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## Intro....Why These Two Essays Matter So Much [00:00] What's up everyone? Coach Tony here. In this training, we're going to break down the big supplemental essay, the why question. Actually, two big ones out there. There's the why major and why us prompt. We're going to talk about both of those prompts. So, in case you guys are applying to a school that takes these responses, here's kind of best practices to get make sure you uh do this section really, really well. If it's the very first time meeting, my name is Coach Tony. I've been in college admissions now for the last 16 years, helping our students kind of end up everywhere in the admissions process. Some of our kids end up at state schools. Some of our students end up at private school. Some of our kids even go to the Ivy Leagues and the IV Plus colleges. So, today we're going to kind of showcase what we tell our students to think about when they work on their supplemental questions. Okay, I'm going go ahead and share my screen really quick. And as I'm sharing my going live, you watching this live, you're probably joining me on Zoom or Facebook right now. Go ahead and say hi in the chat and let me know what grade you guys are in. So really quick, drop a nine if you're a ninth grader, 10 if you're a 10th grader, 11, 11th grader, 12, 12th grader if you're 12. I'm not sure why you're here. So too, maybe you're deal transfer process. Maybe that's reason too. But go ahead and let me know in the chat so we can kind of see if I can cater this a little more to you guys as you guys are chatting in the uh putting your putting your uh your comments in the chat really quick. Uh can you guys see my screen? I'm sharing my screen. Make sure I'm running sharing the right screen as well to go ahead and let me do a quick little yes in the chat if I am sharing the right screen. Uh on your end here, let's go ahead and dive in real fast. If you high skip, go ahead and drop your grade in the chat itself. If you have questions, again, if you're here on Zoom, there's a Q&A box. Go ahead and drop your questions there. We'll do a little bit of Q&A at the very end uh here. And uh if you guys are interested in the notes and the replay, it will be available within 48 hours at the time of this recording. Today is April 21st. Oops, April 21st, um 2025 as well. Okay, so few quick announcements before we dive into the training itself. For our juniors, I see a lot of 11th graders. If you have not signed up for our 3-day college app intensive where we help your child start and finish their ## The Difference Between “Why Major” and “Why Us” [02:15] entire essays in 3 days, definitely check it out. collegeappointensive.com for that one. We have a private newsletter that goes live Tuesdays uh in the morning. If you guys haven't joined that as well, too. Check out college admissions.co.com.co. Uh here you want the notes, text our team 949-7750865. If you're new, it's your first call with us. We offer all new families a free 15-minute coaching call with our team. Set you guys where you guys need to be. It's not a sales call. You can't buy anything on this call anyways. Uh we just want to kind point you guys in the right direction. Uh is all. Okay, so that's that's the first piece over here. Um let's go ahead and get started here. Okay, so first off, what is the supplemental essays, right? So keep that in mind when you guys are applying, right? You're applying to colleges in 12th grade, right? Every school you're applying to has an application. Some schools have their own application, right? Some schools have a a application we'll talk today called the common application. It's one application, right? For thousands colleges, right? Thousand schools use this. If you think of the Ivy's, the Ivy's use this. A lot of top state schools use this as well too. A lot of private schools use this. This is the one app you can apply and submit, right? in the one application. It's going to have a few things. It's going to ask you for personal information, right? It's going to ask you for your your your name, your parents information, all that, your school. You're going to ask you for academics, right? What classes did you take? What grades did you do? It's going to ask you for activities, right? What activities did you do? Uh for the common app, there's going to be 10 slots, right? 10 slots here you filled up. If you have more, you can share it in the additional section. And there's going to be a personal statement, right? personal oh personal statement. So this is the big main essay. This one is 650 words that you use. There's seven prompts, right, to pick from. You pick one of the seven to be your prompts that you are working on here. Okay. So that is the common application itself. But right every school you're applying to, these are the common things that they have in common. Right? The all schools are going to get your same personal academics, activities, personal statement. All the schools you're applying to is going to have the same information. What makes it different? Oops. What makes it different? Each college may ask for a a college specific supplement, right? Does the college or each college you apply to, they're going to ask you for additional questions, right? Sometimes I could be uh several more short answers, right? are several more essays uh to answer as well too, right? Essays are prompts. These are the supplementals. These are specific only to that school. No other schools will see it except for like the school. So, let's say you're applying to Harvard. Harvard is going to ask you for a specific Harvard supplement. If you're applying to Stanford, Stanford's going to have a specific they have a lot of questions, right? Uh questions there. So, every school has their own specific questions that you're going to answer that it goes uniquely to their school. So that is the supplement. A lot of different questions that some might ask you about your future. Some