How To Write A Great College Admissions Essay

How To Write A Great College Admissions Essay Elyse received her BA in linguistics from Dartmouth College and her MA from Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to joining College Coach, Elyse worked as an admissions officer at Barnard College and Bennington College. Visit our website to learn more about Elyse Krantz. Show this draft to your college English teacher, your counselor, your Transfer Center director, or a relative who will be brutally honest. Speaking of future drafts, one of the best things you can do is run your essay by a trusted family member, educator, advisor, or friend. Get feedback from somebody whose opinion you respect. After reading your essay, the committee member should know something about your personality, your style and your values. Below are some tips for writing an essay that will enhance your application. ” Instead, ask, “What should I tell them about me? ” Have someone read your essay to see if your point comes across. Instead, put the reader in the moment by painting a picture and then elaborate on why it is important. My friend Alex, who’s about to enter her senior year in high school, has a second-degree black belt in judo. This feedback will give you a sense of how well your ideas are coming across to the reader, how compelling your story is, and how you might be able to improve your essay. These additional eyes are also critical when it comes to proofing your work, catching typos you might have missed, and helping to refine writing that is unclear or off-topic. And if the topic is weird, feel free to write a weird essay. Ask this reader if your essay sounds like you, is interesting to read, wanders off the topic anywhere, and is vivid and coherent. Instead, write an essay that sounds like you are talking to a favorite aunt or uncle. Contact us for your free 15-minute phone consultation with Dr. Kristen Willmott to discuss your graduate school plans and our graduate admissions consulting programs. Our counselors are accustomed to tutoring over the phone and reviewing drafts by email. They can work with students from anywhere in the world, at any time. They’re competing for an admissions officer’s attention, and you don’t want to lose your reader before your story ever really gets going. She was thinking about doing an essay on her beloved “Calvin & Hobbes.” Can you guess what my advice was? No generic essays come out of this process, because this is real essay writing, not essay shopping. The examples, tips, topics and prompts outlined above should help you rock your college application essay. And hopefully, this is an illuminating part of the process, one that not only helps you get into the college of your choice, but one that also helps prepare you for success once you get there. The essay is valuable to you and the colleges to which you are applying. If you think of the application as pieces of a puzzle or as independent voices coming together to tell your story, the essay is part of the puzzle over which you have complete control. The essay also provides you with an opportunity to say what hasn’t been said in your application and do so in your distinct voice. Do not write your way into the essay by simply restating the initial prompt or question. College admission officers are usually able to detect an essaynot written by the student. Be clear about the theme of your essay from the first paragraph. Grab the reader’s attention with a compelling opening sentence. For example, instead of “it was really very important to me â€" and my parents too - that…” use “it was imperative that I…” Keep your essay around 500 words, unless otherwise specified in the application. While colleges often pose different essay questions to their applicants, there are typically a handful of traditional queries that many schools employ. In order to respond to the best of your ability, it’s important to understand what universities are driving at/asking.