CATES Blog

What are some good tips to writing a successful school essay?

If you find yourself struggling with school essay assignments, and everyone does, there are some helpful guidelines you can follow to craft a successful essay. The first essay tip is simply to use all the time you are allotted. Most teachers will give you a few days to a week to work on a paper and you should use all that time. Your teacher is expecting you to.  Even if that means only thinking about the assignment at the beginning, you need to begin the intellectual process of crafting an essay as soon as you are given the assignment.

Make one point in your essay.  Every successful English paper or history paper is centered on a singular thesis. This isn’t to say you can articulate many ideas about a subject along the way, but the focus of your writing must be unitary for your ideas to cohere.  Once you’ve boiled your ideas down to a singular, central thesis, you can begin to plan your essay.

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What is the right time to apply to college?  Are there advantages and disadvantages to different times?

As students end their junior year of high school and begin to look around the corner to their senior year, the topic foremost on their minds tends to be college. Within that, students and parents are undergoing the process of creating and editing a college list. Over the course of college visits, reading brochures, talking to friends, college counselors, and family, students are forming an idea of the kind of school they want to attend. Then comes the decision of applying to college early or not.

There are two kinds of early decision options open to applicants in the college process.  One is early decision, which requires a student to submit his or her application around November 1^st of his or her senior year. The student will then usually be notified by December15th whether the college accepted, rejected or deferred them to regular decision. There are a couple of big advantages to early decision. The first is that the acceptance rate tends to be higher in this round than in the regular decision round.

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What are the particular challenges and opportunities for international students applying to American universities?

Since the United States is home to many of the best colleges and universities in the world, it’s no wonder that so many international students apply to American schools.  The culture of higher education has changed, however, over the past few decades, and even colleges that were once considered easy to get into and now more competitive than ever.  What does this challenging environment mean for international applicants for American colleges?

As mentioned in a previous blog, if you’re an international student, you’ll definitely want to get a jump start on your college applications, since you’re much more likely than an American applicant is to encounter unexpected delays or difficulties along the way.  (Even getting a high school transcript that an American admissions committee can read can potentially be a problem.)  Also, if English isn’t your first language, be sure to give yourself extra time to prepare for the SAT or ACT exam, which will contain English vocabulary designed to challenge even native English speakers.

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How can I keep track of everything I need to do to navigate the college admissions process?

Applying to college is a lot of work.  It can easily seem overwhelming.  To stay on top of it the application process, you’re going to want to make a checklist of everything you have to do, and a calendar of when each thing is going to get done. At CATES we also suggest using spreadsheets as a great tool to organize the college admissions process.

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How should I approach the common application?What are my best options?

Years ago, applying to five or six different schools often meant completing five or six different sets of essays.  In order to make this process more manageable, admissions officers from several different colleges and universities got together and created the common application, a standardized college application that’s now accepted by over four hundred different schools.

So what’s on the common application (or “common app,” as it’s sometimes called)?  You’ll be asked questions about what classes you’ve taken (including AP and honors classes), what jobs you’ve had, and what extracurricular activities you’ve participated in.  You’ll also have to fill out several questions about your family background

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