Dos and Don’ts on paper College Application Essays
College Essays Will Give a Glimpse into Your Soul
While student grades and test scores are clearly top factors in admissions office decisions, application essays often play a pivotal role. A real sense for who you are as a person and student like nothing else, essays give admissions readers. Some say they’ve been a “glimpse into the soul.”
Most colleges require one or more essay as a right part of their applications; some require two, three or higher. Ranging in length from just a couple words to one, two, or three pages of content, essay questions in every free-response section regarding the college application should be considered an opportunity to make a good impression.
In the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s (NACAC) yearly conference, college admissions deans have admitted repeatedly that poorly written essays can “do in” a student with top grades and test scores. and therefore great essays can sometimes turn the tide toward acceptance for a student with less-than-stellar grades and test scores.
These deans that are same offered sage advice about the dos and don’ts of writing college essays.
DO
1. Write revealing, concise essays that inform, enlighten and amuse.
2. Present yourself as genuinely humble, modest, perhaps even self-effacing.
3. Be yourself.
4. Answer each and every facet of the essay question as best you can AND inside the character/word limit provided.
5. Come across as mature, positive, reflective, intelligent, down-to-earth, curious, persistent, confident, original, creative, thoughtful and hard-working.
6. Demonstrate evidence of your having real knowledge about a college and its own many resources, including courses, programs, activities and students.
7. Come up with something that companies to buy essay is counterintuitive you are a football player who is totally into poetry, a young woman who is a computer or physics geek, a macho guy who wants to be an elementary school teacher about yourself, e.g.
8. Compose an essay, give it to others to learn and edit, and then do your final edit before you declare that it is done.
9. Use a variety of words to describe something or someone, e.g., Charley, my friend, my buddy, my schoolmate, he, him.
10. Explain what has to be explained, as in a disease, a learning disability, a suspension, a one-time bad grade, a family tragedy, a major challenge you have had.
DON’T
1. Write too much, ramble on, thinking that more (words) is much better. It’s not.
2. Brag, boast, toot your own horn, or come across as arrogant.
3. Write everything you think college admissions people want as opposed to everything you really think.
4. Go off writing about what you would like to say in the place of what the question asks AND ignore the specified character/word counts.
5. Run into as immature, negative, superficial, shallow, a phony, glib, a slacker, insecure, whiney, disrespectful or judgmental.
6. Provide the impression you know little about a college by writing trite, inaccurate or things that are inconsequential it.
7. Make something up about yourself simply to impress the admissions readers.
8. Write an essay and contemplate it done without interested in punctuation or grammatical errors and having it edited by a minumum of one person.
9. Make use of the words that are same and over, e.g., my pal, my pal, my buddy, my friend, my friend.
10. Make excuses for anything, including a bad grade, an infringement of rules, a suspension, whatever.
Application essays are an excellent opportunity for you to show admissions offices whom you really are, with what ways you believe, how well you perform, as well as your love of life.