Noah earned a full ride and two partial scholarships to study robotics and engineering.
Summary
Problem: The college admissions essay stood in Noah’s way. He was a STEM-focused student, whose math skills heavily overshadowed his writing skills. Noah had dreams to study robotics and engineering in college, but he had to earn admissions into his target and reach universities first. He and his mother both knew intelligence wasn’t enough for admissions to certain universities.
Solution: In our boot camp and subsequent essay revisions, we talked through his weaknesses – grammar, word and cliché usage, honing a message, and writing a narrative structure – and how to fix them. We broke down how to answer the prompt using his message and three specialized college admissions essay writing breakdowns.
Results: Noah earned a full scholarship to the university he attends now. He also earned partial scholarships from two other great schools. He’s on the engineering team at his current school, learning how to make bionic parts for amputees.
Lessons Learned: Our boot camps help smart students hone their skills for the college application process. Intelligence isn’t enough. The key is to teach strategies that maximize chances for success.
The Full Story
In September 2016, Melanie sought Transizion to help her son Noah with college admissions essay writing. Noah was a smart kid with a heavy STEM focus; he took math and science AP classes and loved talking about building robots. There was one problem:
Noah rarely practiced writing, if at all. He had no idea how to write a succinct college admissions essay with a strong message. His mind was all over the place as a result of his wide-ranging interests in tech.
Melanie enrolled Noah in our boot camp with high hopes. We had to help translate Noah’s passion and intelligence into self-exposition for a college application essay.
During the boot camp, we learned about Noah’s ambitions and interests. He wanted to build bionic parts for amputees who had served our country overseas and children in poor countries who lost their limbs at work. Noah believed that technology could solve everything – disease, war, hunger, and poverty – we just had to put the right people and ideas in place.
We used our special brainstorming exercises to figure out the driving forces behind Noah’s love for technology. Through a spirited discussion, we learned that Noah strongly believed in an equal playing field for people who have been through significant trauma. Noah wanted to be a tech leader who could help those with limited access and resources. He knows he was born into a great situation – his mother was involved in his day-to-day life, his father was a caring man with a good job, and he lived in a beautiful neighborhood.
Noah felt almost guilty for his circumstances.
Instead of using guilt as the emotional catalyst behind his essay, we strategized and talked through what the essay structure would look like. Noah began to realize that he wasn’t feeling only guilty, but, also, appreciative for his life.
Appreciation and gratitude. These would be the emotional drivers for his essay. He appreciated his upbringing and wanted to use his gratitude as a motive for bringing his tech to the world.
Once we talked through structure and answering essay prompts, we checked a few of Noah’s preliminary essays and advised for sentence structure and grammar. Once it was time to write his actual Common App essay, he already knew which prompt he wanted to answer, which story to tell, what value to talk about, how to explain it, and how to write with skill and precision.
The boot camp served as a valuable college application writing warm-up for Noah. He needed to learn more about writing, weaving a narrative, and himself before he could write a properly developed essay. After learning these skills in Transizion’s boot camp, writing the actual essay became easy.
Today, Noah attends school on the West Coast, after receiving a full scholarship at one of the country’s finest universities.
He plans on double majoring in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Noah says he still uses many of the strategies he learned in the college admissions essay writing boot camp, and now teaches them to his friends, too.
Best of luck, Noah! Thank you for your passion!
