Avoiding Clichés in Your Personal Essay

At some point, you just have to accept that there will be clichés in your writing. That’s the bad news. If you wanted to snip every cliché out of your college essay, you would be left with just a handful of articles and pronouns.
But then, clichés aren’t all bad. They lend a certain playfulness to your writing; they reveal familiarity with literature and culture; and they condense complicated ideas into short, easily understandable packages.
As with almost everything, there is a balance. The real trick to effective writing is not in eliminating clichés altogether, but in using them wisely. Here are five tips to help you use clichés in a smarter, more potent way.

1. Truth is stranger than fiction. No one person’s life is exactly like any other, so the more honest you are with your reader and yourself, the less likely you are to repeat someone else’s story.
For instance, how will you answer the inevitable question, Why do you want to attend this school? If you begin by imagining what the college wants you to say, you are doing the same as every other applicant. But if you honestly consider all of the complexities implicated in the question, you may even surprise yourself with your answer.

2. Imagine different audiences. Again, take the question, Why do you want to attend this school? How would you answer if you were speaking to your parents? Your best friend? A psychiatrist? The president? What if your essay were really an op-ed for the newspaper? A proposition for a new advertising campaign? The first page of your novel? A political treatise nailed to the door of a church?
Of course, you don’t have to literally address any of these people. The point is not to adopt a strange format which will raise eyebrows. You are a different person depending on whom you speak to; the point is to find which version of you is best equipped to write this essay.

3. Don’t write down your first idea. Your brain, like everyone’s brain, is swimming with recent memories. The jingle you heard on the radio this morning, the line you read in a book last night—those are all on top. Your most creative, original ideas— those are waiting underneath.
Try writing three or four versions of your opening paragraph. Then, for every paragraph you complete, return to the ones that came before it to see how the trajectory of your essay has changed. The most original ideas and phrases will spring up at you only after you have exhausted the easy ones.

4. Show, Don’t Tell. You’ve probably heard this phrase before (in fact, it’s a cliché), but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Many clichés can be dissolved in details. The more (honest) details you provide, the more original your story will be.
For instance, take the phrase commonly found in college essays, “this will make my dream a reality.” How much more engaging would this passage be if the author wrote instead, “I will be able to walk up to my grandfather and read the pride on his face,” or “I will finally be able to take off this string which has been on my finger for four years,” or “someone will have to slap me before I believe I’m awake.”

5. Read other people’s college essays. This tip may be the most important of all. The only way to know what works and what doesn’t work in a college essay is to read essays which work and don’t work. There are a lot of books and websites which offer sample essays. You may also want to read non-college essays as well. For instance, as far as essays go, it is hard to top Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It is powerful and emotional and brilliantly written, but also puts together a very convincing argument in response to a set of questions.


Creativity is not something that can be acquired in five simple tips. Sometimes being creative means breaking all the rules. I will end with my favorite college essay story. A friend of a friend of mine received a college essay prompt which requested simply, Ask yourself a question and answer it.
His essay: “Do you play the tuba? No.”
He was accepted.

What to Look for When Picking a College

There is a lot to think about when looking for the perfect college. This is the place where you will be spending four formative years of your life. Where is it located? How are the academics? Does the school offer much financial aid? How big is it? Are the alumni successful? These are just some of the questions that your college advisor or college guides will prompt you to ask.

However, there are some aspects of college life which you may not think to investigate, but which can greatly affect your experience. Here are just a few of them:

· Professor credentials. I majored in philosophy. When I was looking for schools, I assumed that every philosophy program was the same; Plato is Plato no matter where you study him, right? In fact, most professors have very narrow specialties. It turned out that very few professors at my college studied the people I really wanted to study.

In order to avoid my mistake, find the names of the professors in your desired departments. Look for what is called their curriculum vitae (or CV); this is the list of their major publications and accomplishments. Make sure someone there is interested in the same things you are interested in.

If you do not know what you want to study, make sure the school employs people with a variety of specialties, so you are not forced into a concentration for lack of options.

Even more important than what a professor studies is whether the professor is good at teaching. You won’t learn anything from a brilliant writer who can’t express herself. The website www.ratemyprofessor.com is an excellent resource for learning about a professor’s skills in front of the chalkboard.

· Visiting Speakers. In four years of college, I probably learned as much from visiting lecturers and performers as I did from classes. I heard from poets, reporters, architects, musicians, humanitarians, politicians, and one international chess champion. You can usually find the names of some of next year’s speakers on the school’s website, or the website of a particular department. Looking at last year’s speakers can give you good idea of the caliber and variety of people the school attracts.

In addition, student groups often bring in speakers or performers related to their cause. If you find a student group whose mission intrigues you, do a little research to see whether they have sponsored lectures or performances in the past, and whether they are planning to do so in the future.

· Student Government. Student groups are another indispensible part of the college experience. I was a member of a performance poetry group, and some of my most fulfilling and educational moments in college took place in the service of that group. We were fortunate in that the school’s Student Union was supportive and helpful. Without the help of student government, student groups get very little done.

If you have any interest in creating or participating in a student group, check the website of your student government. How much money does it have set aside for student groups? What kind of paperwork do you have to fill out? What kinds of activities do they usually fund, and what do they usually not fund? Learning about your student government can also tell you something about the social atmosphere on campus.

· Food. There are more important things in college than food. At the same time, how you eat greatly affects how you feel and how you learn. How many places are there to eat on campus, and how diverse are their options? How close are they to the dorms? Are they open late? Are they healthy? How much do they cost? What are the off-campus dining options?

