What is college life like.
College life is a transformative journey marked by freedom, personal growth, and academic exploration. It's a time to make new friends, choose your courses, and develop essential life skills.
To maximize your college experience, explore your interests through extracurricular activities, form diverse friendships, and manage your time effectively to balance academics and personal growth.
To write about your college life, start by reflecting on your experiences, both academically and personally. Share anecdotes, challenges you've overcome, friendships you've made, and how college has shaped you. Be honest and specific in your writing to make it relatable and engaging.
Important aspects of college life include academic growth, personal development, building lifelong friendships, and participating in extracurricular activities. Balancing these elements while managing time effectively is key to a fulfilling college experience.
College life is an exciting adventure. It's a time to make new friends, learn new things, and grow as an individual. The freedom to choose your classes and explore your interests is liberating. You'll face challenges, like tough assignments and exams, but they help you grow. College also teaches time management and responsibility. It's not just about books; it's about life skills. So, embrace every moment, join clubs, and make memories. College life is a beautiful journey of self-discovery.
When describing your college, focus on its unique qualities, such as campus culture, academic programs, and extracurricular opportunities. Share your personal perspective and experiences that make your college special to you.
College life is a remarkable journey marked by newfound independence and self-discovery. It's a time when you choose your academic path, make friends from diverse backgrounds, and face academic challenges that shape your character. It's about exploring your passions, participating in extracurricular activities, and preparing for a bright future. Embrace every moment, as college life is a valuable chapter in your personal and academic growth.
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"keep in mind that the admissions officer is some dude lying on a couch reading your essay at 10 pm.".
Written on Sep 23, 2024
As high school seniors prepare their college essays, they are often pressured to compose a story about their monumental, life-altering experiences — the more dramatic, the better!
However, the reality is that you don’t have to climb Everest to write an effective essay.
One man proved this with his brief college essay about studying in a local McDonald's, which he credits getting him into nearly every institution he applied to, including Harvard.
Jeffrey Wang , a Harvard alum who graduated as Valedictorian from his high school class in 2015, is assuring modern-day high schoolers that they do not have to craft a masterpiece about how they wrote a symphony while balancing a full course load of honors classes in order to get into college.
RELATED: High-Performing Student Accepted To Duke & USC Reveals Why She Turned Both Down To Go To A State University
He should know — his entire essay was centered around a local McDonald’s restaurant he studied at throughout high school. However, it had quite an unexpected takeaway and humanized him beyond the average applicant attempting to impress recruiters.
Wang shared a screenshot of his essay on X (formerly known as Twitter), and it has since been viewed over 2 million times.
“Some people study best at the library. Others occupy a corner in a coffee shop where inspiration and creativity flow with a cappuccino. Personally, I do some of my best work while sipping a one dollar plus tax McIced Tea at a plastic table on which my laptop and a book rest,” his essay began.
I got into Harvard + almost every college I applied to w/ an essay about studying at McDonalds. Had multiple admissions officers write me handwritten letters complimenting me on it To any frantic high school senior, the best advice I got was - keep in mind that the admissions… pic.twitter.com/94sKmcQGSD — Jeffrey Wang (@wangzjeff) August 8, 2024
“The subtle scent of grease fills my nose, and the shouting of order numbers rings in my ears. I’ve found an unconventional place of contentment beneath the Golden Arches.” Wang goes on to tell a story about one summer night when he stumbled across his local McDonald’s restaurant and decided to order a meal and sit down for a bit.
As he was eating, he found serenity in all of the hustle and bustle, the aroma of hamburgers and fries, and the sound of children begging their parents for a McFlurry .
“I realize that there is nothing on my mind but my surroundings and my stomach. I’m completely at ease; no pretension exists in this global franchise that has more stores in the world than people in my town,” he wrote.
After finishing up his meal, Wang went to his car, retrieved his books, and went back inside to study at the same table. It was hours later, when he lifted his head up from his books, that he realized it was the most productive he’d been in months.
Since that summer night, Wang made the McDonald's his go-to study nook.
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“While attention-catching sights and sounds sometimes divert my attention, they’ve helped me to work by forcing me to focus harder,” Wang wrote.
“Better yet, I’ve found meaningful the array of diversions I’ve experienced, from a conversation with my quirky, retired seventh-grade English teacher about how fast (not quick, he had taught me) life passes by, to companionship with employees here like Milly, who works the cash register, and Maureen, the manager.”
For Wang, McDonald’s became a crucial place for him to escape and study — and it certainly helped that he had some delicious options from the dollar menu!
“For this, McDonald’s speaks to me,” he wrote. “Sometimes, I put my pencil down or stop typing into a Google Doc just to appreciate the simple utility of the location in a sort of wistful way. I see my life as a sort of quest to find ultimate authenticities, and while I know that there will be more truths to discover and that they will most certainly be more difficult to find, my being content at McDonald’s is one conclusive victory.”
