Radford senior Kimberly Kisner has been thinking seriously about college — Notre Dame, possibly UPenn? — since junior year, but she didn't really start thinking much about her essay until last week. After all, this general's daughter already has the grades (a 4.0-plus adjusted GPA) and test scores (in the upper echelon of 2000 in her SATs, including a 720 on her writing), so she's in pretty good shape, right?

Her college counselor, Jean Fukuji, nixed that notion.

Sure, it's three weeks to Labor Day, but still she lobbed the question that left Kimberly and classmate Adam Burkett, both 17, quaking in their chairs: Have you started your college essay prep yet?

College applications aren't due yet, but those in the know say the best time to at least start — if not dot those i's and cross those t's on that stellar essay — is ... yep, now.

The weight given by a particular school to the essay varies, explained Lisa Rhone, senior associate director of the admissions office at the University of Southern California, a highly competitive private school.

"The essay is definitely important," said Rhone, whose school saw about 500 applications from Hawai'i seniors last year.

While academic preparation — types of classes taken, grade-point averages and standardized test scores — is their first concern, the number of applicants who pass those hurdles still far outnumber those USC can accept, she said.

"The rest of the application helps us to understand the student," Rhone said. "The essay is the most important piece of that."

BEFORE YOU WRITE

What are you waiting for? asks Gen Tanabe, the first student from Waialua High to be accepted at Harvard, who went on to write nine books on getting into and paying for college, including "Accepted: 50 Successful College Admission Essays."

"A lot of students wait until the last minute," he said. "They can do that for their classes, but unlike those, you really need to do a lot of thinking."

That's because the early bird gets the best ideas.

"If you haven't started writing, start brainstorming," he recommended.

Begin by envisioning the key message, that slice of your life you want to share with admissions officers. Sit with a blank sheet, Tanabe said, and clear your mind of any preconceived notions of what you think the admissions officer wants to hear.

"Think about your best days, your worst days, your biggest accomplishments, think about your own life," Tanabe said. "Take a notepad and start writing down anything. Don't cross things off right away — give yourself a couple days."

GOOD ESSAY ELEMENTS

Once you have the list that includes those middle-of-the-night or in-the-shower inspirations, get out the red pen and start narrowing themes down.

Ditch topics that won't fit in the space allotted, Tanabe said. If you're trying to cram details of your entire trip to the Philippines last summer into two pages, you may give it short shrift. However, narrowing to a moment, such as the first time you met a family member who taught you a lesson or left an indelible mark on your life, could be the perfect essay topic.

"(You're) always looking for a nice story," Tanabe said, "and the student's ability to analyze something. What kinds of things did they learn?"

Catherine Sustana, an English professor at Hawai'i Pacific University, also knows good essays — in fact, her college admissions essay is part of a book, "Essays That Worked." That essay got her accepted at Brown, Harvard, UNC-Chapel and Georgetown. (She ended up attending Brown, an Ivy League college.) She wrote about road trips with her family, drawing a metaphor between those trips and her ability to write.

"The best essays I've seen make good use of metaphors, metaphors that can reveal something about the person," said Sustana.

Concrete imagery is key, as well: "Admissions officers are reading example after example of abstract accomplishments," chair of the English program at HPU. "When they read something that they see, hear or taste, it really wakes them up."

Know where the heart is, she added. Don't just put something on the page and tinker; have a clear idea of what you want people to know about you.

"I, for a long time, thought it was supposed to look a certain way," Sustana said. "A friend of mine helped me to understand that it was something inside me, something that made me different."

Sustana's advice for essayists: "Look at your own life, see that you're a thoughtful person, reflect that in some way, (explore ways of) looking at the world around you, make sense of it."

No, it's not always easy.

"It's frightening for students to go out on a limb where the essay isn't going to look like any other," she said. "But that's exactly the limb they want to be on."

PROOF IS IN THE EDITING

OK, your first draft done, what's next? Run it through spell check and send it on through to the college?

Nooo!

(That's college counselor Fukuji's shrieking you hear.)

Besides giving it to your parents to offer feedback, Fukuji suggests showing it to a trusted adult, preferably someone who can help you proof it carefully, and someone who knows you.

After his chat with his counselor, bright-eyed Adam, 17, with the posture of the ROTC leader he is, sat up even straighter. He's determined to show his finished essay to non-English teachers who know him, too. They can give him a read on whether he really captured himself on paper.

As Tanabe knows, a trusted adult will let you know when you're off the mark.

"What may be acceptable to you or your friends may have a different connotation to someone a generation older," he said.

Tanabe himself had two English teachers who helped him with the essay that took him two months to get just right.

"You want an editor who's good at grammar, spelling," he said. "You also want someone who can give you context. (It sounds like the making of) the world's longest term paper, but what I ended up with was a really tight, well-written essay."

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED QUESTIONS

Which of these is a real college-essay question?

A) "Discuss the impact of the iPod on American culture, from music to commercial flight, and imagine where that will lead and the technology that will ensue from it."

B) "Why is it acceptable to kill hogs for food, unlike dogs, when hogs are considered intelligent, too?"

C) "Have you ever walked through the aisles of a warehouse store like Costco or Sam's Club and wondered who would buy a jar of mustard a foot-and-a-half tall?"

The answer is C, a question posed by the University of Chicago, that goes on to say: "We've bought it, but it didn't stop us from wondering about other things, like absurd eating contests, impulse buys, excess, unimagined uses for mustard, storage, preservatives, notions of bigness ... and dozens of other ideas both silly and serious. Write an essay somehow inspired by super-huge mustard."

Essay questions range from the standard ("How have your life experiences and background shaped you into an individual who will enrich the university community?") to the strictly academic (i.e., "Discuss an aspect of a book that has shaped the way you think") to the offbeat, wacky and surreal, like when the University of Virginia asks, "What is your favorite word, and why?"

That school scrapped a question about switching bodies — roughly, whose would you choose and why — because the responses got a little too weird. Plus, there were a few too many literalists who wrote about hot people. (A tip: College admissions staffs generally aren't looking for students whose intellectual pinnacle is their appreciation of great abs.)

Some of Chicago's questions offer poetical prompts. "If you could balance on a tightrope, over what landscape would you walk?" Some are blank canvases. "How do you feel about Wednesday?"

Then the University of Pennsylvania offers this classic in the admissions biz: "You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit page 217."

— Washington Post