Making Your Game Plan: Preparing to Apply to Multiple Undergraduate Programs (Part III)

This is the third, and last part in our three part series on making a game plan to apply to multiple undergraduate programs abroad as a high school junior, or senior in Taiwan. In Part III, we’re talking about why it’s so important to have all of your essay questions in one central place.

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Ok so you already know that you need to have your dates, details and links centralized in your “My Game Plan” document. You already know that you should have both a print, and an electronic version so that you can have your plan with you everywhere you go, in case you need to refer to it. But before you head down to the print shop, there’s one last, massively important section that you have to include in your Game Plan document. That section, of course – is essays.

Essay Questions

Essay questions are the most cumbersome part of any college application, regardless of whether you are a native English speaker, or not. At Transcend Admissions Consultants, we often advise that our clients make one master document with all of the essay questions from every single school they are applying to, like an "essay packet." This way, you can read all of the essay questions you need to answer in one place. You can see which essays you might be able to modify to suit other schools, without having to write an essay from scratch, and saving yourself time.

Here’s an important, time saving question: Do two of the schools you're applying for ask a very similar question, or have an open ended question? If you invest a lot of time into writing one extremely good essay that conveys your strengths and passions, you can modify it slightly to suit the values of those two schools. Where you might write "… for all of these reasons, School A is the perfect fit for my interests, and personal motivations to attend university in America," you can change "School A" to "School B" while keeping the majority of the essay unchanged.

This Essay Questions section includes Letters of Recommendation, personal statements, and any other long-form written content that you need to take control of. Do not, we repeat, do not forget about your Letters of Recommendation (LORs).

Get all of your essay questions in the last section of your Game Plan, and you will save yourself immense amounts of time and effort down the line, when your time would be put to better use writing essays and clicking “submit” on your finished applications.

Conclusion: What does your "My Game Plan" Document look like?

It contains the

- Dates

- Details & Links

- Essay Questions

Necessary for you to stay on top of all of the information you need to apply to your target schools. Have some fun with it! Customize it and personalize it with pictures and quotes that inspire you. Put in the logos and colors of each school that you like so that you feel connected to the schools and their values when you write your application and essays. You should have your “My Game Plan” document available on your computer, smart phone, tablet, and in print so you can carry it around with you in your backpack.

If you ever have any questions about how to tailor your “My Game Plan” document, or how to approach the application season for your target schools this year, feel free to reach out to me at transcendadmissions@gmail.com.