Write A College Essay

Write A College Essay According to Business Insider, Tufts University and the University of Chicago have both earned reputations for their out-of-left-field essay questions. From this vantage point, Lombardi shared some awesome expert-level college essay tips. We also enlisted the help of a qualified expert in the field. Meredith Lombardi, Associate Director of Outreach and Education at the Common Application, offers a few tips on exactly what admissions officers are seeking from a great application essay. On the whole the admissions committee wants to hear your voice. “Parents have the gift and burden of knowing their students better than anyone; they are therefore uniquely qualified to help them identify good essay material,” Heathman says. But, if they can’t limit their participation appropriately, or are causing their student needless stress, they should seek out a teacher or counselor. “We don’t have a problem with having some assistance,” she says, understanding that students want to present themselves in the best light. She encourages applicants to ask someone who doesn’t know their narrative, such as a neighbor or church member, to provide a fresh look at the essay. See what you should do with them on the next page. Deciding which college you want to attend is stressful. Preparing your college applications and meeting various deadlines is an ordeal. Worrying about the essay questions you'll be asked -- and how many you'll have to answer -- is agonizing. When you construct an essay that satisfies you, ask a trusted teacher to proofread and critique it. Make any changes required, and type the essay into a word processor or text editor so that you can copy and paste it onto the electronic college application. This will help prevent errors and typos that might occur if you retype the essay into the essay window when you're filling out the application form. Moreover, it impedes a school’s ability to see who they are, get a sense of their authentic voice and writing style, and determine if they are prepared for the writing demands of college. There is no way to know who will be assigned to read a given essay, says Jager-Hyman. Don’t use words that aren’t consistent with the overall language and tone of the essay. Don’t use a thesaurus to find other words that you wouldn’t normally use. Last year, CMC had eight admissions officers and 10 part-time readers for 7,100 applications. Both Stanford University and University of California Berkeley officials insist they read all essays. Every reader has his own taste in what he wants and what matters to him, and a student sometimes gets lucky. “You have to hope that (the reader’s) taste jives with your sensibility,” Jager-Hyman says. In other words, they wouldn’t ask for them if they didn’t read them. Wordiness comes in many forms with many different namesâ€"deadwood, repetition, redundancy, BS, filler, fluffâ€"but whatever the type, those extraneous words have no place in a winning college admissions essay. However, do be careful with slang, colloquialism, and inappropriate language. You need to remember that you have no idea who will be reading your essay â€" it could be an admissions counselor in her early 20s, or a part-time admissions reader in his mid-70s. Get feedback from somebody whose opinion you respect. This feedback will give you a sense of how well your ideas are coming across to the reader, how compelling your story is, and how you might be able to improve your essay. These additional eyes are also critical when it comes to proofing your work, catching typos you might have missed, and helping to refine writing that is unclear or off-topic. And if the topic is weird, feel free to write a weird essay. Some colleges and universities are actually notorious for their unusual â€" and in some cases, genuinely strange â€" college application essay prompts. Patricia Krahnke, president of Global College Search and former assistant admissions director at Rutgers University and Vermont State Colleges’ dean of admissions, agrees with Stevens. She tells me large schools receiving 30,000 to 60,000 applications are using software to crunch numbers and manage the volume of applications. The examples, tips, topics and prompts outlined above should help you rock your college application essay. And hopefully, this is an illuminating part of the process, one that not only helps you get into the college of your choice, but one that also helps prepare you for success once you get there. Speaking of future drafts, one of the best things you can do is run your essay by a trusted family member, educator, advisor, or friend.