It’s that time of year again. Seniors spend their free time—typically a half hour at about 2 a.m.—writing draft after draft of college essays.

The first draft is bound to get trashed. If you’re like most people, it won’t follow the prompt of the essay question.

And the second draft is just boring. “This is OK—but it doesn’t make you stand out,” your college counselor will tell you.

So, on to draft three. Spending multiple sleepless nights trying to polish it to perfection, until you are finally satisfied with your work.

Only it’s 500 words over the word limit.

However, this seemingly ridiculous work may pay off. It certainly did for Francie Neukom, ’04, who attends Stanford University, and Peter Liu, ’05, who attends UCLA. Both are now published authors.

Margie Amott, independent college counselor, submitted Neukom’s and Liu’s college essays, along with five others, to be evaluated for publication in “The Fiske Guide: Real College Essays That Work” by Edward B. Fiske and Bruce G. Hammond.

Five of the seven essays she submitted, including Neukom’s and Liu’s, were accepted.

To select the winning essays, the book’s authors asked school counselors across the nation to send in their best essays. “If a counselor forwarded it as one of the best he/she had seen, we knew they would be good,” Hammond said in an e-mail interview.

“From there, we chose essays that we thought would fit into our broader vision of the book—a little like admissions officers at a highly selective college picking a class,” he said. “We did not use plenty of essays that were good enough.”

The book was published in August and, according to Hammond, has sold approximately 150 copies per week.

After a short introduction on writing a good college essay and picking a suitable topic, the book goes on to give real examples of 109 well-written college essays on various topics such as academics, hobbies, athletics, family, humor and “why are you applying.”

Neukom’s essay, which describes her passion for writing and reminisces about the many penpals she’s had throughout her life, falls in the “hobbies” category.

“At first, I wrote about my relationship with my [twin] sister, but it seemed forced,” she said. “I realized that letters and postcards are very important to me and writing about them would make me stand out from the crew.”

In her “advice section” in the book, Neukom advised applicants to “write about something you really care about, even if others find it dorky or strange. My friends would always laugh at me for preferring old-fashioned snail mail to the phone. So, if you tell someone else your idea and they think it’s dumb, don’t let that deter you.”

It was actually for this reason that the authors of the book chose Neukom’s essay among the others.

“Francie’s [essay] was noteworthy because she picked a topic that everyone else thought was weird—which is why it was so great. Letter writing was a wonderful way for her to show how much she values friendships, even long-distance ones,” Hammond said.

In contrast to Neukom’s detail-saturated essay, Amott believes that Liu’s essay about his interest in classical music stood out because it was a short essay that fit the prompt of writing about a “significant activity” well.

In the book, the author wrote that short essays about a “‘meaningful activity’ can easily become run-of-the-mill. [Liu] avoids that fate because [he] delves beneath the surface of his involvement in music.”

“He shows an impressive maturity in his approach to music and, at the same time, that he is an open-minded person who thrives on new influences,” Hammond said in an interview. “His conciseness is also superb—not a wasted word in the essay.”

Though his essay was gladly received by the book’s authors, Liu said that he thought it was rather “cheesy.”

“I don’t think writers can be entirely satisfied with their own writing,” Liu said. “Other readers see what is on the page, but I see what isn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if every writer in that book thought she wrote the worst essay.”

Although Amott is pleased that five of her students’ essays were published, she doesn’t always recommend that students read college essay guides.

“I generally do not care for college-essay books.  I have read most of the ones available just to know what is out there, but I advise my students to stay away from them because there is no such thing as a standard ‘quality’ essay,” she said.

“[The Fiske Essay Guide] is all right to use just to get a feel of what a good essay is because they are more traditional, quality essays—not ones that are out-of-the-box and tempting to copy.”

Furthermore, according to Amott, SCDS students can afford to worry less about their essays.

“It is my general perception that SCDS students are quality writers,” she said. “Even the weakest student is usually a solid writer.  I wish I could say that about all area high schools.”