#138 Your Teen’s (Perfect) College Application Essay with College Bound Mentor Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker Robbins 00:40

In today’s episode, we’re tackling the myths and the truths about writing the college application personal statement. I’m excited to be joined by IECs from the college bound mentor podcast, Lisa Bleich, Abby power and Stephanie Forman, together, they bring a wealth of experience in guiding students through the college admissions process, and our conversation will debunk common myths when your teen is chasing the perfect college essay, such as the need to write about overcoming hardship or crafting a unique story to stand out. Instead, we’ll focus on the importance of authenticity and tips for how their personal statement can reflect who your student is, how they think and what motivates them, our guests share practical advice on writing a compelling essay that balances resonating with admissions officers while truly representing your teen’s voice, whether your teen is in the midst of applying to college or you’re looking for guidance for your younger student just starting the college bound Journey. This episode is packed with valuable insights and actionable tips. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish, coaching production. Let’s dive right in to a great conversation.

Lisa Marker Robbins 01:58

Stephanie foreman, Lisa Bleich, Abby power from college bound mentor, welcome to the show. It is so great to have you on my podcast. I had so much fun being on yours. And so I you know, I want to share on this topic that I heard you guys already talk about, which was a personal statement and how students feel like all this pressure for it to be perfect. And as I listened to the episode and my listeners, you need to be listening to their episode as well college bound mentor. But if I listened to that episode that you guys did on the personal statement, if I still had a kid in high school, I would have felt like some relief that it doesn’t have to be perfect, and insights to make it easier. And so let’s start with, I know, when I was on your show, we talked about the we were doing some myth busting over there, around college majors, and how to write the why this major essay and all that, I’m sure there are myths that people believe about the personal statement. So let’s do some more myth busting, because I think myth busting is fun. Who wants to go first? All

03:15

right, I’ll start. I mean, one of the myths is that I have to have overcome hardship,

Lisa Marker Robbins 03:21

like I have to have had a struggle. I’ve got to have a big struggle in my life. Yeah, so what’s the truth? Right?

03:29

The truth is, no, you just have to be authentic to who you are. I mean, a lot of times, you know, I’ve had some parents who have called me who will say, you know, my child is, like, just a good kid. He’s really smart. He’s done a lot of, like, leadership in his school, but, you know, he hasn’t had any major hardship. Hasn’t had to overcome any challenges. He’s had a really, you know, more or less easy life, so he’s just not going to be able to write about anything in his essay. And the answer is that that’s fine. I mean, there’s still things that are unique to him, and the way he thinks about life, the way he approaches problems, the way he deals with other people, that he can find something wonderful to write about that will be unique to him. I

Lisa Marker Robbins 04:13

have a question on that. Then if, let’s say there is a student who’s had a lot of hardship, right? So I can think about, you know, having done this job for 25 years, I’ve had plenty of them that have had, like, big things happen, either to the kiddo, personally. I mean, even way before covid And things got hard from that. But like, personal illness and family or job loss or health crisis for the teen or whatever, like, if they have had lots of hardship, is that what they should always write about? Yeah, go ahead, Abby,

04:47

we the way we approach it is, if

Abby Power 04:50

the hardship or ever overcoming the challenge is really part of your identity, it’s part of who’s made what’s made you who you are, then it could be a good topic to write about. About. And another thing that we think about is, if it’s a challenge that you’re currently going through and you haven’t gotten across to the other side, it’s probably not the right thing. You’re probably still processing it and going through it, and that’s not the right thing to write about. But I’ve had lots of kids who’ve had really big challenges, and they’ve just decided this is not part of me. For example, right now I have a client with dyslexia, really, and dysgraphia, really, really, really severe, you know, could have been debilitating, but she just does not want to write about it. She’s like, That is not who I am. I do not want that to be what’s on, you know, what they see about me. And then last year, I have a young woman who’s going to Cornell, who did write her entire essay about overcoming pretty debilitating dyslexia. So I think it’s really individual. It depends on where you are.

