Jill Shulman's 'College Essay Confidence' - What Every College-Bound Student Needs!

In College Essay Confidence: Conquer Blocks, Free Your Voice, and Write a Knockout Application Essay, author and founder of In Other Words, a college essay coaching service, Jill Shulman delivers a clear and informative guide that helps students navigate the college admissions writing process with confidence using their own unique voice. Filled with focused writing practices, pep talks, brain booster tips, and essays from real college applicants, her book helps ease the stress of what can feel like an incredibly daunting task to many. Additionally, the framework she provides in her book can also be applied to other forms of writing, including personal essays, memoirs, and other reflective writing. As for the topics students choose to write about, she noted, “…I try to help them shrink down a topic because every topic has been written about, but no topic has been written about by you, so if you can shrink down the topic to something so specific that no one else in the universe could possibly write about it. Even if you’re writing an event and someone else was there, they would have a different point of view on it…”

Something that Shulman noticed when working with students is that they tend to be the most resistant when beginning their first draft or making revisions once they had started. She reflected that while some students loved their first draft and resisted making any changes, others felt frustrated with their initial draft and wanted to give up entirely. “So this black-and-white thinking – getting them to let go of that and give their essay a chance and ‘let’s go through it and save that first draft. You can always go back to it, you know? It’s not lost forever… let’s play around with it…'” And for those who feel overwhelmed or defeated by the process, she offers some encouraging words of wisdom, “Trying is the victory, so let’s try. Trying is the most amazing, bravest thing you can do, so let’s go for it!”