College Blog
You did it! Your family got to the other side of the application deadlines, and you survived! But now, if you applied early action or early decision anywhere, then decisions have begun rolling in. And while a deferral may be disappointing, it’s worth remembering that a deferral is not a no! Here, we’ll unpack the difference between a deferral and a waitlist, how deferrals and waitlists work, and where you should go from here.
Every year, students repeat misconceptions and bad advice about how to write a personal statement. The internet is awash in videos and articles by amateur experts who just finished their admissions process and are trying to advise anxious students about how to write the “perfect” essay to get into colleges. Students often find their peers compelling, especially when those peers giving advice got into some fantastic colleges themselves. The reality, however, is that there is no secret to the perfect essay.
Really, those students don’t actually know why they got into a particular college—even a highly selective one. Colleges are not in the habit of telling students why they were accepted. Students just find out, “hey, I got in!” (cue excited screaming and IG/snap stories). It may have been the essay, or it may have been their GPA, extracurriculars, or a clutch recommendation. More likely is a combination of all of these.
The “additional information” box is used differently by so many colleges, it can be tricky to understand what constitutes an appropriate use of these boxes. This section is truly optional. There is no reason to fill out this section if you have nothing relevant to add.
But if you do have something that might be relevant to share, let’s talk about the Additional Information section. There are a lot of tabs, sections, and subsections to the Common App, so we will start by telling you where to find the Additional Information tab and what’s in this section. Then we’ll talk about some things that you might put into the Additional Information, and some things to definitely leave out of this section.
Which prompt you pick matters less than the story you choose to tell and how you tell it. When you begin to get ready to write, you should employ a process that begins with understanding the questions being asked. Turn over all your cards. For some people that involves brainstorming, for others it doesn’t. Whether you brainstorm or not, write with no regard for length; just get all the ideas on paper. Then organize the parts of the story that are really important or the parts that came out well, and begin trimming irrelevant content, shortening sentences and fixing verbs, getting rid of unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. At the end of the process, you should have an essay that tells the reader something about you. It should be a story that no one else could tell but you. And hopefully the writing sounds like you—a polished version of you, a you in a suit-and-tie or blouse-and-blazer, but you nonetheless.
