Enter grades and activities into tracker; complete brag sheets on Naviance; set up school tours and interviews.

Emma and I just had our first meeting. I was surprised to find that she is quite behind. She has not taken the SAT yet, is scheduled to do so in August, and has neither secured her recommenders nor completed the brag sheets on Naviance. We started by going through her tracker docs and populating them with activities and awards. She is to go in and enter her grades and anything else she can think of. She had also not done anything toward demonstrated interest, so I told her to use Naviance to contact schools and request information. She should also use social media to track all colleges she is interested in going to. She also should set up tours and interviews where possible. We are going to meet again next week and try to get her caught up. First task is to complete these brag sheets. I am going to follow up with the parents to uncover other awards or activities that Emma could not immediately recall.

Expand brag sheet answers with detailed, thoughtful responses; review available Common App essays.

Emma and I worked on her college list, both adding and subtracting colleges. We also populated some dates and details and will continue to do so throughout the next few weeks now that the information has come back from the Common Application. Not all essays are available yet, but some are in so we will be discussing those over the weeks to come. We then went into her essays document and worked on her brag sheets. Emma needs to do much more work on these brag sheets to get them done and off of our to-do list. As I described to her, these need much more than perfunctory random answers. They need detailed, well-thought-out responses so the teachers and counselor know that she has taken the assignment seriously and so that we can expect the same from them.

Complete teacher brag sheet answers; fill out academics and test trackers on Google doc.

We are still working on brag sheets for Emma's teachers since only a small amount of cursory work was done since our last meeting. We are now pretty close to finishing her counselor recommendation and Emma will spend time answering questions in a similar fashion for her teachers. We also discussed activities for the Common Application and which ones we will use and in what order. I hope that we are able to begin work on her essays in August. As for college admission programs, I have penciled in REA at Harvard which precludes utilizing any other EA option, given her college choices. The next deadline after 11/1 for Harvard is 12/1 for USC School of Cinematic Arts. All others fall in January.

Complete all three recommender brag sheets; add newly identified research activities to the tracker.

Emma says she has been very busy and so she did not have much of a chance to do any work. We have to get her three recommender brag sheets done. Today, we set up her Common Application account, discussed the personal narrative, adjusted her college list, and spoke quite a bit about activities. We did find two additional hidden activities that she did not consider previously related to individual research she has done. She says she would be open to doing research this year as well. I think we should find an opportunity for her to do some research related to film and Native-American studies.

Confirm all recommenders; complete brag sheets; send first drafts of all five Harvard essays.

What I have learned is that Emma definitely needs strong supervision in order to get things done in a timely manner. She had done very little work on her brag sheet prior to our meeting. They are still not done, although we did discuss them along with her Harvard essays during our meeting today. She has three assignments for next week. She must get all of her recommenders on board, she must work on all the brag sheets in order to get them pretty close to completion, and she has to give me drafts of the five Harvard essays. We are meeting again on Wednesday, so she has five days to get this done. We did come up with some really good ideas for the Harvard essays so I feel very confident that those will be quite strong.

Submit brag sheets to teachers; confirm recommenders in Common App; send UC essay drafts.

Emma had done a pretty good job working on her teacher brag sheets and Harvard essays which were her assignments for today. I expressed to her that she has to have the brag sheets completed and submitted to her teachers so that they can write their recommendations. We also have to resolve her other recommendations and make sure they are entered into the Common Application. Together, we did some work to advance the five Harvard essays. I will provide edited versions in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, Emma will be getting me drafts of her UC essays. We also talked a bit about her college list. We eliminated University of North Carolina. When I suggested MIT and CMU as additional reaches, she just laughed at me.

Send first draft of third brag sheet; write Common App essay draft; approve Harvard essays.

Unfortunately, Emma has still not completed her brag sheets. I worked on them after the session and now I feel good about two of the three. Emma needs to get me a first draft of the third one and then I will edit it and get it back to her quickly. Once we do these things, the brag sheets part of our work together will be done. Then, Emma needs to write a first draft of the Common App essay related to her interest in Native American studies. I have asked Emma to approve the five Harvard essays so that we can check that off our list. Next up is University of California which I will be looking over on Emma's behalf over the next few days.

Submit brag sheet immediately; complete UC application sections.

Emma discussed with me the possibility of getting out of AP Lit and going to AP Lang because she does not particularly like the teacher nor feel she will get a good grade. She is trying to do so without showing a W on her transcript. If she is unsuccessful, we will have to explain it on the Common App essay related to additional information. Also, she told me she is not going to retake or submit the SAT. She has a 710/720. This is a little bit of a blow to her application but hopefully we can overcome it. Today, we worked on University of California. We also worked on her brag sheet which has to be submitted immediately.

Finalize Harvard and UNC essays; send remaining UC essay drafts and first Common App essay draft.

Emma had gotten some help rewriting the Harvard essays. I did not press her too hard on this, but it was clearly done professionally. Actually, it was quite beautiful. I just want to be careful that it does not get flagged. So, we did some work toning it down. We discussed several of the colleges on her list including some of the supplemental essays for USC. Her assignment is to finalize the Harvard essays, the UNC essays, and get me drafts for the remaining University of California essays. I also asked her for a first draft of the Common Application essay. We have all the notes in the document. We also reviewed her activities entered into the Common App. They were pretty good; we just changed a few things here and there.

