which is like if you have like one story about one moment, often that doesn't show enough sides of you to be kind of competitive with what else, what the what what kind of sophisticated level of writing um has become the norm. Totally. And I think you know, a lot a lot of that does have to do with the internet, with people sharing ideas and information. And you know, I mean it's it's more competitive because there are more students, but there's also more people sharing more information and more ideas. And so, you know, I think as much as students can get kind of the wrong Impression from online information. I think they also can get a lot of good information and teach themselves a lot. And then, you know, that kind of just raises the bar on the competitiveness.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um and I think that's why I like to think of the personal statement more as like a hero's journey that can, you know, go through multiple steps and go multiple different places within your life the past four years or however long, rather than like a snapshot of one of one moment.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um just a couple more questions. Um one of them is do you have any favorite favorite essays to write?
SPEAKER_01Um interesting. I mean, I guess the caps is probably my favorite, just because that's so I I that chance for a student to articulate who they are and their hero's journey at this moment in time is so special. Um, in terms of the other supplements, I mean, maybe like uh a creative Chicago essay, just because that's like so out of the box and and zany and kind of lets a student do a lot. But I I don't know that I have a favorite prompt, right? It's uh no no offense to the folks that construct the prompts, but I I feel like I don't really I kind of like reverse engineering things. Just like I was saying that I start with the values and then come up like with the story. I think I I encourage students to think about like all the different colors that they can paint with to like tell the story of who they are, and then look at the landscaped of prompts they're going to have to answer, and then decide where to use which color. So it's I don't know that I have a favorite essay. It's just more like, okay, like here's a student that has a lot of blue and orange and green and purple, and the orange is gonna be fantastic for the community essay, and the purple is gonna be great for the disagreement essay, and we've already painted with a lot of like green and yellow in the caps. Um so I think I just think about it more as like you use them to your advantage and like make them work for you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. It also makes sense that you like the creative because I think that's the the trick with the creative. Otherwise, there's so many possibilities. Like you can just, I mean, you can go in so many different directions. But if you think about the creative as what haven't I gotten a chance to showcase yet that I want to showcase, then you can kind of find a prompt. I mean, there's like gotta be a hundred of them that you can choose from because it's been so many years they've been doing this, right? And you can just go to that like list online and say, okay, which one can I fit what I want to talk about into, you know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_03And um do you have any that you that you dislike writing to?
SPEAKER_01Um, not not that I dislike. I mean, I think the why essay, like why this school essay can be tricky just because of the research it asks the student to do for each school. And you know, that that's just more time and um intensive. So I like to think of that in two ways. One, it's a chance to really get to know the schools on your list and and do some of that legwork of like, do I actually want to go here? Um because the idea of a school can be great. But then when you actually dig into the classes available and the professors, maybe you realize it's not what you thought it was or not a good fit. A. Yeah. Or B, you get more excited.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I had a student last year who told me that um she loved doing YSAs because she just gets so much more excited about going to college.
SPEAKER_02It was the cutest thing.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. That's like ideally, yeah. So it's like taxing, but then hopefully there's also that good thing. And like the why YSA to me is like, I mean, I know this is a weird thing to say about a college process, but it's a little bit like dating. It's like, you know, they want to know if they ask you out that you're gonna say yes. Right. And like you also have to know that if they ask you out that you want to say yes. And and doing that research is gonna like help you figure that out. I think another tricky one is the the one that's become more popular recently about like disagreement. Um, only because I think finding a way to answer that authentically that really shows that you listened to someone who sees the world differently from you and learn something is challenging when our world is understandably very like polarized, and there's a lot of things where like maybe you don't think there's a lot of nuance around certain topics, and that's potentially fine and understandable. Like um, maybe you're like, oh, human rights, not a negotiable nuanced topic. Uh so finding something that you can genuinely speak to listening to somebody else, um, someone else's point of view and how you kind of grew from that is I don't say I dislike it, I have just found it like challenging.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's I think because society tends to be so so siloed too, a lot of students by the time they're graduating from high school may not have had much exposure to people who have strong differing belief systems. Um and so that can be tough, especially when they couch the question as specifically a discussion. I think like the perspective was challenged version of it, like talk about a time your perspective was challenged, can be a little bit more accessible because you, if you haven't had a conversation, you can talk about reading a book or like encountering an article or you know, something along those lines where you did learn something new genuinely, and it's easier to have that experience proactively if you happen to be in a community that's fairly homogenous in terms of values and belief systems and ideology, you know. Um I think I think that one can be really tough because you know it's it's it's tricky because I understand why they're asking it because they want to show you they want you to show readiness for encountering those experiences in college, but in a lot of ways that's what college is for because a lot of a lot of us don't have those experiences before college. Like this is the time when we we do get thrust into that, and so if you haven't had them thus far, it can be kind of tough to even come up with, you know. It's like, can we can we find someone to talk to so that we have a discussion to talk about, right? Even like can you can you interview someone for your school newspaper so you can like talk about you know what you learned from them just to like even have had the conversation. I think particularly when it's couched as a conversation, it can be really tough because sometimes you just haven't had them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great point. And again, I think that's another reason to kind of just start to look at what supplements lie in your future now, because um, not that you want to do anything like that you wouldn't do anyway, but you could start if you know that you're gonna have to write XYZ essays in the coming months, you can start to look for opportunities to lean into those moments that you you may not have thought to do otherwise, or you may not have prioritized otherwise.