might ask ## How to Write About Your Major Without Sounding Boring [05:30] you for your favorite class. The topic we're going to talk about today are two big topics. One one common top one common question a lot of schools will ask you is why major is one of the first ones and number two is why us, right? Why do you want to go to our school here? So let's go ahead and start first with the Y major. As we start here in the chat, if you guys are following along, go ahead and drop your intended major in the chat. If you're a parent, what's your child's intended major? If you're the student, what's your intended major? Just so we can have some like live examples to play with is also let me know what major you guys are thinking about doing. And as you guys are are are writing in the chat, give you some some some information as well too, right? Little little f some FYI things, right? FYI how most colleges right colleges typically colleges are typically four years long right four years long here you don't take major classes start year three typically right so you don't take your first two years what happened your first two years right first two years is going to be your general education courses and your preerequisite classes as well too so I see here some of us are are uh public policy physics engineering bio The first two years you got to be doing general ed for anything and the pre-erequisite classes. Classes, think of us, think of them as pre-major, right? Pre- major classes, right? Classes you do to declare that you're that major as well, too. That's kind of what these are because realistically, right, those you guys who are joining me today, I see a lot of ninth, 10th, 11th graders here today joining this call. you guys have absolutely no clue what you want to do because you haven't done a college I think major is a college concept not a high school concept you usually uh uh we'll switch majors so like we have how many people are here with us right now we have over 121 people here live this the fun stat is 80% of students will switch majors at least one time so for everyone who who responded we had like I think 30 30 comments here right majority of you 24 of you or more are gonna switch majors at least one time. So, what you wrote might actually not be the one that you guys are thinking about doing. Okay. So, that being said, going back, we have lots of amazing majors. Some of them, by the way, are not major. We have few people who wrote premed. PMED is not a major. Premed is an emphasis. Same thing with pre-law. Some of you guys wrote pre-law. Pre-law is not a major. That's an emphasis. Preclasses are basically a set of classes that you do to the to pursue a further education right that's not a major in itself is all right so but majors like classes that you take from a specific school public policy is a major even engineering some schools have like specific majors engineering might be a college right so it might be specific as well too so something to look into as you guys are applying yeah keep in mind majors a set of classes that you guys take is all here okay so big question now is Why major? So, some of you guys, I'm going to list some of you majors. Some of you guys wrote public policy. Some of you wrote history, engineering, physics, biology, uh, neuroscience, right? Animation, right? Very cool. So, what out of all these, the big question is why, right? ## The “Classes + Activities + Twist” Framework [09:00] Oops. They're going to ask you why do you want to study this major? And most people have an okay answer. It's probably not the best reason uh because again I was like oh yeah but why and that's the big one and I see a few people here who wrote BSMD especially the BSMD people this is a bigger question for you because you are literally have to explain why you want to do BSMD and your reason usually cannot be I want to be a doctor faster because that's pretty much what the BSMD is because everyone wants to do that right so what's so special about you what's your why behind doing all this so here's a framework I'm g teach you guys a framework to to answer this question so far, right? The best way to answer a Y major question is you want to answer here's the classes I've taken, classes I've taken, here's the activities I've done, right? Here's the unique twist about your college that I that like fits with me. That's the best framework I've seen uh that our students do. classes I've taken, activities are done, and together why do I want to study at your school is the big thing, too, because again, you're applying to the substance at their school. You got to make sure they know that you're going there as well, too, right? So, this is the one thing. So, for those of you who are not juniors yet or you're younger, something to keep in mind, right? You want to have the classes these we call we call these the overlays of your specific major. Each major has a set of things that a reader is trained to look for. for those don't know actually was a former UC Berkeley admissions reader. So I saw a lot of things like different majors require different things I'm looking for in your academics just to show that you are interested right so overlay so you should showing the readers I've taken these classes what if coach Tony what if my school doesn't offer it that's fine colleges don't need you to have resources they want you to sh to be resourceful if your school doesn't offer it cool how you still going to figure it out though right are you going to be okay it doesn't offer it I'm or are you be someone who's going to go and figure it out despite everything else? Right? So that's the big thing here. So going back, what classes have you taken? After the classes you've taken, you're also going to go ahead and talk about the activities you've done. This is the big one, right? So in your activities, I call I tell how are you tasting your major? basically if I looked at your application how can I tell right that you are interested