Application Essay

Application Essay Remember, admissions officers want to see that you have done serious homework on their institution indicative of students who, if admitted, is likely to actually enroll (the whole “demonstrated interest” thing). The best recipe for creating something unoriginal is beginning from a place of fear. It’s easy to play it super-safe and get sucked-into the clichés and tropes of the “Why Us? In the end you may produce a competent essay, but at a school with a single-digit admit rate, just about everyone will have produced something competent. According to Business Insider, Tufts University and the University of Chicago have both earned reputations for their out-of-left-field essay questions. From this vantage point, Lombardi shared some awesome expert-level college essay tips. We also enlisted the help of a qualified expert in the field. I wrote three distinctly different full drafts for my Common App college essay, all speaking about my Asian-American identity in different ways. Each full draft also had a number of smaller edits. The persuasive personal essay turns ethos, pathos, and logos into a song for our common humanity, by sparking recognition in the reader for another’s foibles, trials, and shared beliefs. And here you thought essays were just painful exercises. Remember that your research will be more effective if you do early research into ALL your schools at once, or at least all the ones that have Why School essays. Originality is celebrated there â€" not in the half-hearted “good for you” way, but in the full-throated “GOOD FOR YOU! One of the first of my fellow students to befriend me wore corset tops and tutus and carried a parasol with which she punctuated her every utterance. Her best friend was a boy with purple hair who once wore a shirt with built in LED lights for Christmas. They were the most popular people in school, in direct contrast to all that was socially acceptable in New Haven. Our peers recognized them as being unique, but instead of ostracizing them or pitying them, the students in Berkeley celebrated them. Did you pick us just because we’ve got a good ranking, or do you actually know something about how we work? Cultural reputation, IE, what the students behave like and what they value? DI correllates to yield, and yield boosts rankings â€" and everybody likes high rankings. Speaking of future drafts, one of the best things you can do is run your essay by a trusted family member, educator, advisor, or friend. Get feedback from somebody whose opinion you respect. This feedback will give you a sense of how well your ideas are coming across to the reader, how compelling your story is, and how you might be able to improve your essay. These additional eyes are also critical when it comes to proofing your work, catching typos you might have missed, and helping to refine writing that is unclear or off-topic. And if the topic is weird, feel free to write a weird essay. Some colleges and universities are actually notorious for their unusual â€" and in some cases, genuinely strange â€" college application essay prompts. Don’t they already know what is great about their school? They’re asking because of something called demonstrated interest. Demonstrated interest is a fancy way of saying, how much do you really want to go to OUR school? You spent your high school years independently pursuing an area of passionâ€"creating your own reading list, seeking out adult mentors, etc. Now, you have gotten the admission officer’s attention. If, after reviewing your composition, you can check both of those boxes, and you’ve avoided the common pitfalls highlighted previously, then you can rest assured that you have mastered the “Why Us? Now that you’ve done strong research and extracted some key facts as well as the ethos of the school, it’s time to show why you belong there. You value substantive and constructive feedback over chasing A’s. You plan on getting a graduate degree and want to immerse yourself in research throughout your undergraduate years. Meredith Lombardi, Associate Director of Outreach and Education at the Common Application, offers a few tips on exactly what admissions officers are seeking from a great application essay. A licensed counselor and published researcher, Andrew’s experience in the field of college admissions and transition spans more than one decade. He has previously served as a high school counselor, consultant and author for Kaplan Test Prep, and advisor to U.S. Congress, reporting on issues related to college admissions and financial aid. Once your essay is complete, have someone who doesn't know the prompt read your application essay. Afterwards, see if the reader felt the essay answered the prompt. You may be surprised how quickly an essay can stray from the prompt.