Writing A Strong College Admissions Essay

Writing A Strong College Admissions Essay Don’t rely on spell check alone to catch all of your mistakes, either. Be sure you are using the correct form of words too (they’re, their, there, your, you’re, etc.). Few things will throw off an application evaluator more than misspellings and typos in the college essay â€" except when you mention the wrong college! Don’t tell us how much you want to attend XYZ University when you are submitting the essay to The College of ABC. While it is important to talk yourself up as the awesome student you truly are, you still have to remember that the application essay is not a résumé. You can certainly submit a résumé with your application, but your essay is not the place to do it. Resist the temptation to buy the “best college essays” book. It will only contribute to the “paralysis by analysis” you might be experiencing. The genius for your essay rests within you, not an essay someone else has written. You need to craft a statement that speaks to who you are as a person. As you can see, the risk-reward element with the essay is very high, especially if you aspire to highly selective colleges and universities. We want you to expand upon a few characteristics that make you great, not just give us a list with the thousand and one things that contribute to your greatness. This way, we are able to fully grasp why these particular characteristics, out of the many you could have selected, are so important to you and who you are as an individual. This is especially true if you are an experiential, hands-on learner who values testing ideas. Be prepared to provide evidence of this learning style in your supplemental essays. All are historical elements of your college applications. Well established over time, they determine your general competitiveness in the selective admission process. We have found that the #1 reason for essay procrastination is that students don’t feel confident in getting started â€" i.e. they aren’t sure what to write about and how to structure it. I quickly learned to play the clarinet and joined the elementary school band. As soon as I was physically big enough to carry around a mini Fender electric guitar, I begged to take guitar lessons. Here are 5 essential traits of a compelling college essay. Your essay doesn’t need to have all 5, but college admissions officers look for at least one of these traits or possibly two. Once a student picks one or two of these to focus on in their essay, they are on the writing path to a stellar essay that describes exactly who they are and why they would be an asset to a college. When I was in second grade, I read the essay for the first time and learned the donor was a professional musician and an accomplished guitar player. This knowledge was the catalyst for me to begin exploring my own musical abilities. Perhaps it was subconscious at the time, but while many of my elementary school friends were playing sports with their dads, I was looking for a way to connect to my donor through music. During middle school and high school, my enthusiasm for music and performing accelerated in tandem with my talent. In addition to pursuing instrumental music, I began singing in theatre and in an a cappella group. Too often students get stuck on the choice of a prompt and never get to the essay itself. The Common App essay prompts are not requirements; they are ideas designed to stimulate a creative thought process. Focus instead on the key messages you want to convey and develop a storyline that illustrates them well. There is a very good chance an essay developed in this manner will meet at least one of the listed essay prompts. Besides, that other essay would go on forever, and, as I mentioned, we read thousands of these things each year. Craig is a college admissions coach and founder of CollegeMeister. While we can’t write your essay for you, the following essay tips should be helpful in developing a personal statement that becomes the glue for a thematically cohesive application. The manner in which you like to engage in learning. We don’t all process the same information the same wayâ€"and colleges don’t all deliver it in the same manner!