Approve or edit final Harvard essay; send partial Common App essay draft.

Today, I did some work on Emma's final Harvard essay which she now has to approve or edit. At that point, Harvard will be done. We spent most of the time today working on the activities list for the Common App. We have got everything done in terms of categories so that it will be relatively easy to get everything into the Common Application. Finally, we discussed the Common App essay which we need to get done in the next week or so. We discussed a basic structure and Emma said she would get me a draft before next week even if it is just part of the essay. I showed her a few examples of students' essays that were highly successful, so she understood the nature of the essay, specifically that it is a highly personal essay that demonstrates certain characteristics such as resilience, grit, determination, the ability to rise above adversity, and likability.

Continue Common App essay draft; finalize Harvard essays; set up CalArts account.

I spent a few hours working on Emma's Common App essay prior to our meeting. She had been stuck previously and I wanted to see if I could move her along. We discussed it during our session and she generally liked the direction, and she will take the next stab at continuing it and send me a new version in the next couple of days. We also synced up her Common App college list with her tracker college list. We added Wesleyan to the list. We discussed her activities once again and I will put them into the Common Application. We also got her honors and awards added. Harvard is due in less than three weeks, so we have to make sure that one is done. She also has to set up an account for CalArts and complete her application for University of California.

Continue Common App essay in the shared document; confirm Naviance teacher recommendations.

Emma and I had a wide-ranging discussion that started with the Common App essay. I have provided her with edited versions of the first two paragraphs, and she informed me that she had been working on it as well off the document. I asked her to put everything into the document from now on so I know what she is doing and so we do not operate on cross or parallel paths. She had a good idea which is to write about how film can be used to connect people. This could flow very naturally from the first two paragraphs in which she became disillusioned and disconnected as a result of an injury that effectively ended her athletic dream. We also discussed the fact that her five Harvard essays are highly polished. I recommended that she leave them the way they are. She will get a personal reference from Professor Demetri, who is world famous in the world of international affairs and history. We did lots of entry into the Common Application, including her first four activities and tweaked her academic honors section. It is my goal to have the Common Application and Harvard supplement done by next week, giving us a one-week cushion.

Complete revisions on remaining two UC essays; begin Columbia application.

Emma and I primarily worked on her University of California application essays. Two of the four are pretty well completed whereas the other two still needed new revisions. Prior to this meeting, Emma had already submitted her Harvard application REA. Decisions come out in mid-December. We also briefly discussed her Columbia application which is the next one up on our list. Emma and I had a rather contentious but cordial meeting to discuss various versions of her Common Application essay and Harvard supplements as well as to discuss wording of her activities section. I do have to say that Emma was rather feisty today. As is the case with some students, when the pressure of getting final versions completed truly hits them, they become a bit possessive with regard to their essays. The best that I can hope to do is to provide them with my honest opinion based on my experiences. I try to get across that my only objective is to help them, and that all my opinions are honest and unbiased and designed to be helpful, not critical. Above all, essays should make candidates likable, admirable, and authentic.

Review and approve revised activity descriptions in UC application.

Emma and I worked on her University of California application. I felt that many of her activities should be re-organized and I did some work for her after the session was over. I would still like to go in and re-word some of her other activities. I do not feel that the current descriptions do them justice.

Decide on USC and NYU applications; add photography activity description to UC application.

Unfortunately, Emma is now questioning whether or not she wants to apply to USC and NYU, both of which have spectacular film programs. Each of them has a very extensive application process, but the first one due is USC so Emma really has to make up her mind quickly so that we can get everything done on time. Today, we worked primarily on her University of California application and got that ready to go. She just needs to add a description for the photography activity. I hope she decides to apply to both of the schools, because they are widely considered to be among the best programs in the country.

Finalize Stanford answers; complete UC San Diego supplement.

Emma and I worked on her UCLA supplements and also discussed her UC San Diego supplement. Next, we discussed some answers for Stanford due on December 5. Particularly for Stanford, I think we came up with some really interesting topics, including the great Boston molasses flood as an event in history she would like to witness. I cannot imagine that anyone else has ever given that example, which is a good thing!

Write a draft of the Stanford roommate essay; insert recommenders and résumé/portfolio into UCLA supplement.

Emma and I had a heavy-duty brainstorming session today in advance of her submission of her University of California application — specifically related to the UCLA supplemental application on Accept'd which has some challenging aspects to it. We left it that I would look at what Emma has already provided for her personal statement and do some heavy editing. We also discussed the kinds of awards and activities that should go to the UCLA supplement and determined that it should just be a copy of the information that was in the larger UC application. Emma also has to insert her two recommenders whom we determined would be her supervisor at Broad Institute and her APUSH teacher. She must also include her résumé and portfolio. We also brainstormed her Stanford roommate essay and came up with what I feel is an excellent idea. Emma will write a draft which I will then review.

Enter grades and activities into tracker; complete brag sheets on Naviance; set up school tours and interviews.

