From ‘Lives’ to ‘Modern Love’: Writing Personal Essays With Help From The New York Times
October 26, 2016, new york times learning network, by educator innovator.
This resource from the New York Times Learning Network provides seven recommendations for teaching and writing personal essays, as well as a curated collection of essays from the Times to serve as mentor texts.
“In this post we suggest several ways to inspire your students’ own personal writing, using Times models as ‘mentor texts,’ and advice from our writers on everything from avoiding ‘zombie nouns’ to writing ‘dangerous’ college essays.”
Interested in finding out more? Read the full article at The New York Times Learning Network .
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Competition
New York Times Personal Narrative Writing Contest
November 17, 2023.
High School
Description:
For this contest, we invite you to write a personal narrative of your own about a meaningful life experience. We’re not asking you to write to a particular theme or to use a specific structure or style, but we are looking for short, powerful stories about a particular moment or event in your life. We want to hear your story, told in your unique voice, and we hope you’ll experiment with style and form to tell a tale that matters to you, in a way you enjoy telling it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/learning/our-3rd-annual-personal-narrative-writing-contest.html
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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, examples of personal essays that worked.
Hey guys, I'm working on my personal statement for college apps and I'm feeling a bit lost. Are there any resources or examples of personal essays that got students into top colleges? I think reading some would help me understand what works and what doesn't when writing my own.
Hello! I can understand why you're feeling overwhelmed, but seeing examples of successful personal essays is a great way to gain inspiration and understand what makes a compelling story.
1. CollegeVine has a collection of free essay examples available on their website covering a variety of essay prompts and topics. These essays worked for students who were accepted into top colleges and could serve as inspiration for your own writing. This blog post has those examples: https://blog.collegevine.com/personal-statement-essay-examples/
2. Johns Hopkins University shares some "Essays That Worked" on their admissions website. This collection includes personal essays from students who were accepted into JHU, along with commentary from admissions committee members on what made the essays stand out.
3. The New York Times publishes an annual series called "Standout College Application Essays" featuring a selection of exceptional personal essays written by students. Some of these essays were written by students who gained admission to top-tier colleges, and their stories can provide valuable insights and ideas for your own writing.
When reading these essays, remember that there is no single formula for writing a successful personal essay. But, you can take note of the storytelling techniques and writing styles that resonate with you, and consider incorporating them into your own essay.
One tip to keep in mind is to focus on showing your unique perspective and voice. Admissions committees want to understand who you are as a person, so take the time to reflect on your own experiences, values, and aspirations. Pick a topic that genuinely inspires you and is distinctive to your own life, and then tell your story in a way that highlights your personality and growth.
Good luck with your personal essay, and I hope reading these examples helps you find your own voice and create an essay that reflects who you are!
About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ
CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.
Guide to The NY Times’ Five Best College Essays on Work, Money and Class
So, you might ask, “What can I learn from this year’s crop of college essays about money, work and class? And how can they help me craft my own memorable, standout essays?” To help get to the bottom of what made the Times ‘ featured essays so exceptional, we made you a guide on w hat worked, and what you can emulate in your own essays to make them just as memorable for admissions.
- Contradictions are the stuff of great literature . “I belong to the place where opposites merge in a…heap of beautiful contradictions,” muses Tillena Treborn in her lyrical essay on straddling rural and urban life in Flagstaff, AZ, one of the five pieces selected by t he Times this year. Each of the highlighted essays mined contradictions: immigrant versus citizen; service worker versus client; insider versus outsider; urban versus rural; poverty versus wealth; acceptance versus rebellion; individual versus family. Every day, we navigate opposing forces in our lives. These struggles—often rich, and full of tension—make for excellent essay topics. Ask yourself this: Do you straddle the line between ethnicities, religions, generations, languages, or locales? If so, how? In what ways do you feel like you are stuck between two worlds, or like you are an outsider? Examining the essential contradictions in your own life will provide you with fodder for a fascinating, insightful college essay.
- The magic is in the details — especially the sensory ones. Sensory details bring writing to life by allowing readers to experience how something looks, sounds, smells, tastes, or feels. In his American dream-themed essay about his immigrant mother cleaning the apartment of two professors, Jonathan Ababiy describes “the whir,” “suction,” and “squeal” of her “blue Hoover vacuum” as it leaps across “miles of carpet.” These descriptions allow us to both hear and see the symbolic vacuum in action. The slice-of-life familial essay by Idalia Felipe–the only essay to be published in The Times’ Snapchat Discover feature–opens with a scene: “As I sit facing our thirteen-year old refrigerator, my stomach growls at the scent of handmade tortillas and meat sizzling on the stove.” Immediately, we are brought inside Felipe’s home with its distinctive smells and sounds; our stomach seems to growl alongside hers. Use descriptive, sensory language to engage your reader, bring them into your world, and make your writing shine.
