Editing is a necessary skill to ensure your essay is coherent and also communicates enough about you. A lot of students get stuck on the idea of telling the admissions officers exactly what they think they want to hear, which can lead to their submission of an essay that realistically says nothing unique. By revising your essay, you can see how and where your narrative fails. This allows you to fix your essay’s flaws and submit a version of the essay that best reflects who you are.
The College Essay as a Social Experiment: How to Start a College Essay About Yourself
You can write your college essay about anything, which is part of the reason it is hard to find a subject. Having no predetermined topic will undoubtedly feel overwhelming, especially since most high school students aren’t used to writing that way. You’re stuck looking for an answer to the question “what colleges are looking for?” The answer is, frustratingly, nothing. They’re looking for well-crafted, thoughtful essays that tell them something about you they can’t glean from your app.
Parent’s Guide to Helping Students with the College Admissions Essay
The college admissions process can be just as stressful for parents as it is for students. Parents feel that they need to manage their child’s time, stress, schedule, and expectations, which can lead to tension. The college process requires students and their parents to be as unified and cooperative as possible. We’ve created a step-by-step guide for parents to help their children with the college admission essay.
Phrases you Should Never use in a College Admission Essay, Part 2
In the second installment of “Phrases to Avoid,” we have compiled 39 more phrases sourced from real college essays that you should never use under any circumstances. They include unnecessary hyperbole, awkward word choice, and tired cliches among their many problems. In many cases phrases like these are a red flag to an admissions officer, and using any one of them can help land your essay in the rejection pile.
How to Write a College Essay About Failure
The common app offers five prompts for the personal statement, aka the dreaded “.” Despite the fear the essay evokes, each option gives you the chance to be creative. While we encourage students to explore their quirkiest side, it can often be challenging to strike that balance between being creative and answering the question. The first obstacle is choosing which of the five prompts to answer. Today we’re going to explain some strategies for how to answer the second prompt on the common app.
15 Words you Should Never use in a College Admissions Essay
After reading hundreds of college essays, we have compiled a list of words you should never use in your college admissions essay. Some of these words embody the emptiness of vague or overly complex word choice, others are redundant, some are grounds for an almost automatic rejection. You only have 650 words max in most of your essays. Every single one should count.
What are Colleges Looking for
Dear Aspiring College Applicant,
I know you’re telling yourself you’re not going to get into college. Everyone around you is so much more qualified than you are. You could have higher grades, better test scores, more impressive extracurriculars. If you had just put one more hour into studying, you would have gotten an A instead of an A- in that class. That class is the reason why you’re not going to get into Brown. You’ve convinced yourself you’re going to get rejected from literally everywhere you apply, leading to shame, embarrassment, and regret.
When Writing your College Admissions Essay, Know your Audience
Up until now, the audience for your writing has probably been limited. You’ve had essays and papers due for your humanities classes, where you know the teacher well, and maybe you’ve dabbled in creative writing for yourself or a school assignment. With the exception of a few students, most first time college applicants have never written a cover letter or any other sort of writing that is intended to be read by an unknown audience. This is one of the many struggles with the common app personal statement—the college essay. It is difficult to strike the right tone because most likely, you’ve never written anything quite like it. The first thing we always tell our students is to consider their audience.
What Should my College Essay be About?
Of the hundreds of essays we’ve read, we’ve found that the most successful essays fall into five categories.
The first is the genuine thought-provoking essay. This is the hardest type of essay to write because it is absolutely impossible to fake, which makes it is a favorite amongst admissions officers. Students who write a genuine thought essay are unusually insightful for their age and tend to make precocious observations. What makes this type of essay so unique is the author’s ability to bring the reader into their world, to articulate in 650 words how they see the world and how their perception has shaped who they are. In , the author tells the reader how he sees and experiences the world by painting a picture rich in metaphors and depth. It showcases prodigious writing skills, an amazing level of intellectual depth, and a tone wise beyond its years. While these essays are not for all students, when done well they can often be the most rewarding.
Successful Essay Breakdown
Five Mistakes People Make During The College Admissions Process
The college admissions process is a daunting undertaking. For you students it will require an insane amount of your time, effort, and focus. But you’re probably sick of hearing this. You’ve had this drummed into your heads by college counselors, teachers, and your parents. As consulting professionals (aka people who help get into college for a living) what we want to do is help you identify the five most common mistakes students like you make during the college admissions process. If you learn from these mistakes the whole process will undoubtedly go much smoother and you’ll have a much better chance of ending up at the school of your dreams.
43 Phrases You Should Never Use In A College Admission Essay
When most students are writing their college admission essay, they aren’t thinking about the Essay Readers at colleges whose entire job is to sort students’ essays into NO, MAYBE, and YES piles. As hard as you’ve worked on your essay, you may get exactly two minutes of a Reader’s time if he or she feels your writing is boring or unoriginal. Unfortunately, a huge percentage of essays fall into this category. On the other hand, the few essays that show clear, original thinking get promptly placed into the YES pile. The admission essay is one truly personal section of the college application; if your essay stands out, your chances of getting into your top choice school goes up dramatically. Therefore, take careful note of these 43 phrases. Using them might spell NO for your admission chances.