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
Release Date: 10/14/2025
705: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Storytelling (Ep 5: The Stains on My Baseball Pants) with Kaila Barber
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Show Notes: Hi, friends, and welcome back to our series, On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling. In this series, we take a close look at personal essays written by real students, talking about why we love them, what makes them work, and how they came to be. In this episode, we break down an essay on… wait for it… baseball. Wait, what? But Ethan, I thought writing about a common topic was a fast track to blending in. And yes—in many cases, it can be. But this essay offers a great example of how a familiar topic can become something more layered, specific, and...
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704: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 4: Tiny Windows into My Being) with Ali McKeon
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Hi, friends, and welcome back to our series, “On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling.” In this series, we take a close look at personal essays written by real students, talking about why we love them, what makes them work, and how they came to be. In this episode, we explore an essence objects essay, which is to say an essay that was written about objects in the author's room, each one of which reveals a different aspect of their life. I'm joined by Ali McKeon, an essay coach and program advisor here at College Essay Guy. Ali worked with the student who wrote this...
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703: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 3: The Pilgrim and The CEO) with Jane Longley
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Welcome back to the College Essay Guy podcast and our series On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling. I’m one of your cohosts, Tom Campbell, former Pomona and Holy Cross admissions officer, turned essay coach and college counselor. In this series, we look at real personal statements from real students: what choices were made, what was revised, and why it works. For this episode, we sit down with Jane Longley, one of our amazing essay coaches here at CEG, to unpack an essay that one of her student wrote titled “The Pilgrim and The CEO.” It tells the story of two...
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702: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 2: Much Ado About Nothing) with Dr. Greg Ungar
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Welcome back to our series, “On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling.” In this series, we take a close look at personal essays written by real students, talking about why we love them, what makes them work, and how they came to be. On Becoming speaks not just to the craft of writing, but to what I believe the personal statement is at its best: a record of becoming, the often messy, hopefully meaningful process of finding yourself… through the process of storytelling. In this episode, we slow things down and focus on a single essay, which the author calls “Much Ado About...
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701: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 1: My Desk & Magic) with Amanda McRaven
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Welcome to a brand new series here on the podcast I’m calling “On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling.” In this series, we’ll dig deep into college essays from past students, talking about why we love them and how they came to be. For me, this title “On Becoming” speaks not just to the craft of writing (how a story came to be), but to what I believe the personal statement is at its best: a record of becoming… the beautiful, sometimes messy process of witnessing someone learn to better understand themselves, articulate their values, and claim their voice in...
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623: Standing Out in STEM: Practical Advice for Future Scientists, Engineers and Techies
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Welcome back to the College Essay Guy Podcast. Today’s episode is hosted by Tom Campbell, Community Manager & Senior Essay Specialist at College Essay Guy and a former admission officer at Pomona College and Holy Cross. We’ve polled the thousands of students who participate in our live webinars and courses and ask what they’re favorite subject is, and consistently, STEM reigns supreme. By a lot. In this episode, Tom sits down with Jay Zhang, college counselor at College Essay Guy, to dig into the biggest questions students and families have about preparing for and applying to STEM...
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622: Inside the Personal Statement Process (Part 4): Supplemental Essay Deep Dive 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 a behind-the-scenes look at Alisha’s supplemental essays. If you’ve been following our Inside the Personal Statement Process series, this episode zooms out a bit—you’ll hear us work live through several of her supplements and talk through how to bring clarity, intention, and personality into each one. In this session, Alisha and I explore: What makes a great “list” response for Columbia—and how to avoid filler How to refine a topic that feels “too common” into something that might stand out...
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621: Financial Aid Tips for International Students (and Their Counselors)—2025 Edition
The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
Welcome back to the College Essay Guy Podcast. This is a very special session with a dear friend of mine and an honored guest in my world, Joan Liu. Joan is the founder of Second Chance, an organization that helps high achieving students from around the world secure full scholarships to universities after their original offers fall through. This conversation is adapted from a live webinar that we hosted where Joan shares some of the most practical, candid advice I've heard for international students who are looking for full financial aid and for the counselors who support them. In our...
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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...
info_outlineIn 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 last season with Cassidy, 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 outlining for her personal statement?
- What brainstorming activities helped Alisha to pick her topic?
- Reading through Alisha’s first draft of her personal statement
- Creating a reverse outline of Alisha’s first draft to set her up for writing the second draft
- And more!
Alisha is a current high school senior going through the application process who loves science, movies, and discovering new places. When she’s not studying the brain, she’s mentoring younger students through her program Running Start or planning her next adventure.
We hope you enjoy our session!
Play-by-Play:
- 1:40 – Getting to know Alisha through her brainstorming materials
- 2:12 – Values
- 3:10 – “I love, I know” exercise
- 5:32 – Superpowers
- 6:32 – Career interests
- 12:00 – “Roles and Identities” exercise
- 15:09 – “Essence Objects” exercise
- 17:37 – Alisha discusses her personal statement topic
- 19:00 – Alisha walks through her essay outline and examples
- 31:55 – Alisha reads the first draft of her personal statement
- 35:45 – Alisha shares her thoughts on her draft
- 38:50 – Ethan gives feedback
- 46:00 – Ethan walks through the process of creating a “reverse outline” for draft two
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