Counselor Resources
Free resources to support secondary school counselors in their college guidance work
Welcome! These free worksheets and handouts are designed to support your work with juniors, seniors, and their families. In this companion site to Write Yourself In, you’ll find PDFs that can be distributed digitally or in print, as well as Google Docs that can be used by your students (within the Doc, choose “File” → “Make a copy” to make a personal, editable copy).
Feel free to adapt any exercise as needed for your community; I just ask that you include attribution if you use my content. And please let me know what’s helpful, what’s not, and share your ideas or suggestions!
Common App Personal Essay
Topic Brainstorming
Big Turns / Little Turns: My favorite Common App personal essay brainstorming activity, inspired by an English teacher I used to work with. [ PDF ]
Five Words Brainstorming Activity: A simple activity to generate strong essay ideas. [ PDF | Google Doc ]
Bullet the Prompts: Another good brainstorming activity. [ PDF | Google Doc ]
Values, Passions, and Light: More brainstorming, if you like to take a different approach with your students. [ PDF ]
Topic Selection
Essay Topic Checklist: A printable one-page checklist to help teens identify strong topics for the personal essay. [ PDF ]
What are they looking for?: An explanation of ten personal qualities sought by selective college admissions officers. Some will be obvious to high schoolers; others can lead to interesting conversations. [ PDF ]
Revising & Polishing the Personal Essay
Revision Checklist: A printable one-page checklist to help students determine when their essays are done. [ PDF ]
Questions for feedback: Worksheet with six questions for students to ask when they share their essays with others; the goal is to push them beyond “Did you like it?” and “What do you think?” [ PDF ]
Supplemental Essays
The Why Our School Essay
Long Why Our School Outline:Template for researching and organizing longer WOS essays (>400 words or so). [ Google Doc]
Short Why Our School Outline:Template for researching and organizing longer WOS essays (<400 words). [ Google Doc]
What is a liberal arts education? An article/handout to help students answer this question, which can be useful for Why Our School essays. [ PDF | Web article ]
Other Supplements (Community Essay, Lived Experience Essay, etc.)
Contributions/Lived Experience Essay: Short article on this relatively new type of essay.
Contributions Worksheet: Guided activity to help students see how they’ve contributed at home and at school, then identify stories for their essays. [ PDF | Google Doc ]
Community Essay: Short article with tips on writing strong community essays.
Diverse Perspectives Essay: Short article on this type of essay, which often trips students up.
Activities List & Resume
Common App Activities List
Activities List Template: A worksheet to help students organize and edit their activities lists, before they start pasting things into the Common App! [ Google Doc ]
Common App Activity Categories: A reference list of all 29 Common App activity types, along with guidance on selecting categories (PDF contains categories only). [ Web article | PDF ]
Resume
Sample resumes: A PDF containing two sample high school student resumes. [ PDF ]