Your senior year will be busy.  You will probably be visiting college campuses, formulating your list of schools and taking the SAT subject tests, in addition to balancing your regular plate of schoolwork and activities.  So it’s important to do anything you can do for your applications now.

If you want to avoid last minute panic, follow these suggestions and get a jump start on your college applications:

1.    If you are having essay-worthy experiences this summer, don’t trust that your memory will recall all the details of those experiences.  **Write them down!!**  Trust me, it will make the essay writing process SO much easier than it would be with just your memory to rely on.

2.    If you’re not engaged in some interesting activities and adventures this summer, do some self reflection and find something to jump into.  It doesn’t have to be glamorous – you could get a job in a bakery or video store and make an essay out of it.  A great essay is more about who you are and how you experience your life than about the actual things you do.

3.    If you haven’t already, ask your teachers NOW for letters of recommendation.  They will appreciate having the extra time to think and write.  See my article, http://theessayexpert.com/blog/2010/05/29/before-you-graduate-start-now-on-your-letters-of-recommendation-lors/

4.    Write an essay draft.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  Just get something down on paper.  It will get your ideas flowing and take off some of the pressure you might otherwise experience in the fall. 

5.    Talk to your parents and friends about your ideas.  And if you do write a draft of your essay, share it with others.  They might have insights into your experiences and growth that you don’t have.  After all, you only have one brain and it can only recognize so much about itself!  

6.    On August 1, download the Common Application Form and fill out all the generic information you can (name, address, etc.)  Get those details out of the way so they don’t clutter your brain and you can focus on writing your essays.

Follow these six suggestions and you will have much more peace and brain space so you can focus on your other senior year activities — and you’ll have more FUN too!!

The fact is, we all love a good story.  Admissions committees love good stories.  Hiring managers love good stories.  Customers and clients love good stories.  Always remember:  the person you’re writing for is a human being!  How do you get another human being to read your document?  Spin a good yarn!

If you’re applying to college, tell a story with a beginning, middle and end.  I had a client who wrote about teaching his sister to ride a bike.  His first draft was all rosy about how great the experience was, and it did not have a compelling beginning, middle and end.  He felt lost in the writing, and the essay was boring. 

What ultimately made the story great was that he started at the beginning, when he was annoyed at his sister for being small and clumsy, then moved through the process of a breakthrough in becoming a teacher, and a better teacher — and finally to where he released the seat and the sister took off on her own on the bike.  Victory!  A great story.

In college applications, many times what makes a great story is to admit to a struggle or fault, and show how you broke through it.  In a cover letter, believe it or not, you can do the same thing. 

All kinds of people are saying “No one reads cover letters anymore.”  Well, of course no one is reading them – because they are stilted and boring and no one can get through them!  Have you ever considered that if you write a good enough story in your cover letter that it really *will* get read!

Do you have an example of a time when a project was failing, and you stepped in to fix it?  That makes a great story!  Is there an example of something you achieved that relates to the job you’re applying for?  Don’t be afraid to tell these stories in your cover letters!

On your resume, too, tell as much of a story as you can in a bulleted line. 

What not to write:  “Assisted scientists with their research.” 

What to write: “Conducted genetic, epidemiology, and behavior research on sport fish in Illinois, Canada, and the Bahamas.”

Ah, now that sounds kind of interesting!

For an example of a bio that tells a great story or two, see Senior Investment Analyst Bio on The Essay Expert’s website.   This client reported to me that she loved her bio story so much that she kept reading it to herself after it was done!

Whatever the reason, we all love a good story.  Tell one in your college and job applications.  Tell one in your bio.  If you do it well, your intended audience will keep reading…  and reading…  and reading.

I have a secret to share:  I sometimes wish I had gone to Oberlin where the students might be a bit more hippie and down to earth, i.e., more like me.  But I will never regret having a Yale degree on my resume.  It helped me get into another prestigious school (NYU Law ‘98) and has gained the respect of several employers and clients.