RELATED: College Expert Replies To Kids Who Say Universities With High Acceptance Rates Are For ‘Dumb’ Students
Wang concluded his essay by declaring that in the chaos of everyday life, many people have difficulty focusing and being content exactly where they are.
“I’ve learned that contentment can exist in imperfect and unforeseen places when you simply observe your surroundings, adapt, and maybe even eat a french fry,” he wrote.
Wang claimed that some college admissions officers took the time to write him personal handwritten letters praising him for his work and sharing how much they enjoyed it.
He also had a message to high school seniors stressing out about composing a masterpiece essay.
“To any frantic high school senior, the best advice I got was — keep in mind that the admissions officer is some dude lying on a couch reading your essay at 10 p.m.,” he revealed.
“Make sure that this person is entertained and thinks that you're an authentic human being.”
Most 16 or 17-year-olds have never experienced anything earth-shattering, and that's OK.
Wang illustrated beautifully that college essays do not have to be extraordinary tales to make an impact. They can be as simple as how your morning cup of coffee is your favorite part of the day.
“The truth is that most of us don’t live in a superhero movie where one event just changes the course of our lives,” Pratik Vengal , who offers advice to incoming college students, said in a video.
Vangal explained, “The most common fallacy that I see online is that you need to have experienced some major disturbance, or grief to write a good college essay, and that’s simply not true.”
“The most successful college essays that I’ve read take a small moment, something even as modest as waiting at the bus stop in the morning, and transform it into an essay that truly shows colleges who you are. Your goal is not to prove your intelligence, they know you’re smart! Colleges want to hear an authentic and genuine story written in your voice.”
When you think about it, college admissions officers have to read over endless paperwork from thousands of applicants. They are more than likely sick of having to read the same essays that deal with fabricated themes of teenagers saving an entire population or curing a mystery illness just to impress them.
They want to read something that is simple, to the point and depicts you as a human being and not an applicant number or a superhero.
As Wang, who is now the co-founder of his very own company, has proven to us, you do not have to have extraordinary experiences to receive extraordinary opportunities.
RELATED: How A High School Student At The Bottom Of His Class With A 2.1 GPA Wrote A ‘Cliche’ Essay About Bowling And Got Into Yale
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.
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The college essay: a mini-memoir.
What if you were limited to 650 words to write your memoir? Upon what would you focus? What part(s) of your life would you choose to emphasize? How would you articulate your values and the experiences that have shaped you? In many ways, this is an unfair exercise, to be constricted to so few words in sharing your story. This is what the college essay asks of applicants. Then again, college admission is anything but fair.
A memoir asks the author to highlight a meaningful or noteworthy aspect of their life and to bring it alive for the reader. In its perfect form, it is an unveiling of the heart, an opportunity to laugh, cry, and spill your emotions onto the page. The college admission essay combines all of these expectations in one short snapshot. This can be daunting, even paralyzing for young people, many of whom have never been asked, or allowed, to speak from the heart in their writing. Instead, they have been schooled in the five-paragraph essay with an introduction, three supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion. It feels more like math than poetry and can be uninspiring. Then students at the end of high school are suddenly presented with the challenge of the personal narrative, as if dropped into the wilderness without a compass, ill-prepared, and lacking sufficient survival skills.
As applicants gaze into the vast expanse, often anxiety about getting it “right” stifles their voice. Those who can find their voice sometimes are at risk of having it garbled by heavy-handed editors–parents, teachers, consultants–who, while well-meaning, fail to honor the unique expression of a student’s lived experience. The temptation of over-applying artificial intelligence has made this even more fraught. The essay is meant to be authentic, honest, and personal, not contrived, flawless, or comprehensive .
How do I stand out in my essay? What do colleges want to hear? What topics should I avoid? Is this story too cliche? What if nothing traumatic has happened in my life? These are the questions that I have repeatedly heard over two decades as a high school counselor. They are born of the head, not the heart. They miss the mark that college admission should be about applying your voice not manufacturing a profile. At a time when student mental health on college campuses is in crisis, the admission experience—and the essay for sure— ought to be about getting within rather than just getting in.
The truth is that the college essay gets a disproportionate and undue amount of attention, such that it loses its magic, becoming more manipulation and less mini-memoir. I have read thousands of essays as an admission officer and then high school counselor and spoken to countless admission deans who have reviewed even more than I have. There is no shortage of books, websites, and “experts” who will purport to offer the secrets or code to crack the college essay. It feels to many students like the last thing they can control about the admission process and the key to college acceptance. The reality is that when applicants cede control, ignore instruction, stop strategizing, and simply write from the heart, they stand out. It is when they accept who they are and trust in the power and importance of their unique voice that these 650 words or less will carry the most meaning.
