Even before we start talking about how to write a college admission essay, let’s first figure out what is a college essay. The college admission essay is your personal statement, about 500-650 words long and this is your chance to tell your own unique story of your background, interest and personality.
The next question is why is this essay important? Through your college essay the admission officers are looking for three takeaways:
- Who are you as a person?
- How will you contribute something of value to the college?
- Can you write clearly and effectively?
The way to make your essay a compelling read is not so much about writing style and language proficiency as it is about being honest and genuine. A personal essay should be about something that has meaning for you, and makes you come across as thoughtful, authentic and motivated.
So let’s take a look at how to write a college essay in a way that the college notices you.
Let Your Passion shine through
Make sure that the narrative you build in your essay makes your passion shine through, something that matters deeply to you. Think of the events, moments or situations in your life which have made you pause and think, reflect and imbibe, or even just simply left an impact on you.
It could be about a book, an experience, a person, a movie, a sport – anything that has moved you or has been important to you in some way or the other. This will enable you to connect the dots and arrive at what it is that you care about. And then, you write about what you have arrived at.
Connect your subject with its impact
You might want to write about a nail-biting finish of a sport that had you totally awed. Well, it’s not difficult to write about a summary of a game that had a tennis player move up from a two-set loss to amp up his game to win the remaining three and the grand slam title as a result.
What’s tricky is to bring out how this match revealed elements of grit and tenacity, of not losing one’s nerves when down, and gathering all your mental strength and physical skills to come back into the game and go hell for leather to win the match. And that is exactly what you need to bring out in your essay.
When recalling these events, it isn’t as much recounting as it is the reflection that’s important. Talk about how the subject that you have chosen to write about made you feel, how it changed the way you think, and whether it had an impact on your priorities and/or values.
Don’t let the focus dissipate
Let the focus of your essay remain undispersed throughout its length. While the whole idea is to present a positive image of yourself, it cannot turn into an “I, me, myself’ write-up that talks about your various qualities.
So how do you bring out the qualities that you want to talk about without appearing to be a braggart? If it is your diligence you want to highlight, talk about a time when you toiled through days together on a project to hone it to perfection. If it’s your compassion for the underprivileged, talk about the fundraising you organised with the help of your friends and family, garnering a record donation from the public for the cause.
It is crucial that you pick an important moment or a small piece of your experience, and then demonstrate why that moment matters. collegeexpress.com quotes Tamara Siler, Senior Associate Director for Admission/Minority Recruitment Coordinator at Rice University. “Focus on a moment you feel has defined you as a person and as a student.” Lorenzo Gamboa, Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions at Santa Clara University, adds, “Students do not need to compile an entire season into an essay. Just give us one place, one time, one moment, and that will do it for you.”
Show, Don’t Tell
Your essay is more than just ideas stemming from your mind as a result of your personal experiences. For the admission officers, it is a window into the workings of your mind, its perceptions, its responses and how you view the world, in general. Therefore you need to have tangible examples to support your ideas.
For example, if you are talking about how starting to read at an early age has made you a voracious reader, then talk about who introduced you to books, what are your earliest memories of books, and how did your interest develop further into exploring various genres, how has that made you more informed, evolved and empathetic as a person. To make your essay sound credible, spend some time on how your story relates to your personal qualities and then write from a specific angle.
This implies that each time you express an idea, just writing a statement of fact is not enough; you need to include specific examples to support your ideas. If you want to talk about your ability to take initiative, describe times when you’ve taken action. If it is your discipline and persistence give examples of initiative and determination. Describe examples in ways that you don’t have to spell out these qualities.
Be creative, yet stay clear and logical
How do you roll out the creativity in your essay? Even if your subject or topic is something common, you can make your writing more exciting and enticing by making uncommon connections, providing uncommon insights or using uncommon language.
An example of uncommon connections could be how you connect your interest in engineering to not the usual attributes of a scientific mind or love for machines but to collaboration, efficiency and hands-on work.
Uncommon insights could include how your experience of a difficult internship with a very demanding superior changed for the better when you provided more research-based stats than asked for. It shows how you took the extra initiative, worked harder and made it into a better working experience.
Uncommon language would include using phrases in a way they haven’t been used before. https://www.collegeessayguy.com/ gives this introduction in an essay which is a great example of uncommon language considering not many people would compare their laptop to a passport.
My laptop is like a passport. It is plastered with stickers all over the outside, inside, and bottom. Each sticker is a stamp, representing a place I’ve been, a passion I’ve pursued, or a community I’ve belonged to.
You can be as creative as you want but if your sentences and thoughts do not string together logically, your essay is meaningless. Make sure your essay is organized into parts that flow seamlessly from one into another. Ensure there are transitions, a beginning, a middle and an ending.
It is a good idea to make a teacher or a parent read your essay to get a sense of the reader being able to perceive what you are trying to convey in your college admission essay. Also ask them their opinion on whether they find the essay content lucid, connected logically in its parts and easy to understand. This will give you a fair idea of how a new reader (the admissions officer) will perceive your essay and if you need to make any changes to it for it to appear more structured or interesting.
Conclusion
You must know that admissions counsellors receive hundreds of applications and will read through your essay in a very short time span. Make sure your essay is engaging in language, organised in structure and clear in its main idea. It is important that the voice in the essay remains your own even though you may have sought help to write the essay. Some students try and sound much smarter and more driven than they actually are. Some choose a subject they don’t care about, but one that they think will impress admissions officers. Don’t do that. Write about what you truly believe in, what really matters to you and don’t project yourself to be someone you are not.
If you’d like to learn more about how to write a better college admission essay, get in touch with one of our experts at College Counselling Coach. We cover the whole nine yards of the college admission process to maximise your chances of landing at the right program and the right college.