How To Write The College Essay

How To Write The College Essay To do this, you need to get away from simply summarizing events. For instance, let’s say you spent a summer during your high school years doing a homestay in another country while learning a new language. Remember, you’re not Sergeant Joe Friday writing up a police report. Feel free to tell us about a time you stumbled, and what happened next. Don’t be afraid to reveal yourself in your writing. Focus on one event, one activity, or one “most influential person.” Tackling too much tends to make your essay too watered down or disjointed. Especially if you’re recounting an event, take it beyond the chronological storytelling. To succeed in the long-term, you need to think strategically. From there, get out a piece of paper and start brainstorming ideas for each. Put down anything you can think of that might work as an essay. The more ideas, the better, as you often find your best ideas only after getting the obvious ones out of the way. If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This article explores concrete ways to apply strategic thinking in your life. Here's a list of 42 awesome college tips to make the most of freshman year and beyond. After you’ve checked for mechanical errors, you need to go back through your essay and edit it. Look for things like consistency of tone, style, and form. If you need some help, check out this guide from Purdue. Even if they do, they certainly don’t have the same knowledge and perspective that you have. To close this gap, you need to be as specific as possible. I believe the main cause of the problem is that there’s a disconnect between what we know in our heads and what we put down on paper. As I mentioned before, it’s best to start with brainstorming. And you’re certainly not telling your story just for the heck of it. You’re trying to show who you are and what you’re about. Furthermore, they likely know nothing about the subject of your essay. Formatting and presentation cannot replace substance, but they can certainly enhance the value of an already well-written essay. Tell us something different from what we’ll read on your list of extracurricular activities or transcript. Essays should have a thesis that is clear to you and to the reader. Your thesis should indicate where you’re going and what you’re trying to communicate from the outset. icons new College Packing List Show up to your next semester ready for anything. Listen icons new The College Info Geek Podcast Learn how to be a more effective student, even while you're doing your laundry. Sadly, one of the easiest ways to stand out is to have correct spelling and grammar. Don’t let stupid mistakes pull down the quality of your essay. Proofread this thing more than any essay you’ve ever written. These are just filler words that we lean on for convenience. Once you’ve followed the process I described and have a list of, say, topics, I recommend doing a bit of free writing for each. Now, it’s certainlypossiblethat you happen to be that guy, and I definitely encourage you to highlight any uncommon experience you’ve had on your essay. For instance, if you’ve climbed Mt. Everest or visited space or helped cure a rare disease, then yeah, you should probably mention that at some point. I’m not sure how else to put this, but there are some things best left unshared in your college app. To craft an outstanding essay you have to get past these overused descriptions. When writing about an experience like this, it can be really easy to get wrapped up in all the cool things that happened. You need to talk about what you learned, about how this experience changed you, and how it helped form who you are today.