It is a fact that today’s students have it harder than ever to get into the school of their choice. Heck, forget dream school – for many students around the country, getting into any school right now can be a challenge. To give yourself the best chance at getting accepted, you have got to send the admissions committee your best stuff. One of the key ways to impress them is to write clear and convincing essays. Here’s how to write a college application essay that will increase your chances of getting accepted.
Writing an Admission Essay
First things first, before you get started writing any old thing just to get the darned thing done, you must know what the admission essay is meant to accomplish. The college application essay is the opportunity for you to show the admissions committee who you really are as a person. They review countless applications when they build their incoming freshman class, and they are interested in admitting students based on more than their test scores and GPA. Before you even pick a topic for your essay, you should take some time and think about what makes you a special candidate, and more importantly, how you can convey that to the admissions counselors.
How to Start a College Application Essay
Most applications nowadays will provide you with a couple prompts to begin. Now that you know what type of person you want to show the committee, you should think back on an event in your life that lets that person shine through. One important thing to keep in mind is that admission counselors are looking for someone who is determined to succeed (since this increases the likelihood that you will graduate and become a successful alumni). So it doesn’t really matter whether the event is some big victory or bitter defeat, what they want to hear is what you learned from it and how you intend to apply it towards big achievements on their campus.
How to Format a College Application Essay
There are two critical elements when it comes to formatting your essay. The first is that you must adhere to the required length of the essay and count the words or run them through the word count tool in your word processor. The admissions department reads so many submissions that it will be easy to determine whether your application essay fits within the guidelines. The other element to focus on is your grammar. No matter how good your story is, your odds of acceptance decrease if the reader has a hard time concentrating on what you’re saying because of how you’re saying it. Have a teacher or two review your sentence structure and word choice to make sure both are air-tight.
How to Write a College Application Essay About Yourself
Now that those two elements are taken care of to ensure you have a fighting chance, it’s time to get to work telling your story. The key point to focus on here is to always keep in mind the person who is reading the essay. You’ll know all the background and context of your story and remember exactly how things unraveled, but you need to be crystal clear in the details so the reader can draw a solid picture in their mind of who you are. Here’s a trick – have a friend give your essay to someone they know (coworker, parent, etc) and after they read it ask them to describe the kind of person who wrote the essay. Admissions counselors are regular people too, so if what this person says is not what you intended then you have some work to do.
Admission Essay Editing
This brings us to the final part of how to write a college application essay, and it should also be where you spend the most time. You probably can’t tell by the conversational tone, but most newspaper columns and blog posts (like this one!) go through several revisions to deliver their message crisply and succinctly. Think of your first draft as a beginning point of explaining who you are at a distance, and through editing you can bring that person into focus. Remember, every applicant is allowed the same word count to convince the committee why they belong on campus, so be absolutely sure that each word you use counts.