SPEAKER_03Or or focus on remembering them too, you know. Sir, yeah. Keeping a, I think like having keeping a Google Doc where you just you don't have to write the anecdotes, but just enough notes for you to remember what happened, so that if you want to use it as an example for an essay, you have some cues for yourself to remember. Totally. It's not a really natural way. I mean, unless you're a person who's who's like born to write memoir, it's not really a natural way to go about life to be like, oh, I had this experience, let me like remember it so I can tell the anecdote, you know?
SPEAKER_01Like exactly. But it is it's maybe it's a little bit like that, you know, conventional wisdom where it's like you, I don't know, where they say, like, oh, you're like thinking about buying a red car, and all of a sudden you see red cars everywhere, you start noticing them. But if you if you're like, oh, I have to write about, I'm gonna get to write about XYZ in the future, you might start to see and notice those things.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, your brain might start to file those away in a different way. Whereas if you weren't thinking about that or that wasn't part of your awareness, it they would just not be as you know, spotlit in your mouth in your mind.
SPEAKER_03In your mind, yeah. Harder to remember and and recall in order to write about them. Yeah. Um so last two questions. Um, what's your favorite part of this college essay process?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I mean, I think my favorite part is the reverse of what we've been talking about, is so hard about it. I mean, I think I feel really lucky that I get to meet a 17-year-old at this point in their life where like maybe for the first time they are grappling with trying to articulate and mine like who they are in this moment, how they became who they are in this moment, what their values are, and what stories bring those to life. I think that that is really cool and I feel really honored. I know that's very challenging, um, but my favorite part is getting to like dive into that challenge with young people because I think it's such a cool thing. And then once you have like clarity around that, it's so empowering, and that's gonna help an interview process. It's it's gonna help everything because you can walk in and like know who you are in this this way that maybe you knew kind of simmering in the background, but if you've never articulated it, it's not on the the forefront of your mind as much. So I love that, and it's so bespoke to each person. It's like I think that's why it feels very similar to actor coaching to me in a weird way. It's like when I'm coaching someone on playing Juliet, for example, yes, there are certain structures and parameters you have to think of when you're playing Juliet. You have to say the lines that are on the page, you have to have diction so the audience understands you, you know, you gotta hit these notes, these beats for the story to make sense, but everyone's Juliet within that structure is going to be different because of who they are. And with the college process, like you there is an audience you're writing for. There are certain essays and prompts you have to answer and beats you have to hit, but yours is going to be yours because of who you are, and it's going to be different.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think for me, it's I I well, I had a student um that has graduated now that I happened to talk to sometime, I think it was last year or sometime she had graduated by then. And she mentioned that the the process of writing together helped her clarify um who she was, was very like reflective and it it helped her get a better sense of who she was.
SPEAKER_02And I was like, oh, that's so exciting to hear. Like it was like an empowering process where she like really felt she got a better sense of herself, and I was like, oh, success.
SPEAKER_03You know, which is like that's exactly what that's exactly what it it is, that's what it is in the best iteration of it, you know. I think if you are able to to manage it well, you get like a stronger sense of what you care about and who you are. And and even as you were talking about like the skill building that you get along the way, I think why essays, as much as they can be, I mean, it's tricky, you know, one of the things that you were talking about in terms is the research being tricky, but I also think one of the things that's tricky about it is to write it in a way that doesn't sound like just like a research dump, right? Like it actually sounds genuinely excited about the school, and it feels like, you know, it's not like a fill in the blank of all of these different things that, you know, here's my research programs, and you know, like like I did the research kind of kind of uh a list of research that you did, right? Um, but I also think that skill is invaluable in terms of writing cover letters, you know, no matter what you do for a job, like those YSAs, if you get good at writing them, great, great skill to have because it's applicable across so many different types of things that that you have to do. Okay, uh, last questions. Are there any like final tips or pieces of advice that you would offer parents and students? Ooh.
SPEAKER_01Um, or I like remembering is something I think about a lot as an actor is that when an animal, like a dog, walks on stage, they're often the most compelling thing on stage. Like even if it's Annie and everyone's there, like the kids are cute and they're belting out, the sun will come out tomorrow. Sandy walks the dog walks on stage and everyone's like. And I feel like it's because, in part, you know, dogs are cute, yeah. But the dog doesn't know how to do anything other than be a dog. Yeah. Like there's no like, oh well, they like me. Am I doing the right thing? Am I writing what they want me to write? Is this perfect grammar? And so I guess I would just say, like, remember to be the dog too. Remember to like be yourself in this too, which is not to mean that we don't need to have structure. Unfortunately, we are not dogs, like humans, like the best actors in the world spend their career unlearning their self-consciousness and unlearning just trying to mimic other voices to like find their own voice and to show up as themselves and their own take on a role. And so, you know, that's the both end of our task, right? Is to show up as ourselves and also to give it like a structure so that it can land with our audience. But I would just say, like, remember to be the dog and be yourself, and that you're gonna get so much advice thrown at you, and all of our brains work so differently. So take what is useful for your brain and what helps you in this process, and know that none of these are hard, fast rules. Um, and take what's useful for you and try to connect to that bigger why behind what why you're doing this and the tools that you can take from this that will serve you well beyond the next year of your life. Um, because they will.
SPEAKER_03Awesome. Thank you so much, Patricia. Yeah, it was really, really fun. Um thanks everybody for listening. And if you have anything that you would like us to talk about, any questions or topics that you'd like to hear us talk about, feel free to email us Hello at seeing Beyond Admissions.com and we'll put that in the show notes too. Um and we will talk to you all next time. Thank you.
