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Get Noticed: 10 College Essay Tips
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Don't "recycle" essays.
An essay that sounds
like it has been used before will blend with everyone else's.
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Captivate your audience. Make your essay
engaging and memorable. Include a quick, enticing intro; give a reason
to finish reading it.
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Be yourself. Choose a topic that is meaningful
to you. Use your own voice. Show off a side of yourself that
your application does not; don't simply write what you think an admissions
office or scholarship committee wants to hear.
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Accentuate the positive.
When writing about a
personal experience, emphasize how the experience changed you for the
better.
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Write in the active voice.
Doing so will make
for a clearer, more concise essay.
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Don't overextend. Your essay isn't a term
paper. Stay focused on your topic.
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Ask people for input. Whether it's a teacher,
counselor, friend or parent, ask someone you respect for some candid
feedback. Is it confusing? boring?
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Leave time for rewriting.
Look for weak or dull
spots and spelling and grammatical errors. Never let your first draft
be your final draft.
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Revise, reword. Improve on your first draft
through various rewrites. Read the essay aloud to find awkward
sentences or problems.
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Pursue perfection. Have someone else look it
over. Quadruple-check the spelling. Type your essay carefully.
FASTWEB STUDENT BULLETIN, High School Edition, Oct./Nov. 2003
MORE TIPS!
Seven Great and
Unexpected Tips to Use When Writing Your Essay
TIP #1:
Your essay is not graded by Olympic judges
College application essays are not graded like Olympic
diving or
gymnastics matches where you start with a 10 and lose points for every
error. The essays are not read by tyrants with red pencils, they are
read by harassed admissions officers who are looking for an impression.
1. That impression is mostly emotional.
2. The reader of your essay is reaching an emotional conclusion
about YOU, not an intellectual conclusion about your topic.
And the very best emotional conclusion that reader can reach is:
"I
really like this kid" TIP #2:
Make sure you have one great idea
This follows from the first point. The
reader of your essay is looking
through the essays--and reading very fast by the way--to get the gist
of what you have done with the question. If you have repeated one
of the thousand most frequent ideas...
> Wrestling taught
me to concentrate
> Grandma's death taught me to stop and
smell the roses
> I like to help others in my community,
and thus I help myself
...you have not aided your cause one iota, no matter how well
written, typed, and proofread your essay is. In fact, adding polish to
a
routine idea often makes it worse and less personal.
TIP #3: Your good idea should be a personal, small idea
Avoid "BIG TOPICS"
1. Avoid obvious big topics like peace in the
Middle East, ecology,
civil rights, and general human nature.
2. Also avoid the thousand smaller versions of those BIG IDEAS
which slip into an essay as a pasted on "moral."
3. Keep your idea personal
Less Successful Idea: "I was at camp when Uncle
Harry died, and
finding out about his life from my parents convinced me what a
warm and generous man he was."
Better Idea: "The first time I confronted
my parents in an adult way
was when Uncle Harry died. I was at camp, and they didn't tell me
about it for two weeks, thinking I would rather stay at camp than go
to his funeral."
COMMENT: The better version is about YOU, not Uncle Harry (who isn't
applying for admission) and you now have a concrete, limited, and
personal story. In telling that story, the details can show the
committee
who you are: mature, aware and eager to grow. The "real" story
of the essay is not about death, Uncle Harry, or even you arguing with
your parents. It's about your success in growing up.
TIP # 4: Myth #1--Just relax and be yourself
The application people love to tell you this, but the truth is that you
have about as much chance of relaxing and being yourself while
writing a college application essay as any untrained person would
painting a mural or acting in a movie.
1. Painting and acting are things that
anyone can "sort of" do but
which require practice and training to do well. So is writing.
2. You have to earn relaxation.
3. You'll start to relax when you feel secure. That usually
means
after you have written several drafts, and someone knowledgeable
has guided you through them.
TIP #5: Myth #2--Just relax and be
yourself
Who is yourself?
We all have several selves. One for our family, one for our friends,
one for
formal occasions, one for when we are alone. The snapshot taken while
fooling around in your basement with a Polaroid is you, and so
is the picture
of you as the best man in your brother's wedding. Which
picture does the
admissions committee want to see? It depends.
You
have to make a
strategic decision.
You should be a considered and well executed version
of one of your
better selves. Which self? The self which is best able to get
the job done
--the self which can present you as unique and passionate about
something important. TIP #6:
Love is not all you need, but if you got it, go with it
Any topic can be handled well, but if all things are equal, choose an
upbeat topic. Write about a passion, not a doubt. Teen anxiety
and
cynicism are pretty tiresome to admissions officers. If you love
something, and you can convey that love with detail and conviction,
do it. If you are fortunate enough to really love someone in your
family
and you can capture that feeling with anecdotes, dialogue, facts,
images, and stories--write it. If you are rare enough to love a
younger
sister or brother, explain it.
If you can explain why you "love," something using anecdotes, dialogue,
facts, images and stories--and the same essay tells us something
important about you--your chances of getting in anywhere just got a
boost. TIP #7: The two
effective and simple rhetorical devices least used
by college entrance essay writers
Weak version: Mrs. Von Crabbe, my piano teacher, taught me
more than just how to play the piano. Her lessons were filled
with advice that one could use in life. Even though her English was
often just a little off, and her manner seemed odd, she will always
be memorable to me.
Better version: "Alex," Mrs. Von Crabbe would say, "the concert
is starting even so before you sit down on the bench." She had told
us the first day never to call her Mrs. Von Crabbe Apple "even with
my back in the behind." But how could we? We loved and feared
her to much.
Comment: Both essays could become weak essays if the only point
they made was that Mrs. Von Crabbe was wonderful. The second
essay, however, rich in quotation and detailed memory, has the
promise of letting the reader "hear" Alex, the writer, and like him.
Having the reader like you is probably the best kept secret of college
essay writing. No, you are not expected to be able to write as well
as the Better Version, most professors can't do that, but remembering
to directly quote the key people in your essay will put you on the
right path.
Which one of these sentences is better?
> I live in a suburb outside a big city where
half the property is
conservation land, and the other half is large plot houses.
> I live in Lincoln, Massachusetts, a town fifteen miles west of Boston,
where half the property is conservation land, and the other half
is large plot houses.
Both sentences are okay, but the second is better. Readers are nosy,
they want to know the name of the town. Do not say "my
father works for a big law firm in a big city" as if you were writing a
bad version of the Great American Novel and were fearful that any
real details might limit the "timelessness and universality" or your
masterpiece. You should write: "My father works for Arnold and
Porter,
a large law firm in Washington, D.C." Of course, there's always
the possibility of too much detail. "Large law firm" in the sentence
above could itself be "a 340 member law firm with branches in twelve
cities.
--These tips were written by Cambridge Essay Service
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