Lisa Marker Robbins 05:48

Yeah, Lisa, what were you gonna say? And then Stephanie was gonna

Lisa Bleich 05:52

say that I have a student this year who has had a lot of hardship, but he also has a lot of other amazing things to talk about. And I would say that most of our personal statement brainstorming was about his hardship. But then, and I think he needed to, he needed to get it off his chest. He needed to talk about it because he hadn’t really had a safe place to talk about it for and then he ended up not writing his essay about it at all, and it was a beautiful essay, and I think he just needed to share that and be heard. But he didn’t necessarily need admissions to know everything about it, because he had so many other things that were more true to who he was

Lisa Marker Robbins 06:31

that’s definitely worth Yeah, yeah. So

Stefanie Forman 06:34

kind of an example that touches on what both Lisa and Abby said, I worked with siblings, and a brother and a sister who had a very difficult relationship with a parent, and one of the siblings was able to Abby’s point like evolved from that situation and came on the other side. So was able to write about it with this really unique insight, and there wasn’t any negativity there, because he went through the work, and he was the older sibling too, whereas the sister, to Lisa’s point, I think she just had to write it all out, and it was really cathartic for her, and she was grateful for that experience, but she wasn’t on the other side of it yet, and she felt that the personal statement wasn’t the right place for it, because she still had some work to do. So, yeah,

Lisa Marker Robbins 07:24

in the messy I always call that the messy middle, if you’re still on the messy middle or there’s not a scab on it yet, which is kind of gross, but then it’s probably not the time to start picking at that, right? Okay? What else? What other myths do you guys think are out there?

Abby Power 07:39

This is the one I think that we were focused on in our podcast. I have to be completely unique and stand out. I have to have done something amazing that stands out to admissions, which I always say, that’s never going to happen. These people have read 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of essays. You could have literally contributed to the cure of a disease, and they’ve seen it before. So it’s really more about, I think, what Lisa said showing how you approach things, it’s basically a substitution from you sitting across the table from the admissions rep and them saying, you know, Sally, you have a minute and a half tell me a story from your life that tells me who you are as a person, and it can be something so small that just shows how you approach things your way, you know, or or an interest that you have cultivated that’s your own. It doesn’t have to be something earth shattering.

Lisa Marker Robbins 08:34

You bring up a good point. You said, you know a minute and a half, there’s different stats out there, and we all know them as IECs, right? But like you know, between six and nine minutes, or always under 10 minutes of how long that entire application is going to be read. And so we’ve poured ourselves in to all this time, and they’re going to take fewer than 10 minutes to read it, and only a small portion of that time is on this personal statement. I mean that to me, you guys talked about like not being perfect in your podcast. That should take some pressure off. If it’s that quick a part of a read, right?

Lisa Bleich 09:15

Yes and no. I mean in the sense that, yes, it is a very quick read, but because it’s a quick read, it has to be really clear, like when they’re reading the essay, like you don’t have to be the most amazing writer in the world, but you do have to write really clearly and very specifically, and so that we that they’re in your head and they know who you are as a person when they’ve read that essay. And I think that’s the part that makes it, puts the pressure on it. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to communicate who you are. They have to understand, you know, what are you thinking about? How are you interacting with other people? How are you solving problems? You know, what’s going through your head? Those are the things that, if you can communicate that in a very concise way. So that the when they read it, you whenever I read an essay and I have to read the I have to read a sentence twice, it’s too complicated. I don’t know what’s happening. You don’t want the reader to have to go back and read it. It should be clear. It should be simple. It should be really obvious when they’re done, because they do spend so little time on it. So if they have to spend time deciphering it, then they’re going to just skip it and move on to something else.

Lisa Marker Robbins 10:22

Any other myth? Go ahead, yeah, yeah.

Stefanie Forman 10:25

I think Lisa just busted a myth about you have to be a great writer. I think so many of our students come in and feel like they have to be this great writer, and not all of us are, but as long as we’re authentic and we’re telling our story. I think we spoke about a little bit ago that we found out we were all at this same yearly conference for our profession, and something that was reiterated so many times is that they don’t want to see something that’s too polished, and if they see something too polished, they’re going to put it aside, and they’re going to they understand at this point what an authentic 17 year old, 18 year old voice is, versus a 35 year old voice, or, you know, a parent voice, or a mentor’s voice. So I yeah, that’s, that’s something that we really try to instill in our students, just just to write. You write your story and and it will come through. And that’s that’s really powerful. Well, that’s

Lisa Marker Robbins 11:25

a you just and so you just busted another myth Stephanie, which was that you know, they won’t know if your parent helps you or writes it for you. I had a client about three years ago. It was so obviously written by the parent. And I had a really hard time with the family understanding that it’s not just even that it wasn’t okay, but that the school would pick it up, for sure. I mean, we know they will, as professionals. Okay, so Stephanie, you bring up some stuff it, and what you just said, with your myth busting, that really begs the question of, then, what is the goal of the personal statement? Like, how do we sum up? We’ve kind of touched on it here and there with these answers. But what is the main goal of this? The at the state of the personal statement?

