College admission essay is an important part of the academic journey. Find out more on how to cope with this type of project like a pro.
How to Write a College Admission Essay
College admission essay is probably the most important piece of writing you are going to do in your life. It, to a huge extent, determines whether you are going to be admitted to the college you want to attend, and what college you attend plays a significant role in the entire course of your future life and career. However, many students have only the most tentative understanding of what this type of work requires and how they can optimize their efforts. To make your life a little bit easier, we wrote this article. Read on and learn the best tips for writing an admission essay that will get you into the college of your dreams.
How to Begin
First and foremost: do not be in a hurry to complete your essay. You are not going to score bonus points for completing your admission essay in an hour. Give yourself plenty of time to write, edit, proofread, and rewrite it. Make sure that at least a week passes between you first sit down to work on it and the submission date. Write it slowly, take your time to find the best possible way to express your thoughts. After you finish, give yourself a few days of break to forget about it a little bit, and only then start proofreading it. Do not shy away from rewriting parts of it or even the entire essay from scratch.
Begin with a template – it will help you start out with something instead of just a blank page. You can easily find any number of templates online – just make sure they are good, do not jump at the first one you find. However, do not be overly reliant on them. Not all of them are ideal, not all of them work with your situation, and by definition, they exist to turn you in the right direction, not to limit your creativity. You are not going to do yourself a favor by strictly following a template the admission committee saw hundreds of times.
How to Write
The rest of your application papers contain mostly objective information about you: your grades, your achievements, and so on. Conversely, the admission essay serves to showcase you as a person and explain why you are going to be a good fit for the college in question. So express your personality instead of trying to adhere to an image you think the admission committee wants to see:
- Show what makes you unique and how the college is going to benefit from accepting you. Do not try to stay conventional out of fear of offending someone – it is always better to be noteworthy rather than bland, even if noteworthiness has a bit of notoriety about it;
- Use varied language, but do not resort to a thesaurus to do so. If you employ words you do not typically use in your speech, both written and spoken, it looks and sounds weird and forced. Some students believe that by using a thesaurus to add variety to their language they make themselves sound more sophisticated and well-educated; in reality, such inclusions of foreign matter into the natural flow of speech are almost always jarring and immediately recognizable;
- Look for a way to express your personality. Sharing a personal story is an excellent way to do so – the admission committee is not just interested in how you did in school, but also in who you are as well. Tell a story that demonstrates who you are – however, make sure it is relevant to the prompt given in your assignment. The committee may be interested in your persona, but they are more interested in your ability to answer the question posed in the task.
What to Do After You Have Finished Writing
Editing and proofreading are essential for the success of any academic assignment, but in the case of a college admission essay, they are absolutely indispensable. Although this assignment is supposed to reflect your natural speaking voice, it does not mean that you can neglect the rules of grammar and spelling. On the contrary – you should make sure that your writing is impeccable. Mistakes, especially serious grammar mistakes, always look jarring and immediately devalue whatever you have to say, but when you make blunders in a piece of writing that should demonstrate your best positive qualities, it looks pathetic.
Therefore, make a list of all the most common mistakes you make and go over your essay a few times over to root them all out. Ask somebody else to help you with proofreading – another pair of eyes can do wonders in this situation, as a person unfamiliar with a text is always better at finding mistakes than its author. If you and your assistant cannot agree on whether something is right or not, rewrite the dubious fragment altogether in a way that will satisfy you both.
Another useful technique that can help you notice mistakes is reading your essay aloud – sometimes phrases that look acceptable on paper and sound alright in your head turn out to be phrased awkwardly and weirdly when you pronounce them. Also, try reading your essay backward, one sentence or even one word at a time – it will help you concentrate on individual words, expressions, and sentences rather than the overall flow of the text, thus making certain kinds of mistakes more obvious.
If you still experience problems even after applying all these tips, you can always delegate this work to a reliable college admission essay writing service – you simply have to find a company you can truly trust, as not all of them are equally dependable. Look for an agency that has been around for a long time and has a good reputation among its customers. Placing a test order for a smaller, simpler assignment can also help you single out the best agency for you.
However, with enough effort, time, and careful application of the tips we listed in this article, we are confident that you will be able to write an admission essay eventually.
