Nervous About College Essay Writing?

Nervous About College Essay Writing? Watch that you are using the same tense and point of view throughout your essay. Always read your essay over for grammatical and spelling errors one last time before you submit your application. If you choose not to disclose your disability in your essay or college application, remember, you may still disclose at any point after you are accepted into the school. You will need to do this to receive any of the accommodations and support services that you might need to be successful. Remember, your disability is part of who you are but not all of who you are. Do not fall into the trap of describing your disability in great detail. Do not write a textbook explanation of your disability. Disclosing your disability may be important, but explaining every aspect of it and how it affects your life might be more than what the college admissions expect from you. New York teen Alex Tiso wrote his college essay on burrito bowls and got into his dream school. 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. 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. These 650 words or less â€" your personal statement to colleges â€" will be one of the most important pieces of writing you’ve done in your life up until this point. Often the best college essays develop out of a moment or idea that at first seems small, but then grows, develops, and takes on a life of its own. A thoughtfully crafted essay and a clean, clear application can make a tremendous difference in the college admissions process. Alex Tiso, 18, wrote his college application essay on burrito bowls and got into his dream school. Think of the college application process as a video game, and the dreaded college essay is the dragon that needs to be slayed. 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. He’s almost certainly either a genius mech pilot or the subject of some prophecy in an alternate dimension that he’ll be transported to. Even if you’re only applying to a couple schools that you know you can get into, it will still serve you well to write a compelling admissions essay. Use your uniqueness to your advantage, not as a hindrance. To help youth applying to college navigate the college essay in order to submit their best work with their college application. DO NOT PROCRASTINATE. Look, we all procrastinate. This knowledge was the catalyst for me to begin exploring my own musical abilities. I quickly learned to play the clarinet and joined the elementary school band. Standing out from everyone else could put you in the running for additional scholarships and will also simply make a good impression, which never hurts. So treat a college application essay as a tool for standing out in ways the robots can’t. It’s a lot like the cover letter you write when applying for a job â€" it’s your chance to reveal the person behind the accomplishments and statistics. After showing their essay to everyone, students edit it again and again to make each reader happy--and before you know it, their story has been ground down and their voice has vanished. Writing your college essay can be a daunting task. But please, please, please do not not procrastinate on your admissions essay. Everything I’ve covered in this article matters only if you give yourself enough time. If you start the day before the application is due, all I can say is good luck. For the most part, it’s unlikely that you’ve experienced anything extremely uncommon in the relatively short amount of time you’ve been a human. Most high school students lead lives that don’t deviate too far from the norm â€" except that one quiet guy in your class who sits next to the window near the back. You could describe a situation from your unique point of view , mention it in passing, or tell a specific story about a situation in which your disability affected the outcome. Your goal in a college application is to stand out.