Lisa Bleich 12:17

Well, the large personal statement, oh, did you want to start Stephanie, I don’t

Stefanie Forman 12:23

know. Go ahead. Lisa, go.

Lisa Bleich 12:24

No, you go because she asked the question. You just weren’t doing anything so well.

Stefanie Forman 12:31

I think, I mean, there’s a lot of goals, but the one of the first things that I say to my students is that think of it as a conversation between you and the admissions officer or the person who’s reading your essay, and what do you want them to know about you? What is essential for them to know about you, and that might not be present in the other parts of your application. And you know, we go back to that word authentic. And you know, if you if I was having a conversation with you, would it feel like that essay on the page? So that’s one place that I start with. What about Abby and Lisa? Where do you start with with your students,

13:12

one of

Abby Power 13:13

the first parts of our brainstorming process is we take them through this exercise where they identify descriptors that describe them. We give them a really long list, and they have to choose 10, then they have to choose their top five and actually back them up, provide evidence, anecdotes, examples. And one thing that I always have a hard time balancing with my clients is they kids have a lot of great stories, but do those stories to say the right things about them? Do they really communicate their strengths and the characteristics that they want to to to put forth to the college. And I had one hysterical example a couple years ago where this young woman, who was an amazing person, she used to help new immigrants in New York City in court, she would translate for them in Spanish. I mean, in this area, in New York City, that’s pretty sketchy. I mean, such a courageous young woman in so many ways, and she did so many interesting things, like drum circles in the subway, like she was someone you wanted to be your best friend. And she was insistent on writing this essay about this surfing accident she had, which was a great story. It’s the kind of story you’d tell, you know, your friends at a party. It was really, you know, adventurous and scary and dramatic, but it really just sort of showed poor judgment, and she thought it showed her courage. And I was like, No, you do all these amazing things that show your courage and and your willingness to be out there. This is not it. So a lot of the times, kids have a great story they come in with, and then you kind of have to sort of unravel, unpack that with them and show them that not every great story is a great story for this process. Or,

Lisa Marker Robbins 14:55

I mean, we did talk earlier about how you brought up to the point. Abby about like, you’re not going to find the unique story. And so take the pressure off that it has to be like the first one that they’ve ever read, because they’ve read these so many of them. But at the same time, there are topics that are a little too cliche as well, right? Like your sports injury and you recovered and went on to the whatever win the race, right? For the most part, they’ve heard way too many of those. And so they’re How do you guys communicate? If, because you all, and I know what the personal statement, the goal of it is, and what it should sound like. What do you do like Abby? How did you handle that conversation? Sound like you were? You’re pretty direct with her. But if it’s a parent or anybody who has an inkling of like, this shouldn’t be the story. This isn’t the story. How do you discern that and how do you communicate about it? Lisa, Well,

Lisa Bleich 15:51

it’s interesting that you say that, because I would tend to just like one of my myths is that you can’t write about divorce, death, sports, camp, mental health, learning, all of those things. I don’t think it’s the topic. I think it’s the way you approach it and how you write about it, and that’s what differentiates you as a person. So I had this conversation, I had a student, and we went through the exercise, you know that all of the brainstorming, we start to identify threads, like you were talking about in our on our last podcast, the threads of the key themes is what we always identify. And there was this one young man who is this really brilliant young man, but he was a really strong planner. He liked to have everything just so he was very mathematical, and he was very systematic in the way that he approached everything. And as we went through all the topics, being the director of the color color war, which everybody talks about, anyone that’s went to summer camp has talked about color war, and I always am like, no, no, we can’t now we’re not going to talk about this. This is not a good topic. This is so over overused. But when we went through all of the different things that he had done, and this was also during covid, so there weren’t as many other things it actually showed. The reason that it was so appropriate for him was because he planned, he was in charge of planning the entire thing for the whole camp. So we had a Google Sheet, and he he had put down all of the different iterations of what was going to happen. How we used to laugh is like, how many rubber duckies he was going to have, how many kids were going to be involved? What was the precise timing of each event, and how was that going to work? What were the points going to be, and how was he going to allocate those points? And then, of course, there was a problem, because the kids, they didn’t care about his rules and his elaborate spreadsheet, so they started cheating. So then he had to figure out, Okay, now, what am I going to do when everybody’s cheating? I didn’t account for that. And so he’s quickly calculating and recalculating minus points and plus points for different things. And so it was this great way that got into his head and helped us understand what he was about. And the mom called me up, and she’s like, and she was, she wasn’t like, necessarily questioning, but she just wanted to understand, to your point, she’s like, what you know? Why is he writing about that? So when I explained it to her in that way, she’s like, oh, yeah, I totally get that. And that’s that. And that made total sense. Normally, I’d say, don’t write about color war at camp. But for this particular young man, it embodied all of the ways that he thought. And it was a really funny story, you know, and we still call them rubber ducky boy because they can’t So, so that’s another myth. Is it’s the personal statement is to communicate how and why you approach things and do things. The resume, the rest of the application says what you did, the personal statement says how and why you do it. And that’s really the difference? Great.

