How Not To Start Your College Essay

How Not To Start Your College Essay Even with essay writing experience, it can be hard to frame a well-organized, comprehensive, thoughtful answer in 500 words or less. You might need to approach the questions from a few different perspectives before you find the right formula. Still, Jager-Hyman says that some parents who get their hands on their kids’ essays go too far and change the tone or tenor. Some essays she read were “too stiff, too adult and too formal,” â€" not the student’s work. College counselors weighing in on the college review website Unigo indicated that, depending on the school, up to four people could read a single essay. For the application season, the Common Application announced that their 600-plus member schools, which include many private and public universities, need not require essays . Inside Higher Ed, a popular website monitoring issues in higher education, estimated that 20 percent of members will eliminate the essay requirement. You can write an excellent essay, but if you don’t focus on answering the question that the college is asking, you will likely not be admitted to the school. Do write in your own language and remember to show rather than tell. We’ll help you figure out what to write about, and we’ll help you finish all your essays early. You’ll submit on time and with confidence in your essays. The same applies to wanting to be in a city or town or being part of a small, medium, or large student body. While you may prefer certain settings or sizes, the fact is, you can easily find those qualities anywhere. When you construct an essay that satisfies you, ask a trusted teacher to proofread and critique it. Over 70 percent of students choose just three of the seven Common Application prompts . That is because three of them work well if you write your essay first and pick the prompt second. The college essay is a page-long assignment given to you by a school, to be completed by a certain date. My 17-year-old is working with Russell on a college essay. Regardless of the topic about which you choose to write, be sure the essay reveals more about you than the other characters or places in the story. DON’T reveal something you would never consider telling your parents â€" while honest essays can be strong, your college essay is not the place to admit to shoplifting or drunk driving. DO tell a story; your college essay will be more similar to your creative writing or journal assignments that to your persuasive essay. Make any changes required, and type the essay into a word processor or text editor so that you can copy and paste it onto the electronic college application. This will help prevent errors and typos that might occur if you retype the essay into the essay window when you're filling out the application form. To make the most of this opportunity, once you have your essay questions, practice writing your essay using the tips provided by the college or from one of the links in this article. If you're lucky, your junior and senior high school language arts teachers incorporate essay writing into the curriculum. He is thorough, highly knowledgeable and patient. He has so many tips about writing a solid college essay. The moral to the college essay is that there need not be a moral. You are writing a personal narrative, not a parable, so don’t feel compelled to conclude with a lesson learned or a happy ending. Use the story or stories you tell to illustrate a larger, more abstract point. Many students fall into the trap of offering superficial or generic reasons for wanting to attend. An admissions committee doesn’t want to hear that you’re attracted to the warm weather â€" you can just as easily find that at another college in the South. Emory even calls out the commonality of that response in its prompt. Jager-Hyman notes that every writer has an editor, and editors can help select topics, tell students where the essay is lacking and help them organize their thoughts. In this competitive climate, many students think their essay must reflect an earth-shattering achievement, like curing cancer or ending world starvation, but that’s not its purpose. It’s also not a place to reiterate one’s résumé or explain away a bad semester (there’s a section in the application for that). Colleges want to “hear specifically what you learned from an experience” â€" not clichés. Admissions writing truly requires a new set of skills which most high school applicants don’t frequently get to practice or cultivate. However, avoiding some of these pitfalls will help you as you refine your CommonApp, supplemental and scholarship essays. Your admissions essay must be fundamentally reader-friendly. It should not read like a dense PhD dissertation OR an informal e-mail to your best friend; it should strike a balance between the two.