Getting Started On Your College Essay

Getting Started On Your College Essay We learn that the author knows how to turn a phrase, the author is a warm and caring person, the author has a sense of humor, and the author will bring us cookies if we admit her to our imaginary college. All in all, we see a student who is a skilled writer with a warm heart â€" positive traits, to be sure. 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. Given volume, staff sizes, and compressed timelines between application deadlines and decision release, that seems at worst a blatant lie, and at best an incredibly inefficient process. 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? 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. Some schools will tell you that two separate readers evaluate every essay in its entirety. I finished right before my first deadline on October 15, and hardly touched my Common App essay afterwards. While I met my deadlines, I remember desperately wishing during late-September and early-October that I had finished at least the first draft of my Common App essay before school started. I wish I had kept in mind that college applications were not my only priority during senior year and planned more proactively accordingly so I that wouldn’t get stressed out. Second, students want validation that they have done a worthy job on their essay, and they naturally gravitate towards the adult mentors in their life. A college counselor or English teacher is great, but when we hear that parents, SAT tutors, or my-mom's-friend-who-is-good-at-writing are also weighing in, we start to worry. You’ve finished writing your essay, and you want to immediately submit it and be done with it. 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. Sklarow's members also, of course, help students with essays. But he noted that his members adhere to his association's ethics guidelines as well as NACAC guidelines -- and that members talk about ethics all the time. Personally, he said he would offer this guidance to members on how to avoid problems. 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. 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. I started brainstorming as early as June before my senior year, but I didn’t actually start writing my first draft until mid-August. They’re looking at your essay, recommendations and activities to understand the whole picture of you. It all depends on where you’re applying, your grades and your test scores. If you’re applying to a large state institution, and your numbers are strong relative to their average student body, then you’ll get in on the strength of your four years of hard work. 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. How to Write the Best College Admissions EssayThe college admissions essay is perhaps the most dreaded part of the college application process. This essay doesn’t share many life-defining revelations; we learn, as a brief aside, that the author often cared for her younger siblings, but little beyond that. Yet despite its relative lack of major information, it reveals a lot about who the author is.