The Bottom Line: How To Start A College Essay
The college essay introduction should hook your reader and make her want to know more and read more.
Good personal statement introductions will contain the following features:
- A killer first line
- A detailed description of an experience from your life
- A pivot to the bigger picture, in which you explain why and how this experience has shaped you, your point of view, and/or your values.
You don’t have to write the introduction first, and you certainly don’t have to write your first sentence first. Instead, start by developing your story by telling it out loud to a friend. You can then work on your first sentence and your pivot.
The first sentence should either be short, punchy, and carry some ambiguity or questions, orbe a detailed and beautiful description setting an easily pictured scene. The pivot, on the other hand, should answer the question, “How does the story you’ve told connect to a larger truth or insight about you?”
Essay No 1 On Composition About Myself:
My name is . I grew up as an only child. I am thirteen years old. My parents died while I was quite little, so I live with my grandparents.
Accustomed to living with older adults, I always act more mature than my age. I am in . I have had a lot of people invest in me academically, so I have excelled in most of my classes. My hobbies include music, reading and traveling. Although I dont get to travel much, I relish every moment I get to. I am generally pleased with my life.
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How To Write A Thank You Card To A College Professor
You are not alone if you sink in your chair when a college instructor tells everyone to introduce yourself in class. Some professors use icebreakers such as personal introductions to encourage student participation in class discussions. Asking and answering questions in class is less intimidating when you know your classmates. Ironically, a well-intended activity to help you feel more relaxed can unleash all your anxieties. Preparing a short introduction paragraph about yourself can calm your nerves and bolster self-confidence when you are put on the spot to introduce yourself in college.
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Stick To A Clear Essay Plan
Creativity is an aspect very much appreciated in writing, but dont assume that a creative essay is not also an organized one. Obviously, you don’t want to write a bunch of words without meaning, so make sure you write about just one subject at a time.
You will have a maximum number of words, so the secret is not to try to cover everything in your essay. Create a plan before you actually start writing, organize your essay in three parts , and decide on the main ideas you want to express.
Why Intro Sample 2 Works
Let’s take a look at what qualities make this essay’s introduction particularly memorable.
#1: It’s Got a Great First Sentence
With the first sentence, we are immediately thrust into the middle of the actioninto an exciting part of an argument about whether “biogeochemical” is really a word. We’re also immediately challenged. Is this a word? Have I ever heard it before? Does a scientific neologism count as a word?
#2: It Shows Rather Than Tells
Since the whole essay is going to be about words, it makes sense for Shaan to demonstrate his comfort with all different kinds of language:
- Complex, elevated vocabulary, such as “biogeochemical” and “donnybrook”
- Foreign words, such as “parantha” and “Camembert”
- Colorful descriptive words, such as “shrieks and shouts,” “famously flakey, “whizzes past,” and “hash it out”
- “Fake” words, such as “unwinning” and “Rambo”
What’s great is that Shaan is able to seamlessly mix the different tones and registers these words imply, going from cerebral to funny and back again.
#3: It Uses a Pivot Sentence
This essay uses the value-extraction style of pivot: “Words and communicating have always been of tremendous importance in my life.” After we see an experience linking Shaan’s clear love of his family with an interest in word games, he clarifies that this is exactly what the essay will be aboutusing a very straightforward pivoting sentence.
#4: It Piles On Examples to Avoid Vagueness
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Pivot Idea : Link The Described Experience With Others
In this pivot, you draw a parallel between the life event that you’ve been describing in your very short story and other events that were similar in some significant way. Helpful phrases include “now I see how x is really just one of the many x‘s I have faced,” “in a way, x is a good example of the x-like situations I see daily,” and “and from then on every time I …”
This state of discovery is something I strive for on a daily basis. My goal is to make all the ideas in my mind fit together like the gears of a Swiss watch. Whether it’s learning a new concept in linear algebra, talking to someone about a programming problem, or simply zoning out while I read, there is always some part of my day that pushes me towards this place of cohesion: an idea that binds together some set of the unsolved mysteries in my mind.
After cataloging and detailing the many interesting thoughts that flow through her brain in a specific hour, Aubrey uses the pivot to explain that this is what every waking hour is like for her “on a daily basis.” She loves learning different things and finds a variety of fields fascinating. And her pivot lets us know that her example is a demonstration of how her mind works generally.