Emma and I just had our first meeting. I was surprised to find that she is quite behind. She has not taken the SAT yet, is scheduled to do so in August, and has neither secured her recommenders nor completed the brag sheets on Naviance. We started by going through her tracker docs and populating them with activities and awards. She is to go in and enter her grades and anything else she can think of. She had also not done anything toward demonstrated interest, so I told her to use Naviance to contact schools and request information. She should also use social media to track all colleges she is interested in going to. She also should set up tours and interviews where possible. We are going to meet again next week and try to get her caught up. First task is to complete these brag sheets. I am going to follow up with the parents to uncover other awards or activities that Emma could not immediately recall.

Expand brag sheet answers with detailed, thoughtful responses; review available Common App essays.

Emma and I worked on her college list, both adding and subtracting colleges. We also populated some dates and details and will continue to do so throughout the next few weeks now that the information has come back from the Common Application. Not all essays are available yet, but some are in so we will be discussing those over the weeks to come. We then went into her essays document and worked on her brag sheets. Emma needs to do much more work on these brag sheets to get them done and off of our to-do list. As I described to her, these need much more than perfunctory random answers. They need detailed, well-thought-out responses so the teachers and counselor know that she has taken the assignment seriously and so that we can expect the same from them.

Complete teacher brag sheet answers; fill out academics and test trackers on Google doc.

We are still working on brag sheets for Emma's teachers since only a small amount of cursory work was done since our last meeting. We are now pretty close to finishing her counselor recommendation and Emma will spend time answering questions in a similar fashion for her teachers. We also discussed activities for the Common Application and which ones we will use and in what order. I hope that we are able to begin work on her essays in August. As for college admission programs, I have penciled in REA at Harvard which precludes utilizing any other EA option, given her college choices. The next deadline after 11/1 for Harvard is 12/1 for USC School of Cinematic Arts. All others fall in January.

Complete all three recommender brag sheets; add newly identified research activities to the tracker.

Emma says she has been very busy and so she did not have much of a chance to do any work. We have to get her three recommender brag sheets done. Today, we set up her Common Application account, discussed the personal narrative, adjusted her college list, and spoke quite a bit about activities. We did find two additional hidden activities that she did not consider previously related to individual research she has done. She says she would be open to doing research this year as well. I think we should find an opportunity for her to do some research related to film and Native-American studies.

Confirm all recommenders; complete brag sheets; send first drafts of all five Harvard essays.

What I have learned is that Emma definitely needs strong supervision in order to get things done in a timely manner. She had done very little work on her brag sheet prior to our meeting. They are still not done, although we did discuss them along with her Harvard essays during our meeting today. She has three assignments for next week. She must get all of her recommenders on board, she must work on all the brag sheets in order to get them pretty close to completion, and she has to give me drafts of the five Harvard essays. We are meeting again on Wednesday, so she has five days to get this done. We did come up with some really good ideas for the Harvard essays so I feel very confident that those will be quite strong.

Submit brag sheets to teachers; confirm recommenders in Common App; send UC essay drafts.

Emma had done a pretty good job working on her teacher brag sheets and Harvard essays which were her assignments for today. I expressed to her that she has to have the brag sheets completed and submitted to her teachers so that they can write their recommendations. We also have to resolve her other recommendations and make sure they are entered into the Common Application. Together, we did some work to advance the five Harvard essays. I will provide edited versions in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, Emma will be getting me drafts of her UC essays. We also talked a bit about her college list. We eliminated University of North Carolina. When I suggested MIT and CMU as additional reaches, she just laughed at me.

Send first draft of third brag sheet; write Common App essay draft; approve Harvard essays.

Unfortunately, Emma has still not completed her brag sheets. I worked on them after the session and now I feel good about two of the three. Emma needs to get me a first draft of the third one and then I will edit it and get it back to her quickly. Once we do these things, the brag sheets part of our work together will be done. Then, Emma needs to write a first draft of the Common App essay related to her interest in Native American studies. I have asked Emma to approve the five Harvard essays so that we can check that off our list. Next up is University of California which I will be looking over on Emma's behalf over the next few days.

Submit brag sheet immediately; complete UC application sections.

Emma discussed with me the possibility of getting out of AP Lit and going to AP Lang because she does not particularly like the teacher nor feel she will get a good grade. She is trying to do so without showing a W on her transcript. If she is unsuccessful, we will have to explain it on the Common App essay related to additional information. Also, she told me she is not going to retake or submit the SAT. She has a 710/720. This is a little bit of a blow to her application but hopefully we can overcome it. Today, we worked on University of California. We also worked on her brag sheet which has to be submitted immediately.

Finalize Harvard and UNC essays; send remaining UC essay drafts and first Common App essay draft.

Emma had gotten some help rewriting the Harvard essays. I did not press her too hard on this, but it was clearly done professionally. Actually, it was quite beautiful. I just want to be careful that it does not get flagged. So, we did some work toning it down. We discussed several of the colleges on her list including some of the supplemental essays for USC. Her assignment is to finalize the Harvard essays, the UNC essays, and get me drafts for the remaining University of California essays. I also asked her for a first draft of the Common Application essay. We have all the notes in the document. We also reviewed her activities entered into the Common App. They were pretty good; we just changed a few things here and there.

