Whether you’re writing a personal statement for graduate school, perfecting your resume, or preparing for a tough interview, you’ll have to ask yourself tough questions. The degree to which you can find your best answers hinges on your psychoemotional access. Pardon us while we step into the therapist’s chair. Ahem. What are the factors that block access?

Self-doubt. Fear (of judgment). Obsession with engineering “best results” (What does my listener want to hear?) Shame (this is what I really want, but it will sound ridiculous). Comparison (my colleagues/peers would never say something like this). Under-processing (you’ e never allowed yourself to ever consider what you really want).

So, how do we overcome these obstacles? Every day we work with applicants who – despite considerable career and academic success – still struggle with asking themselves tough questions. The easiest solution is the most difficult one: staring the fear, self-doubt and obsession with results in the face. Quickly, nonjudgmentally, and liberally presenting your most honest, bold answers and sanitizing them later.

This is where we come in. Our process hinges on helping clients simply present their truth without fear of judgment or prematurely critical evaluation. Yes we are tough critics, but the best criticism comes later. We want to criticize your honest thinking to help get you where you want to go.

However, if you’re not able to answer the difficult questions, or you don’t have the desire to do so – why start the application process in the first place? In working with us, some of our clients have realized they’d like to apply to a different type of program, or even delay the process of applying altogether. And that’s great, because this process is not about us!

Ultimately, applying is not about short-term achievement; it is about moving forward. At IvyEyes, this is what we aspire to help each client to do.

To your progress,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

At the risk of revealing our trade secrets, if we had to pick the piece of writing advice we most commonly find ourselves giving, it is this: Be more specific.

Imagine you are on an admissions committee and you are reading the first line of your 54^th essay of the day.  Read the two options below and think about which one would leave a more lasting impression:

Option 1: The sun was shining.

Option 2: The golden afternoon light reflected off the polished white squares of my grandmother’s immaculate linoleum floor.

The first option says one thing and one thing only, and it has been said a hundred thousand times before in exactly this way. The second option conveys a similar image, but includes much more information—the setting, the time of day, your grandmother’s proclivity towards cleanliness. This specificity results in much more vivid, unique, and memorable imagery, and these are all qualities you are shooting for in an admissions essay.

Specificity is even more important when you are writing about your qualifications and accomplishments.

Option 1: I am hardworking and creative.

Option 2: In my role as student docent in the art museum, I developed a system to track the most popular artworks and created a tour that targeted those pieces.

Option 1 asks the reader to believe a generic, unproven statement. Option 2 offers the reader a memorable example of creativity and diligence. Remember that everyone applying will be making similar claims about their positive qualities—when is the last time someone wrote an admissions essay about how lazy and unhelpful they are? Your task is to leave the reader with vivid, specific examples of you at your best, not generic statements that could easily apply to 80% of the applicants. Be specific. Then be even more specific.

It can be hard to generate specificity in the admissions essay format—after all, the path to college, graduate, or professional school is somewhat standardized and it can seem impossible to make that path seem fresh or unique. If you are having trouble, pick an important moment in your life and then describe the scene in its every detail—the sounds, the smells, the quality of the light, the people who were there (or not), the sensation in your body as you lived through that moment. Tell the full story of that moment and the events that led up to it, and why this moment holds so much meaning for you. The stories of your most important moments say more about you than you would probably dare to say directly, and you may be able to use this story as a framework for your essay.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

The New York Times has really struck a nerve this time (see article here). Nominalizations. But you’re so smart and such a capable writer, whatever could be wrong with your elegant prose? Take this soporific sentence for example:

“The proliferation of nominalizations in a discursiveformation may be an indication of a tendency toward pomposity and abstraction.”

As the article so eloquently points out, these so-called “zombie nouns” cannibalize active verbs. More critically, they erode at your connection with your reader and the clarity of your story. In admissions writing, this type of language – so very common in academic circles it might as well be a class at Yale or Harvard (it’s every class) – erodes at the connection between you and the person deciding whether you’ll be admitted to college or graduate school.

We know you’re smart. But regardless of the intellectual impenetrability of your subject matter, consider whether you truly need nominalizations to clearly, effectively communicate your ideas. Think Hemingway and Twain. There’s nothing wrong with abstraction, but the most memorable, articulate admissions writing is elegant and precise.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com