Application Essay Questions

Application Essay Questions Giving yourself plenty of time, focusing on the specific details of your life, and showcasing your unique personality can help you craft the perfect college application essay. A strong essay can give you the best chance to get into the school of your dreams. Reading the essays of other students who successfully got into the college of their choice is a good way to find inspiration for your own writing. Every year, the path to college is paved with more roadblocks. Increasing applications from the U.S. and abroad mean that universities across the country are rewarded with an even more elite pool of candidates. Impeccable grades and test scores alone are no longer enough to set students apart from the crowd. As social media and technology begin to change the landscape of higher education, admissions officers are looking for new ways to get to know potential students. You can’t make up that passion, and you shouldn’t try. Find an idea wherever you canâ€"application essays tend to be a source of hesitation more than inspiration. Most colleges, as well as the Common Application, will have the topics for their essays available online. Think about what you’ve accomplished and what you feel defines you. Think about parts of your background that have shaped your life. Ultimately, every application essay you write is going to be about you, as it should be the easiest thing to write about and it will give admission officers an idea of who you are. If your schedule and ours permit, we invite you to come to the Writing Center. Make an appointment or submit your essay to our online writing center . Look them up, and then start looking anywhere and everywhere for ideas. It’s always good to pull ideas from your own experiences. Making sure you have the right punctuation in the right place and using active voice over passive is vital. That said, make sure your good grammar doesn’t keep the essay from sounding like you. Don’t push to use fancier language or longer sentences than you normally would. Use the simplest word you need to get a point acrossâ€"every time. Sell yourself as you really are, so that reading your writing and having a conversation with you both feel like meeting the same person. Most top-tier colleges and universities require you to include an application essay or personal statement when you submit your application. But how do Ivy League and other elite schools differ from your average state or private college when it comes to admissions essays? The application essay is not a résumé, nor is it an epic. They also don’t expect you to have survived trauma or carried out heroic feats by your senior year in high school. So always represent yourself in the best way possible, but make sure you keep that depiction truthful. Word order means more than word choiceâ€"you need to check, double-check, sit for a while and check again to make sure your admissions essay is as polished as possible. Basic grammar is really, really, important; it won’t get you into a school on its own, but without it, you could cost yourself a spot. The genuine article onlyâ€"everything is significant when it comes to telling your own story. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been or what you’ve seen, and this is not a time where a reader is judging your list of achievements. The most important factor of your college admissions essay is that you’re writing about what’s truly important to you. Have confidence in your own choicesâ€"what music is special to you, the authors you most value, the activities you participate in. Your enthusiasm for wood carving, slam poetry, Coen Brothers movies, or whatever, is what will jump off the page. There is still no better way to introduce yourself than through an admission essay. In a sea of otherwise identical college applications, your college application essay gives you a chance to show why you deserve a coveted spot at your preferred university.