What The #%@!& Should I Write About In My College Essay?

What The #%@!& Should I Write About In My College Essay? Finding a cure for cancer, saving the whales singlehandedly, or traveling abroad to build homes for orphans does not automatically make a great essay. It’s all about the delivery, the reflection, the conversational tone, showing not telling that will make for a winning essay. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, please share your story. There are supplementary essays for some schools, in addition to the common app essay, that are just 300 words or less. Simply recanting facts will not distinguish you from other candidates with equal class rank, grades and test scores. Making your scholarly endeavors personal will pique curiosity and demonstrate your potential to contribute to an academic community. If you can make the reader laugh, say “I get that” or “me too”, you are on your way to a strong application. In addition, you are sharing something about yourself that is not anywhere else in your application. You can fix mistakes and improve your writing in later drafts. This is a great book to give insight into what a great college essay looks like. The college essay is the place where you are able to show admission officers a glimpse into your personality and allow you to stand out from the thousand of other perfect candidates. Bauld is a former admissions officer who really knows what he's talking about. Yet, this book helped me ground all the swirling thoughts in my head into one short page, 1000 words. It may have been published in 1978, but it's still 100% relevant in today's college environment. It's funny, filled with examples, and quite a joy to read. Even now, I'm getting it as a gift for some rising high school seniors as they embark on their undergrad app journey. Your essay should consist of three parts - an introduction , body and a conclusion . Create an outline, decide where to include examples and write your first draft. Don't worry about making it perfect; just let your ideas flow. Well established over time, they determine your general competitiveness in the selective admission process. If I had to assign the MVP of the college application essay, it would be the very first sentence. Selective institutions often employ supplemental essay prompts to sort the whimsically submitted applications from those that are more intentional. They can clearly demonstrate the synergy that exists between themselves and the institutions in question. All are historical elements of your college applications. Too often students get stuck on the choice of a prompt and never get to the essay itself. The Common App essay prompts are not requirements; they are ideas designed to stimulate a creative thought process. Focus instead on the key messages you want to convey and develop a storyline that illustrates them well. There is a very good chance an essay developed in this manner will meet at least one of the listed essay prompts. If you think about it, that’s only sentences or so. Instead, take the reader between the lines to better understand you, as a thinking person. I actually enjoyed reading this book because he is truly a great writer himself. This book is easy to read and is great whether you're going straight from high school or transferring from another college. I like to think I have really good ideas, but suck a lot at getting them expressed concretely onto paper. Colleges value diversity of thought in their classrooms. The essay is your opportunity to reveal that element of diversity that can be found uniquely within you. You’ll hear a lot from “experts” about taboo topics (sports, death, disease, divorce, pets, etc.) and generic essays on related topics are not a good idea. On the other hand, if you have experienced something intensely personal and profoundly meaningful within such a topic, help the reader to know how the experience affected you.