Cuesta English Professor Helps Seniors with College Essays

On Nov. 3 and Nov. 17, Cuesta College English Professor Sally Demarest visited MBHS to help construct, critique, and revise seniors’ college essays. Whether that be for a UC Personal Insight Question or a supplemental essay, Demarest helped a total of 15 seniors with their writing. 

With limited space and time, seniors had to jump at the opportunity quickly – appointments were booked in 15-minute increments, meaning that time needed to be used wisely. Appointments came on a first-come, first-served basis, with almost every time slot filling up in less than a day. Students were required to bring at least one essay draft to work on with Demarest. 

During each time slot, Demarest spent a few minutes getting to know each student, learning about their major, extracurriculars, and anything else relevant to understanding their essays. She then read them carefully and took notes on each essay, and wrote suggestions on how to improve it. In a thoughtful conversation, Demarest walked through the whole essay, pointing out parts that were confusing or needed development and making suggestions on how to improve them, asking clarifying questions as she went. Finally, Demarest gave each student her notes, allowing them to remember back to everything she had advised.

Students found that Demarest was overall very helpful in her critiques. She was quickly able to identify the struggles each student had when writing their essays, and was able to provide good feedback on exactly what to do to fix them. Senior Marilyn Garcia was advised on her UC PIQs, with the prompt, “Describe how you have taken  advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.” With this prompt, she worked with Demarest on the storytelling aspect of her writing. She said, “You should show rather than tell, and include [detailed] questions and answers to support your stories.” Like many others, Garcia was able to use the advice Demarest gave her for this PIQ on her other essays, “I used that advice for the rest of my essays to make sure everything is clear and you wouldn’t have to interpret my writing,” she said. 

Senior Joss Finch also got assistance on her PIQs from Demarest, with the prompts, “What would you say is your greatest talent or skill?” and “What have you done to make your school or community a better place?” Finch recognized that she struggled with continuity, and said that she talked about many different things instead of focusing on one specific part of her story. “I would do examples of something, but then I wouldn’t connect it back to what I was talking about, so she kind of just told me to really hone in my examples to completely apply to what I was actually talking about,” she said. 

Demarest had a major impact on the seniors she advised. Many of the students found that they would be able to use this advice in the future, and all of them were incredibly grateful to be able to work with Demarest on their essays.