Escape Essay Hell!: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Narrative College Application Essays

This book is very straightforward about the instructions. It gives great examples throughout the book and at the end of the book as well.It's short, and it is an easy read as well.

As a high school English teacher and as a one-on-on consultant for students applying to college, I needed a resource to recommend that would jump-start the college essay process so that I could help with the fine points and further brainstorming. This book is the one! I've been recommending it to students for more than four years and should have reviewed it long before now. Janine Robinson's step-by-step method is practical, accessible, and sensible, and she writes with a fun, friendly tone. One of the most helpful features to get a student going is the huge list of personal traits/skills near the beginning of the book, encouraging students to define themselves with a few of these adjectives, before going on to "search for 'a time'" when they displayed that trait. The author's instructions for writing a narrative-style (show AND tell) personal statement are clear and practical, and the encouragement to use a surprising, quirky, dramatic, or at-first-glance mundane topic or opening image really lets the creativity flow. Students are thus prevented from making the mistake of writing a college essay that is simply their resume in paragraph form. Instead, they are walked through the process of writing a zoomed, focused view of themselves or something very important to them; this honest, engaging view is what the college wants to read in order to truly get to know the student. As mentioned, I recommend this book to all my seniors, and I also recommend that they get Heavenly Essays, which is a treasure trove of excellent sample essays. Using these principles, my students have written some masterpieces and have been admitted to a wide variety of colleges, including selective universities. Don't miss the chance to benefit from this excellent book.

In my role as an educational consultant, each year I help seniors through the process of developing their college application essays. Using "Escape Essay Hell" as a guide, both for myself and my clients, I have finally found an essay writing guide that simplifies the process and shows a powerful way of developing the personal essay. While many of my clients are skilled in writing analytical, intellectual essays (thanks to the AP process), so many have no experience writing a personal essay...a much different type of essay than an academic one. "Escape Essay Hell" has been the single resource that has taken my essay coaching to another level. I have also found that my clients respond to Janine's clear style of writing., In my experience, this is the most effective application essay writing guide that is available.If you are an educational consultant who is looking to improve your essay coaching, a high school counselor looking looking to help students become better writers, a high school English teacher who wants to REALLY understand what admission essay writing, a parent who want to help their child develop stronger application essays or a senior who is struggling to find a way to develop that all important, personal essay, this is the guide for you. Written in an engaging and straight-forward manner, the process of developing an anecdotal essay is spelled out clearly. In a nutshell, I think this is the most effective guide to application essay writing that one can find.

I treasure this useful resource and have recommended it to all of my high school students. Most essay books will dance around the subject of essay writing. They can tell you how to recognize a good essay from a bad one and might even feature a few samples of general essay topics, but they don't help the reader to get inspired about writing or how to show emotion. I have yet to find a great resource that goes right to the heart of essay writing until I found this book. Janine gives you a step by step approach for how to write a great essay. Her techniques can help students get right to the heart of essay writing in a fast, easy way. Students need to find their core characteristics and include this information in their essay in order to be noticed by collges. They also need to include details. I find that this book is a personal writing guide. Janine will coach you towards writing your personal story. If you are a high school senior,parent,teacher or college counselor, I urge you to purchase this book. This is the ultimate how to guide. Once you have this one, you will want all of the others in the series.

My daughter used this book the summer before her senior year of high school to craft some college application essays and even though the book follows a 'formula', she ended up writing some really lovely essays that captured her personality and experience in her own voice.My son is now beginning to work on his essays, but my daughter has our copy with her at college where she is now using it to write internship and fellowship applications, so we bought a second copy. It's that good.Ms. Robinson writes with reassurance and clarity and breaks the process down into steps that don't seem so intimidating. My only caution is to encourage your student to start the process early so she or he can get feedback from friends on which Defining Qualities and anecdotes to write on.This isn't a great guide for the kind of essay that requires demonstration of highly technical or field-specific knowledge or skills, but it is ideal for prompts that ask for a personal statement, description, or narration of a certain experience or ability.

I'm giving this three stars because when writing my personal statement I remember wanting to write an interesting and different statement, but I couldn't articulate exactly what I wanted. However, when I searched my recommendations in amazon I stumbled upon this book to my delight. Writing a narrative is exactly what I wanted. I even made over a page of notes, which is pretty good for such a thin book. My only problem is, is that although it has given me a good idea (to write a narrative), the author's notion of writing about mundane stories is unappealing to me. I feel that it is ok to write about mundane things only if there is something special about it. Again, I can't quite articulate what I mean. Most of the examples she gave where downright boring e.g. one of them was about tidying up her room!!I feel that this book is a good start for writers, but it is definitely not the be all end all of books. Definitely, worth the money though.

I stumbled across the escape essay hell blog while searching for advice on the new common app prompts and after reading the blog, i just had to get the book - and it was worth every cent. The book is split clearly into ten steps that provide guidance for anyone to conjure up a winning essay. My favorite part about the book is certainly the author's conversational tone which makes it very easy to read and makes essay writing less of a bore.

I find it helpful because it provides a step-by-step approach to break down the intimidating essay writing process into actionable micro-tasks. This is a concise but enlightening book to read.