OWL

Juniors: Resources for Kickstarting Your Essays this Summer

We strongly urge you to have at least your Common Application essay in good shape before senior year begins. Fall of senior year is a busy time and writing your essays while attending school is like adding a class to your schedule. Summer provides the luxury of uninterrupted time to reflect and write. Here's some advice to kickstart your essays over the coming summer months -- from a suggested reading list that we hope will inspire to some excellent step-by-step guidance on the new Common Application essay prompts.

Finding Your Voice in the Essay:  A suggested reading list of first-person essays.

The Real Topic of your Essay is You: One strategy to help you find a topic.

What are colleges looking for in the essay?

Great essay advice from the deans at Vanderbilt, Chicago, University of Illinois and more.

Pushing the Right Brick for Diagon Alley  Writer and independent college consultant Irena Smith on getting started -- and getting personal -- in the college essay.

Great essay advice from the deans at Vanderbilt, Chicago, University of Illinois and more

OWL, the Purdue Online Writing Lab, is featuring excellent advice on the college essay from some of our good friends. Check out the post here -- for commentary on the essay and how colleges view this step in the application from Vanderbilt's Doug Christiansen, Caltech's Jarrid Whitney, and University of Chicago's Jim Nondorf, as well as undergraduate admission deans from University of Arizona, Rutgers, and University of Illinois.