Lisa Marker Robbins 18:42

I love that. Well, it sounds like really, I mean, nothing’s off the table 100% if you’re going to do it in a unique way that aligns with who you are, or if you’re still in the messy metal, then we should leave it off. So if the if that’s the goal of the personal statement to really get to know you, the how and the why. What does it really mean then, to be authentically yourself within that essay? Because it sounds like all the really, all they we all know, all they really want is to just get to know who you are, and that’s going to require authenticity. So how do you guys define authenticity and coach the teams that you’re working with through being able to be authentic in their essays?

Stefanie Forman 19:31

I want to let Lisa talk. Like to give Lisa credit, because it’s something that she introduced into our brainstorm. What like two years ago? From from Tufts about those four questions, and they have, and we and Lisa will talk about those, but at the end of our two hour brainstorm session, and that’s our first big meeting about the personal statement, we kind of end with that, and you see the light bulb go off for our students, because it. It really does a nice job of Yeah, of structure and being concise and like, this is what. This is how we’re going to define that person’s authenticity, if they, you know, answer those questions. So, Lisa, yeah,

Lisa Bleich 20:17

do I say what the questions are? The four questions. So what are you thinking about? How do you interact with others? How do you solve problems, and what motivates you? So I always will tell a parent or anyone who’s reading an essay or having an outside person read the final edition. Does it answer these four questions? I don’t care. We don’t want to know about the topic. We don’t want to know about the writing. We just want to know, does it answer these four questions? If the answer is yes, it’s done its job. If the answer is no, then you need to go back to the drawing board, and you need to put it in in a different way. And it does help provide that framework, because that’s really what they want to get. That’s what they want to understand when they read the

Lisa Marker Robbins 20:59

essay. So you’ve all so you basically have given them the grading rubric for what’s desired. That’s a rubric so that people don’t have to rewind back up. Go ahead and give the four questions again.

Lisa Bleich 21:14

What motivates you? What are you thinking about? How do you interact with others? And how do you solve problems? Fantastic.

Lisa Marker Robbins 21:21

So any other advice, as students are overwhelmed entering college application season, do either any of you or all of you have a parting piece of advice, tips and tricks? Anything that would be helpful to our listeners? Abby, yeah,

Abby Power 21:43

I would say, because kids do get completely overwhelmed and they shut down over this personal statement. And I’ll see clients. I’ll see it happen a year in advance. And I just think, don’t even think about it until the summer before your senior year at the earliest. And in the meantime, you have to take advantage. You have to live your life, take advantage of every opportunity, take every risk you can, so that you build these experiences that you can talk about later. That’s your job during high school, is to make the most out of your experience. So when it comes time to just write a page and a half talking about yourself, you’ll have plenty to write about, you know, but that’s all you should do. It makes me so sad to see kids stressed about the personal statement a whole year before they apply to school.

