We want to acknowledge our amazing students living in different countries around the world. From elementary school to college and beyond -- did you know Admission Ignition has writing students in countries like Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Switzerland, Israel, the UK, and Austria?

While we help them with sentence structure, IB extended essays, and college applications, Becca and I love to learn about our students' local values, traditions, and foods, from arepas in Caracas to esquites in Mexico. 

Students' often explore their nationalities and cultures as part of the college essay process with us. Colleges are interested in learning what makes a student unique -- and where they (or their families) are from plays a big part. Take this question from Notre Dame:

People in the Notre Dame community come from many different places, backgrounds, and walks of life. How is where you're from a part of who you are?

Or NYU's new 2023 prompt:

NYU was founded on the belief that a student's identity should not dictate the ability for them to access higher education. That sense of opportunity for all students, of all backgrounds, remains a part of who we are today and a critical part of what makes us a world class university. Our community embraces diversity, in all its forms, as a cornerstone of the NYU experience.

We would like to better understand how your experiences would help us to shape and grow our diverse community. 

Consider if you could write about your experiences, recipes, memories, etc., from your home country (or hometown!); how would you describe them? How have they shaped you or influenced how you plan to shape the world? These are questions we frequently ask our students and, as a consequence, consider ourselves. 

As instructors, we often forget that we are also lifelong students, and our writing coaching helps to remind us of this fact. While language barriers, time zones, and wifi lags can be challenging, helping our students at critical moments in their educational careers has also been incredibly valuable for us. It is an honor to help our students hone their skills so they expertly share their unique stories (whether in the form of a personal statement, poetry paper, or cover letter).

The American wordsmith Walt Whitman captures the joy found in expanding perspectives and taking in new spaces in his poem Song of the Open Road:

. . . I inhale great draughts of space;

The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought;

I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me;

I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me, 

I would do the same to you.



So, what do you think? Do his words ring true? Tell us, about the "goodness" your culture holds!