Tips For Writing Your College Application Essay

Tips For Writing Your College Application Essay These can vary from personal to trivial, but all seek to challenge you and spark your creativity and insight. The single most important part of your essay preparation may be simply making sure you truly understand the question or essay prompt. When you're finished writing, you need to make sure that your essay still adheres to the prompt. Once you've gone through the questions above, you should have good sense of what you want to write about. Hopefully, it's also gotten you started thinking about how you can best approach that topic, but we'll cover how to plan your essay more fully in the next step. As for personal traits, Eva is really proud of her curiosityâ€"if she doesn't know something, she immediately looks it up, and often ends up discovering new topics she's interested in. It's a trait that's definitely come in handy as a reporter for her school paper. In terms of important events, Eva's parents got divorced when she was three and she's been going back and forth between their houses for as long as she can remember, so that's a big part of her personal story. You should start the editing process by looking for any structural or thematic issues with your essay. If you see sentences that don't make sense or glaring typos of course fix them, but at this point, you're really focused on the major issues since those require the most extensive rewrites. You don't want to get your sentences beautifully structured only to realize you need to remove the entire paragraph. Before you start editing, put your essay aside for a week or so. It will be easier to approach it objectively if you haven't seen it in a while. Then, take an initial pass to identify any big picture issues with your essay. One way to find possible topics is to think deeply about the college's essay prompt. If you have one essay that's due earlier than the others, start there. Otherwise, start with the essay for your top choice school. Contrary to what you may have learned in elementary school, sweeping statements don't make very strong hooks. If you want to start your essay with a more overall description of what you'll be discussing, you still need to make it specific and unique enough to stand out. Maybe you feel more comfortable sitting down and writing the whole draft from beginning to end in one go. Maybe you jump around, writing a little bit here and a little there. She's also played piano for all four years of high school, although she's not particularly good. What experience, talent, interest or other quirk do you have that you might want to share with colleges? Possible topics include hobbies, extracurriculars, intellectual interests, jobs, significant one-time events, pieces of family history, or anything else that has shaped your perspective on life. Once you've fixed those, ask for feedback from other readersâ€"they'll often notice gaps in logic that don't appear to you, because you're automatically filling in your intimate knowledge of the situation. Finally, take another, more detailed look at your essay to fine tune the language. When you start writing, don't worry about your essay's length. Instead, focus on trying to include all of the details you can think of about your topic, which will make it easier to decide what you really need to include when you edit. It's okay to have sections you know won't work or to skip over things you think you'll need to include later. If you just don't have an idea you're happy with, that's okay! Sometimes you'll end up having a genius idea in the car on the way to school or while studying for your U.S. history test. Otherwise, try the brainstorming process again when you've had a break. If something sounds weird when you say it, it will almost certainly seem off when someone else reads it. Give yourself credit for what you've done well, but don't hesitate to change things that aren't working. It can be tempting to hang on to what you've already writtenâ€"you took the time and thought to craft it in the first place, so it can be hard to let it go. Taking this approach is doing yourself a disservice, however. No matter how much work you put into a paragraph or much you like a phrase, if they aren't adding to your essay, they need to be cut or altered. This level of thoroughness may seem like overkill, but it's worth taking the time to ensure that you don't have any errors. The last thing you want is for an admissions officer to be put off by a typo or error. A good way to check for weirdness in language is to read the essay out loud.