Lisa Marker Robbins 22:31

Absolutely Lisa and Stephanie,

Lisa Bleich 22:33

I would say, have fun with it. I mean, it sounds silly, but it it. This is, you get to talk about whatever you want, and you get to be who you are. And it’s not a there’s no even though there’s a formula for what you want to answer, there isn’t necessarily a formula for how you have to do it. So you want to have fun with it. And if it’s easy to write, then it’s the right topic. If it’s hard to write, it’s the wrong topic. Because we’ve seen that happen over and over, where someone we might go down a path, and don’t go too far down the rabbit hole. If it’s the wrong topic, you’ll know right away. If you sit down and you just do like, a 10 minute or 15 minute free ride, and you start writing, and it’s easy and you’re having a good time, then that’s the right topic. If you sit down and you have nothing to write for that 15 minutes, then move on and come up with a new topic. Yes,

Stefanie Forman 23:25

that’s great advice, I guess again, to take the pressure off in the beginning is just to encourage right all different styles of writing work for different students. But a lot of times I’ll use the phrase brain dump, and I don’t care about structure, I don’t care about grammar. And I think to just kind of set those rules in the beginning. I just want your ideas out that relate kind of to this topic that we discussed at the end of the brainstorm. And I think to start that way, to be like, I’m here to support you, but to just do your thing and however this works, and we’ll go from there. I think that starts the process off with giving the students some confidence that this is going to be a little bit different than writing that, you know, argumentative essay for so and so, or this specific type of essay that’s required. So, yeah, I like starting it off like that. Go ahead

Lisa Bleich 24:16

and one last thing for parents, because I know you got a lot of parents that listen to you to the essay. This is your kid’s essay. This is, this is what’s important to them, what’s really shaped them. And a lot of times, as parents, we think something that happened in their lives is the key, Pivotal experience that shaped them. And a lot of times it’s not. And that happens, you know, you know, as a parent, you think, Oh, this was the time that I really think you grew as a person. But sometimes, if you ask the kid, they’ll be like, I don’t even remember that or what are you talking about. And so if you try to impose your own sense of what they should write about, sometimes that can backfire, because it’s really the student’s story and what impacted them. And you may not even realize that they may not even realize it themselves, until they start going through and start seeing things that are thematic, that are throughout their lives.

Lisa Marker Robbins 25:08

I agree well, and I also think, you know, we all work as IECs, with admissions and students, and we do tons of professional development, and we talk to the those that work at the colleges a lot, as much as we can. And I think sometimes parents also make the the error of thinking they know what’s going to be important around an admissions officers table, right? And rely on the people who are the professionals that do the work. Because, just to the same point, Lisa, that you had, that you may not really know is gonna what story your student really wants to tell and what’s most important to them. And I’ve had that same thing, where the kids like, what, when did that happen? And the, you know, the parents like, Yeah, remember. And it’s like, no, you don’t necessarily know what’s going to resonate or what the college admissions officers are looking for as well, and your your classroom English teacher probably doesn’t know either. So they’re great at teaching English, but they’re not necessarily great at getting to the heart of what is going to resonate in the admissions office so well. Thank you, ladies, this has been fantastic. If our listeners want to, they’re like, oh my gosh, these ladies would be fantastic to help my student in the future. Depending on what age they are and what availability you have, what is the best way for people to keep in touch with you or find out more?

Lisa Bleich 26:35

They can go to our website, collegeboundmentor.com they could email us at info@collegeboundmentor.com, but it’s all there on the website, and we also have links to our podcast and our blog. Okay,

Lisa Marker Robbins 26:47

fantastic, and we’ll put all of that in the show notes. Thank you ladies,

26:51

thanks so much.

Lisa Marker Robbins 27:00

Thank you to Lisa Abby and Stephanie for sharing their expertise on writing the college application personal statement. I hope our discussion has given you a clearer understanding of how to approach this critical aspect of the college admissions process. As we wrap up, I encourage you to visit Johns Hopkins essays that worked. You can easily Google this resource or grab the link in the show notes, This resource provides excellent examples of successful college essays and offers valuable perspectives on what makes a personal statement stand out. And if you’re looking for guidance on writing the why this major essay, we had a previous podcast episode on this, just go to flourishcoachingco.com four forward, slash, 084, I’ll also link to that in the show notes. If you found today’s episode helpful, please share it with a friend who might benefit from it. Remember to follow rate and review the podcast to help us reach more families with valuable insights and support. Lisa Abby and Stephanie are doing the same with their podcast college bound mentor. I’ve got a link for it in the show notes. Thank you for listening to the College and Career Clarity podcast, where we help your family move from overwhelmed and confused to motivated, clear and confident about your teen’s future. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and until next time, keep striving for clarity and confidence in your teen’s college journey. You.