Avoid A Theme That Everyone Else Is Using
Your essay will be easier to writeand more exciting to readif its based on genuine emotion and authentic experience. Dont try to guess what you think an admissions office wants to read. So if all your friends are writing application essays about the topic of the day, that may be a good reason to stay away from it. Unless, of course, you have a unique angle that you are burning to share.
Brainstorm Your Topic Ideas
Your topic is most definitely one of the most critical parts of the essay, so choosing the right one is always challenging. A simple trick is to list as many topics as possible for a set period. Dont cringe at your ideas, and dont underestimate them at this point. They can easily be transformed in the future and can become of great potential.
If you have no idea how to write a college essay about yourself, ask your parents or people who know you best about what they find alluring about you. Think of a time when you stood up to something you never thought you would, a good trait of yours, a skill or talent. And use the power of language to compel everyone with your writing skills!
So What Should You Write About
When brainstorming topics, think about challenges you have faced and how youve handled them. You can also ask people who know you best how they would describe you in a few words and why. Their responses can be great jumping off points for writing your essay.
Some students choose to write about seemingly small, ordinary topics that illuminate their character beautifully, and are both poignant and thought-provoking. One student I worked with wrote about growing up hiking with her parents from the time when she was a baby in a backpack carrier, to a grumpy middle schooler, to an appreciative, nature-loving young adult who found outdoor experiences were an essential part of who she was at her core.
Other students choose to describe major life events, or especially challenging experiences that have impacted them deeply. An essay that comes to mind is one written by a student who battled loneliness and isolation due to anxiety and depression, and ultimately found invaluable reprieve in the arts, a passion that they hoped to continue to pursue at the college level.
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Always Always Always Proofread
Proofreading is the last step of the writing process. After youve revised your first draft and reworked your content as necessary to make your essay as strong as it can be, proofread it to catch any spelling or grammar mistakes that might have slipped past you during editing. This is perhaps the easiest part of writing a college essay . . . and the easiest to overlook. Make it a priority to proofread every part of every application before you hit send.
The 13 Best College Essay Tips To Craft A Stellar Application
In many ways, the most labor-intensive part of your college application process is the essay. Its not just about forwarding transcripts or entering a list of extracurricular activitiesyou have to craft something personal and compelling to show the admissions committee who you are beyond your resume.
In this article, well go over our 13 best tips for writing college essays. Well give tips for every step of the process including planning, writing, and editing your essay, as well as some quick and easy tips to boost any essays you already have written! With these college essay tips, youll be that much closer to the best admissions essay ever!
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Example College Essay Format Analysis: The Burying Grandma Essay
To see how the Narrative Essay structure works, check out the essay below, which was written for the Common App “Topic of your choice” prompt. You might try reading it here first before reading the paragraph-by-paragraph breakdown below.
They covered the precious mahogany coffin with a brown amalgam of rocks, decomposed organisms, and weeds. It was my turn to take the shovel, but I felt too ashamed to dutifully send her off when I had not properly said goodbye. I refused to throw dirt on her. I refused to let go of my grandmother, to accept a death I had not seen coming, to believe that an illness could not only interrupt, but steal a beloved life.
The author begins by setting up the Challenges + Effects . This moment also sets up some of her needs: growth and emotional closure, to deal with it and let go/move on. Notice the way objects like the shovel help bring an essay to life, and can be used for symbolic meaning. That object will also come back later.
In the second paragraph, she flashes back to give us some context of what things were like leading up to these challenges , which helps us understand her world. It also helps us to better understand the impact of her grandmothers death and raises a question: How will she prevent such blindness from resurfacing?
Here, the author Raises the Stakes because we as readers sense intuitively that this is not the way to get over her grandmothers death.
A good story well told. Thats your goal.
Top College Application Essay Examples For Students
8 min read
Feb 18, 2019
Dec 21, 2022
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Most students spend many days researching and writing a perfect college application essay. However, admission officers only have a few minutes to read it. Therefore, it should be convincing enough to get their attention.
On the other hand, the best essays are indeed not only the things that matter to college. But a great college essay can compensate for poor test scores and grades. Similarly, a bad essay can also overshadow all of your accomplishments. So consider your application as a tool for standing out among other applicants.
