admission essay example

admission essay example

Writing an Effective Admission Essay

1. Introduction

So here’s the deal: in an essay, you not only give a statement of purpose but also try to convince an admissions committee that you’re qualified to be a student in their college. First, consider the prompt. You might need to write a different essay for each school. Some schools require a specifically focused essay. Others will specify a length. Some will state a general question that you must address, others will leave the topic up to you. In any case, make sure that you answer the essay question in its entirety. Schools will often state whether they want a certain question to be answered or incorporated into a statement. Stick to the prompt! Before you begin, do some research. Read up about the school and its culture. And its philosophy. Reading the mission statement will help you get a feel for what the school wants to achieve. Make sure that when you do write the essay, you reflect the school’s true beliefs. If it’s a liberal arts college, for example, they may be looking for a certain way of life that you incorporate into your way of thinking. During the research phase, you might also want to call the school or surf their website. You see, gathering information will let you make an informed decision about what to include in the essay. Step 3 is essentially brainstorming. Think about the topic long and hard. Let your mind wander. Ask yourself lots of questions. For example, if you are writing an essay on a certain global issue, perhaps consider discussing the impact of your community service endeavors. What makes you care about this issue? Won’t everyone have a similar essay? Will your involvement make a difference in the future? How would it feel if your application were denied because of this topic? What sort of results are you expecting and hoping for? Always get various criticisms on the essay from various people. Next up is generating an outline for the essay. This does not have to be a formal outline because it’s essentially mapping out a mental framework of the essay. You might want to jot notes on scratch paper. What’s important here is you’re organizing your thoughts and beginning to form what you want to write. At this point, you should make a bulleted list of topics you want to discuss, where you want to include them, and how they relate to the themes of the school and its guidelines. Step 5 is drafting. Write the essay, following the guidelines you have set in the previous steps. Usually, a first draft will be quite long, so you may have to pick and choose what you want to write. Make sure you stay within the length limit. The next step is critically revising the essay. During this phase, you will want to enlist a few trusted critics to support the next revision. A teacher, counselor, or knowledgeable friend is fine. However, the more critics you involve, the more confused you may become. Always make sure the critics know the guidelines of the essay. What you need to do is make sure the essay stays logically on course. Spend time revising and don’t skimp on these phases. The think over rubric style check is essential at this point. And there you go. Your artistic masterpiece is now finished. This guide is essentially a more organized and thorough way of doing what you should already be doing when you write your first original essay. If you think creatively, the results will be that much more impressive.

2. Highlighting Your Achievements

One thing to keep in mind when writing about your achievements is not to sound conceited and arrogant. There is a very fine line between confidence and arrogance. The same words can have very different connotations. Words like “I was elected” or “I was chosen” are better to use than “I was the best” or “I excelled”. You never want to give the impression that you are better than someone else, rather that you have worked hard and enjoyed what you have done. Always relate your achievements back to how you are able to use or benefit from those accomplishments in the future. This will give the admissions officer the sense that your achievements have shaped your character and identity.

Before you start writing the “Highlighting Your Achievements” section of the admission essay, you must consider different things. First off, are you the only one reading these achievements or have your friends, family, and fellow students read them? This will help you determine whether the essay is interesting to read. Secondly, prioritizing your achievements can also be important in conveying this to the reader. Make sure you only write about achievements that are relevant to the essay and are recent. Outdated accomplishments will not be of interest to the reader. Going along with relevance, you must make it clear why your achievement is important to you and others. If you won an award, why was it important and for whom? How did it change your life?

3. Conveying Your Passion and Motivation

Ideally, the exposition of your motivation to go into medicine should be incorporated into your explanation of why you want to attend medical school. This can be done in the same essay, or separately in an “additional information” section if the school provides the opportunity. You should be able to cite a few specific reasons why you want to go to medical school at a particular institution. This may include the school’s prestige, the curriculum, the location, the chance to work with underprivileged populations, or the availability of research opportunities. Be sure to show the reader that you have researched the school’s philosophy, programs, and what it has to offer, and that it has influenced your decision to attend. This “why medicine?” exposition can also transition into your explanation of why you want to be a physician, which inherently relates to the personal attributes discussed in section II.

It is imperative that you develop a work that conveys your passion for medicine and illustrates your motivation to pursue a career as a physician. Ideally, your medical education and career should be a “calling” to do medicine rather than simply a career choice. Medicine is a career that requires lifelong learning, continuous self-improvement, and frequent self-sacrifice in order to best serve the needs of the patient and the community. A “calling” to medicine usually involves some pivotal life experience that steers an individual in the direction of a medical career. Whether your exposure to the medical field was a family hardship, a positive learning experience, or volunteer work, the admissions committee should see the direct connection between your life experience and your decision to pursue medicine.

4. Overcoming Challenges and Growth

Often, because of the structure of the essay, what comes across effectively for academic awards or for entrance into graduate school is not the overt challenge, but rather the challenge of dealing with obstacles. Whether the essay is for a general undergraduate or for a specific graduate program, we believe that focusing on the process of dealing with a challenge is a reliable way to show that a student is capable of handling the rigors at our school. For graduate programs, the direct (i.e. what the nature of the specific challenge was and why it was challenging) and provide concrete evidence of the challenge, ideally in the form of a story. Concrete evidence is vital. For this reason, it may be helpful to tell the story to friends or family members in order to have an audience to talk out the difficulty and then later the essay can be written from the recorded story. What we want to hear about is the process. For undergraduate freshmen, the challenge might be more apparent in the transition from high school to a university. This type of challenge is also a great way to show that you are capable of self-reflection. This is a skill that can improve a thousandfold during grad school, but if a student is incapable of self-reflection, it’s doubtful they will succeed in even getting to the school. Self-reflection is more impressive if it leads to growth. This absolutely does not mean that the essay should seek to glorify the challenge or to suggest that a student is capable of only one kind of growth. This can sometimes be a danger in these essays – the goal being perilously close to self-pity. The essay should aim to show that the student has the skills to adapt to a new situation and the resolve to grow from it.

5. Conclusion: Making a Lasting Impression

Finally, the last step is to complete a variety of edits on the entire essay. You’ll want to ask yourself if the essay is logical, well-written, and if it creates a lasting presence. The readiness to go through these edits is what may separate your essay from the others. Often, spending more than five hours on the essay is a great way to ensure admittance to a good school.

The next step is a difficult one: begin brainstorming different topics which your essay might include. Often, colleges will give you a very broad idea on what you want to write about. The key here is to take that broad idea and make it personal.

The beginning step in writing the essay is to begin with a creative, attention-getting first sentence. This can be a quote, a well-known adage, or a statement that will shock the reader. This is to get the reader to look at the next sentence and, in doing so, allow the essay to slowly unfold a person’s personality. The next step is to decide how the essay should be structured. This is a crucial step because if the essay is not structured well, often the most important points go unnoticed.

Writing an effective admission essay can be invaluable preparation for your college application. The essay gives you an opportunity to separate yourself from those who apply and gain admission to the particular school. It’s wide open, which means you have the opportunity to change your future. Depending on your high school record and the particular college you want, your admissions essay can go in many different directions. Often, this is the best chance to discuss the person and dedication that you will bring to the school.