Transcription

Hi, I’m a TJ graduate from the Class of 2010, and I’m currently at William and Mary, probably majoring in International Relations and French, depending on my course load. I’m still a freshman so I have a lot of time. I’m going to talk to you about my college essays, and how I structured my time and how I got them all done and how I picked my topics.

So, I applied to 12 schools, which resulted in many, many essays. Of course, you can tweak some of them to make them work for different topics and different schools, but when it comes down to it, you are writing a lot of essays if you’re applying to different schools, there’s just no way around that.

So, what I did, was I started thinking about my topics spring of junior year. Now, that seems really early…spring of junior year, you’re thinking ‘oh college applications, they’re due in a year. I don’t really have to think about them.’ But the earlier you start thinking about them the less stressed out you’re going to be come the fall or winter break of your senior year when you're trying to get them all done.

I remember I was working on Christmas senior year, just because I had a really good idea and something due in a week, so I just kind of left my family and wrote my essay. So the best thing is start thinking about them spring of junior year, and then start writing them summer of senior year. Summer before senior year, you want to have all your drafts done, for all your topics.

I know that some school selections are going to change, you might decide to not apply to some schools, but a lot of their prompts are very similar. So have some topics going and write those drafts, because you’ll be so thankful come the fall.

In the fall, this is something that I picked up on in November when my friends started doing it, I wish I’d thought of it earlier. Start finishing applications in September or October and start sending them off. Have a checklist, have a target date for each application, and a time by which you send it.

In my mind I was going to work on all of them at once and send them off before the big date, January 1^st, and it was going to be fine. But, if you start sending them off 2 or 3 months early, you’re going to be so relieved and you’re going to have more time to concentrate on the ones that are left. So start sending them off one by one, maybe get the easy ones that only have one supplementary essay done and then just start sending them off one by one by one by one so in December, you’ll only have a few left, and you won’t be as stressed, and you can have your Christmas.