College Admission Essays and Personal Statements Books

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Welcome to the College Admissions Essays college selection and admission advice book review site brought to you in association with Amazon.com. The following books have been selected based on our personal judgments. We hope you will find these useful.

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As we state on our plagiarism page, we most strongly object to using others' essays. We also believe that examining others' essays is usually counterproductive, particularly when no objective critique is given to accompany the essay. There are many factors admissions committees examine and the "successful" essay you read in a published book may not work for you for any number of reasons. As a result, we recommend books on admission essays that give advice on how to write essays and include no more than a few sample application essays.

How to Write a Winning College Application Essay (4th Edition)

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We are particularly fond of this book because it unequivocally states that writing winning essays is not easy. By the author's estimates it should take at least 20 hours to write the essay. We applaud his candor and we certainly advise you to beware of anyone selling a "quick fix" solution for your essays. The book contains 26 different aspects of the essay writing process which are explained in adequate detail. There are also chapters that cover the SAT II writing test and scholarship essays.

On Writing the College Application Essay

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This is a relatively short 138 page book that is easily read. It harps on two basic points: know your audience and present yourself as a truly unique applicant. Adept humor is used to illustrate these two points. A couple sample essays are also presented in this book. Perhaps most importantly, the samples given illustrate first, second and final round drafts of the essays.

The Admissions Essay

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Although two-thirds of this book is dedicated to sample essays, the first third of the book contains very good advice for getting organized. We also enjoyed the second chapter's comments about what the admissions committees want. Warning: Not all of the sample essays contain commentary.

50 Successful Harvard Application Essays

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We have included this book in our review because we realize many of you are going to buy a book of successful application essays regardless of what we say. With that disclaimer made, this is the best book from this genre. Beware though that the book's author, the Harvard Crimson, is the school newspaper as opposed to the admissions committee!