I’m a firm believer that the best time to work on your college application essays is the summer before senior year. But when that time comes, some juniors feel a little leery about shifting their writing style to personal narratives after spending their high school years focused on expository writing (aka thesis papers). Unlike most school assignments, your college application essays require you to tell stories about yourself.

If you want to get into a “personal narrative mindset,” you may find it helpful to do some journaling. Journaling is simply writing down your experiences, thoughts and reflections. You can spend as much or as little time as you like and you can write in whatever form you choose: by hand, on your computer, your phone, etc. It’s helpful to have a central location (whether it’s an actual journal, digital document, etc) to keep all your entries. I strongly recommend not posting your writing to social media; journaling is for you, not the rest of humanity. In add...more