Your essay should ultimately have a very narrow focus. 650 words may seem like a lot, but you can fill it up very quickly. This means you either need to have a very specific topic from the beginning or find a specific aspect of a broader topic to focus on.
At this point you want to look for issues with word choice and sentence structure:
Once you've fixed the problems you found on the first pass and have a second (or third) draft you're basically happy with, ask some other people to read it. Check with people whose judgment you trust: parents, teachers, and friends can all be great resources, but how helpful someone will be depends on the individual and how willing you are to take criticism from her.
"Hello? This is Eva Smith again. I'm a reporter with Tiny Town High's newspaper The Falcon, and I was hoping to ask you some questions about —" Click. Bzzzzzzz. Whoever was on the other end of the line had hung up.
Consideration 2: Does It Tell the Reader Something Different About You?
Also consider whether some of the prompts are similar enough that you could submit the same essay to multiple schools. Doing so can save you some time and let you focus on a few really great essays rather than a lot of mediocre ones.
Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We'll learn your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, step-by-step. At the end, you'll have a unique essay that you'll proudly submit to your top choice colleges.
If you just don't have an idea you're happy with, that's okay! Give yourself a week to think about it. Sometimes you'll end up having a genius idea in the car on the way to school or while studying for your U.S. history test. Otherwise, try the brainstorming process again when you've had a break.
Effects: She is ostracized after arriving in the U.S. “Every time news of a terror attack spread,” she writes, “I could hear the whispers, visualize the stares.” Other effects are implied, and we are left to imagine—and feel for ourselves—the kind of impact this might have had on her, and on us. Vulnerability creates connection.
A: For sure. Say you’re interested in becoming a doctor, but you’re applying to a medical program with a supplemental prompt asking why you want to become a doctor. If you want to avoid repetition, you might not explicitly mention becoming a doctor at the end of your personal statement (you don’t have to discuss your career at all in a personal statement
Q: Are there any situations where I may not want to write about my life struggles?
Needs: Order, autonomy, reassurance, growth, safety, understanding, empathy, hope, support, self-acceptance
The Feelings and Needs Exercise
Challenges: Domestic abuse, alcoholic step-dad, little brother Fernando’s birth, family’s undocumented status
You’ll find some here, here, and here. While you may be tempted to steal those thematic threads, don’t. Try finding your own. Have the courage to be original. You can do it.
I have no immediate relatives in America besides my mom, dad, and sister.
Airports are hands-down my favorite place to be, but I hate airplanes.
A good outline will help you determine the format of your essay, the flow of your thoughts as well as the main purpose and tone of voice. If you’re not ready for this, then email the writing service with the question, “Can I pay for essays here?”
Be laconic and don’t use complex word constructions. The fact is that the admission committee will not appreciate it. You need to enter college or university. This is your top priority. If you’re not ready to do it yourself, then you need to ask yourself the question, “Who can help me and whether I can get a speedy paper discount code?”
Writing such a paper is quite complicated because you have to fit a certain amount of information into a small essay format. You should focus on a specific idea and follow your plan from start to finish. Also, be specific and avoid vague phrases that aren’t relevant to your essay’s topic. It’s best to just be yourself and tell an entirely original story without making up anything extra.
Another point you need to focus on is your story. Choose those moments that will help you stand out from the crowd and establish yourself as a person who seeks knowledge and wants to learn more than anyone.
Create an Outline
The fact is that when you have enough ideas, you can concentrate on the best one. You also need to narrow your options and choose those thoughts that will help you write a good essay and demonstrate you as a diligent student seeking knowledge.
This aspect is very important since you should fully concentrate on what goals this essay pursues. Typically, you will have to answer a question from the admissions committee for your purposes, think about how it might apply to you and describe why you are the ideal candidate.
You must show your interest to the college or university admission officers, as this is very important to any student. It’s best to focus your attention only on your grades, extracurricular activities and past achievements. You need to describe your goals and ambitions that you’re pursuing. Think about what is best to convey to the admission committee. The fact is that such an essay is a kind of advertisement for you as a future student.
It doesn’t need to be an incredibly long essay – just long enough to make a short description of what you have achieved and what you want to do when you go to college or university. Try to share something important that sets you apart from the rest. Or you can contact some writing services and tell them, “I need statistics homework help.”
If you ask a teacher or parent to proofread your essay, they will be able not only to catch mistakes, but also to check if the writing sounds like you. After reading so many examples and following all those instructions, it’s hard to tell if what you just wrote is a statement of who you really are or not. Enlist the help of others to make sure that your essay is immaculate.
While you research your application essay, you will be encouraged to check out some examples of great essays and get inspired. While this is a great exercise, many students allow themselves to be influenced too much by the examples, and use lots of clichés in their desire to impress the admission officers.
The admissions officers will only spend a brief amount of time reviewing your essay, so you need to start with a vivid paragraph that will keep them engaged. The introduction has to reveal to the reader what your essay is about and catch their attention. You could open with an anecdote or an interesting story that will show some of the best parts of your personality and character, offering an insight that will help the admission officers get to know who you are.
Admissions officers go through thousands of applications a year, so it’s only logical that they will notice those that bring a unique personality to life. Let them discover that!
6. Stick to a clear essay plan
A college application essay is usually around 500 words, and those words can mean the difference between acceptance and rejection. You will spend many days researching and crafting your essay, but admissions officers will only have a few minutes to actually read it, so you need to get their attention.
Universities are looking for authenticity and quality of thinking, so don’t try to shape your essay around phrases or ideas that people have used many times before, but base it on your genuine beliefs.
A college application essay is basically a glimpse into how your mind works and how you view the world. If you want your essay to be credible, you need to make sure everything you write supports that viewpoint. Spend some time figuring out how the essay question relates to your personal qualities and then write from a specific angle.
You will have a maximum number of words, so the secret is not to try to cover everything in your essay. Create a plan before you actually start writing, organize your essay in three parts (introduction, body and conclusion), and decide on the main ideas you want to express.
Once you've gone through the questions above, you should have good sense of what you want to write about. Hopefully, it's also gotten you started thinking about how you can best approach that topic, but we'll cover how to plan your essay more fully in the next step.
In general, Eva feels like her first paragraph isn't as engaging as it could be and doesn't introduce the main point of the essay that well: although it sets up the narrative, it doesn't show off her personality that well. She decides to break it down sentence by sentence:
However you structure your essay, you want to make sure that it clearly lays out both the events or ideas you're describing and establishes the stakes (i.e. what it all means for you). Many students become so focused on telling a story or recounting details that they forget to explain what it all meant to them.
Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We'll learn your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, step-by-step. At the end, you'll have a unique essay that you'll proudly submit to your top choice colleges.
Consideration 5: Can It Be Related to the Prompt?
Solution: Eva decides to try to stick more closely to her own perspective: "I'd heard rumors that Atlas Theater was going to be replaced with an AMC multiplex, and I was worried." She also puts a paragraph break before this sentence to emphasize that she's now moving on to the background info rather than describing her call.
Still, don't worry that every single detail has to be perfectly correct. Definitely don't make anything up, but if you remember a wall as green and it was really blue, your readers won't notice or care.
To make this structure work you need a very specific focus. Your love of travel, for example, is much too broad—you would need to hone in on a specific aspect of that interest, like how traveling has taught you to adapt to event the most unusual situations. Whatever you do, don't use this structure to create a glorified resume or brag sheet.