college admission essay examples about yourself

college admission essay examples about yourself

Writing a Persuasive College Admission Essay About Yourself

1. Introduction

You should seek a light-hearted upbeat tone when you approach the introduction. It will set the entire essay into motion and will be the first thing the admissions staff will read. They will be reading your essay with a more relaxed and less critical mindset if you are doing it right, and that is a good thing. An anecdote is the best way to start off this essay. It will set the theme and let the reader know what is coming. This is also a good way to display your knowledge of the particular college you are applying to. Try to show the reader that you know about the college or university. Mention the school’s mascot, or the year it was founded. Get a feel for what the school is about before you try to explain it in your essay. Now transition into your thesis. This is a very difficult paragraph to write. This is where the famous “show don’t tell” statement comes into play. You won’t actually say the words “here is my thesis.” You must take a more artistic approach. Again, remember this is a persuasive essay. You should remain very subtle here. This is not the time to use thesaurus-sprinkled two-dollar words. There is no room for showing off the extent of your vocabulary. You must be succinct, yet enigmatic. Tell them what you’re going to tell them, but don’t actually tell them. This should leave the reader with a solid grasp of what you acknowledge your best traits to be, before you have even begun to elaborate on them. A successful introduction here would leave you wanting to know more about the person who wrote it, and pull you into the following paragraphs. This should help to set the tone for the entire paper, and will help underscore whichever traits you decide to concentrate on. Remember, this forum is essentially a display for the admissions committee to know you on a personal level, beyond the scope of a mere grade report. And convincing them that there is more to be seen could very well increase your chances at an acceptance to their institution.

2. Highlighting Academic Achievements

This is the time to highlight your ability, which means your academic achievements. It’s important to show how you can manage your time to do the work and get the best result for it. Among them are grade point average, class rank, SAT/ACT scores, AP courses taken and grades, Dual Enrollment/Early Admission courses taken and grades, and also AICE courses taken and grades. And tell about the academic distinctions you’ve earned, such as summa cum laude, magna cum laude, cum laude, honor program participant, etc. Besides that, academic achievements can also mean awards, recognition, and scholarships. If you receive any award or recognition, it’s good to put it on your admission essay. It shows that you are a person who is dedicated to what you have done, and of course, it also proves that you have the ability to succeed. And the last is scholarships. By telling what scholarships you have received, it can show how worthy you are to get the scholarships, and it also adds to the university’s confidence to accept you to be one of their students with a scholarship.

3. Showcasing Personal Growth and Extracurricular Activities

Showcasing your personal growth is an integral aspect of the admission application because it conveys your drive and determination. The College Board looks for a specific progression of experiences when they analyze college applications. Your extracurricular activities, such as sports, work, or community service, demonstrate your personal growth and emphasize the concept that you are a well-rounded individual who is deeply involved in the happenings of the world around you. In order to reflect how your extracurricular activities have shaped you, it is important to discuss how you have evolved and what you have learned throughout the course of your involvement. A good way to emphasize personal growth is to have a character or word count at the beginning and end of the essay, indicating the change that has taken place. You can start by recollecting an experience in which you faced adversity. Adversity looks different for each person. Some people may reflect on a time (probably a season) in which the team was less than successful. Others may reflect on a personal struggle such as a debilitating injury, a family turmoil, a sudden change in life situation, or an emotional battle. In describing your experience, be sure to explain the effects of the adversity on you and the people around you. This provides a segue into the depth of the adversity and allows you to reflect on how the struggle has shaped your character. This is the most important part of the essay; this powerful reflection shows who you are and what you have learned. In an essay about a personal struggle with a family turmoil, a student wrote about his in-depth learning of the family’s financial situation, and his part-time work to help support the family. He wrote, “The emotional toll that it took on my family, and the hard work it took to keep the family afloat proved to be a life-changing experience. It has tested my mental strength, and has given me a greater understanding of the trials and tribulations that every individual must face.” This well-thought-out reflection effectively demonstrated the student’s growth and learning. He continued to explain how his experience culminated into a newfound perspective on life and the will to affect his community as seen in his future endeavors. Overall, this essay led to a level of personal growth and its effects on his character, which would enable an admission officer to see the type of student that he would be.

4. Demonstrating Passion and Future Goals

Taking a year to grow, travel, and reason out the next steps in my academic and professional life after college, I began to see that my quest for self-actualization would be made more difficult if I had not pursued such an open-ended event. The drive to develop as an individual remains in a constant state of motion as new experiences and opportunities present themselves. My hunger for opportunities to develop in areas outside my comfort zone could not have been given a greater service than working for an on-campus branch of the Multicultural Experiences Coalition. This organization provides students and faculty with a variety of resources to better serve an increasingly diverse student body and to internationalize the campus at large. As I seek to develop a more comprehensive understanding of what it means to create an inclusive environment, I learned that I can help to make positive changes through my involvement in the community and servicing students who have dealt with marginalization.

5. Conclusion

Your ability to make a good impression and be remembered can be the difference between acceptance and rejection. The key is to give of yourself and have the college see what makes you tick. Don’t settle for less than what you know is your best. You need to really pull the reader in and make them interested in you. This is difficult to do in a limited amount of words. When I wrote my essay, I of course wanted it to be good, but also only had to write it once. For this reason, I put a lot of thought into it and only had to do minimal revisions to get it where I was happy with it. This type of strategy, thinking, and execution of the essay works much better than trying to cut corners in an attempt to write less. When showing the essay to others, make sure you get some good feedback. That means you should probably run it by a few people with good grammar skills and have them proofread it, or you can use the service that UMD offers. Good feedback also helps to show good examples of your skills; this will make your essay all that more realistic and personable. UMD uses many different people to help in the process of critiquing a paper. According to Joshua Keith, a UMD student worker, “We use many different people because different people look for different things. Is it well written? Is it compelling? Is that the person? We try to make sure the essay is reflective of the student’s skill…”