How To Write An Amazing College Essay

How To Write An Amazing College Essay Last year, CMC had eight admissions officers and 10 part-time readers for 7,100 applications. Both Stanford University and University of California Berkeley officials insist they read all essays. Patricia Krahnke, president of Global College Search and former assistant admissions director at Rutgers University and Vermont State Colleges’ dean of admissions, agrees with Stevens. She tells me large schools receiving 30,000 to 60,000 applications are using software to crunch numbers and manage the volume of applications. Instead, take the reader between the lines to better understand you, as a thinking person. CampusChat keeps parents, students, educators and counselors informed of college news, tips, and resources -- all delivered directly to your inbox. Prompt invests thousands of hours identifying top Writing Coaches. We help thousands of students gain admission to top-50 colleges every year. Once you have a revised draft of your college essay, call in your friends and family to take a look. Every reader has his own taste in what he wants and what matters to him, and a student sometimes gets lucky. “You have to hope that (the reader’s) taste jives with your sensibility,” Jager-Hyman says. In other words, they wouldn’t ask for them if they didn’t read them. Focus instead on the key messages you want to convey and develop a storyline that illustrates them well. There is a very good chance an essay developed in this manner will meet at least one of the listed essay prompts. Selective colleges are most interested in students whose sense of purpose is illustrated in their recognition of compatible learning opportunities on their campuses. Have them give you comments and encourage them to be honest. Your essay may be the ultimate product, but before you start worrying about the final edition you’ll send off to colleges, take some time to work on the process. On the other hand, if you have experienced something intensely personal and profoundly meaningful within such a topic, help the reader to know how the experience affected you. Too often students get stuck on the choice of a prompt and never get to the essay itself. The Common App essay prompts are not requirements; they are ideas designed to stimulate a creative thought process. This is especially true if you are an experiential, hands-on learner who values testing ideas. Be prepared to provide evidence of this learning style in your supplemental essays. When they ask the “why do you want to come here” question, they are not interested in knowing whether you can recite their institutional superlatives. Rather, they want to see if you have made the conscious connection between your sense of purpose and the opportunities that exist within their educational environment. The manner in which you like to engage in learning. We don’t all process the same information the same wayâ€"and colleges don’t all deliver it in the same manner! Selective institutions often employ supplemental essay prompts to sort the whimsically submitted applications from those that are more intentional. They can clearly demonstrate the synergy that exists between themselves and the institutions in question. All are historical elements of your college applications. Well established over time, they determine your general competitiveness in the selective admission process. Colleges value diversity of thought in their classrooms. The essay is your opportunity to reveal that element of diversity that can be found uniquely within you. You’ll hear a lot from “experts” about taboo topics (sports, death, disease, divorce, pets, etc.) and generic essays on related topics are not a good idea. Free-writing will help you hone your skills and practice for the real thing. DON’T try to write an important or scholarly essay. A well-researched essay that shows off your knowledge of a particular academic subject tells the reader nothing about you. The reader will only suspect that your essay is a recycled term paper. DO write an essay that only you could honestly write.