Approve or edit final Harvard essay; send partial Common App essay draft.

Today, I did some work on Emma's final Harvard essay which she now has to approve or edit. At that point, Harvard will be done. We spent most of the time today working on the activities list for the Common App. We have got everything done in terms of categories so that it will be relatively easy to get everything into the Common Application. Finally, we discussed the Common App essay which we need to get done in the next week or so. We discussed a basic structure and Emma said she would get me a draft before next week even if it is just part of the essay. I showed her a few examples of students' essays that were highly successful, so she understood the nature of the essay, specifically that it is a highly personal essay that demonstrates certain characteristics such as resilience, grit, determination, the ability to rise above adversity, and likability.

Continue Common App essay draft; finalize Harvard essays; set up CalArts account.

I spent a few hours working on Emma's Common App essay prior to our meeting. She had been stuck previously and I wanted to see if I could move her along. We discussed it during our session and she generally liked the direction, and she will take the next stab at continuing it and send me a new version in the next couple of days. We also synced up her Common App college list with her tracker college list. We added Wesleyan to the list. We discussed her activities once again and I will put them into the Common Application. We also got her honors and awards added. Harvard is due in less than three weeks, so we have to make sure that one is done. She also has to set up an account for CalArts and complete her application for University of California.

Continue Common App essay in the shared document; confirm Naviance teacher recommendations.

Emma and I had a wide-ranging discussion that started with the Common App essay. I have provided her with edited versions of the first two paragraphs, and she informed me that she had been working on it as well off the document. I asked her to put everything into the document from now on so I know what she is doing and so we do not operate on cross or parallel paths. She had a good idea which is to write about how film can be used to connect people. This could flow very naturally from the first two paragraphs in which she became disillusioned and disconnected as a result of an injury that effectively ended her athletic dream. We also discussed the fact that her five Harvard essays are highly polished. I recommended that she leave them the way they are. She will get a personal reference from Professor Demetri, who is world famous in the world of international affairs and history. We did lots of entry into the Common Application, including her first four activities and tweaked her academic honors section. It is my goal to have the Common Application and Harvard supplement done by next week, giving us a one-week cushion.

Complete revisions on remaining two UC essays; begin Columbia application.

Emma and I primarily worked on her University of California application essays. Two of the four are pretty well completed whereas the other two still needed new revisions. Prior to this meeting, Emma had already submitted her Harvard application REA. Decisions come out in mid-December. We also briefly discussed her Columbia application which is the next one up on our list. Emma and I had a rather contentious but cordial meeting to discuss various versions of her Common Application essay and Harvard supplements as well as to discuss wording of her activities section. I do have to say that Emma was rather feisty today. As is the case with some students, when the pressure of getting final versions completed truly hits them, they become a bit possessive with regard to their essays. The best that I can hope to do is to provide them with my honest opinion based on my experiences. I try to get across that my only objective is to help them, and that all my opinions are honest and unbiased and designed to be helpful, not critical. Above all, essays should make candidates likable, admirable, and authentic.

Review and approve revised activity descriptions in UC application.

Emma and I worked on her University of California application. I felt that many of her activities should be re-organized and I did some work for her after the session was over. I would still like to go in and re-word some of her other activities. I do not feel that the current descriptions do them justice.

Decide on USC and NYU applications; add photography activity description to UC application.

Unfortunately, Emma is now questioning whether or not she wants to apply to USC and NYU, both of which have spectacular film programs. Each of them has a very extensive application process, but the first one due is USC so Emma really has to make up her mind quickly so that we can get everything done on time. Today, we worked primarily on her University of California application and got that ready to go. She just needs to add a description for the photography activity. I hope she decides to apply to both of the schools, because they are widely considered to be among the best programs in the country.

Finalize Stanford answers; complete UC San Diego supplement.

Emma and I worked on her UCLA supplements and also discussed her UC San Diego supplement. Next, we discussed some answers for Stanford due on December 5. Particularly for Stanford, I think we came up with some really interesting topics, including the great Boston molasses flood as an event in history she would like to witness. I cannot imagine that anyone else has ever given that example, which is a good thing!

Write a draft of the Stanford roommate essay; insert recommenders and résumé/portfolio into UCLA supplement.

Emma and I had a heavy-duty brainstorming session today in advance of her submission of her University of California application — specifically related to the UCLA supplemental application on Accept'd which has some challenging aspects to it. We left it that I would look at what Emma has already provided for her personal statement and do some heavy editing. We also discussed the kinds of awards and activities that should go to the UCLA supplement and determined that it should just be a copy of the information that was in the larger UC application. Emma also has to insert her two recommenders whom we determined would be her supervisor at Broad Institute and her APUSH teacher. She must also include her résumé and portfolio. We also brainstormed her Stanford roommate essay and came up with what I feel is an excellent idea. Emma will write a draft which I will then review.

Enter grades and activities into tracker; complete brag sheets on Naviance; set up school tours and interviews.

