516: Inside the Application (Part 2): Developing the Personal Statement, Supplemental Essays, and College List with Cassidy, HS Senior
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Release Date: 09/03/2024
620: Navigating Student Health in College: A Doctor’s Guide to Sleep, Stress, and Student Life
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
The transition from high school to college is something that thousands of students struggle with each year, and it’s not something people really talk about. There’s a lot of pressure for students to “have it together” in some broad sense. That's why today I'm excited to talk to Dr. Jill Grimes, Dr. Jill Grimes, author of The ULTIMATE College Student Health Handbook: Your Guide for Everything from Hangovers to Homesickness, for a frank conversation about things that are often stigmatized. Content warning: We get into some pretty serious topics such as mental health, drinking, and...
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619: Inside the Personal Statement Process (Part 3): How Reflection Leads to Insight with Alisha, HS Senior
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Hey friends, and welcome back to the College Essay Guy podcast. Today’s episode is the third and final episode in our series called Inside the Personal Statement Process. If you’re just tuning in, this series takes you behind the scenes as I work one-on-one with Alisha, a current high school senior applying for the Fall 2026 term. Find Part 1 and Part 2 . This episode was recorded just a few days before Alisha submitted her early applications. The focus of this episode is on one of the most challenging—and perhaps, the least discussed—aspect of writing the personal...
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618: Inside the Personal Statement Process (Part 2): Discovering Values Through Revision with Alisha, HS Senior
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Hey friends, and welcome back to the College Essay Guy podcast. Today’s episode is part two of our series called Inside the Personal Statement Process. If you’re just tuning in, this series takes you behind the scenes as I work one-on-one with Alisha, a current high school senior applying for the Fall 2026 term. In the first episode, we got to know Alisha through her brainstorming and outline. In this episode, we pick up right where we left off — Alisha’s second draft. We get into: How did the new outline work for Alisha? How to approach trimming—not just words,...
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617: Inside the Personal Statement Process (Part 1): The Sand Essay with Alisha, HS Senior
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
In our new series, Inside the Personal Statement Process, we’re taking you behind the scenes with Alisha, a current high school senior working through applications right now. If you've ever wondered what it's like working with Ethan in a session, this is the podcast for you! You might remember a similar series where we got to see her whole application process. Rather than focus on the whole application, I wanted to just dive specifically into working with Alisha through the personal statement process. In Part 1, Alisha and I get into: How did Alisha approach brainstorming and...
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616: Authoring Your Life: Why the Personal Statement Is About (Much) More Than Getting into College
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
In today’s episode, I’m joined by my long-time colleague, and our Chief People Officer here at CEG, Sandy Longworth. Sandy has worked as a therapist, a researcher, college counselor — among other things — and has spent years studying the role that narrative storytelling plays in how teens develop their identities. Important note: While Sandy trained as a therapist, and we do talk a lot about therapy in our conversation, I want to make clear that I do not hold that college counseling and essay coaching — or what we do at College Essay Guy — to be therapy. It isn’t....
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615: Rethinking “Best” Colleges: Tools, Tips, and Mindset Shifts for a Better College List with Jay McCann and Dr. Steven Antonoff, Co-Authors of The College Finder
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Hi friends, and welcome back to the podcast. In today’s episode, I’m joined by two special guests: Dr. Steven Antonoff and Jay McCann, co-authors of the newly updated 5th edition of The College Finder: Your comprehensive guide to finding colleges that fit YOUR unique path. In this conversation, we dig into some of the biggest questions students and families face in the college search today, including: What—if anything—are rankings good for in 2025? Beyond starting salaries, which outcome metrics actually indicate value? What’s a responsible way for students to use AI in the search...
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614: 13 Mistakes High School Students Make When Creating Their College List
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Welcome back to the podcast. It’s September, which means many students are building the list of colleges they’re applying to. Today I’m joined by New York Times Bestselling Author, Harlan Cohen, who walks us through his 13 most common mistakes students make when they’re creating their college list. We cover, among other things: The importance of shifting from what “they” want… to what you want The problem with rankings The importance of doing “future math” Why treating college as a one-year experiment can lower the stakes And more Harlan Cohen is the...