- One-sentence paragraphs are catchy . A one-sentence paragraph, as I’m sure you’ve gleaned, is a paragraph that is only one sentence long. The form has been employed by everyone from Tim O’Brien to Charles Dickens and, now, the writers of this year’s featured Times college essays. “I live on the edge,” Ms. Treborn declares at the beginning of her poetic essay on the differences between her mother and father’s worlds. “The most exciting part was the laptop,” asserts Zoe Sottile, the recipient of the Tang Scholarship at Phillips Academy in her essay about the mutability and complexity of class identity. Starting your essay with a one-sentence paragraph—a line of description, a scene, or a question, for example—is a great way to hook the reader. You could also use a one-sentence paragraph mid-essay to emphasize a point, as Ms. Treborn does, or in your conclusion. A one-sentence paragraph is one of many tricks that you have in your writing toolkit to make your reader pause and take notice.
- The Familiar Can Be Fascinating. The most daring essay this year, a rant on the imbalances of power embedded in the service industry by Caitlin McCormick, delivers us into the world of a family bed and breakfast with its clinking silverware and cantankerous guests demanding twice-a-day room cleanings. In Ms. Felipe’s more atmospheric piece, we enter her home before dinnertime where we see her attempting to study while her sisters giggle and watch Youtube cat videos. These are the environments these students grew up in, and they inspired everything from frustration at glaring class inequalities to gratitude for the dream of a better life. Rather than feeling like you have to write about something monumental, focus on the familiar, and consider how your environment has shaped you. How did you grow up—in the restaurant business, on a farm, in a house full of artists, construction workers, or judges? Bring us into your world, describing it meticulously and thoughtfully. Tease out the connection between your environment and who you are/what you strive for today and you will be embarking on the path of meaningful self-discovery, which is the key to college essay success.
About Nina Bailey
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Written by Nina Bailey
Category: advice , Essay Tips , Essay Writing , New York Times , Uncategorized
Tags: advice , college admissions , college admissions essay , college essay , college essay advisors , common application , tips , writing
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IMAGES
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Personal essays from writers around the globe, on the news of the world and the news of individual lives.
William James Warren/Science Faction, via Corbis. The "Lives" essay has been running in our magazine nearly every week since 1996. For those who don't know, it is a place for true personal stories, running about 800 words long, and in the print edition, it's the last bit of editorial content, right inside the back cover.
In this lesson, students will explore the open-ended topics for the 2013-14 Common Application essays through writing and discussion. Then, they will identify and examine Times pieces that might serve as "mentor texts" for their own application essays. Finally, they will craft their own college admissions essay in response to one of the new ...
"In this post we suggest several ways to inspire your students' own personal writing, using Times models as 'mentor texts,' and advice from our writers on everything from avoiding 'zombie nouns' to writing 'dangerous' college essays." Interested in finding out more? Read the full article at The New York Times Learning Network.
5 writers spill on how they got published in the New York Times' Modern Love column. Since I'm not yet qualified to dole out advice about this particular column, I consulted five Modern Love authors for advice. Two of the six authors featured here have won the lottery twice! Here are their tips, stories and insights. 1.
Description: For this contest, we invite you to write a personal narrative of your own about a meaningful life experience. We're not asking you to write to a particular theme or to use a specific structure or style, but we are looking for short, powerful stories about a particular moment or event in your life. We want to hear your story, told ...
The New York Times Learning Network Student Personal Narrative Essay Contest Rubric. Excellent (4) Proficient (3 Developing (2) Beginning (1. Story : Personal narrative tells a short but memorable story about a life experience and communicates why itwas meaningful to the writer . Language : Personal narrative uses vivid details and images to ...
Based on the pioneering New York Times series, About Us collects the personal essays and reflections that have transformed the national conversation around disability.. Boldly claiming a space in which people with disabilities can be seen and heard as they are―not as others perceive them― About Us captures the voices of a community that has for too long been stereotyped and misrepresented.
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National Geographic Books, Sep 3, 2019 - Health & Fitness - 304 pages. Based on the pioneering New York Times series, About Us collects the personal essays and reflections that have transformed the national conversation around disability. Boldly claiming a space in which people with disabilities can be seen and heard as they are—not as others ...
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The New York Times publishes an annual series called "Standout College Application Essays" featuring a selection of exceptional personal essays written by students. Some of these essays were written by students who gained admission to top-tier colleges, and their stories can provide valuable insights and ideas for your own writing.
Every year, The New York Times issues an open call for college application essays on the subject of money, work, and class. Money becomes a lens through which identity, family, and dreams, can be glimpsed. Out of the many submissions they received this year, The Times published the five best essays (four were published in the newspaper, and one in The Times's new Snapchat Discover Feature).
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