Emma and I just had our first meeting. I was surprised to find that she is quite behind. She has not taken the SAT yet, is scheduled to do so in August, and has neither secured her recommenders nor completed the brag sheets on Naviance. We started by going through her tracker docs and populating them with activities and awards. She is to go in and enter her grades and anything else she can think of. She had also not done anything toward demonstrated interest, so I told her to use Naviance to contact schools and request information. She should also use social media to track all colleges she is interested in going to. She also should set up tours and interviews where possible. We are going to meet again next week and try to get her caught up. First task is to complete these brag sheets. I am going to follow up with the parents to uncover other awards or activities that Emma could not immediately recall.

Expand brag sheet answers with detailed, thoughtful responses; review available Common App essays.

Emma and I worked on her college list, both adding and subtracting colleges. We also populated some dates and details and will continue to do so throughout the next few weeks now that the information has come back from the Common Application. Not all essays are available yet, but some are in so we will be discussing those over the weeks to come. We then went into her essays document and worked on her brag sheets. Emma needs to do much more work on these brag sheets to get them done and off of our to-do list. As I described to her, these need much more than perfunctory random answers. They need detailed, well-thought-out responses so the teachers and counselor know that she has taken the assignment seriously and so that we can expect the same from them.

Complete teacher brag sheet answers; fill out academics and test trackers on Google doc.

We are still working on brag sheets for Emma's teachers since only a small amount of cursory work was done since our last meeting. We are now pretty close to finishing her counselor recommendation and Emma will spend time answering questions in a similar fashion for her teachers. We also discussed activities for the Common Application and which ones we will use and in what order. I hope that we are able to begin work on her essays in August. As for college admission programs, I have penciled in REA at Harvard which precludes utilizing any other EA option, given her college choices. The next deadline after 11/1 for Harvard is 12/1 for USC School of Cinematic Arts. All others fall in January.

Complete all three recommender brag sheets; add newly identified research activities to the tracker.

Emma says she has been very busy and so she did not have much of a chance to do any work. We have to get her three recommender brag sheets done. Today, we set up her Common Application account, discussed the personal narrative, adjusted her college list, and spoke quite a bit about activities. We did find two additional hidden activities that she did not consider previously related to individual research she has done. She says she would be open to doing research this year as well. I think we should find an opportunity for her to do some research related to film and Native-American studies.

Confirm all recommenders; complete brag sheets; send first drafts of all five Harvard essays.

What I have learned is that Emma definitely needs strong supervision in order to get things done in a timely manner. She had done very little work on her brag sheet prior to our meeting. They are still not done, although we did discuss them along with her Harvard essays during our meeting today. She has three assignments for next week. She must get all of her recommenders on board, she must work on all the brag sheets in order to get them pretty close to completion, and she has to give me drafts of the five Harvard essays. We are meeting again on Wednesday, so she has five days to get this done. We did come up with some really good ideas for the Harvard essays so I feel very confident that those will be quite strong.

Submit brag sheets to teachers; confirm recommenders in Common App; send UC essay drafts.

Emma had done a pretty good job working on her teacher brag sheets and Harvard essays which were her assignments for today. I expressed to her that she has to have the brag sheets completed and submitted to her teachers so that they can write their recommendations. We also have to resolve her other recommendations and make sure they are entered into the Common Application. Together, we did some work to advance the five Harvard essays. I will provide edited versions in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, Emma will be getting me drafts of her UC essays. We also talked a bit about her college list. We eliminated University of North Carolina. When I suggested MIT and CMU as additional reaches, she just laughed at me.

Send first draft of third brag sheet; write Common App essay draft; approve Harvard essays.

Unfortunately, Emma has still not completed her brag sheets. I worked on them after the session and now I feel good about two of the three. Emma needs to get me a first draft of the third one and then I will edit it and get it back to her quickly. Once we do these things, the brag sheets part of our work together will be done. Then, Emma needs to write a first draft of the Common App essay related to her interest in Native American studies. I have asked Emma to approve the five Harvard essays so that we can check that off our list. Next up is University of California which I will be looking over on Emma's behalf over the next few days.

Submit brag sheet immediately; complete UC application sections.

Emma discussed with me the possibility of getting out of AP Lit and going to AP Lang because she does not particularly like the teacher nor feel she will get a good grade. She is trying to do so without showing a W on her transcript. If she is unsuccessful, we will have to explain it on the Common App essay related to additional information. Also, she told me she is not going to retake or submit the SAT. She has a 710/720. This is a little bit of a blow to her application but hopefully we can overcome it. Today, we worked on University of California. We also worked on her brag sheet which has to be submitted immediately.

Finalize Harvard and UNC essays; send remaining UC essay drafts and first Common App essay draft.

Emma had gotten some help rewriting the Harvard essays. I did not press her too hard on this, but it was clearly done professionally. Actually, it was quite beautiful. I just want to be careful that it does not get flagged. So, we did some work toning it down. We discussed several of the colleges on her list including some of the supplemental essays for USC. Her assignment is to finalize the Harvard essays, the UNC essays, and get me drafts for the remaining University of California essays. I also asked her for a first draft of the Common Application essay. We have all the notes in the document. We also reviewed her activities entered into the Common App. They were pretty good; we just changed a few things here and there.

Approve or edit final Harvard essay; send partial Common App essay draft.