Short Scholarship Essay Example: Tell Us About Yourself
With 100 words, you can only focus on one or two elements of your life. Think about your biggest selling points the things that show you are the ideal candidate. Start by introducing yourself and your educational status. Then jump into the main topic of the essay. You may not have room to mention how the scholarship will help your education. Instead, mention how your education can help your career. The other information will be implied.
My name is Christian Wood. I am a high school senior who will be attending the University of Nevada, Reno in the fall. I am getting a degree in journalism so I can become an online journalist. My goal is to work for the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, or another news outlet that has a strong online presence. The internet is already where most people get their news, and the industry will be even bigger by the time I graduate. Getting a degree in journalism with a focus on digital media will set me up for a fulfilling, fast-paced career fit for the future.
Word Count: 106
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College Essay Introduction Components
Now, let’s zero in on the first part of the college essay. What are the ingredients of a great personal statement introduction? I’ll list them here and then dissect them one by one in the next section:
- A killer first sentence: This hook grabs your readers’ attention and whets their appetite for your story.
- A vivid, detailed story that illustrates your eventual insight: To make up for how short your story will be, you must insert effective sensory information to immerse the reader.
- An insightful pivot toward the greater point you’re making in your essay: This vital piece of the essay connects the short story part to the part where you explain what the experience has taught you about yourself, how you’ve matured, and how it has ultimately shaped you as a person.
You’ve got your reader’s attention when you see its furry ears extended No, wait. Squirrel. You’ve got your squirrel’s attention.
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How To Write A Self
A self-introduction essay is, in most cases, written using the first-person point of view. As a writer, you simply need to talk about yourself and nothing more to a specific audience. You may also like essay writing examples
A self-introduction essay outline can be easy to write, since all you have to do is to introduce yourself. However, one needs to avoid sounding like a robot or a person speaking in monotone. Of course, you need to make the composition interesting and engaging, instead of making it plain and bland. This is probably the main challenge of writing a self-introduction essay, and the first thing every writer needs to be aware of.
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Graduate School Applicant Example
I’ve always loved the Victorian period in English literature. Even as a kid, Dickens captured my imagination more thoroughly than the Harry Potter stories or anything else. As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, I studied English with a concentration on Victorian fiction. Now, I hope to continue exploring this fundamentally important literary period as a graduate student.
First Sentence Idea : Direct Question To The Reader
To work well, your question should be especially specific, come out of left field, or pose a surprising hypothetical.
How does an agnostic Jew living in the Diaspora connect to Israel?
This is a thorny opening, raising questions about the difference between being an ethnic Jew and practicing the religion of Judaism, and the obligations of Jews who live outside of Israel to those who live in Israel and vice versa. There’s a lot of meat to this question, setting up a philosophically interesting, politically important, and personally meaningful essay.
While traveling through the daily path of life, have you ever stumbled upon a hidden pocket of the universe?
There’s a dreamy and sci-fi element to this first sentence, as it tries to find the sublime inside the prosaic .
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Long Scholarship Essay Example: Tell Us About Yourself
Scholarship essays that are 500 words or longer let you tell the whole story. You can discuss your past, present and future in a comprehensive manner. Avoid rambling and make sure each topic contributes to the overall essay. If one piece feels out of place, remove it and elaborate more on the existing elements. By the end of the essay, the reader should have a full understanding of who you are and what you want to accomplish.
Word Count: 534
Pivot Idea : Expand The Time Frame
In this pivot, you gesture out from the specific experience you describe to the overarching realization you had during it. Think of helper phrases such as “that was the moment I realized” and “never again would I.”
Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. The other was the realization that I’d been in this type of situation before. In fact, I’d been born into this type of situation.
This is a pretty great pivot, neatly connecting the story Stephen’s been telling and his general reliance on his own resourcefulness and ability to roll with whatever life throws at him. It’s a double bonus that he accomplishes the pivot with a play on the word “click,” which here means both the literal clicking of the car door latch and the figurative clicking his brain does. Note also how the pivot crystallizes the moment of epiphany through the word “suddenly,” which implies instant insight.
But in that moment I realized that the self-deprecating jokes were there for a reason. When attempting to climb the mountain of comedic success, I didn’t just fall and then continue on my journey, but I fell so many times that I befriended the ground and realized that the middle of the metaphorical mountain made for a better campsite. Not because I had let my failures get the best of me, but because I had learned to make the best of my failures.
