by Abby Bowman

Created on: July 11, 2007   Last Updated: August 25, 2009

Contrary to popular opinion, essay-writing is the easiest part of applying to college. The process only becomes difficult if it's done at the last minute without any preparation. Take the time to plan out your approach and you will save yourself a lot of time and frustration in the end. Trust me: I'm a student who applied to eight universities, including four Ivy Leagues. The strategy below did the job for me; I will be attending one of those Ivy Leagues in the fall. Make sure you start this process at least a month or two before your first application is due.

1. Start with a cheat sheet. Open a new document (you could do this on paper, but it's easier on the computer) and paste in the full text of your essay prompts and questions. Next to each prompt, list what school it's for and how long the essay needs to be. Make sure all the prompts for all of your schools are on this list.

2. Next, it's extremely helpful to rearrange this cheat sheet and cut down on the total number of essays you'll need to write. Take all the open, "topic of your choice" essays and put those together at the bottom of the cheat sheet. If there are prompts to write about a specific quote that defines/influences you, put those at the bottom as well. You will come back to these at the very end.

3. The general guiding principle is to write to the most specific prompts first, then use/edit the same essays to answer more general prompts for other schools. To begin, pick out the school-specific essay prompts on the sheet, like "What makes Stanford a special place for you?" These should be written first, since you won't be able to apply them to any other prompts. When answering these, be sincere and passionate and excited about these colleges you've chosen. Talk about both big things you fell in love with (Stanford's physics department) and little things that intrigued you (the crazed antics of Stanford's scatter band). Be honest and don't exaggerate or make anything up; you decided to apply to these schools already, now you just have to tell them why. Once those are out of the way, the fun begins.

4. Group prompts from different schools together if they could be answered by the same essay. For example: College A wants a favorite quote, College B wants your favorite literary character, and College C wants a favorite hobby/activity. Write an essay about your passion for reading over the years, including a short quote from your favorite book and why you'd love to meet its hero (or its villain). Be

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