Heres What Admissions Officers Look For In A College Entrance Essay

Here's What Admissions Officers Look For In A College Entrance Essay Cited a few real-world examples of college essays that actually worked. Good editors help students describe what makes them different and special. Still, Jager-Hyman says that some parents who get their hands on their kids’ essays go too far and change the tone or tenor. So treat a college application essay as a tool for standing out in ways the robots can’t. It’s a lot like the cover letter you write when applying for a job â€" it’s your chance to reveal the person behind the accomplishments and statistics. However, while it’s true that the essay isn’t the only thing that matters to college admissions officers, a great essay can actually compensate for less than stellar grades. On the flip side, abad essaycan overshadow all of your other accomplishments. 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. 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. Most high school students lead lives that don’t deviate too far from the norm â€" except that one quiet guy in your class who sits next to the window near the back. He’s almost certainly either a genius mech pilot or the subject of some prophecy in an alternate dimension that he’ll be transported to. Their stylistic choices matter, their word choice matters, and their authenticity matters. DON’T reveal something you would never consider telling your parents â€" while honest essays can be strong, your college essay is not the place to admit to shoplifting or drunk driving. DO tell a story; your college essay will be more similar to your creative writing or journal assignments that to your persuasive essay. Use the story or stories you tell to illustrate a larger, more abstract point. To make the most of this opportunity, once you have your essay questions, practice writing your essay using the tips provided by the college or from one of the links in this article. Some essays she read were “too stiff, too adult and too formal,” â€" not the student’s work. Jager-Hyman notes that every writer has an editor, and editors can help select topics, tell students where the essay is lacking and help them organize their thoughts. In this competitive climate, many students think their essay must reflect an earth-shattering achievement, like curing cancer or ending world starvation, but that’s not its purpose. It’s also not a place to reiterate one’s résumé or explain away a bad semester (there’s a section in the application for that). Colleges want to “hear specifically what you learned from an experience” â€" not clichés. For the application season, the Common Application announced that their 600-plus member schools, which include many private and public universities, need not require essays . Inside Higher Ed, a popular website monitoring issues in higher education, estimated that 20 percent of members will eliminate the essay requirement. in Exeter offers both group classes and one-on-one writing coaching sessions to help students through this process. If you're lucky, your junior and senior high school language arts teachers incorporate essay writing into the curriculum. Even with essay writing experience, it can be hard to frame a well-organized, comprehensive, thoughtful answer in 500 words or less. You might need to approach the questions from a few different perspectives before you find the right formula. For the most part, it’s unlikely that you’ve experienced anything extremely uncommon in the relatively short amount of time you’ve been a human. On the subject of essay prompts, Meredith points out that the 7 variations offered by the Common App are designed to give all applicants the opportunty to share something meaningful about themselves. We also enlisted the help of a qualified expert in the field. 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. Free-writing will help you hone your skills and practice for the real thing. We’ll help you figure out what to write about, and we’ll help you finish all your essays early. College counselors weighing in on the college review website Unigo indicated that, depending on the school, up to four people could read a single essay. In other words, they wouldn’t ask for them if they didn’t read them. Last year, CMC had eight admissions officers and 10 part-time readers for 7,100 applications. 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.