3 Tips For Writing College Essays In The Age Of Covid

3 Tips For Writing College Essays In The Age Of Covid While strong academics and social curricula are essential to getting into a top school, for over 300 colleges it is the infamous personal essay that gets them into universities. Admission counselors heavily weigh the heartstrings pulled when presented with a well-written story outlining the applicant’s young life. For many, this will make or break their acceptance to a top-tier school. When you start reading through past admission essays, one of the first things you will notice is that nearly all of them tell a story. You’ve finished writing your essay, and you want to immediately submit it and be done with it. Before you check that box, read over what you wrote, and read over it slowly. Notice any lines that might sound confusing to someone who doesn’t know you and rewrite them. Enlist a friend or family member to read over it, too. It always helps to have someone else give you their feedback before your essay lands in the inboxes of admissions counselors. I’m not the only one reading college essay, so I’ve asked a couple of the Hood admission counselors for their best tips. Even though the Common Application has a suggested minimum of 250 words and no upper limit, admission counselors are reading through stacks of essays. Be sure to tell the whole story; do not leave the reader with too many gaps to fill in. This information will show them how your scores compare to their average requirements and with other students who are applying to their school or program. Surprisingly, some applicants never care to ask this question, and they write essays that don’t enhance their applications. This essay doesn’t share many life-defining revelations; we learn, as a brief aside, that the author often cared for her younger siblings, but little beyond that. Yet despite its relative lack of major information, it reveals a lot about who the author is. We learn that the author knows how to turn a phrase, the author is a warm and caring person, the author has a sense of humor, and the author will bring us cookies if we admit her to our imaginary college. It's a part of the application process that can prompt plenty of anxiety. Here, we debunk four myths and show how to nail that attention-grabbing college essay. As you know, each college has average requirements for admission. Admissions teams review your GPA, the difficulty of the courses you took, and your standardized test scores, which is data that can be graphed. How to Write the Best College Admissions EssayThe college admissions essay is perhaps the most dreaded part of the college application process. To learn more about writing an attention-grabbing college essay, download a free electronic copy of Lifton’s book, How to Write an Effective College Application Essay, The Inside Scoop for Parents. The author of this post, Kim Lifton, is president of Wow Writing Workshop, based in Huntington Woods in Michigan. All in all, we see a student who is a skilled writer with a warm heart â€" positive traits, to be sure. In order to write a great college essay, you don't need a committee. Besides, trying to get all the members on the same page is a lot like herding cats. Second, students want validation that they have done a worthy job on their essay, and they naturally gravitate towards the adult mentors in their life. A college counselor or English teacher is great, but when we hear that parents, SAT tutors, or my-mom's-friend-who-is-good-at-writing are also weighing in, we start to worry. The college essay is an important vehicle for telling the admissions committee about yourself, but the academic factors are far more important, even if the essay is worthy of a Pulitzer. The best ones tell a specific story about an incident or moment in time that provides an insight into who the author is and how they view the world. Consider setting a time limit for this part of the process, or a limit for the number of sample essays you will read, and then set the examples aside and move on to creating your own masterpiece. Writing concisely expresses to the admission counselor that you are able to organize your thoughts and that you respect their time. I have read thousands of essays on topics about winningâ€"or losingâ€"the big game, about bullying, about taking an interesting trip and many, many more. What does matter is how the student uses the essay to talk to me about who they really are and how this thing, this experience, has influenced them in some way. There all kinds of ways to write a college essay and there is no perfect form as long as your piece is engaging, logical, revealing … and answers the prompt. These FAQs about the college application essay should help you tell your story with an end goal of making a good impression on a college admissions officer. Her strategic communication and writing services company is a leading expert on the college application essay. There are no tricks or shortcuts to writing the perfect college application essay. It’s less stressful if your child allows it to emerge from a process of discovery that includes brainstorming, free writing, revision, review and editing.