Today, I did some work on Emma's final Harvard essay which she now has to approve or edit. At that point, Harvard will be done. We spent most of the time today working on the activities list for the Common App. We have got everything done in terms of categories so that it will be relatively easy to get everything into the Common Application. Finally, we discussed the Common App essay which we need to get done in the next week or so. We discussed a basic structure and Emma said she would get me a draft before next week even if it is just part of the essay. I showed her a few examples of students' essays that were highly successful, so she understood the nature of the essay, specifically that it is a highly personal essay that demonstrates certain characteristics such as resilience, grit, determination, the ability to rise above adversity, and likability.

Continue Common App essay draft; finalize Harvard essays; set up CalArts account.

I spent a few hours working on Emma's Common App essay prior to our meeting. She had been stuck previously and I wanted to see if I could move her along. We discussed it during our session and she generally liked the direction, and she will take the next stab at continuing it and send me a new version in the next couple of days. We also synced up her Common App college list with her tracker college list. We added Wesleyan to the list. We discussed her activities once again and I will put them into the Common Application. We also got her honors and awards added. Harvard is due in less than three weeks, so we have to make sure that one is done. She also has to set up an account for CalArts and complete her application for University of California.

Continue Common App essay in the shared document; confirm Naviance teacher recommendations.

Emma and I had a wide-ranging discussion that started with the Common App essay. I have provided her with edited versions of the first two paragraphs, and she informed me that she had been working on it as well off the document. I asked her to put everything into the document from now on so I know what she is doing and so we do not operate on cross or parallel paths. She had a good idea which is to write about how film can be used to connect people. This could flow very naturally from the first two paragraphs in which she became disillusioned and disconnected as a result of an injury that effectively ended her athletic dream. We also discussed the fact that her five Harvard essays are highly polished. I recommended that she leave them the way they are. She will get a personal reference from Professor Demetri, who is world famous in the world of international affairs and history. We did lots of entry into the Common Application, including her first four activities and tweaked her academic honors section. It is my goal to have the Common Application and Harvard supplement done by next week, giving us a one-week cushion.

Complete revisions on remaining two UC essays; begin Columbia application.

Emma and I primarily worked on her University of California application essays. Two of the four are pretty well completed whereas the other two still needed new revisions. Prior to this meeting, Emma had already submitted her Harvard application REA. Decisions come out in mid-December. We also briefly discussed her Columbia application which is the next one up on our list. Emma and I had a rather contentious but cordial meeting to discuss various versions of her Common Application essay and Harvard supplements as well as to discuss wording of her activities section. I do have to say that Emma was rather feisty today. As is the case with some students, when the pressure of getting final versions completed truly hits them, they become a bit possessive with regard to their essays. The best that I can hope to do is to provide them with my honest opinion based on my experiences. I try to get across that my only objective is to help them, and that all my opinions are honest and unbiased and designed to be helpful, not critical. Above all, essays should make candidates likable, admirable, and authentic.

Review and approve revised activity descriptions in UC application.

Emma and I worked on her University of California application. I felt that many of her activities should be re-organized and I did some work for her after the session was over. I would still like to go in and re-word some of her other activities. I do not feel that the current descriptions do them justice.

Decide on USC and NYU applications; add photography activity description to UC application.

Unfortunately, Emma is now questioning whether or not she wants to apply to USC and NYU, both of which have spectacular film programs. Each of them has a very extensive application process, but the first one due is USC so Emma really has to make up her mind quickly so that we can get everything done on time. Today, we worked primarily on her University of California application and got that ready to go. She just needs to add a description for the photography activity. I hope she decides to apply to both of the schools, because they are widely considered to be among the best programs in the country.

Finalize Stanford answers; complete UC San Diego supplement.

Emma and I worked on her UCLA supplements and also discussed her UC San Diego supplement. Next, we discussed some answers for Stanford due on December 5. Particularly for Stanford, I think we came up with some really interesting topics, including the great Boston molasses flood as an event in history she would like to witness. I cannot imagine that anyone else has ever given that example, which is a good thing!

Write a draft of the Stanford roommate essay; insert recommenders and résumé/portfolio into UCLA supplement.

Emma and I had a heavy-duty brainstorming session today in advance of her submission of her University of California application — specifically related to the UCLA supplemental application on Accept'd which has some challenging aspects to it. We left it that I would look at what Emma has already provided for her personal statement and do some heavy editing. We also discussed the kinds of awards and activities that should go to the UCLA supplement and determined that it should just be a copy of the information that was in the larger UC application. Emma also has to insert her two recommenders whom we determined would be her supervisor at Broad Institute and her APUSH teacher. She must also include her résumé and portfolio. We also brainstormed her Stanford roommate essay and came up with what I feel is an excellent idea. Emma will write a draft which I will then review.

Enter grades and activities into tracker; complete brag sheets on Naviance; set up school tours and interviews.

Emma and I just had our first meeting. I was surprised to find that she is quite behind. She has not taken the SAT yet, is scheduled to do so in August, and has neither secured her recommenders nor completed the brag sheets on Naviance. We started by going through her tracker docs and populating them with activities and awards. She is to go in and enter her grades and anything else she can think of. She had also not done anything toward demonstrated interest, so I told her to use Naviance to contact schools and request information. She should also use social media to track all colleges she is interested in going to. She also should set up tours and interviews where possible. We are going to meet again next week and try to get her caught up. First task is to complete these brag sheets. I am going to follow up with the parents to uncover other awards or activities that Emma could not immediately recall.