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My advice to students laboring over their college essays is to take a step back (and a deep breath) and think about how they want to be remembered by the admission reader. What impact do you want your words to have? What image do you want to leave them with? What moment, experience, or value do you want to impress upon them? Don’t try to write your autobiography, just share part of your story as any good memoir would.
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Chris Holmes, associate professor and Chair of Literatures in the Department of English, has been a superfan of Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro for nearly 15 years. Holmes recently met his literary hero, as he was selected by the Rose Theatre in London to author a Playbill essay for the stage adaptation of Ishiguro’s novel “Never Let Me Go.” Holmes hopped across the pond to attend the premiere and feature in the play’s press junket Sept. 25 alongside Ishiguro and other contributors.
“Never Let Me Go” was first adapted for the screen in 2010. The film stars Andrew Garfield, Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley, directed by Ithaca College’s Mark Romanek ’81. The novel was adapted for the stage by British playwright and actor Suzzane Heathcote, well-known for her work with the television series “Killing Eve.”
Life and Culture editor Georgie Gassaro spoke with Holmes to discuss the honor of being selected for this project and learn how his studies of Ishiguro’s work have influenced his teaching philosophy as an educator at Ithaca College.
This article has been edited for length and clarity.
Georgie Gassaro: “Never Let Me Go” seems like such an intriguing, science-fiction story about human cloning. How would you describe the plotline to someone who has not heard of it before? What would be your elevator-pitch for audiences to read it?
Chris Holmes: My pitch for it is that it comes across as kind of a boarding school novel, but it’s a surprise that it ends up being, at least in part, about clones. It begins as a story of three friends who are in a very unusual boarding school. … But, slowly, there’s a simmering unease underneath everything happening, so you feel like something is coming apart at the seams, and then it is revealed that their purpose is to donate their organs so that the rest of the non-cloned population can live extraordinarily longer and healthier lives. It’s truly the story of trying to come to terms with what it means to die for someone that you’ll never meet. “Never Let Me Go” is one of the best high school or college-aged experience books I’ve ever read. You could throw out the clone stuff, and it gets to the feelings of vulnerability and security and being so full of love for your friends.
GG: You have a published essay titled “On Rereading Kazuo Ishiguro.” In what ways has your process writing this essay fit into the ideas discussed in that essay?
CH: It was really interesting to try and go from a very micro form –– when you’re writing an academic book and you’re talking about a particular novel, you’re really focusing on wording and phrasing and form and things like that –– to go very macro. There was a big change in how I had to reread the book and rethink how I encountered it when I first read it for pleasure. It was a very nice thing to re-encounter it.
GG: Will the press night be the first time you meet or interact with Ishiguro at all?
CH: Oh yeah. I have never even been in the same room as him. I’ve never seen him give a reading or anything. It’s sort of blowing my mind, but I’m trying to stay sane about it.
GG: Do you have any ideas as to what you will first say to him?
CH: I don’t even know how to address him, because he’s a knight of the realm. He’s a sir, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him, I just hope that I don’t just fumble around and look like an idiot because I’m such a fan. I’m glad that I’ll get a chance to meet him and thank him for what his work has meant to me over a long time now. Almost 13 years, I’ve been writing about him more than anybody else, and I just want him to know how much that has meant to me. He doesn’t ever need to read the book that I wrote. But I just hope that he’ll feel happy that lots of people are writing about his work.
GG: How does Ishiguro compare to other authors and screenwriters you encounter in your work as a literature professor?
CH: His style is very different from almost everybody else that I study or teach or write about. There’s an infamous line from a review from The Guardian that’s something like, “Reading ‘Never Let Me Go’ makes you want to drink, run a marathon, do drugs and have sex just to feel more alive than the characters in it.” I don’t agree with it, but there is an understatedness to the way that emotion happens in Ishiguro, which for me, is more tense and kind of eerie. It never feels boring or slow or anything like that. But it’s definitely a very distinct style, almost kind of affectless, even when terrible things are going on. There is a distinct and specific outburst of pain and sorrow in “Never Let Me Go,” but it’s so unusual that it’s twice as impactful because it’s not the norm within his style.
GG: How has your own education and experiences like this contributed to your work as a professor at Ithaca College?
CH: I had a lot of imposter syndrome, even as I was getting my graduate degrees. I really felt like I was pulling one over on everybody and that somebody would find out that I didn’t belong there, and sort of usher me out. One of the things I try and do with Ithaca students is really make it clear to them the talents that they have and the things that I can see brewing, even if they’re not fully formed yet. I try and make it so that if I can tell someone has a writing inclination –– even if they’re not necessarily a good writer yet but they want to play with language and build something about an argument or thinking and writing –– I really try and encourage them to not feel like they’re faking it. It’s a process in which you grow through that process, and in that growth you can achieve great things. College is not a time for you to already be fully formed. You’re supposed to learn and grow and have experiences of letdowns and failures, but also have people who really prop you up.
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