The Common Application recently released new questions for the college application essay.

I was especially excited to see that they added a question on failure.

Over the years, I’ve worked with a number of students who’ve had life-changing experiences with failure, but they’ve often felt very nervous about writing about them.

I understand this fear.

Given the highly competitive nature of undergraduate college admissions, it’s natural to feel as though you should showcase your strengths and hide any weaknesses or mistakes.

However, as I’ve explained to many high school students and their parents, colleges are very interested in students who know how to handle failure and who’ve experienced setbacks that have changed the way they think and act.

Now, the Common Application is backing me up!

Here’s one of the new prompts for the college application essay:

“Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure.
How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?”

Learn how you can start writing a powerful essay on failure.

College acceptance emails and letters came out last week, so I’m dedicating today’s post to statistics and congratulations.

Getting into Ivy League institutions was even more challenging this year. As the New York Times reports, seven of these eight schools “have lowered their acceptance rates since last year.”

Cornell, for instance, received “a record-high applicant pool of 40,006,” admitted “6,062 students” and “invit[ed] another 3,142 to join its wait list.” Last year, 6,119 applicants were accepted.

Yale, which “received a record 29,610 applications this year,” lowered its acceptance rate (from 6.81 percent last year to 6.72 this year), accepting 1,991 students and allowing “1,001 students to join its wait list.”

On a brighter note, I’m thrilled to report that students in this year’s Get Yourself Into College program were granted admission to Cornell, Dartmouth, and Yale.

Getting into one of these schools is a great accomplishment, but. . . .

Ivy League colleges are not the only amazing institutions of higher education. Your future is not determined by acceptance to one of these schools.

Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is wrong.

Trust me.

I’m not just saying this is true. I’m going to prove it to you.

Lots of people have been asking me how to get college scholarships, so this week I’m focusing on how to prepare to earn major awards like the AXA Achievement Scholarship.

Start by watching this video, which gives you important details about this $10,000-$25,000 scholarship. Then read this post and take action!

Even if you’re just a freshman or sophomore in high school, you should definitely start exploring some of major scholarship programs like the one offered by AXA.

Why?

You should definitely give yourself plenty of time to relax during the summer, but it’s also important to engage in some fun projects that will give you a competitive edge when it comes to the college preparation and application process.

Look. . . .

We all know that to increase your chances of gaining admission to your dream schools, you need to be at the top of the top of the applicant pool (in terms of your grades, standardized test scores, extracurricular activities, and application package) and then stand out from all the other students in this range.

You’ve heard this all before.

But here’s the big, burning question that often doesn’t get answered. . . .

How can you stand out in this way? What do you really need to do?

This week, I’m providing you with answers to these questions and sharing two excellent, free resources that you’ve got to check out!

Are you overlooking (or just not aware of) how you can go to college for free?

Yes, that’s right. For free.

There are some great opportunities for you to earn merit-based scholarships that cover your full tuition for four years of undergraduate study.

However, in order to set yourself up for success, you need to do some research and plan ahead.

In this week’s vlog, I provide a short overview of the full-tuition scholarships at Tulane University (the Dean’s Honor Scholarship and Paul Tulane Award), so you get a sense of these types of awards. Then, I share 4 strategies that will help you increase your chances of going to college for free.

I love a great adventure–whether it’s an intellectual journey into a new book, an expedition to an unknown city, a spiritual exploration of the higher realms of consciousness, or even a non-linear odyssey on the Internet, where one click can launch me in such a dizzying array of directions that afterwards I can’t even remember how it all started.

Sometimes it’s fun to just let yourself follow link after link as you surf online, but when you’re in the research phase of your college application process, this is not a good strategy.

When exploring college websites, you’re going to come across lots of interesting bits of information. You’ll discover programs, courses, professors, internships, profiles of current students, and much more.

Guess what?

Staying organized while researching colleges is absolutely essential. You’re not going to remember where you found all these details, and you’ll need easy access to them when you participate in alumni interviews, go on campus visits, and answer the “Why us” question, which is often a required part of college-specific supplements to the Common App.

Here’s a great solution, which doesn’t involve old-school file folders. . . .

Last September, I plunged into a two-month research project on an entirely new field of study.

As many of you know, I’m a college English professor.

What you might not know is that I specialize in the relationship between epistemology (the study of the nature of knowledge) and aesthetics (the conditions of “sensuous apprehension”) in early American literature, philosophy, and religion.

I’m especially fascinated with Jonathan Edwards’ conception of the “sense of the heart,” which Perry Miller describes as the “living pulsating state in which a word is vividly, fully identified with its sensation.”

When you experience the “sense of the heart,” you do more than just intellectually understand the truth or excellence of the word you’re reading or the concept you’re studying. You’re filled with a palpable sense of its “beauty, amiableness, or sweetness. . .; so that the heart is sensible of pleasure and delight in [its] presence.”

However, until very recently I had a very rudimentary understanding of the actual anatomy of the heart.

That all changed when our four-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect.

All of a sudden, I was studying the basic structure of the heart, atrial septal defects, and mitral valve clefts; researching the success rates of pediatric cardiac surgeons and hospitals; setting up consultations with surgeons and their teams; visiting the hospitals; and having long late-night conversations with my husband to absorb all the details and make the best possible decision.

We wound up selecting Dr. Emile Bacha (Chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center), and our daughter had her open heart surgery a few weeks ago. Now she’s back to her bubbly, energetic self.

What does any of this have to do with finding your zone for peak academic performance?

Why is it so hard to write your college application essays?

Well, one reason is that your English teachers rarely focus on teaching you the complex process of crafting compelling personal narratives.

They’re too busy teaching you how to write impersonal academic essays.

Don’t get me wrong.

You need to learn how to articulate your ideas about texts and concepts in order to strengthen your analytical and writing abilities so that you can excel in college.

But. . .

Getting into college requires mastering the art of personal essays.

Honestly, personal statements can be much harder to write than regular school essays.

You’ve got to put your own experience into perspective, explain its significance, and find just the right way of structuring your narrative.

That’s not easy, and there’s no simple formula to follow.

So how can you learn to write great essays for your college applications?

Did you know that “the vast majority of teachers report believing that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert,” despite the fact that introverts earn better grades?

Do you really know what makes someone an introvert or extrovert?

Are you curious about how you can tap into the positive qualities of your personality traits and use them to your advantage in the college preparation and application process?

Then, allow me to introduce you to a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School who’s published what’s been described as a “potentially life-altering examination of the human psyche that is sure to benefit to both introverts and extroverts alike.”

So many interviewers kick things off with a question that overwhelms and befuddles even the smartest students.

Are they trying to torture you?

Probably not.

I’ve been on a number of committees that involved conducting interviews, and many of my well-meaning colleagues wanted to start the session by asking this question because they believed it granted the candidate the greatest degree of flexibility and allowed him or her to set the tone of our time together.

Then again, I also have friends who’ve used this question to test, challenge, and weed out certain candidates. If you don’t know how to offer up a coherent response, you’ve blown the first question and turned off the interviewer.

It’s a really simple question. In fact, it’s not even really a question.

So what is it?