A recent article by Eve Tahmincioglu on msnbc.com, “An Ivy League degree no surefire path to success,” explores whether an Ivy League degree really makes a difference when it comes to how well a candidate will do in a job.  The article concludes that hard work, not the college name on your diploma, leads to career success.  Nevertheless, people with Ivy League degrees have significantly higher incomes than their non-Ivy counterparts:

“The typical Ivy League bachelor’s graduate earns about 27 percent more early in their career, and about 47 percent more by the time he or she is about 40, than the typical bachelor’s graduate from all U.S. schools,” according to compensation website PayScale.com.

I wonder:  Do employers like to hire someone from the “right” school simply because of the prestige, or do they beleive they can rely on the pre-screening that the Ivies (and other top schools) do on every admittee?  It seems to me that there’s a really good chance that someone who made it into an Ivy League school is among the best and the brightest.  That’s not to say that a huge number of the best and the brightest — and the most hard working — did not go to Ivy League schools, either because they did not get in or because they chose less pricey options.

It’s understandable that many students prefer to attend Ivies, regardless of whether this education is essential to career success.  Ivy League colleges come with a guaranteed caliber to the student body and community, to the professors, and to the education.  And of course, the degree opens up many doors with ease. 

The competition to get in to Ivy League and other top schools, as reported by Ms. Tahmincioglu in her msnbc article, is fiercer than ever:  “According to the Harvard Crimson, the school accepted a record-low 6.9 percent of applicants this year even though the number of applications actually went up 5 percent — topping 30,000 for the first time in the school’s history.”

The long and the short of it is that if you want to have an easier path to some of the most prestigious jobs in the country, a Yale, Harvard or Princeton degree will go far.  You still need to do well once you’re there, and you still need to work hard once you’re in the work force.  But the big names on the resume don’t hurt a bit.  And in my book, that’s enough to make it worthwhile to shoot for the best.

These are questions to answer before you go away for the summer.  Once you have your answers, make a list of the people who would be your best recommenders.

After identifying your best recommenders, ask them if they are willing to write you an LOR.  Ask in particular if they will write you a strong one.  If they can’t, see if there’s someone on your list who can.

Teachers will really appreciate having the summer to work on your LORs.  Many teachers have more time over the summer months and are not drowning in recommendation requests on top of lesson plans and other school-related activities.  So you can get a leg up by approaching them now!

If you remember particular instances where you demonstrated your intelligence, creativity, responsibility, or other great qualities, don’t be shy about reminding your recommenders about those instances.  You can even give them a list of things you think they might want to cover in their letters. The best letters tell stories, and you probably remember those stories better than anyone else!

Examples of things you might want to share with your recommenders:

• Copies of your best papers in their class
• Copies of your creative writing
• Notes about particular contributions you made in class
• A list of your activities and accomplishments
• Your transcript
• Your student resume (yes you should have one!)

All help you can give your recommenders, whether it’s giving them plenty of time or helping them with material to put in the letter, will generally be appreciated and will make for a stellar LOR!

The benefit to you, besides great LORs, is that when December rolls around, you won’t be biting your nails worrying whether your letters will be in by deadline.

That’s worth a bit of thought and action now, isn’t it?

The content of the article was of course valuable, and 17-year-old Saffa gets points for making a Tom Petty reference.  But I’m not concerned with her content.  The thing that caught my attention is simply that a high school senior got published in the New York Times!  Saffa took huge initiative, worked hard to write a piece that would be of value, and put it out there to the world. 

If you were a college admissions committee, do you think you might take notice?

This student stands out amongst all the others who just sit there, waiting, hoping, wondering.  She even stands out amongst the students who send additional essays, or letters about why X school is their first choice, or new letters of recommendation.  All those things might help you to get off the waitlist, but getting published in the New York Times takes the cake.

Do you have something you can achieve that is truly out of the ordinary?  Can you get published in a national newspaper?  Win a poetry, science or chess contest or competition?  Self-publish a book?  Solve a problem that hasn’t been solved? 

If you’re serious about getting off the waitlist, my advice is to follow Saffa’s example – and stop waiting.