College Admission Essays

College Admission Essays If you want to demonstrate your integrity, share a story that illustrates how you passed up an opportunity to exploit an advantage that was unfairly gained. Claiming that you have good study habits is another empty claim. Detailing the exact study habits that have helped you succeed in school, backed up with the GPA on your application, carries much more weight. Using words in your essay that you don't typically use in your daily conversations can sound awkward and forced. The same process which was used to select English essay topics can be used to select admission topics as well. If you find that your essay is too long, do not reformat it extensively to make it fit. This final step will likely take much longer than writing the entire essay. You may have to revise several times before your essay delivers your message perfectly. Making readers deal with a nine-point font and quarter-inch margins will only irritate them. For strategies for meeting word limits, see our handout on writing concisely. Get it out and revise it again (you can see why we said to start right awayâ€"this process may take time). And, one more time, don’t write in cliches and platitudes. As you go through your revision keep these basic guidelines in mind. It’s time for you to narrow down your options for an essay topic and begin to build your story. At this point you already have all the information you need to create a powerful essay but now you need to start building it. Remember, that every story has a main plot, a few characters that the reader can connect with, and a slow build up to the climax. Their goal is to pull together a certain mix of people. They don’t want a collection of copycats all doing the same thing in their respective high schools. Your essay should show something that is unique; a demonstration of a distinctive quality that no other student may choose to offer. Every doctor wants to help save lives, every lawyer wants to work for justiceâ€"your reader has read these general cliches a million times. It’s probably much more personal than any of the papers you have written for class because it’s about you, not World War II or planaria. You may want to start by just getting somethingâ€"anythingâ€"on paper. Think about the questions we asked above and the prompt for the essay, and then write for 15 or 30 minutes without stopping. What do you want your audience to know after reading your essay? Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, organization, or anything else. Words have nuance to them, and simply inserting a word from the thesaurus is a great way to destroy that nuance. Thesaurus abuse is a lazy and easily spotted trick, and seasoned admissions officers will see right through it. If you feel that you're overusing a particular word, think of alternatives on your own without consulting a thesaurus; using words that you're familiar with will help you avoid misusing them. For help getting started, see our handout on brainstorming. Simply asserting that you have what the university is looking for is not convincing; anyone could make the same claim as plausibly as you if you don't back up your claims with evidence. Stating that you believe in integrity, for example, is an easy claim that's made by thousands of politicians and used car salespeople every year. This is the same approach you need to use in your essay. Line up your scenes in chronological order so that the story is easy to follow. Each university has its own set of prompts you should write about. Here is an example of a prompt from the University of California.