This guide will help you tell your Mighty Story. “This is an expert, engaging, and truly helpful guide for any student staring down the "mouth of hell" —the daunting college application essay process.” —Katherine Ellison, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of "Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention." College application essays offer the chance to present who you are, in all of your particular splendor. To own that splendor is no easy task: sometimes the gems right in front of you are buried deep beneath a pile of expectations and commitments and doubt. The truth, however, is simple: you just need to dig them up. In other words, you have a life, and that life is full of stories. When Irena and I chat, and we frequently do, there’s a common theme: we love our jobs. Why? Because our students find their way into college, not solely through improving test scores or bolstering their list of activities, but by expressing their truest selves. Students who write for school papers, who struggle with dyslexia, who battle scorpions in Texas, search for mushrooms in Oregon, or jog Central Park religiously each day. We get to know them all, and in knowing them, like them immensely. We cheer them on, offering tips from the sidelines—we love being part of a team. This guide itself is an example of teamwork. I drafted the following exercises as a series of blog posts, and together we clarified a vision, coauthored new sections, scheduled weekly phone calls to work through revisions and edits. We get it that writers need support, especially when the work of writing is that of discovering what matters to you and who you truly want to be. Testimonials “Writing is an art. It is a skill honed with exposure to the best writing, and, more importantly, with guidance on how to tailor your unique expression. Irena and Laurie are wizards with words: they helped me crystallize verbose sentences and infuse them with new meaning and impact. I love most that their guidance is empowering. It enables and equips you to chart out a beautiful piece of writing that tells your story. This confidence and self-reflection is necessary going into an essay-writing process. Above all, their warmth, dedication, and collaborative approach made my application process a very memorable experience, one that I shall cherish forever.” —Student, Duke University “Irena and Laurie guided me through the process of expressing my own voice and helped me express that voice most clearly and impactfully. Their advice was always clear—not only did they advise what I needed to work on, they also helped me with how to go about it, which is usually where I get stuck. Working with Laurie and Irena was more than writing a college essay—they also really pushed me to really reflect and be honest with myself, which ultimately helped me gain a deeper understanding of who I was and what I wanted to do.” —Student, Harvard University “I truly believe that Laurie’s insightful questions made my son’s essays come alive. I don’t think he would have achieved the same results without her. Not only was he accepted at his first choice school, but he was given the Rensselaer Leadership Award which is a four-year merit scholarship.” — Parent, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student “This book was super helpful! I read through it in one sitting and now have a million things I could write about. Laurie and Irena’s compelling and easy-to-follow advice gave me confidence and inspired me to try the exercises not because I had to, but because it was fun. “ —Student, Austin Waldorf High School

Mighty Writing’s College Application Essay Guide: Everyone has a story to tell. Make yours mighty. (2017-May)

Test Preparation

Filipelli, Laurie

College & High School

Independently published

Poetry. "Here is a calendar full of long shadows, a guidebook of unlikely bursts of music, and we couldn't ask for a better guide than this keenly perceptive, wry, plucky poet. In Laurie Filipelli's ELSEPLACE, as in Keats, we may not know if we wake or dream but that uncertain state blurs nothing, rather it clarifies the mysteries that are our befuddlements and salvations."—Dean Young"In Laurie Filipelli's debut collection, lyrical prose poems that evoke the sorrows of the calendar year are juxtaposed with feisty odes that soar and float and sing and refuse to be tethered. Elsewhere could be anywhere, but ELSEPLACE is brilliant and magical. It's where the cat's been when it reappears, it's a place you have to squint to see, it's a town that exists only when you name it, it's the wig shop in Tyler, Texas, it's Poem City (the wonderful book in your hand!), and Paris, Las Vegas, where the way to win is to forget what you want."—Maura Stanton"Part oracle, part anchor, the poems in ELSEPLACE hover like the recurrent image of a balloon caught between imminences. Filipelli's poems are driven less by containment than bafflement, by the ferocious tenderness of invention. For ultimately, these are love songs to maybe, to the 'crooked O,' to 'wind's eye beginning to open.'"—Elyse Fenton

Elseplace

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Brooklyn Arts Press

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