College Essay Tips For Application

 As the deadline approaches, I thought I would write you, prospective applicants everywhere, to offer four simple tips to writing an amazing college essay. As you will see in our college essay examples, there is not a single correct way to approach college essay prompts, nor is there one particular formula to writing a better college essay. Reflecting on these two Common App essay examples, there are a few steps you can take in your own writing process for creating college essays that will work at top schools. Before diving into the writing process of writing a Common App essay, you should consider the other schools that you are writing essays for, and ensure you have a strategy for your whole portfolio of essays, and that you are covering different topics for each.

 

Since the Common App essays will be seen by numerous colleges, you will want to draw a portrait of yourself that is palatable to a wide range of institutions and admissions officers (for instance, if you are applying only to engineering programs at a few schools, do not focus your Common App on STEM at the expense of your other applications--save it for your Supplemental Essay). You should send the Common App Essay to most Common App schools, but you do not need to write a separate statement for every Common App college (although some schools might require you to send your supplemental essays - more on this below).

 

When we say the college essays, we are referring, for the most part, to the Common App Personal Statement, an essay written by the vast majority of applicants. The traditional college application essay typically requires a self-reported, open-ended response to broad or generic prompts, which may ask you to share a story, reflect on an event, or discuss a subject. Our college application essay examples will address a variety of additional essay questions, including why you are interested in a specific school or major. Keep in mind as you read through college essay examples for this prompt that the content will vary from applicant to applicant.

 

Colleges are interested in seeing a complete picture of every applicant, and essays are an actual opportunity for students to let their personalities shine through. Admissions officers also want to see if a student is capable of giving an articulate response to an essay question. While it is a good exercise, many students let themselves get influenced too heavily by a few examples of excellent essays, and they employ many platitudes in their quest to impress the admissions officers.

 

An essay is not going to save anyones application that is unqualified for attending a particular school, but it may help the student to present his or her case. A great college application essay is not going to make up for a students bad grades in the lower echelons of the schools applicant pool, but it can help a qualified candidate stand out from the pack. This article by US News also provides admissions officers with tips on writing an example college application essay that stands out from the rest of the personal essay examples.

 

The admissions team at Hamilton offers these tips for you to consider as you sit down to write your college application essay. Follow these four guidelines, and I promise that you will have an essay that makes a great college application. Following the dos--and do nots--outlined above will help you create essays that are unique, persuasive, and genuinely personal. While we cannot write your essay for you, the following essay tips should help in developing the personal statement that becomes the glue of a thematically cohesive application.

 

Spend time understanding how the essay question connects with your personal qualities, then write from a particular perspective. Ultimately, your essays focal point needs to make sense to you; it should also excite and inspire you, as well as the people reading it. Equally important, however, is that your essay does not stand out due to careless typos, divisive or off-color statements, or deviations from your argument or your word count.

 

Chances are, if you are writing about something you are genuinely excited about, your enthusiasm will shine through, making your essay stand out from one that sounds robotic. You will also enjoy yourself more during the writing process, and feel good about your essays, as they will represent you as a real person. Writing essays that really represent you is a crucial step in the college application process, one that helps you get into your best-fit colleges - and get scholarships.

 

If you want your essay to be credible, you will want to ensure everything you write supports this point of view. However, with the right mindset and strategies, you can write an essay that improves your candidacy for admission.

 

With more students applying to selective colleges than ever, and with many of these colleges placing less of an emphasis on standardized test scores, an admissions essay can be a critical component of an applicants application. For colleges, an essay provides not just a chance to assess your creativity, writing style, and abilities, it says something about your life perspective--your preferences, values, how you think--and about the experiences and people that uniquely shape you. Each college essay example we included in our college essay examples shows how you can approach different college essay topics with powerful, deliberate writing.

 

In the webinar together, Ginger Fay, director at Applerouth, and Kim Lifton, president at WOW, take a look at the first four steps in Wows process, as well as sharing the best tips from WOW for college essay writing. If you are the kind who likes to start with "do nots," take a look at our How Not To Write Your College Application Essay blog post. The strongest Stanford College Application Essay examples illustrate your personality with vivid stories and concrete details.