I spend a lot of time talking to 17-year-olds about what is valuable in life and what is worth aspiring to. With the Rio games on the horizon, I thought, who better to look to than Olympic athletes for lessons on motivation, ambition, and expression of your greatest self?

Part of being a successful applicant is choosing wisely where you'll apply. With our mania for applying to a dozen or even two dozen colleges, the idea of targeting your choices has lost out to strafing the landscape with applications.

I recently had the pleasure of talking to a group of high school students in a summer writing program about college application essays.

Alongside my college counseling work, I've written six novels and taught creative writing to college students and adults for decades. You don't need to write a novel to get into college, but you do need to adopt some of the essentials of writing creatively to make your application essays sing.