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613: Inside the Application (Part 6): Making the Decision with Cassidy, Class of 2025
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Hi friends, and welcome back to the podcast. This one’s going to be short—and honestly, it’s an episode I didn’t think I was going to record. Why? Well, if you’ve been following along with Cassidy’s journey over the past year, you know we’ve covered a lot: from brainstorming her personal statement, to revising her supplements, to weighing her college acceptances. And when we wrapped Part 5, I figured we could leave it there. I thought it might be enough to know she had some great options. Silly me. You wrote in. You wanted to know: Where did she end up? So here we are: the final...
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612: Admission Nutrients (Part 6 of 6: Intellectual Curiosity): Important Ingredients for a Well-Balanced College Admission Process—And Life with Hillary Dickman
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Welcome back to the podcast! This is our sixth and final chapter of our series on admission nutrients — qualities that can make for a healthier, more meaningful college admission process… and life. In case you missed it, we started with , with Raissa Diamante (Director of admission from Harvey-Mudd College), then I sat down with Deanna Dixon, (Dean of Admission at Smith College) to talk about , then Tom met with Dysean Alexander (Assistant Director for West Coast Admission at Lafayette College) to talk about and Nathan Faust (Loyola Marymount University) to talk about . Today we...
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611: Admission Nutrients (Part 5 of 6: Service to Others / Community Impact): Important Ingredients for a Well-Balanced College Admission Process—And Life with Nathan Faust
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
In Episode 5 of our series on Admission Nutrients, Tom Campbell is joined by Nathan Faust, Admission Counselor at Loyola Marymount University, to talk about Service to Others / Community Impact. In their conversation, they get into: Why service to others and community impact is a valuable nutrient to fold into your high school experience—and life Tips on communicating your service and community-impact initiatives to admissions officers Examples of how this nutrient may overlap with the others Advice for counselors on how to explain the value of this nutrient to students and families...
info_outlineToday’s episode is part two of our series, Inside the Application. Ethan is joined by Cassidy, a current high school senior who is working on her college applications for the Fall 2025 term. Ethan and Cassidy will be walking step-by-step through the college application process as it unfolds this school year. In episode 2, they get into:
- How is Cassidy’s personal statement coming along?
- What does Cassidy want colleges to know about her?
- How is Cassidy approaching her supplemental essays?
- What is Cassidy looking for in a college and how did she develop her list?
- And more
Stay tuned for future episodes where Ethan and Cassidy continue the conversation! This series is a bit different in that, normally, we share episodes-in-a-series consecutively. For these, we’re releasing them pretty much as we record them, so you’ll notice them interspersed among other topics we’ll be covering. We’ll continue to check in with Cassidy to see how things are going, and you’ll find out how it turned out a few months from now.
Cassidy is a current high school student going through the college application process. She lives in the Bay Area, loves ballet, knows a lot about Biology, and identifies as a “yapper”—more on that in our conversation.
We hope you enjoy!
Play-by-play
- 1:36 - What has Cassidy been working on since last episode?
- 3:28 - Cassidy reads draft two of her personal statement
- 7:51 - Cassidy shares her thoughts on her draft
- 9:18 - Ethan gives feedback and shares suggestions for the next draft
- 12:57 - Ethan reviews Cassidy’s "Everything I Want Colleges to Know About Me" list
- 21:38 - Ethan reviews Cassidy’s CommonApp Activities List and Additional Info sections
- 26:09 - What is Cassidy looking for in a college and how did she develop her list?
- 25:00 - Ethan reads the supplemental prompts from Cassidy’s college list tracker
- 35:56 - What is a “super topic" and how might it help Cassidy?
- 50:50 - What is the Roles and Identities exercise?
- 58:55 - What are Cassidy’s next steps in her drafting process?
Resources
- Part 1 of this series, Inside the Application
- Cassidy’s brainstorming and second draft
- The "Everything I Want Colleges to Know About Me" List: A Brainstorm Exercise
- 8 First Choices: An Expert's Strategies for Getting into College by Joyce Slayton Mitchell
- How to Combine Your College Essay Prompts (To Save 20+ Writing Hours)
- College Essay Guy’s Personal Statement Resources
- Learn How to Write Great Supplemental College Essays
- College Essay Guy’s College Application Hub
- College Essay Guy’s Roles and Identities Exercise
- Funko Pops