in this field or not right so I think that's the what's the big thing if you haven't done that again another uh way to start thinking about this what have you done right in high school to show the readers you're thinking about that for example someone wrote public policy how how do I know your interest in public policy looking at your activities you said someone said history how do I know you're interested in looking at your activities engineering how do I know that looking your activities so it's basically looking at your activities how can I tell so for those of you who are younger if you don't have much taste taste more things right tasting your major do stuff that you think there's nothing you have to do right by the way people talk about oh I have to do research no no no most kids don't do any of that stuff they still still make it in so it's not the specific research or internship is it can be right if that's how you learn best that works but it's not the have to be right and the as piece of all this is a unique twist about the college, right? Because why not study uh public policy at Berkeley? Why do you want to go to Harvard for it? What's so different about the public policy programs at these two schools or any other school? Same thing with all the other majors you guys picked, right? It's every school ## Why Generic Answers Get Skipped....And What to Do Instead [12:45] offers something because it's unique at their school for that thing. I think that's going to be the big thing you want to address, right? And how you learn that best as well too. That's kind of the best framework I've seen of the uh the major itself. Okay, so that's going to be the big one that you want to think about as you're writing this section over here. Okay, so that's the Y major part. Let's jump to the other one. The other one's the more fun one. The other one is the Y college, right? The Y college is the other big one uh as well too. So, really quick in the chat, just to again make sure you guys are still awake, what colleges are you guys looking into? Let me know in the chat. Just drop college names. college names um in the chat. What college do you want to go to in the future? If you're a junior, what what schools are you applying to in the fall? If you are a uh younger student, what schools are on your list? Your dream schools and all these schools. Go ahead and just drop it in the chat there. Awesome. We got we got a bunch of awesome schools uh in the chat here. We have University of Virginia, we have Harvard, we got Brown, we got Berkeley, CMU, Cunningham, Calpali's, MIT, uh, University of Texas as well too, PIT. Love it. One thing to keep in mind, right, uh, for those of you who name dropped any Cal State schools, any Calpaly schools, these schools do not have any essays, right? So, if you're applying to a Cal State school, a California State University, or a Calpaly school, right? It's one of the subsections of the Cal States. Uh they don't offer uh they don't offer any um any essays at all. If you're applying to a UC, they have ess. So keep in mind, keep that in mind as well too, right? But for the other schools, a lot of the other schools though that you guys will mention today, they all use the common application. And for a lot of these schools, one of the supplements that they're going to ask you is why do you want to study here? Right? Why do you want to study here at our school? So before I answer that, I'm going to give you stuff not to do, right? Don't don't do this. Right? So don't do this as well. Right? So number ## How to Research a College Using the 7 Click Rule [15:00] one, first thing, don't name drop a professor. This is one of the things we see so often every single year talking to students. That's the first thing I do. Oh, I want to go here because professor, professor Robert Rich, he teaches a public I'm sorry, public I'm picking public policy. I'm picking on you, right? Oh, he was a public policy person at Berkeley, so that's why I want to go to the school there, right? Why don't we want to name drop a professor? Here's why. Right? What if, right, the professor no longer teaches there next year, right? Does that mean you're not gonna you're gonna give up your spot at college because all you care about is going to the school? Oh, right. What if what if the professor moves to another college? Right? Are you going to move with them? Right? I'm 99% sure most of you guys do not care about the professor. You're just picking it to name drop someone. Here's the worst reason, right? What if uh the professor doesn't teach any undergraduate classes? Means they only do like research or they only do graduate level work. Then you didn't even do your research, right? And what what does it show about you as a person? Oh, they didn't even do the research about our school to not know that to not know that this teacher doesn't even teach. Uh they just do like research or something else at our school as well too, right? Okay. So again, that's why we said don't name drop a professor because professor can change, they can move, they can retire, right? And if that's the case, are you going to move? Are you going to retire with them or leave with them uh as well too, right? Don't do that. Number two, right? Don't uh what's a good word for it? Fluffy up don't fluffy up the college. Right? What does that mean? Right? People are like MIT, you are the best. you are the best at engineering, right? Do you think MIT knows that they're the best at engineering? They're nodding their heads. They know they're the best. You don't need to remind them that they're the best. They know that, right? They know that, right? Hey, uh Stanford, you have the best program in X. Again, they know that. They already know this stuff. So again, so you bragging about their school, how does that tell me about why you should be there? They should be like, you're right. We are the best. So we don't need you. We are good the way we are. Right? So that's a big mistake. You