Expand brag sheet answers with detailed, thoughtful responses; review available Common App essays.

Emma and I worked on her college list, both adding and subtracting colleges. We also populated some dates and details and will continue to do so throughout the next few weeks now that the information has come back from the Common Application. Not all essays are available yet, but some are in so we will be discussing those over the weeks to come. We then went into her essays document and worked on her brag sheets. Emma needs to do much more work on these brag sheets to get them done and off of our to-do list. As I described to her, these need much more than perfunctory random answers. They need detailed, well-thought-out responses so the teachers and counselor know that she has taken the assignment seriously and so that we can expect the same from them.

Complete teacher brag sheet answers; fill out academics and test trackers on Google doc.

We are still working on brag sheets for Emma's teachers since only a small amount of cursory work was done since our last meeting. We are now pretty close to finishing her counselor recommendation and Emma will spend time answering questions in a similar fashion for her teachers. We also discussed activities for the Common Application and which ones we will use and in what order. I hope that we are able to begin work on her essays in August. As for college admission programs, I have penciled in REA at Harvard which precludes utilizing any other EA option, given her college choices. The next deadline after 11/1 for Harvard is 12/1 for USC School of Cinematic Arts. All others fall in January.

Complete all three recommender brag sheets; add newly identified research activities to the tracker.

Emma says she has been very busy and so she did not have much of a chance to do any work. We have to get her three recommender brag sheets done. Today, we set up her Common Application account, discussed the personal narrative, adjusted her college list, and spoke quite a bit about activities. We did find two additional hidden activities that she did not consider previously related to individual research she has done. She says she would be open to doing research this year as well. I think we should find an opportunity for her to do some research related to film and Native-American studies.

Confirm all recommenders; complete brag sheets; send first drafts of all five Harvard essays.

What I have learned is that Emma definitely needs strong supervision in order to get things done in a timely manner. She had done very little work on her brag sheet prior to our meeting. They are still not done, although we did discuss them along with her Harvard essays during our meeting today. She has three assignments for next week. She must get all of her recommenders on board, she must work on all the brag sheets in order to get them pretty close to completion, and she has to give me drafts of the five Harvard essays. We are meeting again on Wednesday, so she has five days to get this done. We did come up with some really good ideas for the Harvard essays so I feel very confident that those will be quite strong.

Submit brag sheets to teachers; confirm recommenders in Common App; send UC essay drafts.

Emma had done a pretty good job working on her teacher brag sheets and Harvard essays which were her assignments for today. I expressed to her that she has to have the brag sheets completed and submitted to her teachers so that they can write their recommendations. We also have to resolve her other recommendations and make sure they are entered into the Common Application. Together, we did some work to advance the five Harvard essays. I will provide edited versions in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, Emma will be getting me drafts of her UC essays. We also talked a bit about her college list. We eliminated University of North Carolina. When I suggested MIT and CMU as additional reaches, she just laughed at me.

Send first draft of third brag sheet; write Common App essay draft; approve Harvard essays.

Unfortunately, Emma has still not completed her brag sheets. I worked on them after the session and now I feel good about two of the three. Emma needs to get me a first draft of the third one and then I will edit it and get it back to her quickly. Once we do these things, the brag sheets part of our work together will be done. Then, Emma needs to write a first draft of the Common App essay related to her interest in Native American studies. I have asked Emma to approve the five Harvard essays so that we can check that off our list. Next up is University of California which I will be looking over on Emma's behalf over the next few days.

Submit brag sheet immediately; complete UC application sections.

Emma discussed with me the possibility of getting out of AP Lit and going to AP Lang because she does not particularly like the teacher nor feel she will get a good grade. She is trying to do so without showing a W on her transcript. If she is unsuccessful, we will have to explain it on the Common App essay related to additional information. Also, she told me she is not going to retake or submit the SAT. She has a 710/720. This is a little bit of a blow to her application but hopefully we can overcome it. Today, we worked on University of California. We also worked on her brag sheet which has to be submitted immediately.

Finalize Harvard and UNC essays; send remaining UC essay drafts and first Common App essay draft.

Emma had gotten some help rewriting the Harvard essays. I did not press her too hard on this, but it was clearly done professionally. Actually, it was quite beautiful. I just want to be careful that it does not get flagged. So, we did some work toning it down. We discussed several of the colleges on her list including some of the supplemental essays for USC. Her assignment is to finalize the Harvard essays, the UNC essays, and get me drafts for the remaining University of California essays. I also asked her for a first draft of the Common Application essay. We have all the notes in the document. We also reviewed her activities entered into the Common App. They were pretty good; we just changed a few things here and there.

Approve or edit final Harvard essay; send partial Common App essay draft.

Today, I did some work on Emma's final Harvard essay which she now has to approve or edit. At that point, Harvard will be done. We spent most of the time today working on the activities list for the Common App. We have got everything done in terms of categories so that it will be relatively easy to get everything into the Common Application. Finally, we discussed the Common App essay which we need to get done in the next week or so. We discussed a basic structure and Emma said she would get me a draft before next week even if it is just part of the essay. I showed her a few examples of students' essays that were highly successful, so she understood the nature of the essay, specifically that it is a highly personal essay that demonstrates certain characteristics such as resilience, grit, determination, the ability to rise above adversity, and likability.

