What Makes A Great College Essay?

What Makes A Great College Essay? This is a legitimate concern as you will likely compete with numerous applicants who have backgrounds similar to yours. Therefore, follow these tips to ensure that your essay shines in the competitive admissions process. Browse profiles and reviews of top rated admissions essay editors and have your admissions essay professionally edited today. The essay prompts on the Common App are predictable and mundane. As 400 essays flutter around the room, you notice a page with a recipe for cranberry bread. But you must, because the deadline for notifying applicants is just a few days away. Essays that are riddled with advanced vocabulary can seem pompous or even inadvertently comical to the reader. When selecting anecdotes for your essay, pick vivid ones that you can tell succinctly. If a story would require 450 words of a 600 word essay, then you’re not going to have a lot of space to express self-reflection and analysis of the situation. Remember that the admissions officers are more interested in your perspective of what happened than the events themselves. In our experience, the main worry that applicants have is that their essay won’t stand out. And then there’s this fantastic essay, evidence of an inventive and independent mind. You put her folder into a box marked “Admit,” and you look forward to discussing her with the Admission Committee tomorrow. Suddenly, a gust of wind blows through an open window, upsetting the pile of applications. The options in allowed applicants to describe their accomplishments, the obstacles they’d encountered in life, or the problems they would like to solve. These questions are little more than invitations for stock answers delivered in stock formats . The recent arrests in Operation Varsity Blues put the entire college admissions structure under well-deserved scrutiny. This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The college admission essay can be so crucial, yet so daunting regardless of what you plan on studying - psychology, social work, public health, real estate, teaching. Here are five tips to help you polish up your college admission essay to make it as good as you can. Can you substitute an advanced vocabulary word for a phrase? Writing concisely expresses to the admissions officers that can organize your thoughts and that you respect their time. Advanced vocabulary should be the spice of the essay to give it flavor, so you’ll use plain language most of the time. You’re facing yet another long night of reading vague, boring, pompous essays. You slowly bow your head and rest it in your hands, wishing for a different job. While the data collected from students admitted to Harvard and Stanford is the most specific, AdmitSee also collected interesting information on other Ivy League schools. One pitfall of extenuating circumstances essays is they tend towards hyperbole and overexageration. I became the head of household responsible for caring for my three younger sisters. I became a full-time student, employee, and house mom. Instead of getting discouraged by my setback in calculus, I saw it as an opportunity to grow and reconsider my future. This applicant provides balance and nuance to their issues at home and concrete ways that they’ve developed and matured over time. They also link their special circumstances into their proposed major, Public Relations. I appreciate that this essay is very straightforward. They get right to the point why they are at their current university, what they hope to study at UT, and how their goals evolved over time. At the time, I was taking care of my mother, a single parent, and coordinating her transfer to rehab for alcohol addiction.