Crafting An Unforgettable College Essay

Crafting An Unforgettable College Essay Don’t rely on spell check alone to catch all of your mistakes, either. Be sure you are using the correct form of words too (they’re, their, there, your, you’re, etc.). Few things will throw off an application evaluator more than misspellings and typos in the college essay â€" except when you mention the wrong college! We want you to expand upon a few characteristics that make you great, not just give us a list with the thousand and one things that contribute to your greatness. This way, we are able to fully grasp why these particular characteristics, out of the many you could have selected, are so important to you and who you are as an individual. Besides, that other essay would go on forever, and, as I mentioned, we read thousands of these things each year. We have found that the #1 reason for essay procrastination is that students don’t feel confident in getting started â€" i.e. they aren’t sure what to write about and how to structure it. Sure, any student can list achievements, but that’s not what the admissions gurus are looking for in an essay. You will need to do this to receive any of the accommodations and support services that you might need to be successful. To help youth applying to college navigate the college essay in order to submit their best work with their college application. Your goal should not be to include all of your accomplishments and activities . I quickly learned to play the clarinet and joined the elementary school band. As soon as I was physically big enough to carry around a mini Fender electric guitar, I begged to take guitar lessons. Perhaps it was subconscious at the time, but while many of my elementary school friends were playing sports with their dads, I was looking for a way to connect to my donor through music. Don’t tell us how much you want to attend XYZ University when you are submitting the essay to The College of ABC. While it is important to talk yourself up as the awesome student you truly are, you still have to remember that the application essay is not a résumé. You can certainly submit a résumé with your application, but your essay is not the place to do it. The most engaging essays tell a story and have a clear focus. A thoughtful and detailed narration of a difficult time in your life tells far more about you than a list of competitions won and honors achieved. During middle school and high school, my enthusiasm for music and performing accelerated in tandem with my talent. In addition to pursuing instrumental music, I began singing in theatre and in an a cappella group. Once a student picks one or two of these to focus on in their essay, they are on the writing path to a stellar essay that describes exactly who they are and why they would be an asset to a college. But the personal essay, doesn’t have to be that terrifying a beast if your student holds the keys to writing one that will stand out from all of the rest. Think of the college application process as a video game, and the dreaded college essay is the dragon that needs to be slayed. Any uncovered dishonesty would have serious consequences on your future. Anyway, writing about something due to of personal experience will be much easier than writing about something you have had to make-up. If you choose not to disclose your disability in your essay or college application, remember, you may still disclose at any point after you are accepted into the school. There is not a time I play my clarinet or guitar, step up to a microphone to sing, or take a bow after a performance that I do not wonder what my donor would think of me. I am still searching for a connection to him through performing and music. I am thankful his personal essay swayed my mother to choose him as my donor, and that his writing compelled me to discover and pursue all of my passions in the classroom and on the stage. When I was in second grade, I read the essay for the first time and learned the donor was a professional musician and an accomplished guitar player. This knowledge was the catalyst for me to begin exploring my own musical abilities. The overall workload here is really dependent on your college list, so if your list isn’t as ambitious, some of the timelines above might not apply to you. The main point here is that getting a head start and planning your essay workload is essential to limiting how stressful the college application process needs to be. Make sure to get these done early so that you give yourself a lot of time to work on the remaining regular decision supplemental essays. If you chose your essay prompts correctly, hopefully you can use an essay or two from here for some of your remaining school essays. Map out all essay prompts for UC applications and all regular decisions schools.