711: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 10: The Silent Assassin) with Amber Patterson
About this episode
Ethan Sawyer and Amber Patterson discuss personal storytelling in college essays, focusing on a specific student essay and the admissions process at Texas Christian University.
Hi, friends, and welcome back to our series, "On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling," where we take a close look at personal essays written by real students, talk about why we love them, what makes them work, and how they came to be. In this episode, I'm joined by Amber Patterson, Regional Director of Admission at Texas Christian University. This conversation does two things at once. We read a real student essay closely, line by line, and we get inside an admission reader's head to understand what's actually landing as she reads through it. We get into: What Amber hopes to learn about a student when she sits down with their personal statement Why TCU has chosen not to use any AI to read applications, and the human moments she says a machine can't pick up How the reading process actually works at TCU A full breakdown of an essay called "The Silent Assassin," starting with Amber's take on why a clever hook may matter less than students think How to nest a small, everyday challenge inside a larger essay (the hybrid structure), and how a common challenge can be than enough How to subtly weave an extracurricular activity into your essay, and how to actually use the…
More episodes of The College Essay Guy Podcast: A Practical Guide to College Admissions
- 714: A Live Essay and Application Review with Anna, HS Senior
- 713: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Storytelling (Ep 10: The Stomach Whisperer) with Tillie Gottlieb
- 712: Empowering First-Generation Student Success: The Warren High School BUS program with David Cha
- 710: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 9: Where I Grew Up) with Hillary Dickman
- 709: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 8: Molding Clay) with Calvin Pickett
- 708: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 7: Robes) with Andrew Callery
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