College Essays And Application

College Essays And Application As a college essay coach at MEK Review, I encounter many students who have difficulty writing about their hardship effectively. I work with them closely to create an engaging essay that reveals the student’s core character traits and personal growth. Essays on negative life events can be very tricky. Unless enough time has passed since the experience, the essay can be too personal, too much of a rant, or just too hard to read. One rep said the general rule of thumb was no essays on the Four Dsâ€"Drugs, dating, death, and divorceâ€"but you get the idea. No college application is complete without the personal essay, which can be daunting for many students to write. Many local students want to write about growing up in a diverse environment and how they have been enriched by that environment. While celebrating diversity is great, the problem is that these essays risk falling into truisms. Be warned that some college essays demand more creativity than others. Consider the cultural identity of your prospective school as you formulate your topic. The goal of your essay is to make an impression on an admissions officer, but you don’t have much time to do it. Look for a strong opening line that really grabs the reader’s attention. Ask your readers whether the essay provides an accurate depiction of who you are and ask whether it is clear, concise, and easy to read. If you were given a prompt by a certain school, make sure that your essay actually addresses the prompt. If you want to write about a personal challenge, emphasize what you learned and how you grewâ€"if you dwell on the details, the essay will not achieve its purpose. Once you have written your college application essay, your job isn’t done â€" you need to keep working on it to improve it until you can improve it no further. It is a great idea to have someone else read your essay to provide feedback. In fact, the more people who read your essay, the better. Even if you don’t have anyone else who can read your essay, you can review it yourself â€" just take a day or two off after writing it before you read it back so you can view it with fresh eyes. Although juniors may feel like they have a lot of free time right now, the reality is that most high school students are still taking classes â€" they've just shifted into an online format. Therefore, Sawyer says, this may not necessarily be the right time to start working on essays. Some may embrace a tradition of creative thinking. In some instances, you can actually see this cultural identity reflected in an essay prompt. The Common Application, which is accepted by nearly 800 colleges and universities, is a single-serving college application that allows you to create one admissions package for submission to multiple schools. Of course, your college application essay is just one part of your admissions package, along with your GPA, your class rank, and your extracurriculars. Students write about the diversity of their schools or their city, but not enough about who they are. While no lives are riding on your college application essays, this is a great time to revisit some of the rules of writing well. One of the best opportunities that you have to introduce yourself to admissions counselors is through your college essays. In 2017, Carolina Williams earned admission to Yale thanks in part to an application essay about her love of Papa John's pizza. Williams' essay brought widespread recognition from news outlets and social media, and demonstrated how admissions essays can help students add a personal touch to an otherwise faceless process. The piece highlighted her distinct literary style and fun personality, and it's a model that other applicants should emulate. Experts say supplemental essays tend to be short, but St. John’s College bucks that trend, requiring a minimum of 400 words. That’s because the school is interested in seeing students write at length on a chosen topic. That doesn't mean that the essay is unimportant; it does give you an opportunity to directly make your case to the admissions committee. Just keep a healthy perspective on its relative importance as you write.