Writing about COVID-19 in the wrong way can doom your application to the reject pile instantly, while writing about it in the right way...

Article originally published on Forbes.com in December, 2018. College application deadlines are just around the corner. At this point, high school seniors h...

You’ve probably heard that it’s a bad idea to write your college application essay about world peace, a sports game (or sports in general), a trip, the death...

Welcome to the supplemental essays for the University of Chicago! These are a doozy. I'll be frank with you: I can only take you so far with these in a blo...

You’ve got three essays to write for Notre Dame. Everyone must answer the first question (“Why This College?”). Then you get to choose two prompts from a lis...

Welcome to the Northwestern supplemental essay for the 2019-2020 application cycle! You've got just one question to respond to, and it's probably the most c...

Welcome to the Johns Hopkins supplemental essay for the 2019-2020 application cycle! Johns Hopkins asks only one supplemental essay question, so you’re going...

Welcome to the Cornell supplement for the 2019-2020 application cycle! For Cornell, you only need to write one supplemental essay, but it’s a rather long one...

Welcome to the Duke supplement for the 2019-2020 application cycle! Duke asks three questions. One is required, one is technically optional (but actually isn...

Welcome to the Brown University supplement for the 2019-2020 application cycle! You’ve got three pretty standard questions: “Why This College: Academics,” “W...

Welcome to the Penn supplement for the 2019-2020 application cycle! Unlike many other Ivy League schools, Penn doesn’t ask you a zillion questions. In fact, ...

Before I get started, I want to warn you: the Stanford supplement is very long, and very difficult to write. You can often get a sense of what a school is lo...

Welcome to the Harvard supplementals for the 2019-2020 application cycle. Buckle up—there are a ton of questions. The good news is you don’t have to write ab...

Welcome to the Princeton supplemental essays! Princeton University divides its numerous supplemental short answer and essay questions into “Activities,” “Sum...

Welcome to the New York University supplemental essay prompt for the 2019-2020 application cycle! Here's everything you need to know. We would like to know m...

As the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains on its admissions website, they’ve chosen to eschew the Common App (good for them!) and ask you to writ...

Welcome to the 2019-2020 essay prompts for UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, and UC Merced...

Welcome to the Yale University supplemental essay prompts for the 2019-2020 application cycle! Here's everything you need to know. (You can refer to the Yale...

Welcome to the Columbia University supplemental essay prompts for the 2019-2020 application cycle! Here's everything you need to know. (You can refer to the...

Welcome to the Tufts University supplemental essay prompts for the 2019-2020 application cycle! Here's everything you need to know. (You can refer to the Tu...