Find The Perfect Topic + Write With Style With Julie, College Essay Coach

Find The Perfect Topic + Write With Style With Julie, College Essay Coach So to help, we're offering the following tips for writing your college essay. , the college essay is your best chance to put your individual, unique stamp on your application. Similar to the questions above, the emphasis should not be on who you choose. If you choose a person in the hopes of merely impressing the admissions committee, it will likely make your essay appear disingenuous. If she hasn’t been in touch with a rep, she will use this year’s prompts as a guide. Some students try so hard to be creative, or to entice the reader with a sense of intrigue, that they sacrifice clarity. You must write about what they taught you and how it relates to your own outlook on life. As with many of these questions, the issue/cause you select is not nearly as important as your explanation. Though you can certainly demonstrate passion and fervor for your argument, it’s vital you don’t come across as dogmatic. You want to reveal that you can think logically and objectively; the reader shouldn’t come away thinking you’re myopic. Additionally, you must remember that, ultimately, admissions officers are using these essays to gain insight into you. If your reader is one paragraph in and thinking, “I don’t have a clue what this student is talking about,” you’ve moved from arousing interest to creating confusion. It’s certainly possible and often effective to begin your essay with a description that piques interest without necessarily revealing exactly what the description is about. But while enticing and intriguing are good, bewildering and unintelligible are not. Another very simple tip, but many of the less compelling essays we read each year fail to focus. Now that you've got an essay you're happy with, it's time to see what others think. Share it with a few people who you trust and who know you well. Maybe that's your parents or your high school guidance counselor, or maybe it's a trusted friend or favorite teacher. Ask them to read it over and tell you whether the point you're trying to make is clear, and whether it rings true to who you are. Their stylistic choices matter, their word choice matters, and their authenticity matters. Your college essay gives you the chance to talk about your best assets. While your essay should convey your best qualities, you want to avoid bragging too much. If you write about an activity or an experience, focus not on how good you are or what you have accomplished, but instead on what the experience/activity means to you. Before you paste your essay into the Common App or Coalition App, hit spell check, then read it one more time in the application window to make sure nothing was left out and there are no formatting problems. Think about the special nugget of information you want the reader to know about you at the end of your essay and write with that central theme in mind. Finally, colleges can use the essay to begin picturing how you’ll connect with and make the most of resources within their specific campus communities. The essay is valuable to you and the colleges to which you are applying. If you think of the application as pieces of a puzzle or as independent voices coming together to tell your story, the essay is part of the puzzle over which you have complete control. The essay also provides you with an opportunity to say what hasn’t been said in your application and do so in your distinct voice. Rather than starting your essay by telling us what it's going to be about, think about how you're going to catch our attention, and pull us into your story. , start mulling over how you might reply to these prompts. Jot down any ideas you want to return to later in one place, whether that's a notebook, the notes app in your phone or somewhere else you can easily find them. When you start writing, do it in a word-processing program, not the application website itself, so you can revise, spellcheck, autosave your progress and come back later. We don't want it to be an intimidating process â€" rather, we want to get to know you, and your essay is the best opportunity to show us who you are. Think about a memorable story a friend or family member told you, or a great book you read or movie you watched. It probably didn't start out with a thesis statement, did it? Instead, write about a person who truly has impacted your life. It doesn’t matter if it’s a third cousin, your boss at the local pizzeria or your French teacher. Just be sure that the essay isn’t merely a biographical sketch. in Exeter offers both group classes and one-on-one writing coaching sessions to help students through this process. Meeting times will vary, depending on each individual. You and I and your teenager will come up with a schedule that works best for everyone. The Word Barn is a great space for writing and sharing ideas. Showing that students can write, however, does matter.