Look at this blog if you are looking for some college application essay examples to get an idea. Then, explore various samples to write amazing college essays for your admission.
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Take Advantage Of Resources
Though developing a strong college essay can be a long, tedious process, you donât have to go through it by yourself. . There is a wide range of online admission resources that you can access through various universities and nonprofit organizations. These help you make the best version of your prompt and enhance your chances of getting accepted.
How To Make A Resume For College Stand Out
Whittle your list down to your most impressive accomplishments. You don’t need to include your GPA and scores, since colleges will see them in your application.
- Include your highest achievements and honors.
- Describe major leadership roles and initiatives you have undertaken.
- Include unusual but impressive activities, experiences, and special skills that don’t fit neatly into the activity sections of college applications.
- If you have spent significant time working outside of school, include your work experience.
- Mention special circumstances, such as a part-time job, that kept you from participating in outside activities as much as you wanted to.
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Heres How Forbes Got The Chatgpt Ai To Write 2 College Essays In 20 Minutes
Not only does ChatGPT write clear, compelling essays, but it can also conjure up its own personal … details and embellishments that could up a students chance of acceptance and would be difficult to verify.
getty
Forbes full conversation with ChatGPT, OpenAIs newest natural language model, is pasted below. Each of the college admissions essays took less than 10 minutes to complete. Read our story about ChatGPTs capacity to write college applications here.
Hilariously Awful College Admissions Essays
My face would burn bright red, and I would quickly lose my train of thought. If you present those reasons explicitly, you may appear too superficial and be viewed as not a very valuable asset for the company. You know what else it could be? How did she begin this quest to distinguish herself? Overcome with wonder, I wanted to touch and taste, to stick my head into industrialsized freezers, to explore every crevice. If this sounds like you,then please share your story. The goal is usually to earn a spot in your preferred institution. You can place an order an admission essay with ustoday and let a professional finish the hassle for you. When you are limited to 500-600 words in writing, you must be particularly careful choosing your words.
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Make A Plan Of Attack For Your Essays
The first thing youll need to do is identify all the essays youll need to write and their deadlines. It may help you to make a spreadsheet with the essay guidelines for each school, the word count, the prompts, the due date, and any special instructions. This will help you figure out:
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How many essays youll need to write, and how long those essays need to be.
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Whether you can reuse any essays: In general, you can reuse essays for prompts that are about your life, broadly similar in theme, and have a similar word count. You probably cant reuse essays that are very specific to the college, like Why This College essays.
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Which essay you should write first: Youll probably want to start first on the essay with the earliest application deadline. Alternatively, if you have plenty of time or the deadlines are close together, you could start with the longest essay or the essay that will be used for the most schools . Do what you feel most comfortable with.
With all this information gathered, youll be able to make a plan of attack for your essays and make sure nothing gets lost in the application shuffle. .
Avoid Cliches And Platitudes
The more cliches you use in your writing, the more boring and less insightful your essay will be. Cliches are phrases that are so overused that they are essentially meaningless, and they are likely to make any reader roll their eyes. Phrases like a dime a dozen, outside the box, cold as ice, dirt cheap, flash in the pan, and so on are frequently deployed in conversation because they convey a common idea quickly. But you dont want your essay to be common, so avoid cliches. Try to think about how you can communicate the same idea in a more specific and interesting way.
Heres a list of over 600 cliches. But for the most part, you wont need a list youll know something is a cliche because you will have heard it a million times already.
You should also avoid platitudes or sweeping generalizations about life. These are statements that are so broad and far-reaching as to be both obvious and completely uninsightful.
So avoid making statements like And thats how I learned that hard work pays off, or Theres no I in team. You may think you sound sage or wise, but the truth is, platitudes are going to sound immature and poorly-formed to the reader. Similarly, dont say things that sound like they could come from an inspirational quote account on Instagram.
Avoid saying anything like this at all costs.
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Put Yourself In The Place Of An Admissions Counselor
If you were someone who had to read dozens of college essays every day, would you enjoy reading this one? Does it have a promising beginning? Is it easy to follow? Is it free from distracting typos? Does it have a logical conclusion? Does it make you want to know more about the writer? If you think so, chances are that an admission counselor will too.
