How To Write An Effective College Essay

How To Write An Effective College Essay In your essay, they are looking for signs that you will be a successful student at their institution. It’s important to show that you want to learn, and that you’re enthusiastic about this next chapter in your life and what it can mean for your future. I’m not the only one reading college essay, so I’ve asked a couple of the Hood admission counselors for their best tips. In our College Essay Clichés to Avoid post, we advised students against writing about moving to America from a foreign country. These FAQs about the college application essay should help you tell your story with an end goal of making a good impression on a college admissions officer. There are no tricks or shortcuts to writing the perfect college application essay. It’s less stressful if your child allows it to emerge from a process of discovery that includes brainstorming, free writing, revision, review and editing. Running your essay through spell check is important, and having someone you trust read your essay to catch other small mistakes is even better. Admissions officers generally won't dock minor mistakes in punctuation, but grammatical errors always look sloppy. However, if you’re applying to an Ivy League school or a smaller liberal arts college, then they’re really looking at the whole package and the essay can be very important. At some of these schools, there are very few students who don’t have near-perfect test scores and GPAs, so how do you stand out? Many of the supplemental essay questions from colleges will ask the student why they are choosing to apply to that college in particular. That question can generate a lot of generic responses from students, said Sawyer of “College Essay Guy.” Don’t be generic, he said. Dr. Maggie Wray is an academic life coach who helps high school and college students develop the mindset, motivation, organization, and time management skills they need to be successful in school. When you start reading through past admission essays, one of the first things you will notice is that nearly all of them tell a story. Before you check that box, read over what you wrote, and read over it slowly. Notice any lines that might sound confusing to someone who doesn’t know you and rewrite them. Enlist a friend or family member to read over it, too. It always helps to have someone else give you their feedback before your essay lands in the inboxes of admissions counselors. Admissions counselors read dozens of essays every day, so do your best to write clearly and concisely. The best ones tell a specific story about an incident or moment in time that provides an insight into who the author is and how they view the world. Consider setting a time limit for this part of the process, or a limit for the number of sample essays you will read, and then set the examples aside and move on to creating your own masterpiece. You’ve finished writing your essay, and you want to immediately submit it and be done with it. Easily avoidable mistakes, like not checking that the entire essay is copied into the application, can harm your application prospects. When an admissions officer doesn't get the whole story or notices a sloppy mistake, it changes how schools perceive you. When you're finished writing your admissions essay, it's important to proofread your material. As you know, each college has average requirements for admission. Admissions teams review your GPA, the difficulty of the courses you took, and your standardized test scores, which is data that can be graphed. This information will show them how your scores compare to their average requirements and with other students who are applying to their school or program. David Nathan is a high school English teacher and Nick Accrocco is a college counselor who have collaborated on a book about college admissions. The college essay is an important vehicle for telling the admissions committee about yourself, but the academic factors are far more important, even if the essay is worthy of a Pulitzer. Even though the Common Application has a suggested minimum of 250 words and no upper limit, admission counselors are reading through stacks of essays. Be sure to tell the whole story; do not leave the reader with too many gaps to fill in. Writing concisely expresses to the admission counselor that you are able to organize your thoughts and that you respect their time. It's a part of the application process that can prompt plenty of anxiety. Here, we debunk four myths and show how to nail that attention-grabbing college essay.