my common app essay + writing advice (full scholarship to vanderbilt, accepted to emory)

Hello guys, welcome to my YouTube channel. My name is Joy. Today I will finally sit down and read my

common

FSIA for you and also give you my own tips and tricks for the

common

app. I tell them I'm going to read. I tell you, I ended up sending him to Vanderbilt and Emory and I ended up getting a

full

scholarship

to Vanderbilt and Emory. I'm also making this video that any of you who are currently working on

writing

your own

essay

can use. this video to inspire me and to learn something from my own personal mistakes.

I want to start with the

advice

. The most important

advice

that helped me the most was actually from my English teacher when brainstorming for his

essay

came down to four minutes of your life, these four minutes could literally be anything, it could be something really big like going to a competition or something really small like washing dishes, boiled down to four minutes of your life that really caught your attention, maybe it wasn't anything big. but it seemed unique to you or you felt some change in your perception or you feel that in these four minutes it really sums up an identity or a trait of yours and if you can immerse yourself in those four minutes and really develop them and write very introspectively and deeply, you will be able to create an essay with your own narrative voice and you will be able to really know how to develop your character and your traits in a unique way.

It's a really good way to start your brainstorming process and start thinking about the things that matter to you and the things that you want to include in your essay, but when I was brainstorming I was thinking about different four minutes that actually stood out in my life, something that really stood out for me was one When I was 16 I was flying alone for the first time when my plane was rerouted and I had to spend the night in an airport and thinking about this feeling of being in this airport reminds me a lot how I felt when I was moving. and then I decided to delete the type of thoughts I had Hi guys, this is editing me and it appears very quickly.

I wanted to explain a little about this video. Curious fact. In fact, I submitted the wrong version of my Common App to Vanderbilt. a different version that I was going to submit, but I forgot to copy and paste it into my actual Common App and ended up submitting the wrong essay. Basically, I ended up spending the correct version of my essay on Emory, but I'm deciding to read it. I put out the wrong version that I sent to Vanderbilt because I feel like that's what people would want me to do because that's the version that got me the

scholarship

, so I felt like I should show that version, but in the version that I sent to Emory.

I ended up removing some of the details, for example there is a sunscreen part that I just removed and simplified a lot of the details. I changed my sentence structure and changed some words because I felt like parts of my essay came. it deviated a little in a way I didn't want it to and also some of the details were really unnecessary and I felt like I was taken away from the overall essay, but I thought you guys know I'm going to go ahead and read. My common main essay for you, the palm I chose was the lessons we learn from the obstacles we encounter.

It can be critical to subsequent success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you and what did you learn? From the experience of the first time I traveled alone, I knocked Gibby out of an engineering competition and won, confidently saying goodbye to my mom and my Alabama teammates as I entered security. I boarded the plane expecting a smooth flight home to Seattle, but 30 minutes before landing the plane's intercom rang. Your captain here, a snow storm closed SeaTac Airport, so we will be redirecting to Portland International Airport shortly at 4.

I was too young to book a hotel and it was too far from Alabama and Washington for either of my parents to It will help me get trapped. Portland airport to my rescheduled flight the next morning while brushing my teeth at 2:00 a.m. m. the periodic welcome to Portland International Airport echoed in an empty bathroom. I realized something in tenth grade. I left Alabama fresh-eyed and eager to experience my cousin's claims about Washington. magnificence I boldly entered my new school, but my optimism was slowly shattered on the second day of school, a classmate vigorously shook a bottle of sunscreen and accidentally splashed the oily substance into my hair.

I washed it away and moved on, but the pieces of my life that had once formed. an image no longer fit only lunches new classes with material I had already learned no consistent violin teacher cross country and orchestra times overlapping old friends tapered tacks broken water heaters there was no overhead light our bed but I felt drift my only constant I waited looking for a silver lining once I realized he wasn't coming I visited the vice principal's office looking for a new schedule and they turned me down I left in a daze passing students in their school sweatshirts and comfortable laughter longing for all the things I wasn't I realized how passively I lived until then waiting for opportunities and friendships to come my way, I never learned to look for them after moving, I felt stuck for the first time in my life and I was sick of it that afternoon, sitting alone after the cross-country practice, I made myself.

I turned around and asked the girl her name a week later I looked into a classroom of seniors my heart was pounding in my ears it's this body of knowledge that I choked down shaping group projects and seating charts and different words for friendship I forced myself to speak every time I reached Everything became easier until, finally, the cumulative dopamine rushes from meeting new people left me addicted. This fascination filled a new adventure of mine. My YouTube channel, which began as short iMovie edits meant to preserve pre-move memories, evolved as I invested hours filming and editing both educational programs. and comedy videos the feedback was stimulating, the comments both online and face to face reinforced my power.

I was able to positively impact lives, make people laugh, and help people, often the little bravery it took to release a movie while building a new family of runners, intellectuals, and musicians. I got a schedule change and even reconnected with my friends from Alabama discussing enemies and engineering over FaceTime. I notice students sitting alone as I once did in their classrooms during lunch on the lawn after practice and remembered my own loneliness. I extended my newly freed hands. My open ears gave Shire here the opportunity to vocalize the thoughts, friendships, and voices that would strengthen my conviction in the importance of getting closer to who I am while brushing my teeth at the airport.

I recognized a parallel. I was just stuck somewhere. between Alabama and Washington, a physical manifestation of how I was feeling was moving, but when I felt comfortable on the airport bench instead of my previous fear, I felt an incredible peace. 6 am. I'm walking towards a security checkpoint, content in the knowledge that I've grown from the detours I've taken and am never truly stuck in limbo, so that was my rehearsal. My essay is by no means perfect. There are a lot of things I would change, but I hope that just me reading this gives you some ideas and helps you.