Ready to start? Here are some tips to come up with an A+ college application essay:
- You may be asked to write about a personal experience, an achievement, or a person who is significant to you. Go beyond the what or the who and dig into the how and the why.
- If you write about a trip or event, describe how this experience affected you and why its meaningful to you.
- If you are writing about a person in your life, be personal and specific, not just sentimental. Explain what this person did and how their actions, words, or example affected you.
Find out how other students successfully tackled their college application essays.
Visit bigfuture.org for more free, comprehensive college planning resources.
The Purpose Of The Admission Essay
Your college application essay needs to breathe life into your application. It should capture your genuine personality, explaining who you are beyond a series of grades, test scores, and after-school activities. But thats not nearly as scary as it seems, because you get to choose what to share and how to share it. Take a minute and think about the college or university admission officers who will be reading your essay. How will your essay convey your background and what makes you unique? If you had the opportunity to stand in front of an admission committee to share a significant story or important information about yourself, what would you say? The college application essay is your chance to share your personality, goals, influences, challenges, triumphs, life experiences, or lessons learned. Not to mention why you’re a good fit for the college or universityand why it’s a good fit for you. These are the stories behind the list of activities and leadership roles on your application.
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Why College Admissions Boards Want College Application Essays
Before starting the writing process, its important to review and address why college admissions boards want college application essays in the first place. The supplemental essays provide the opportunity to let the admissions boards know about unique traits that they cant read in the general application. Each essay is a chance for every applicant to speak directly to the admissions board and let them know their unique story.
For instance, if a student has few extracurriculars, they might use the essay to explain that they used that time to work a minimum wage job to finance a college fund. Maybe a students GPA dropped drastically during one semester because of a life-altering eventthe essay is an opportunity to discuss how that event may have negatively affected their grades but tremendously shifted their perspective of life.
Admissions boards are looking for students who can effectively communicate about their life, work, and learning philosophies. This helps the board get to know each applicant as a student and a human, and it can help them determine if each student is a good fit for the university or college.
As the College Board says, Colleges want to see that prospective students can write well and build a logical argument with supporting ideas. Some colleges also use the essay to help determine whether an applicant is a good fit.
What Is A College Admission Essay
It all depends on the kind of student you are. A student can fall into one of these three categories:
First is the type of student that falls within the 95th percentile in SAT and his or her GPA is 4.0. To top it up, you have an impressive list of activities and proven leadership records. In this case, college admission essay might be a little less important for you. The college you are about to join may have already decided that they will admit you. All you can do is to bring out your personality in the essay. You can stop reading this article at this point.
But we also have the second category the middle of the pack. Most students fall in this middle grey. If you are one of these students, imagine that the person who will be reading your essay will be comparing you to 99 other applicants who have the same qualifications as you. They have the same test scores, the same GPA, and just a couple of extracurricular activities without any proven leadership records. Your essay is what will set you apart.
The third and most unfortunate category of students is the below-average group. Having poor grades with no extracurricular activities can mean that your entry into college is based on how much you can express yourself on an essay and convince the person reading your essay that you deserve an acceptance letter. Fortunately, colleges often admit students with weaker academic qualifications for different reasons, and so, you still have a chance.
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Organize Everything Into An Outline Format
If you have your mind set on the topic, the next step is starting the real deal. Creating an outline will help you put your ideas in place. Your outline can go as follows:
It would be best to start with something that grabs the readers attention. After your reader is engaged, put relevant background information the reader should know. Finally, work on the thesis statement that presents your main point.
In this part, you should elaborate on your topic in depth. The paragraphs are limited to the word count. Try to be as precise as you can. Elaborate on the details by giving relevant examples for each one of them.
In the end, remind the reader what all this was about by echoing your thesis statement. Summarize your main points and end the essay with a beautiful and memorable line.
Application Essay Writing Tips And Prompts
Our veteran admissions counselors are frequently asked to share expert advice about writing compelling college essays. We asked our admissions counselors to share their perspectives on why the college essay matters and what matters most. We trust youll find this information useful as you prepare your college applications. Feel free to contact our admissions staff with additional questions.
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