don't need to fluff. I call fluffy up the college and make them feel good as well. So they already know that. Here's another one. The big another big one as well too. Number three, uh do not copy paste uh this answer to each college. Right? This is the biggest mistake I see and this is how we can catch it. Right? So basically you're like uh I want to go to ## The “Whiteout Test” for Catching Copy-Paste Mistakes [18:00] Harvard because you're the best. you have the best professors and your uh public policy public policy uh is where I want to learn from. Right? Uh it's in a great part of town. I love Harvard, right? This is a prompt, right? Can't tell. Why says do not write copy and paste is that this is copy and pasteable, right? A test we tell our students, we call it the white out test. Right. What the white out test is is if I can white out the names of the schools. White out. Oops. White out here. White out here. Right. If Oops. White out here as well too. And then I say I want to go to Brown because you're the best. You have the best professor. Your public policy is where I want to learn from. Or I love Brown. Huh. Isn't that doesn't that still make sense? It technically does, right? Let's white this out again. If I wipe this out again, right? White out. White out again. And I want to go to MIT because you're the best. You have the best professors. You public policy is where I want to love. Oh, I love I love MIT as well, too. This is the wild test. You can wide it out and you can plug another school and it makes sense. You shouldn't do that. These prompts are so custom to the schools themselves that you want to make it original and unique to them, right? So, here's a little fun fact, right? Fun fact, right? I went to So, we're for those who don't know, we we're part of a bunch of like um college admission organizations. So, we talked to a lot of colleges yearly. That's how we kind of stay up to date on all the changes and all the things there as well too. One of the new things that a lot of schools are sharing with us this year, this past year is that because college is getting more and more and more competitive, right? They you this used to be at the very end of the app. You read through the uh personal information, the academics, the activities, the essays, then you read the supplements. What a lot of colleges, the more selective colleges doing now, they're going straight to the why us prompt first. Because if that's not good, why even spend the time to read everything else in full detail? Okay, they will they will skim to everything. They will read everything. But are they going to treat it seriously? Probably not. If it's like a you guys have the best school, I want to go here. Right? That doesn't do anything uh to the readers. So what they want to know is they want to know why do you want to come to our school? So now what do we want to do? Right? What do we want to do? We want to do a few different things. Okay, the first things is talk uh so do this now, right? Focus on you, not them, right? The colleges already know they're great. You need to focus on yourself. So why uh why do you want to go to their school? Talk about yourself, right? And basically, you want to kind of relate yourself to their values, to their uh what makes them different, right? what makes their college different as well too than others is the big one. Right? Then you want to talk about here's what uh uh what what the college offers. What's unique basically ## How to Show You're a Perfect Fit Without Bragging [21:30] what's unique about their school that other schools cannot say. If you say you're the best at blank, a lot of schools are the best at blank. If you say you're in a good part of town, a lot of people in a good part of town. If you say, uh, my favorite actor graduated from you, they already know that. They don't care about you. How how do you relate to them, right? So, focus on what makes their cause unique. So, a little tip here, little tip here is I call the seven clicks. Seven clicks means you shouldn't be able to find it on the front page. If you say, I want to go to USA because it is the most competitive UC to get into, right? Two mistakes. Number one, that's about UCLA, not about you is number one. And number two, if I Google it, I can find that on the very first page. If not, one click, one click. You can do that. What you want to look for, what's so unique about the school that you need to click in seven times. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, and then you find that information out, that's unique just to them. People, if you had to go that deep, you know something a lot of people don't know, right? A good example of this, by the way, has has anyone here in the chat, has anyone here watched the show Hot Ones on YouTube, right? Anyone drop a yes in the chat if you guys have seen this show? It's it's a it's a talk show uh where the host uh interviews people while eating hot wings, right? As well, too. Some people have seen it. Awesome. Cool. So they they interview them eating hot wings and the qu the the comment everyone says is like dude Sean who's a host how'd you know that about me because he does his research so much that you can't even find stuff so you want to channel your in your inner right Sean Sean Evans I think in your inner Sean what's so unique or special about that school that you're like whoa how'd you know about that how'd you know this mentality of the seven click method that you want to go deep into this as well. Right? And last one, last one. Uh this one is this is this is what we can do together. So you don't want to just brag about you. You don't want to just brag about the school. Talk about why you're are the perfect fit for each other, right? Why are these two the perfect fit? Why is that school why can't you learn this at any other school? Right? And if you answer this honestly and like you did the research, it's really hard to find these for every single school because ## UPenn Example....Dual-Degree Essay That Worked [24:00] every school is you got to figure out what's unique about it. What's unique about you? And because of that, you can't apply to every school because not every school has that factor for you because if you just blindly copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, and change a few words, those are generic. That's not going to be as strong, right? These should take a long time to figure out like hm what's so unique about your school where I and me and your school can vibe well together. That's going to be the big key thing here. Okay? And that's going to be the big takeaway for you guys. You got to figure it out. There's no magical, hey, write this cuz that's good. No, it's up to you, right? Again, focus is on you, not the schools. Again, keep in mind the schools already know they're the best, right? Each school believes in their world that they are the best college out there. You don't need to convince them that they're the best. They know that. The question is they want to know why are you the perfect fit. Not saying you're the best either, but you're the best fit for them. What you want to study and what they offer is a perfect fit. One of our students uh if you guys want to check it out, she she uh we interviewed her on YouTube. We interviewed her. We put on YouTube. We didn't do anything on YouTube, but she uh applied this past year. One of our seniors uh got into UPUP, right? One of the Ivies, right? too. She got in as a nursing and business dual degree program, right? As well too. If you notice, if you those of you who are interested in that, there's not many of those programs out there, right? But the student, she talked about herself, right, of how she was interested in nursing and business for her first. Then she talked about how UPEN was one of the very few programs in the US that offered a program like this. and she talked about how by going to that school she could achieve this other thing in the future get going through the school to get to this other final result right you guys want to check out that interview it's up there just look up eagle lock up you'll probably find the interview on YouTube as well I think that's the big thing okay that's pretty much it so quick little recap for you guys as well too again the big two questions you got to be answering is the why major with the major talk about the classes and activities and the unique twist that the school offers when comes to the why college, why us prop question, you want to focus on you, focus on what's unique about the college and then focus on why you want to go through them to get to where you want to go. That's the big takeaway. Okay, that being said, I I I this training hopefully that was nice, good, short, and sweet to the point for you guys as well too. Again, really quick, was that was that helpful? Let me know in quick chat if that was useful, help for you guys. Drop a quick yes in the chat there. And uh again, quick announcements. If you guys want the replays, text 9497750865 for the replay here as well. Those guys who want uh a free coaching session, if you haven't done one yet, text the word coach, same number. They'll help you out with that. And our intensive, it's going to be uh live uh for our juniors as well, too. Okay, let's go ahead and dive into the Q&A really quick. We have a question here in the chat. If you have questions, go and drop it in the chat or drop it in the Q&A box as well. Wash is the major for BSMD just biology or neuroscience depends on the school. Every school is a little different. Every school is set up a little different as well too. So, especially BSMD programs for those who are interested in BSMD programs, we actually have a BSMD coach on our team. Me and her coach Sonia is her name. Me and her did a bunch of interviews and bunch of like fun trainings. Check it out on YouTube. Look at look up the word BSMD Eagle. You'll probably find it uh there. Check it out. Um for our students, talk to coach Sonia. She hosts office hours on Wednesdays. You can drop by her office hours, talk to her, pick her brain about the BSMD program uh as well too. Okay, cool. I think that is it. I think we are good for today. Uh for those who are real quick about too for those who want to join us for a few more trainings this week. We have a few awesome trainings planned tomorrow. Uh coach, anyone here know of ROC? Does any know ROC is ROC uh stuff? Uh, tomorrow, Coach R is gonna do a training on how to get a full ride scholarship through RLTC. For those of you who are interested, on Wednesday, I'm doing a training with one of my good buddies, uh, Joey from Think Prep on AP exams. For those who know, next month is AP exam season. So, we're going to go ahead and do a little we we invite him to come do a little training for you guys. Um, here it be Wednesday. Uh, also on Wednesday we have a training for parents on financial aid. So if you guys are a current parent, you gota look try to figure out how to how to pay for college. Coach Dave is doing a training for you guys this Wednesday and this Thursday for any of our we had I know we have a lot of juniors here today. This Thursday, Coach Victor is going live and he's doing a training on the top 10 college admission tips you need to know. So, super super useful for any incoming uh senior very very soon. And that's pretty much it for today's session. A few quick uh things. Number one, we are also hosting a summit, a free event on May 10th. If you guys want to go to eagleock.com, eagleock is the word collegebacks.com/summit. Uh we're hosting a free one-day event May 10th. You can't buy anything on that that called that day. It's a it's a 4 hour of training. It's really really awesome. Check that out there. Okay, that's pretty much it for me. If you have any questions, let me know. If not, I'll see you guys for our coaching family. I'll see you guys in the office hours. If anyone else, I'll see you guys next week. Bye, everyone.