Writing+Your+College+Application+Essay

**__Writing your college application essay__**

 * 1) Remember your audience
 * 2) Your audience is reading for a particular purpose
 * 3) Your application is being compared to every other application received
 * 4) Remember there is a limited number of seats in each freshman class
 * Admissions personnel assume they will lose 10 to 15% of each accepted class
 * Students apply to more than institution and will go with the best option: academics, scholarship/financing, athletics, social (and not necessarily in that order)
 * Stuff happens and sometimes students have to defer their matriculation
 * Even if a student chooses to attend a particular institution, he may change his mind at the last minute to go some place else
 * If you are on the waiting list of a school you prefer, delay your acceptance confirmation as long as you can and check with your preferred school a day or two before the confirmation deadline.
 * Even if you confirm your acceptance, depending on how much you have to pay before you start attending classes, identify a “go/no go” date and check with your preferred school before that date. BUT DO NOT BE A NUISANCE or your name may disappear from the waiting list.

__ Why an admissions essay? __
Admissions teams want to know if you can write well. Writing scores and abilities impact a number of things: 1) the number of developmental or remedial writing courses that have to be offered; 2) the number of freshman writing classes and at what level need to be offered; and 3) the likelihood a student will succeed in college and it’s all about retention, graduation rates, and graduation GPAs.

If you cannot articulate your ideas or position on a topic well, the admissions team may speculate you haven’t sufficient motivation or capability to keep up with your academic work to graduate.

Because there are limitations for each incoming freshman class and because an admissions team is looking for diversity in the student population as well as majors, your essay may make the difference between the fat envelope, the waiting list, and the “no thank you” letter.

__ Choosing your topic __
Your application essay topic is the second independent choice you get to make, provided you get to choose the colleges to which you want to apply. The admissions team will have reviewed your transcript and other application information, so your college application essay is one of the few windows into //you//: your values, your preferences, your personality, your thinking process. It may also be the sole extended example of your writing abilities: organization, structure, style, grammar, and mechanics.

Your topic reveals something about you because most students write a college application essay about something that is important to them or about which they feel passionate. Your topic indicates something of your values and how you perceive yourself. The admissions team also notes if your topic is about something in the past or about the future, or both. Your writing demonstrates more about you and how you think than you might realize. Your topic and your style of writing indicate if you have a sense of humor and how you show it; if you are methodical based on the way you present information.

Just keep in mind that while there is no “right” answer, the admissions team does pay attention to what you say and how you say it. Because of the way you write about your topic, you are offering clues about yourself, about the way you see yourself, and about the way you see the world in which you live.

__ Focus, focus, focus __
Don’t write about your whole summer, but a particular event or moment in time. And think about how that event or moment in time taught you something about yourself, showed something about yourself and your abilities, etc.

The admissions team is looking at hundreds if not thousands of essays. As you circle around to your topic, think about your strengths and weaknesses; think about your best qualities and the most important things these strangers need to know about you and why you are a good if not excellent candidate for this college or university.

Even if you choose to pick an event or role, address why that event or role mattered or matters to you and the type of person you are. Keep in mind they’ve already seen the list of your extracurriculars, so now is the time to talk about why being in charge of set design for the theater department made a difference and how it helped prepare you to major in math.

__ Writing the essay __
There are lots of approaches to writing the college application essay and most of them are similar to writing any paper.

As you know, there are many prewriting strategies. If prewriting frustrates you, skip this and go straight to writing your draft. You probably incorporate elements of prewriting in your draft process anyway.
 * // Prewriting //**
 * Brainstorming
 * Set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes
 * Make a list, draw a concept map, or just write about your strengths, your interests, your characteristics
 * Don’t write about activities: playing a sport, winning an award, having a lead role or responsibility; that comes later
 * For each strength, interest, and/or characteristic, jot down things you’ve done or been that demonstrate each of those
 * Look for patterns and connections

Just as with any writing you do, you have to make a decision about how best to present your information. What kind of structure will you use? How much description should you include? What is your thesis or your point? When the admissions team has finished reading your essay, what do you want them to know, think, and say about you?
 * // Drafting //**

There are many ways to get to this draft. You can set that timer again and just write, using your prewriting activity. You can choose a strength, quality, interest, or characteristic and tell a story that demonstrates that strength, quality, interest, or characteristic.

Keep in mind that the essay is not a stand-alone part of your application, so it may be possible to use your essay to amplify or expand on something in your application, but might also be the way you show what you have not been able to list or describe in your application. The essay may be the way you answer the question: “What’s the most important thing I need to know about you that isn’t in your application?”

Just do it.
 * // Editing //**
 * Give yourself time to review your work after a day or two so you can review your text more objectively.
 * How does it sound when you or someone else reads it out loud? Listen to your words and to your tone of voice.
 * Review, revise, delete.
 * Proofread. More than once. Better yet, have someone you trust read it to give you feedback and help you proofread.

__ Other notes and words of advice __ DON’T. ..
 * 1) try to be too clever. Humor, irony, satire, and sarcasm are hard to convey in writing, especially for a reader who doesn’t know you. Jonathan Swift got in trouble a few times because people misinterpreted his tone of voice. Check out //A Modest Proposal//.
 * 2) go overboard with your metaphors, especially the elongated “metaphor for my life.” Your life probably is not like a box of chocolates and Forrest Gump got away with it because it was one of many metaphors in the movie, and it was a movie.
 * 3) exceed a stated word count. Exceeding the word count will not work in your favor because it will indicate a) you can’t count; b) you can’t edit or revise or control your writing sufficiently to say what needs to be said in however many words; c) you don’t have enough discipline to focus on the one thing that’s really important for the admissions team to know about you; d) you don’t like to follow directions; e) some of the above; f) all of the above.
 * 4) be too clever with your rhetorical approach. For example, the rhetorical or hypothetical question at the start of an essay can be provocative, but it has to serve a purpose. If that purpose isn’t met in the balance of the essay, the question may serve to demonstrate you’re trying to be more philosophical or intellectual than you actually are.
 * 5) worry about your vocabulary being too big or your readers not knowing the terms or words you are using unless they are too specific or too obscure; don’t waste time defining terms, phrases, or concepts someone on the admissions team probably knows.

DO. ..
 * 1) remember your audience. Many members of the admissions team have likely read thousands upon thousands of application essays, so “tricks” don’t work.
 * 2) use quotes where appropriate.
 * 3) write more than one draft.
 * 4) work hard to be precise and excellent with your grammar and mechanics.
 * 5) use a thesaurus if in your revision process you discover too much repetition of particular words or phrases, but be careful you aren’t arbitrary in your choice of a replacement. You need to be sure the synonym is accurate //and// sounds like you.
 * 6) coach your readers/proofreaders.
 * 7)  check out The Cringe Inducing Metaphor
 * 8) ==== visit College Board to see what other resources you might find and be able to use.====
 * 9) see writing this college application essay as a valuable exercise from which you will learn something about yourself and your writing.

//Coaching your readers/proofreaders//
 * 1) You might have readers who can proofread well and others who know you well so will read with your voice and personality in mind; the folks in the admissions office probably don't know you.
 * 2) If you are trying to convey something in particular, you might ask your reader(s) to read with that intention in mind to let you know if you conveyed what you intended.
 * 3) Be sure your proofreaders/readers are willing to be honest with you. If someone is afraid of hurting your feelings, that reader isn’t going to do you one bit of good.
 * 4) Explain to your readers that the writing is separate from the content. That is, the writing itself may be technically very good, but the content may be unclear or confusing. You need to be both technically good and clear.