Dreading Writing Your College Application Essay? Tips From The Pros

Dreading Writing Your College Application Essay? Tips From The Pros 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. 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. 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. 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. Essay writing tips adapted from Kelly Tanabe’s “Four Steps to Writing a Winning Admissions Essay, Part I”. See how eliminating extra words actually makes your point stronger? DON’T let your tutor or your teacher or your parents take over your essay. The resulting essay will not reflect you and thus will not accomplish its goal, no matter how “good” it seems to be. DON’T be pretentious or overly formal â€"this is not the time to play the role of Albert Einstein or Mother Teresa if that’s not who you are. Resist the temptation to portray yourself as a saint with a 4.0â€"you’re better off presenting the real you. DO be yourself â€" your essay should sound as if it could have been written by no one else. Eliminatingprepositionsis a great, easy way to tighten your writing. Start with a creative lead.Capture the readers’ interestin the first two sentences. With a wealth of experience as a writer, journalist, and educator, Robert Schwartz has written for all four major television networks. In the feature film world he has written or rewritten screenplays for all of the major movie studios. If you need some help, check out this guide from Purdue. Sadly, one of the easiest ways to stand out is to have correct spelling and grammar. 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. But you can’t forget to talk about what matters. You need to talk about what you learned, about how this experience changed you, and how it helped form who you are today. To do this, you need to get away from simply summarizing events. 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. This is your story, or some small but significant part of it, as told or reflected upon by you. To succeed in the long-term, you need to think strategically. 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. Submit it, and treat yourself to something nice â€" like your favorite film, a run, quality time with your dog or whatever it is that you enjoy. Ask people you trust for their feedback, but don’t let anyone else tell you how you should write it.