Now that I've shared my essay, get the gears turning in your head. I'm going to move on to the advice portion of this video, so let's start with when you should start

writing

your feedback essay, learn from my mistakes, oh my gosh. I probably did the worst thing I could have done, which was start writing my essays and cheering up senior year and senior year. You'll have a hard time staying afloat, balancing your classes, and calming down. The worst thing you can do is start writing your essays. For the last year in my head I was thinking that one day I'm going to have an epiphany.

I'll know exactly what would be the perfect thing to write from my stock app. I'm not telling you right now what the epiphany is. It's not time to start writing your essays, it's probably the end of third year. I would start to really think about the different moments in your life that I've highlighted you, what traits of yours you really want to express and let's move towards them. how to get inspiration for topics when writing your essays it's so easy to fall into this trap of wow my life is so boring i literally have nothing interesting to write about everything i could possibly write is so cliché i'm a trash can almost everyone who write these essays feel like this, okay, and so what are the different ways you can get out of this rut?

The first is four minutes, just like thinking about different four minutes in another way. Getting inspiration is actually asking other people in your life what they think you should write about because when you live as yourself for so long and go through the motions of your daily life every day, it's very easy for things to do and things to do. Things that you've accomplished feel very mundane, but for someone else who's looking at your life it's a lot easier for them to pick out the things that they think are really interesting about you, you know, sit down with someone who knows you're really, really well and alone. ask them brainstorm for five six seven eight hours go down the rabbit hole of memories try to relearn and remember things you did that we're actually great that maybe you forgot something really important to recognize is Sometimes, these don't have To be great, the more mundane the things you write about, the more interesting the essay itself can be if you can really delve into something that may seem really mundane, but really follow your thought process so that every time you have like a change of mindset, there was a moment when you realized this, there was a moment in your life that you feel really sums up who you are and if you can narrow it down to a specific moment in your life, which you can, which you feel like has all these things and you really take it out and really think about it and write deeply.

You can make a really great essay. Another really good thing you can do is look at the supplemental essays for the colleges you're actually at. Search and see if there are different topics that you really want to write about for those supplemental essays and then mix and change different topics and ideas until you feel like you have a really coherent idea for those specific colleges that you're really targeting. For writing tips, my biggest writing tip is to not obsess over perfection when you keep reading and you read these essays that people don't post all the time, but for the most part you're reading an essay that's been edited over and over again, over and over again, so when you write your own it's very easy to wait or try to recreate that perfection, if you expect perfection right away it's very easy to suffer from writer's block or erase ideas before you.

Even really finishing what I would recommend to you is that when you go to your writing sessions don't have expectations of everything you want to include in your essay, just throw it all up, don't edit it, don't think, just convey. Consciousness type vibes try to put everything you want to say on the page no matter what it sounds like and then leave it alone and come back every few days and edit it and edit it and edit it until you create something solid. outside of word vomit it's a lot easier to just get it all out and then go through it and try to edit it, then edit it in your head and try to make it sound perfect while you're writing it and then you know, hit like. really big writer's block zero expectations don't expect a perfect essay right away and then a second tip I have for writing in terms of this stream of consciousness and this kind of idea is to get really sleep deprived, it says something that's what I did. and many of my friends and people I know did it simply out of procrastination, but there is something very unique about starting a rehearsal at 3am. m. and finish it at 7 a.m. m., it is much easier to vomit.

Find out everything you're thinking when you basically have no filter. This also works especially well for supplemental essays, especially when you're three days away from the deadline and you like those essays, they just have a different impact than what's happening on your phone. I like to put the phone down, get out your laptop, just write for a while and then leave it alone and come back and edit it and do all that kind of jazz, so now let's talk about the editing that I've personally warned against. having too many people on heroes, two or three people is a pretty decent number of people.

I would have that one or two of those people will be people very close to you and people who know what kind of person you are and who you are. The kind of trust enough to share ideas with them and have them help you during the writing process. For me personally, that was my mother and then once you've written your essay with the help of those editors, I would go to someone else who didn't.Do it. I know you very well and I was not involved at all in the writing process and have them read your draft and mark it up and everything and then tell you what they got out of the essay and hope

full

y the things they got out of the essay.

The type of student they think you are in that essay is what you want to convey because really at the end of the day what you are trying to do with this essay is create a picture in the reader's head of what type of person you are. The goal is for the person who doesn't know you very well and is editing your essay to tell you what kind of person they got from the essay, and for that person to be the person you wanted them to imagine from the beginning. Does the essay make sense? I hope so.

I wouldn't go through three editors and I definitely wouldn't have them edit the same essay at the same time like I know some people like to make a Google Doc and send it to three different people and they all edit it at the same time. I would not do that. I would limit myself to sending it to just one person. and then getting feedback from that person changing the essay and then that kind of jazz, so that's basically all I have to say about the common app essay. I hope this video was helpful to you, if you like, feel free to give it a try.

I'm also going to share my Vanderbilt supplemental essays and scholarship essays and soon I'll also share my Emery essays, so if you want to check it out, feel free to Subscribe If you've been in the process of writing and have your own tips and stuff, feel free to leave them in the comment below. If you have any questions, feel free to also leave them in the comments below. I always try my best to be as helpful as possible, thank you all. Much to see and I hope to see you next time, bye.