The Common Application: What Should I Write About?

Good news, college applicants. The subject is secondary.

Your application essay is a story about you. It’s not about poor orphans in Ecuador or your Great Aunt Lucy or the time you ran for student government. It’s about how that person or experience affected you. Are you different now? Did you learn something meaningful about yourself? read more

What Do Admissions Officers Want to Read?

Today’s post on the New York Time’s blog, The Choice, emphasizes the same points we make when we talk to students and parents about what makes a strong application essay. Our advice – based on conversations with admissions officers all over the country – never varies: read more

Too Much Help: A Message to Parents

A friend recently asked me, “Isn’t there a fine line between editing your kid’s essay and writing it for her?” She wanted to know why it matters if she helps outline her daughter’s application essay if she thinks that might give her daughter an edge. read more

Win a Free Senior Portrait: Enter Wow Raffle This Week

Want to win a free senior portrait sitting with a professional photographer? Come to one of Wow’s parent/student info sessions this week (West Bloomfield High School at 7 p.m. on Tuesday; Huntington Woods Library at 7 p.m. on Wednesday), and you will be entered in a raffle to win a portrait sitting valued at $125 with Ally Cohen, founder (and chief shutterbug) of Frameable Faces at the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield. read more

A Toast To Our Students!

Congrats to Wow’s inaugural college essay writing class of 2009/10. Many of our students already have been accepted for early admissions to their top choice schools; others have been accepted into honors programs; and a few have landed substantial merit scholarship dollars. read more