Writing Your College Admissions Essays

The summer is the best time to write your college admissions essays. But our students at Ivy Coach don’t hang out at the beach all day in between drafts. They are pursuing their passions!

There is a post up on “The Huffington Post” today by Robert S. Schwartz entitled, “Forget About Writing Your College Application Essays This Summer. Have Fun Instead!” We could not disagree more vehemently with this headline. On the contrary, the summer is the absolute best time to write your college admissions essays. Students are off from school. They don’t have to cram in writing the most important essays of their life in between AP U.S. History exams and studying for the SAT Subject Tests. They have the time to think, to find their inner voice, and to express themselves in the best way possible.

In the piece, Mr. Schwartz states, “I have recently come to the conclusion that writing your college application essays now is the last (!) thing you should do over this final, great summer before college. And that if you want compelling, attention-grabbing essays that are the best reflection of who you are, having a fun, interesting summer and writing about these experiences in September best accomplishes this.” We disagree so strongly with these words. Just because we at Ivy Coach strongly encourage our students to write their college admissions essays over the summer, our students are still having interesting and intellectually challenging summers where they are pursuing their passions that will help make them stand out in the world of highly selective college admissions.

Just because they will have more time over the summer to write these admissions essays does not by any means imply that our students are hanging around the house all day, soaking in the sun in the backyard in between drafts of admissions essays. While the writer of this piece references one student who changed his mind on when college essays should be written, we ask what about all of the students who write terrible essays when they’re rushed to write them in the fall? And, by the way, students can still have fun when pursuing their passions that will help them stand out in admissions. In fact, that’s precisely how they will stand out.