how to write college admission essay

how to write college admission essay

How to Write a Winning College Admission Essay

1. Understanding the Importance of the College Admission Essay

Finally, your essay should illustrate a clear idea of the college that is the right fit for you. By doing this, you can show colleges that you can be successful at their institution and that you have selected their school for good reasons. One last point to remember is that the college admission essay is a way for colleges to confirm that they know the type of student they would be taking in. Your essay will help the college to better understand you as a person, often helping them make a decision on your acceptance. By showing your strong points and displaying the type of student you are, your essay can aid colleges in making this decision in your favor. By fully understanding the expectations of what your essay should do, you can have a better picture of the importance of this essay and what it should mean for you.

Ideally, you should tell the story about one of your proudest achievements. It will serve as a validation of your hard work. It is important to remember that this achievement could be something big or small. This accomplishment should have impacted your life in a significant way. In addition, it is important to remember not to write an essay that simply repeats what is already in your resume. Your essay should provide additional details, clarification, and further explanation on achievements you have made or something you have failed to accomplish. This also holds true for providing an overall understanding of you as a person. Your essay should elaborate on the strengths or weaknesses of your character and how this has affected you. This part of the essay can serve as an interesting transition into the type of person you are now and how the college can benefit from having you. A good essay inspires the reader to learn more about you. Ideally, your essay will cause the reader to say either “I could picture this individual at our college” or “It’s a shame I would really like to get to know this individual, but I feel that we would not have a place for them at our institution”.

One of the best ways to understand the importance of the college admission essay is to view the essay as a representative of yourself. Think of the essay as an opportunity to tell your story to colleges. This essay is the way for colleges to learn your background and how it has affected you. Your grades and test scores will show colleges what you are capable of doing, while your college essay will display what you are actually like. The essay allows you to set yourself apart from other students.

Your college admission essay is one of the most important essays you will ever write. The focus of this essay is to provide your reader with a deeper understanding of you as a person. This essay has to be the best piece of writing you have ever produced. It needs to be so impressive that you will be chosen out of hundreds of other applicants. This essay should not be taken lightly. A good place to start is to really understand the importance of the essay. In order to gain an understanding of this, you should attend college fairs, visit schools, read guidebooks, and speak with current college students. You should also read articles and attend workshops on the college application process and essay writing. This should assist you in finding information to better understand the importance of an effective college admission essay.

2. Choosing a Compelling Topic for Your Essay

Focus on a belief or insight. Using a specific incident in the beginning will help you to have more focus in your writing. Madie has found that “The most successful essays are not merely descriptive writing, but an attempt to communicate a unique idea or belief.” In an essay, conflict is good. A description of a trip to the mountains is boring and doesn’t go far enough to illustrate what you learned from it. Whether it was a realization that you were happy the way things were, or a new understanding of a complicated time, belief or insight can play a significant role in your college essay.

Focus on a moment. One of the easiest ways to think of a college essay topic is to focus on a specific instance that changed you or that represents something about your character. As Madie, a Brandeis University student, puts it, “You don’t need to tell a long and complicated story to have a good college essay. Just start writing about who you are, what you’ve done, and why you’re unique.” This might be a narrative of a moment as simple as waking up at 5 a.m. to go to swim practice or as complex as a trip to Haiti and the lessons learned from interacting with people who have very different lives. Whether it’s funny or moving, starting your essay off with an intriguing anecdote about your personality will lay the groundwork for the rest of your essay.

3. Crafting an Engaging Introduction and Captivating Body

Wrap it up. Once you have a good grasp of your audience’s attention, the introduction must conclude with a clear thesis statement. The thesis is an essential part of the student’s argument. It serves as a roadmap for the essay and allows the student to prove the thesis as the essay progresses. The thesis should be one sentence and it should be a statement that can be arguable. Remember, it is very easy for the reader to predict what follows the thesis in the argument, and a good thesis helps the reader to anticipate coming arguments. A well-written thesis greatly improves the likelihood of a successful paper. Be sure to follow up the introduction with an engaging and enthralling body. No matter how well-written the introduction is, it will lose its steam if the body is not up to par. High school English teachers and college admission readers are rather conservative. This means that they already have a preset disposition on how an essay is, and they will prefer to read an essay that is argumentative or expository. Due to this understanding, it is highly advised to attempt the essay with an expository prompt. This prompt generally requires the writer to do the following: analyze an existing definition, speculate on the cause or effect of an event, or compare one thing to another thing. In reading these prompts, it is clear that they share one thing in common: they require the student to take and defend a position. In doing so, the student must select the position and support it throughout the essay.

4. Showcasing Your Unique Qualities and Achievements

High school students are often tempted to write about issues or events that may paint them in a negative light. Twersky stressed that the goal of the essay should always be to show the admissions committee something they cannot garner from the rest of the application. “There is a perception that the essay should be written about something tragic and that students should show how they’ve overcome hardship. This is completely false. You want the essay to be uplifting and reflective of who the student is.” He said students are often drawn to writing about issues such as depression, parental divorce, or a sick relative. “These are all valid topics, but what is often overlooked is that the essay is part of the assessment process. It’s harder for an admissions committee to admit a student who they don’t think will make it through four years at the college due to emotional instability. In these cases, the student has to take great care to prove to the committee that these events have made them stronger and that they are unflappable. This is a hard road. It is often better to find another anecdote, something with lighter subject matter that is better reflective of who the student is.” He did note that there is an exception for students who come from an international school system. “If a student has moved around a lot, has had to change cultures, has endured a change of family income, or has had other significant shifts in what is considered normal, these can be great topics for the essay.” Twersky’s final warning was that students should not craft an essay about an event in a glorified or self-congratulatory manner. “No matter what the topic is, the essay should be in service of the betterment of the student’s still forming image as a citizen and future leader within the context of a larger community.”

5. Polishing Your Essay to Perfection

The final step is editing and proofreading your finished essay. One tiny typo or error could cause readers to doubt your intelligence, ability, and motivation. After you have crafted a solid draft of your essay, put it away for a while and do something else. Later, come back to it. Does your voice sound like you? Does it reflect your main goals, ambitions, and life philosophy? Doing other activities such as sports, clubs, volunteering, and even working can be enhanced on a resume and should be considered as a possible essay topic. Think about what you want to say about yourself and what you want the readers to know about you. Then re-read it. This time ask your English teacher to review it for language errors. If you are not one hundred percent sure your teacher or relative will check it thoroughly, ask your guidance counselor. If you are well read, a lover of syntax and literary devices, or if you are not a French student with one year of college prep English, you should seek a professional tutor. A well written admission essay should be grammatically correct. A brilliant essay with bad language is like a beautiful car with no engine. Clean it up. Get rid of almost all contractions (can’t is not acceptable in formal writing), verb phrases, adverbs, little words (such as “a”, “the”, “it”, and “is”), and negative prefixes (such as “un” or “in”). Replace what you have deleted with vivid synonyms that catch the reader’s attention. For example, instead of “it could be of some interest to the reader” try “it would pique the interest of the reader.” This make a sentence shorter and it sounds more distinguished. If you are a bit unsure about good vocab words, you can really enhance you essay with help from a thesaurus. But beware, often words do not have the exact same meaning so be careful about the context in which you use it.