Essay

Essay No matter how well you write your first draft, there's probably room for improvement. After your initial draft is complete, let it sit for at least a day. With some space between yourself and your initial writing, you'll be able to view your essay objectively and have better luck finding the flaws. After polishing it up, let it sit again and give it another coat of polish before showing it to your proofreaders. Every year, the path to college is paved with more roadblocks. Increasing applications from the U.S. and abroad mean that universities across the country are rewarded with an even more elite pool of candidates. Impeccable grades and test scores alone are no longer enough to set students apart from the crowd. Making sure you have the right punctuation in the right place and using active voice over passive is vital. That said, make sure your good grammar doesn’t keep the essay from sounding like you. Don’t push to use fancier language or longer sentences than you normally would. Use the simplest word you need to get a point acrossâ€"every time. The application essay is not a résumé, nor is it an epic. They also don’t expect you to have survived trauma or carried out heroic feats by your senior year in high school. So always represent yourself in the best way possible, but make sure you keep that depiction truthful. As social media and technology begin to change the landscape of higher education, admissions officers are looking for new ways to get to know potential students. There is still no better way to introduce yourself than through an admission essay. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been or what you’ve seen, and this is not a time where a reader is judging your list of achievements. The most important factor of your college admissions essay is that you’re writing about what’s truly important to you. Have confidence in your own choicesâ€"what music is special to you, the authors you most value, the activities you participate in. Your enthusiasm for wood carving, slam poetry, Coen Brothers movies, or whatever, is what will jump off the page. You can’t make up that passion, and you shouldn’t try. Find an idea wherever you canâ€"application essays tend to be a source of hesitation more than inspiration. Most colleges, as well as the Common Application, will have the topics for their essays available online. Look them up, and then start looking anywhere and everywhere for ideas. It’s always good to pull ideas from your own experiences. Think about what you’ve accomplished and what you feel defines you. Think about parts of your background that have shaped your life. Ultimately, every application essay you write is going to be about you, as it should be the easiest thing to write about and it will give admission officers an idea of who you are. The best college admission essays go through several drafts before they're finished, so don't be afraid to rewrite your essay as many times as needed. Unlike the rest of your application, which consists largely of objective facts like grades and test scores, your application essay allows you to truly showcase what makes you unique as a student and a person. Use your own voice and your own stories to illustrate why you would be an asset to the school. Don't fall into the trap of sanitizing your speech and your opinions for risk of offending an admissions officer. Word order means more than word choiceâ€"you need to check, double-check, sit for a while and check again to make sure your admissions essay is as polished as possible. Basic grammar is really, really, important; it won’t get you into a school on its own, but without it, you could cost yourself a spot. Sell yourself as you really are, so that reading your writing and having a conversation with you both feel like meeting the same person. The genuine article onlyâ€"everything is significant when it comes to telling your own story.