college admission essay examples

college admission essay examples

College Admission Essay Examples

1. Introduction

When I was younger and my imagination was much simpler, I dreamed of becoming a chocolate factory owner, an author, or a bakery shop owner with my best friend. Dreaming about the future, as my fourth-grade teacher explained, is a sign you’re going someplace, and I was determined to become someone great. These dreams evolved into even more delusional ones, especially those revolving around my future career. During elementary school, I was always torn between fashion designer and cake decorator, and those dreams led to the interest of advertising, visual arts, and culinary arts during my high school career. Now, at the brink of making one of the most important decisions of my life, I have come to the conclusion I want to be an art director, more specifically, the art director of my own cake shop. As a well-rounded student, I have a fondness for the intellectual character and learning environment that the college provides. I am aiming to attend an art school and take some marketing and business classes as well as the added bonus. I feel as though it is just as important and beneficial to indulge in my academic side while taking art classes. It has been said that I am very practical and resourceful, and I would like to enhance these traits by studying in a competitive educational environment.

2. The Importance of College Admission Essays

Remember that the college admission essay should be about you. The college wants to know about you. It does not want to read about the “next big thing” in a twelve point font. Colleges want to know what you are passionate about, and what you are passionate about is often tied to what you are envisioning for your future. It is important to spend some quality time thinking about what experiences in your life have led you to the point where you are applying for college. These experiences can range from personal triumphs, to struggles, to a moment in which you questioned something that you once held as a universal truth. All of these experiences can be molded by you into a dynamic essay that will show an admissions office who you are and why you are worthy of being enrolled at their institution. Remember that an essay without passion is like a burger without the bun. It might be good, but it will not be very appealing. The goal is to make your essay stand out from the rest, and the first step in doing that is to make sure that it does not pitter out. Some may find it helpful to draft an outline before writing the essay, so that they can organize their thoughts into a clear and coherent structure. The word limit allocated to each essay can be quite restricting, so make sure that every point you make is presented in a concise and impactful manner. At the end of the day, the essay should make the reader feel as though they have learned something about you, while at the same time offering insight to your character. At this point the content of your essay can range to practically anything, so long as it answers the prompt you have chosen to respond to. Having someone else, such as a teacher or family member, read your essay can provide you with helpful feedback to make your essay better. By the time you finish writing the essay, you want anyone who reads it to be drawn into what you have discussed, and if the odds are in your favor, impressed with what they have read.

College admission essays can form a critical part of your college application, especially if you are vying for a spot at a top tier institution. The college admission essay is your chance to show the admissions office who you really are. While the grade point average and the standardized test scores are vital, they do not provide the admissions office with insights into who you are and why you should be granted admission. It is the essay that allows the student to communicate with the college and demonstrate what they will bring to the campus community. Colleges are not looking merely for students. They are looking for future leaders, innovators, and shapers of the world. A college admission essay is your chance to convince the admissions office that you are the student the college is looking for.

3. Key Elements of a Strong College Admission Essay

The essay should also be written in the first person and exhibit some of the applicant’s actual character. While being yourself is important, it is also vital to make sure your essay is well-written, and maybe a bit less casual. While a college admission essay is a personal extension of the applicant, it is still a good idea to show some level of professionalism. Make sure that you use high-quality writing that is suitable for an intelligent individual. Avoid overly “texting” style shortcuts, but do write in your own voice. This is a big opportunity to present your own characteristics in an attractive way. A college admission essay allows you to show your ability as a writer and demonstrate your knowledge. A good combination of the two will tell a much stronger story.

An essay must show more than a benefit to the university, but instead demonstrate a lasting benefit to the applicant. It should avoid mere flattery to the institution. For example, if an applicant is an Economics major that has been primarily self-motivated to learn about the subject on his own, this might be best highlighted through an anecdote about the excellence of self-teaching demonstrated through a unique experience.

As colleges and universities become more and more selective, they have put more weight on the essay as a unique way to differentiate an application from the others. Writing a college admission essay is different from a general essay. The most important element of a strong college admissions essay is that it must be a narrative. This essay is not the place to debate the merits of the applicant against the university. Instead, it should represent a well-told story that presents the applicant in a positive light. This can best be done by telling a specific story or series of stories that help to highlight the applicant’s personality or something that they value.

4. Examples of Successful College Admission Essays

It was a rainy day when I left the office of my school counselor. The words failure and disappointment rang out in my head with no significance when compared to the loud echo of I want to go back to (Public) and that’s final! A risky job in changing schools for the improvement of future education may have seemed like a step back to avoid failure or embarrassment, but it would prove to be a lifesaver in sudden need of redirection back onto the right path. Today I am procrastination-free, comfortable with hard work and dedication to success, and have a drive to move forward to do new and better things. I have learned the bitter taste of failure and the stinging redemption of hard-earned success. This rough patch in the road has left me convinced that I have truly and finally found the right track and have become surer than ever of where I am headed. The lesson of this experience and the heart and drive put into it have given me recent strength for taking the plunge into new uncharted waters and has paved a satisfactory road in successfully preparing me for a new chapter in my life to come.

The decision of moving to a new private school so easily was an eye-opener. The privileges of being of a “higher” more privileged class were nowhere more present than they were at my new school. I felt the distance between myself and my fellow lower-class citizens. A decision before my first day that still continues to ring in the back of my head on occasion. I selected not to do a summer homework assignment at all since it was optional and I remember my shocked embarrassment when I found that very sheet of paper handed back to me with the words “this is not how we do things” spoken by my teacher written in a red pen. This would be such a surprise considering what I have dealt with in public schools were teachers expected to have classes and the year to run itself. This simple assignment was the first of many other wake-up calls that I would receive and I can discern now that it was an aid in leading me to my final decision of going back to public school.

Beep beep, beep beep, beep beep! The sound of my alarm clock stands as a daily test to wake me from the comfort of my bed. A test I fail on a regular basis due to the comfort of postponing the opportunity of going to school that lies ahead. Once again I find myself in the comfort of my bed, staring emptily into the gray sky of late afternoon, right after breakfast. I failed to finish the race. The environment and second-rate sports and physical education program gave me the opportunity to quit and I took it. Full quitting would be a decision I came to when I started to ditch certain clubs and extracurricular programs in favor of a bit less academic pressure and they would all come back to haunt me as I moved on to the next stage in my education.

Common App Essay Prompt 2 The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, I understand that my experience in college has been unlike most other students. I have been lucky in that I have been given the opportunity to decide what I wanted to do. I have known that I loved math and sciences and thus I only applied to schools with good engineering programs. The only problem was that I had no definite career in mind, and this has created a major blow to my self-esteem. It has taken me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and in the end it all came down to my experience in my AP Biology class. A friend and I would get in arguments about the healthcare system in America vs. the UK, and I would prove all my points right or wrong just to make him mad. I found that the environment there was just perfect for me. I enjoyed the intellectual discussions and that satisfied my thirst for knowledge. I had no definite occupation, but I knew I wanted to do something that would contribute to society and was a little out of the ordinary. After researching various careers I have realized that I want to be a biomedical engineer and work in a medical field.