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Essay No 4 On What I Like About Myself:
Who am I? Answering a question like this has often been difficult even for those with high intelligence quotient. I may not know who I fully am, but I know who I am not. I am not a vindictive person, I am not irresponsible, I am not slack with my studies, I am not dishonest and I will never deliberately set out to hurt anyone. I am not petty and I am not a bully.
My name is . I am fourteen years old and I am a boy. I was born into the family of Mr and Mrs . I am an only child. I live a sheltered life. I live with my parents and my grandparents. Ours is an extended family setting. Even my mothers relatives often come to crash at our house during the weekends.
My parents are outgoing people and they are quite down to earth. I get lots of attention from both of my parents, my grandparents, their friends and basically everyone around me. This probably explains why I crave attention wherever I go and I only associate with people who show me care and attention.
I love meeting people and I love making friends with people who are social. I am who I am, and I make no excuses for how I have turned out.
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Strategy : A Concrete Image
Starting with a concrete image helps the reader to grasp your point more immediately. For example, this applicant begins to describe her favorite places to think:
While eating Cheerios, my eyes wandered from the yellow giant cardboard box to the white plastered ceiling, with shades of dawn in muted colors, and back to my bowl of cereal.
This is probably not a particular episode since the applicant frequently uses the kitchen table as a thoughtful refuge. Yet she offers a vivid description with concrete details, and so we can picture her sitting at her kitchen table, letting her mind drift into pensive thought.
Strategy 5: An Element of Mystery
There are many ways to engage your reader, but the elements of mystery and surprise are perhaps the most effective. With admissions officers pouring over as many as fifty essays in a day, they begin to scan applicant statements, stopping to read only those that are written extremely well and are out of the ordinary. There is perhaps no better way to get your readers to finish reading your personal statement than to make them guess what you are writing about through the element of mystery.
Consider this applicants introduction:
I had a mental image of them standing there, wearing ragged clothes, hot and depressed, looking upon us as intruders in their world. They would sneer at our audacity. We would invade their territory only to take pictures and observe them like tourists.
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Short Speech About Myself For Students
I am given two minutes to talk about myself. When I ponder at my being, at my existence and my physique, first thing that strike in my mind is my existence as a human. I am not more than a human.
I being a human possess such qualities which distinguish me from rest of the creature of God. God has endowed human with faculty of reasoning and intellect which is the most sublime characteristic in every man. My life as a human is full of adventures, experiences and experiments. I am twenty years old boy. I study in university.
I passed my college and school life where I faced many hardships and difficulties but I didnt yield to those temporary forces of world. Even I got miserably failed twice during my school life. My life is amalgamation of failures and successes.
When I have a cursory glance at myself now. I truly stand indebted to my poor parents who not only supported me but encouraged me through hard times. They never lost their hope in me. After consequent failures in exams.; At last I succeeded and made my parents happy. I took second position at college level and joined university.
When I was selected in university I made my mind that I have to work every waking to succeed in exams. I am punctual, regular and dedicated to my studies. Since last two years at university, I am position holder and have topped in all curricular and extra curricular activities and events celebrated annually and monthly.
First Sentence Idea : Counterintuitive Statement
To avoid falling into generalities with this one, make sure you’re really creating an argument or debate with your counterintuitive sentence. If no one would argue with what you’ve said, then you aren’t making an argument.
If string theory is really true, then the entire world is made up of strings, and I cannot tie a single one.
There’s a great switch here from the sub-microscopic strings that make up string theory to the actual physical strings you can tie in real life. This sentence hints that the rest of the essay will continue playing with linked, albeit not typically connected, concepts.
All children, except one, grow up.
In just six words, this sentence upends everything we think we know about what happens to human beings.
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Interests Hobbies And Achievements
What are your interests and hobbies?
Playing a sport? Traveling? Hiking? Reading? Kite flying? Or something unusual, say bull fighting?
Go into details if youve pursued the hobby with serious interest. For example, if youre into reading, mention what genres you read, your favorite books, your favorite author, and how reading has affected you.
Dont forget to mention your participation in extracurricular activities in school, if you did. Dont forget to mention any significant achievements youve had?