 Great college essays stay far far away from cliches. Stay tuned and I'm sharing the ones that people don't usually tell you about. Thank you for joining me on my channel for the best college essay advice. Subscribe and hit the bell. You want to be unique. You want to stand out. You want to show them how impressive you are and you could be in college. I get it. You want to stay far far away from these three cliches that most people don't even talk about. If you want to see the standard cliches, you want to see this video linked above. But if not, these are the ones people don't tell you about and that could really kind of get you into the pile of same z's. So hi, I'm Dr. Josie. Stick around. I have worked with students for years and years and years over 10 years now and I know what they're looking for. Stick around. It's your turn. Tip one. Know the difference between bragging and accomplishment. Bragging looks outward for approval. It usually kind of focuses on your certitude that you are going to be right all along about something. Accomplishment focuses on the lessons learned on how much you've grown from the experience. It has humility. The former could talk about exactly the same journey but it is focused on how you were right all along, how it is kind of outcome over process. But accomplishment focuses on that journey, that process. So here's an example. I was cut from the volleyball team and then the team lost. I knew I was good and it made me realize that they cut me because it was personal but I don't let it get me down. So this person wants to write about overcoming an obstacle and that's kind of one of the obstacles. That is exactly verbatim, one of the essays. How you how you kind of tweak that? After the painful cut, I thought I had lost my favorite volleyball for good. However, I started coaching middle school girls and learned that I can control how I react to challenges and loss. The first one, I don't really care about the journey. This second one, I am going on the journey with her. I'm invested in how she not only felt a loss but how she kind of looked outward, shared something, her knowledge of volleyball with other people. Tip two, lose the word passion from your essay. If your essay has the word passion in it, control find, look and see. If you have it in there, take it out and for instead of that you want to swap in. I'm being very bossy right now but you want to swap in an image. So instead of saying my passion for math makes me see the world through numbers, you want to say something like, counting the birds in flight above or even the meatballs on my lunch plate. I see the world through snazzy equations, angles and number signs. Notice how with kind of a dependent clause of images and I have another video linked above here with creative writing techniques. So instead of saying I have a passion for math and I see the world through numbers which is great and it could be a supporting sentence. You don't want that to be the entire thing that you're saying. So bring in images, show the passion. Do you have an essay draft already and you're afraid that you have some cliche material? Uh-oh, comment below. I'd love to help you out. Tip three, I put this in a cliche because it happens too often to not kind of talk about. So do you kind of look up from your essay and say, someone that doesn't know me will care about this, will care about me. If you don't, you are too wrapped up in your kind of truth in your story and you haven't looked up to strategize yet. So one of the main cliches is that someone who is older than you, someone who doesn't know you, someone who hasn't been invested emotionally in your journey yet and only has two pages, will they care? You want to ask that and if you're not sure then you are not really writing to the reader just yet. You need to both write your story and your truth and honor that but also make sure that you know who your reader is and that you're caring how to deliver that message, that it doesn't fall flat. So you want to make sure that you are humble, that you are giving us images so that we see, we can kind of like prop up a camera over your shoulder and just kind of see the world and see your experience through your lens, not just say words like passion or commitment or eye-overcome adversity, show me that, right? So make sure that the person who is reading it cares about you and visually and emotionally sees what you're going through. Oof, that was some hard truth but I care about you guys, I care about your essays and I want you to do well so you want to make sure that you are kind of ticking these three off and you're not doing any of these cliche faux pas in your essays. You want more information, want to make sure your essay is as strong as possible, click on the description below. I have a free college guide to really help you with structure, writing, tone, messaging, all that good stuff. I am reviewing essays right now. I have my online workshop going on right now. I have a YS template with an academic word bank that you can use for your supplements. A lot is going on so come ask me questions, reach out and I'd love to help you out. If you found this video helpful please give us a thumbs up, give us a like, share with your college-bound friends and we'll keep making more. Thank you so much, have a good one.