Dos And Donts Of Writing A College Admission Essay

Do's And Don'ts Of Writing A College Admission Essay This year's seven prompts offer a wide variety of approaches for you to display your writing skills. Each one has potential -- either obvious or hidden -- for you to make a meaningful impression on your admission readers. Can you substitute an advanced vocabulary word for a phrase? Writing concisely expresses to the admissions officers that can organize your thoughts and that you respect their time. Advanced vocabulary should be the spice of the essay to give it flavor, so you’ll use plain language most of the time. Essays that are riddled with advanced vocabulary can seem pompous or even inadvertently comical to the reader. When selecting anecdotes for your essay, pick vivid ones that you can tell succinctly. If a story would require 450 words of a 600 word essay, then you’re not going to have a lot of space to express self-reflection and analysis of the situation. Remember that the admissions officers are more interested in your perspective of what happened than the events themselves. In our experience, the main worry that applicants have is that their essay won’t stand out. This is a legitimate concern as you will likely compete with numerous applicants who have backgrounds similar to yours. Therefore, follow these tips to ensure that your essay shines in the competitive admissions process. The college admission essay can be so crucial, yet so daunting regardless of what you plan on studying - psychology, social work, public health, real estate, teaching. Here are five tips to help you polish up your college admission essay to make it as good as you can. This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. Imagine that each school has a unique character that you’re aligning yourself with. The goal of the personal experiences described in your essay is to show that you’ve reached the level of maturity and competency to thrive in their school. If this is a legacy type of situation, where you have relatives that have gone to that school, you can mention that as well, in such a way that endears the school to your family. It’s possible that schools will be glad to hear how their university has impacted your family. The recent arrests in Operation Varsity Blues put the entire college admissions structure under well-deserved scrutiny. One pitfall of extenuating circumstances essays is they tend towards hyperbole and overexageration. This applicant provides balance and nuance to their issues at home and concrete ways that they’ve developed and matured over time. The admission essay isn’t terribly time consuming, but you want to not be rushed. Write the draft of the essay, and give yourself time to reflect on it. This time of reflection and thinking about the essay can be the most rewarding. Put something on the page early, and think it over, and make changes without pressure of finishing under an impending deadline. While the data collected from students admitted to Harvard and Stanford is the most specific, AdmitSee also collected interesting information on other Ivy League schools. Browse profiles and reviews of top rated admissions essay editors and have your admissions essay professionally edited today. The essay prompts on the Common App are predictable and mundane. The options in allowed applicants to describe their accomplishments, the obstacles they’d encountered in life, or the problems they would like to solve. These questions are little more than invitations for stock answers delivered in stock formats . I realized that if math isn’t my strong suit, I probably won’t enjoy a career in banking. I feel like many of my friends want to go to business school, but don’t actually enjoy the work or have the skills required to be a successful student. They also link their special circumstances into their proposed major, Public Relations. I appreciate that this essay is very straightforward. They get right to the point why they are at their current university, what they hope to study at UT, and how their goals evolved over time. At the time, I was taking care of my mother, a single parent, and coordinating her transfer to rehab for alcohol addiction. I became the head of household responsible for caring for my three younger sisters. I became a full-time student, employee, and house mom. Instead of getting discouraged by my setback in calculus, I saw it as an opportunity to grow and reconsider my future. College Admission Essays are an important part of being selected to college in the admission process. Here are 10 tips for how best to accomplish the essay that will help you get accepted. As I got to know him better through our frequent email exchanges, I soon discovered that he had a great sense of humor, in addition to genuine sensitivity. When we began discussing ideas for essays, I encouraged him to choose a seemingly mundane event from his everyday life and develop it using his unique humor. As you'll see here (with Mike's permission), he followed my suggestion with smashing success.