On Saturday, we consulted with the high school students for the second time. The first time, we were simply brainstorming ideas for each prompt of the essay. Mine chose to write about an experience which made them go outside their comfort zone (Richmond's supplemental essay). When we were first brainstorming, I talked to her about writing this essay, telling her that I wrote about when I went to Australia and New Zealand. She had a similar experience when she went to Barcelona, Spain for the first time, and a story was born.
When we met on Saturday, she already had completed her essay, although it was far too long. Because she had a similar essay for class that did not have a length requirement it was 2 pages longer than it needed to be (Richmond has a two page max for this essay). So I tried to determine what she would be focusing on in the final draft. She told me that she wanted to show how she overcame the language barrier, and then I started to specifically look at the paragraphs that talked about her experience with using Spanish. I noticed that she had some wordy sentences as well as a few very fixable problems with organization. After talking to her about those things, I asked her how she was planning on concluding the essay. Although her conclusion was good for the original assignment, the admissions essay requires you to show how this experience has changed you. I wanted her to give a couple sentences about how she felt after the experience. She told me she felt confident about using her Spanish after going to Spain, and I told her to conclude with something about how she would feel comfortable expanding her mind and being challenged.
No comments:
Post a Comment