Dos and Don’ts written down College Application Essays
College Essays Can Provide 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. Like nothing else, essays give admissions readers a proper sense for who you really are as a person and student. Some say they have been a “glimpse into the soul.”
Most colleges require at least one essay as a part of their applications; some require two, three or even more. Ranging in length from just a couple words to at least one, two, or three pages of content, essay questions in virtually any free-response section associated with the college application should be thought about a way to make a impression that is good.
At 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 essays that are great sometimes turn the tide toward acceptance for a student with less-than-stellar grades and test scores.
These same deans have 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 aspect of the essay question as best you are able to AND inside the character/word limit provided.
5. Come across as mature, positive, reflective, intelligent, down-to-earth, curious, persistent, confident, original, creative, hard-working and thoughtful.
6. Demonstrate proof of your having knowledge that is real a college and its many resources, including courses, programs, activities and students.
7. Talk about anything that is counterintuitive about yourself, e.g., you paper writer might be a football player that is totally into poetry, a young woman who is some type of computer or physics geek, a macho guy who would like to be an elementary school teacher.
8. Compose an essay, give it to others to read and edit, and then do one last edit that it is done before you declare.
9. Use a number of words to spell it out someone or something, e.g., Charley, my pal, my buddy, my schoolmate, he, him.
10. Explain what has to be explained, as in an illness, a learning disability, a suspension, a one-time grade that is bad a family tragedy, a major challenge you’ve got had.
DON’T
1. Write too much, ramble on, thinking that more words that are( is better. It isn’t.
2. Brag, boast, toot your horn that is own come across as arrogant.
3. Write everything you think college admissions people want instead of what you really think.
4. Set off writing about what you need to express rather than what the question asks AND ignore the specified character/word counts.
5. Come across as immature, negative, superficial, shallow, a phony, glib, a slacker, insecure, whiney, disrespectful or judgmental.
6. Supply the impression that you know little about a college by writing trite, inaccurate or things that are inconsequential it.
7. Make something up about yourself in order to impress the admissions readers.
8. Write an essay and contemplate it done without shopping for punctuation or grammatical errors and having it edited by one or more person.
9. Use the same words over and over, e.g., my pal, my buddy, my pal, my friend, my friend.
10. Make excuses for anything, including a grade that is bad an infringement of rules, a suspension, whatever.
Application essays are a great opportunity you really are, in what ways you think, how well you perform, and even your sense of humor for you to show admissions offices who.