Writing The College Essay

Writing The College Essay I won’t know exactly when I’ll snap out of my idiotic insensitivity, but at some point I’ll learn the difference between flat tires and gas showers. They say the brain matures at 24, but even after 24, it will be a slow progression from self-centered kid to empathetic adult. The essay is valuable to you and the colleges to which you are applying. If you think of the application as pieces of a puzzle or as independent voices coming together to tell your story, the essay is part of the puzzle over which you have complete control. The essay also provides you with an opportunity to say what hasn’t been said in your application and do so in your distinct voice. Because UVA and Michigan request similar word counts, she will not have to adjust these for length. Rachel takes a few days to relax after completing 11th grade before creating a spreadsheet listing her colleges. It will take a combination of reading stories about survival â€" Nightand The Diary of Anne Frank â€" and growing up. I’ll travel; I’ll teaching memoir writing and I’ll hear stories including ones by students living in a homeless shelter. I’ll realize how people struggle and suffer and that all these years later I still have no idea what it feels like to be a minority. If you write about an activity or an experience, focus not on how good you are or what you have accomplished, but instead on what the experience/activity means to you. Before you begin to tackle this essay prompt, there are a few points of which you should be aware. First off, don’t reiterate information that can be found in other parts of your application. Instead, use this opportunity to showcase an additional side/aspect of yourself. It’s certainly possible and often effective to begin your essay with a description that piques interest without necessarily revealing exactly what the description is about. But while enticing and intriguing are good, bewildering and unintelligible are not. Another very simple tip, but many of the less compelling essays we read each year fail to focus. Think about the special nugget of information you want the reader to know about you at the end of your essay and write with that central theme in mind. The Word Barn is a great space for writing and sharing ideas. Showing that students can write, however, does matter. Their stylistic choices matter, their word choice matters, and their authenticity matters. Your college essay gives you the chance to talk about your best assets. While your essay should convey your best qualities, you want to avoid bragging too much. Secondly, you must recognize that schools don’t only view “big” achievements as a viable topic. You don’t need to have worked on a cure for AIDS or helped send a rocket into space to write a compelling essay. The moral to the college essay is that there need not be a moral. You are writing a personal narrative, not a parable, so don’t feel compelled to conclude with a lesson learned or a happy ending. Regardless of the topic about which you choose to write, be sure the essay reveals more about you than the other characters or places in the story. Rachel decides to write about her local and global communities of Third Culture Kids. To be able to tweak this essay for several colleges, Rachel will write about her most meaningful community in the first half of the essay, and then gear the second half to each college. in Exeter offers both group classes and one-on-one writing coaching sessions to help students through this process. Meeting times will vary, depending on each individual. You and I and your teenager will come up with a schedule that works best for everyone. She then uses both the Common App and individual colleges’ websites to find guidelines, deadlines and essay prompts. If Rachel has established a relationship with a college admissions representative, she will ask if supplemental essay prompts for next season will change. If she hasn’t been in touch with a rep, she will use this year’s prompts as a guide. Some students try so hard to be creative, or to entice the reader with a sense of intrigue, that they sacrifice clarity. If your reader is one paragraph in and thinking, “I don’t have a clue what this student is talking about,” you’ve moved from arousing interest to creating confusion.