Some college manuals grade a campus’s food. Remember, variety is more important than quality (although ideally you want both). I don’t care how much you like pizza, you will get tired of it if you eat nothing else for four years.

· Major Conflicts. College students and authority figures don’t always mix. There is bound to be some sort of conflict between the students and the administration, or the college and the surrounding city. If you google your college and the word “news,” what stories come up? What were the headlines of the last few student newspapers? If you plan on joining a fraternity, how do the fraternities relate to the school’s administration? What degree of racial, religious, and socio-economic understanding is there? At some schools everybody gets along, but at some schools they do not. It is worthwhile to know which kind of environment you are entering.

· Ask around. Every school has its own quirks. You will learn more about a school by asking current students than you will from the internet. While you are talking to a current student, ask them what questions they wish they had asked before they entered school. Even if their school doesn’t interest you, they may have some insight into college in general which you won’t hear anywhere else.

--Eric Rosenbaum

SAT/ACT Instructor

Email - solutions@victorysteponline.com

The importance of College!

As young children never wanting to let go of our parents’ fingers, we all dreamed big. Our parents’ love and encouragement made us believe that we could be the President. The Movie Star. The richest person on earth. As we grow older, these dreams are often shattered by the reality of probability and the awareness of opportunities. No matter what our future goals, we are told one thing. “You must go to college to be successful”.

This seems like the most difficult statement to understand as we are comfortable teenagers protected by the doors of our homes and the walls of the familiar high schools. Why do I have to leave? Why do I have to start over? Going to school with the same friends for years, and having parents or guardians to guide us seems like too good of a deal to leave behind. We all think that we have excellent maturity and can handle anything that life throws our way. However, it is sometimes important to wonder, have we really experienced everything that life has to offer?

That’s where college comes in and offers us something vitally important-experience. Experience makes us wiser. Experience makes us stronger, and more willing to persevere. Taking the sometimes impossibly difficult classes, meeting people from all over the world, and travelling to the most remote places, each day of the 4 years of college brings something new, something we have never experienced before. The long exam week, the diverse student body, the community activities done through various clubs, team work established between peers, knowledge gained through experiments, relationships and networks created - all of this and more changes us into strong, skilled citizens. We are then truly equipped to handle all of the world’s problems.

President Obama attended Occidental College, got his BA from Columbia University, and studied Law at Harvard. Julia Roberts attended Georgia State University. Finally, Bill Gates attended Harvard. Suddenly, the dreams of being the future president, a movie start, and the richest man in the world don’t seem so impossible. While it is true that we grow the most in the first few months after we are born, college is the time for one to grow the most as a person. Without this growth, the remote dreams of our childhoods seem to remain distant.

As high school seniors it is difficult to understand why we must work so hard to get into a college of our dreams. The grades aren’t enough to get us in. We must have extracurricular activities, do well on the SATs or the ACTs, fill out numerous applications, etc. However, the simple word ‘college’ does not justify the prestigious and significant portion of our lives that the word brings with it. College is important. College is crucial. Why? Well, there is no better way to seek an answer to that question than to live through it.

Teacher Recommendations for College Applications!

“Can I have your recommendation for my college application?” Okay, it may not be THE question, but it is a pretty important one in regards to college and the long process of applying to a college. While some state universities do not require them, many private and prestigious state universities require prospective students to obtain 2-3 letters of recommendation adults they have known inside or outside the classroom for some time.

Most students find this to be a slight problem. Math teacher? I always sit in the back. Gym teacher? Doesn’t know I exist. Counselor? Has 100 other students to deal with. In order to avoid this common, but unfortunate dilemma it is important to start early and to start strong. This isn’t an advise to start a friendship with all 7 or 8 teachers. This is to say that it is important to get to know one or two teachers and assure that those teachers do the same thing in return. While the recommendations do not have to be from an academic teacher, most universities ask for at least one academic recommendation. This means that other than the one, the other recommendations can be from youth leaders at church, coaches, art teachers, etc. However, all letters of recommendation should have at least a slight indication towards the perspective student’s academic potential. Hence, the letters that hold the weight are the ones from teachers.

If the student makes the effort to be polite, to spend a little time in the classroom outside of class, and to show diligence while in class, all teachers feel honored to help their students have a better shot of getting into college. While a teacher is unlikely to write a truly bad recommendation, colleges can tell the difference between a generic letter of recommendation and a personal, more detailed letter.

So, how do you get a better letter than John who sits across form you? Or, how do you make sure the letter isn’t the same as Lisa’s (generic)? It’s simple, really.

• Do not ask a teacher that barely knows you. Generic, generic, generic.
• Plan ahead. Give the teacher at least a month’s notice before he or she has to submit the letter. The less time, the more cranky the teacher will be while writing it.
• Do not ask when the teacher is busy, or distracted. Take the time to go in outside of class and ask politely. The teacher is doing you a favor, don’t act like you’re doing him or her a favor.
• Sometimes, it is helpful to provide the teacher with a brief resume. Other times, teachers have forms already made that ask you to list talents, important moments, etc. in order to help them write the letter.
• Provide envelopes and stamps. If he or she is doing this much to help you pursue your education, they should not have to buy stamps for you too.
• Follow up. After about a week’s time, politely remind the teacher about the due date. After the work is done, write thank-you notes to all teachers who you asked to write a letter.