Summer is upon us, and many rising seniors—if they haven’t already—are turning their attention to college applications. Among the most important components they will be tackling is the Common Application “Personal Essay”, often simply called “the college essay.” For almost all students, this will be the most important essay colleges read, and for some, it may even be the only one they read.
But there’s just one problem: almost every student writes the wrong type of essay.
In this episode, we break down why the title “Personal Essay” is itself misleading and fails to tap into what many top colleges seek: students not merely with personality but those with a purpose.
Students who show promise as future scholars and leaders capable of impacting their college—and ultimately, the world—in some singular, hyper-specific way.
Merging both the “personal” and “intellectual” qualities colleges seek, we discuss how students should go about tackling this essay, illustrate with examples, and argue that the much more strategic, proactive approach we introduce must be adopted across all application components.
Finally, for students earlier in the college process, we motivate the importance of building the kinds of candidacies—and reference experiences—from which stand-out essays will ultimately be formed and without which many essays will fall short regardless of how well they are crafted.
“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Web: greatmindsadvising.com
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
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College admissions has never been more competitive: high GPAs, strong test scores, and a well-rounded resume—once sufficient for an acceptance—are now common features of most applications to highly selective colleges.

In this episode, we reveal what top colleges nowadays seek: students with compelling admissions stories centered around a focused academic passion, or “hook.” Using the process we’ve employed with our own students to help them gain admission to top colleges, we break down how students need to go about identifying their own unique narrative, how to build and continually re-shape it over time, and how their approach should differ depending on how close—or far away—they are from actually applying to colleges.

“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Web: greatmindsadvising.com
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising
TikTok: @greatmindsadvising
YouTube: @GreatMindsAdvising

When many parents applied to college around three decades ago, college lists and outcomes assumed a fairly predictable, linear order. You had your “safeties,” schools to which you were almost certain to be admitted, your “targets,” schools to which you could reasonably expect to be admitted, and “reaches,” schools to which you would most likely not be admitted.

Nowadays, however, college outcomes seem less predictable than ever, with students often being rejected or waitlisted even at schools that might be classified as “safeties” and “targets.”

What exactly is going on? In this episode, we distill the variation in outcomes to different application components and requirements at various colleges, the decision plans under which a student applies at each college, and other factors such as “yielding” (whereby a college pre-emptively rejects an overqualified student viewed as unlikely to enroll).

While many may claim that admissions is a random process, we instead take the perspective that there are systematic differences between applications that students can control and other differences of which they can at least be aware so as to optimize the precision—and reduce the variability—of their outcomes.

“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Web: greatmindsadvising.com
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising
TikTok: @greatmindsadvising
YouTube: @GreatMindsAdvising