Continue Common App essay draft; finalize Harvard essays; set up CalArts account.

I spent a few hours working on Emma's Common App essay prior to our meeting. She had been stuck previously and I wanted to see if I could move her along. We discussed it during our session and she generally liked the direction, and she will take the next stab at continuing it and send me a new version in the next couple of days. We also synced up her Common App college list with her tracker college list. We added Wesleyan to the list. We discussed her activities once again and I will put them into the Common Application. We also got her honors and awards added. Harvard is due in less than three weeks, so we have to make sure that one is done. She also has to set up an account for CalArts and complete her application for University of California.

Continue Common App essay in the shared document; confirm Naviance teacher recommendations.

Emma and I had a wide-ranging discussion that started with the Common App essay. I have provided her with edited versions of the first two paragraphs, and she informed me that she had been working on it as well off the document. I asked her to put everything into the document from now on so I know what she is doing and so we do not operate on cross or parallel paths. She had a good idea which is to write about how film can be used to connect people. This could flow very naturally from the first two paragraphs in which she became disillusioned and disconnected as a result of an injury that effectively ended her athletic dream. We also discussed the fact that her five Harvard essays are highly polished. I recommended that she leave them the way they are. She will get a personal reference from Professor Demetri, who is world famous in the world of international affairs and history. We did lots of entry into the Common Application, including her first four activities and tweaked her academic honors section. It is my goal to have the Common Application and Harvard supplement done by next week, giving us a one-week cushion.

Complete revisions on remaining two UC essays; begin Columbia application.

Emma and I primarily worked on her University of California application essays. Two of the four are pretty well completed whereas the other two still needed new revisions. Prior to this meeting, Emma had already submitted her Harvard application REA. Decisions come out in mid-December. We also briefly discussed her Columbia application which is the next one up on our list. Emma and I had a rather contentious but cordial meeting to discuss various versions of her Common Application essay and Harvard supplements as well as to discuss wording of her activities section. I do have to say that Emma was rather feisty today. As is the case with some students, when the pressure of getting final versions completed truly hits them, they become a bit possessive with regard to their essays. The best that I can hope to do is to provide them with my honest opinion based on my experiences. I try to get across that my only objective is to help them, and that all my opinions are honest and unbiased and designed to be helpful, not critical. Above all, essays should make candidates likable, admirable, and authentic.

Review and approve revised activity descriptions in UC application.

Emma and I worked on her University of California application. I felt that many of her activities should be re-organized and I did some work for her after the session was over. I would still like to go in and re-word some of her other activities. I do not feel that the current descriptions do them justice.

Decide on USC and NYU applications; add photography activity description to UC application.

Unfortunately, Emma is now questioning whether or not she wants to apply to USC and NYU, both of which have spectacular film programs. Each of them has a very extensive application process, but the first one due is USC so Emma really has to make up her mind quickly so that we can get everything done on time. Today, we worked primarily on her University of California application and got that ready to go. She just needs to add a description for the photography activity. I hope she decides to apply to both of the schools, because they are widely considered to be among the best programs in the country.

Finalize Stanford answers; complete UC San Diego supplement.

Emma and I worked on her UCLA supplements and also discussed her UC San Diego supplement. Next, we discussed some answers for Stanford due on December 5. Particularly for Stanford, I think we came up with some really interesting topics, including the great Boston molasses flood as an event in history she would like to witness. I cannot imagine that anyone else has ever given that example, which is a good thing!

Write a draft of the Stanford roommate essay; insert recommenders and résumé/portfolio into UCLA supplement.

Emma and I had a heavy-duty brainstorming session today in advance of her submission of her University of California application — specifically related to the UCLA supplemental application on Accept'd which has some challenging aspects to it. We left it that I would look at what Emma has already provided for her personal statement and do some heavy editing. We also discussed the kinds of awards and activities that should go to the UCLA supplement and determined that it should just be a copy of the information that was in the larger UC application. Emma also has to insert her two recommenders whom we determined would be her supervisor at Broad Institute and her APUSH teacher. She must also include her résumé and portfolio. We also brainstormed her Stanford roommate essay and came up with what I feel is an excellent idea. Emma will write a draft which I will then review.

Enter grades and activities into tracker; complete brag sheets on Naviance; set up school tours and interviews.

Emma and I just had our first meeting. I was surprised to find that she is quite behind. She has not taken the SAT yet, is scheduled to do so in August, and has neither secured her recommenders nor completed the brag sheets on Naviance. We started by going through her tracker docs and populating them with activities and awards. She is to go in and enter her grades and anything else she can think of. She had also not done anything toward demonstrated interest, so I told her to use Naviance to contact schools and request information. She should also use social media to track all colleges she is interested in going to. She also should set up tours and interviews where possible. We are going to meet again next week and try to get her caught up. First task is to complete these brag sheets. I am going to follow up with the parents to uncover other awards or activities that Emma could not immediately recall.