What Is The Purpose Of A College Essay?

What Is The Purpose Of A College Essay? All in all, we see a student who is a skilled writer with a warm heart â€" positive traits, to be sure. In our College Essay Clichés to Avoid post, we advised students against writing about moving to America from a foreign country. Your child has narrowed down the list of colleges to apply to and now comes the all-important college essay. No subject is more anxiety-inducing than the essay. Keep in mind that the admissions counselors at each of the colleges to which you apply will read hundreds of applications each week. Here are a few pieces of advice to consider as you write, revise, and submit your college essays. However, if you’re applying to an Ivy League school or a smaller liberal arts college, then they’re really looking at the whole package and the essay can be very important. At some of these schools, there are very few students who don’t have near-perfect test scores and GPAs, so how do you stand out? They’re looking at your essay, recommendations and activities to understand the whole picture of you. But the same is true for college essays, as Orwell doubtlessly would have realized if he were reanimated and handed him a sheaf of Common Applications. The sad truth is that most college application essays are not very good. When I say they are “not very good”, I mean they are either boring, impenetrable, melodramatic, or all of the above. It will capture who your student is beyond grades, test scores and co-curricular activities. I’m going to give you the rundown of what colleges are looking for when they read your application, and then I’m going to explain how the college essay fits into that equation. Given volume, staff sizes, and compressed timelines between application deadlines and decision release, that seems at worst a blatant lie, and at best an incredibly inefficient process. DEEP WEB RESEARCH. This should be the heart of your essay, as well as the meat and potatoes. Reading the school’s website is not a bad start, as it will give you a basic overview of what’s on offer. Keep an eye peeled for course listings, recent news events, maps and descriptions of important campus buildings, student run organizations, and other key terms. Then take those terms and plug them right into Google, Youtube and Linkedin! However, neither of them have ever seen my final draft. Throughout the process, I also had several close friends read my drafts. After reading links on the things that interest you, you’ll understand it almost as well as someone at the school! Statistical websites like College Factual are tremendously helpful here as well, as are blogs from current and former students, Vlogs, Instagram feeds â€" anything and everything is fair game. Cite a wide range of sources in your essay to show the depth of your research. Alternatively, some of my friends who were successful in the college admissions process met with their English teachers frequently to review their college essays. This allowed them to constantly have someone to bounce ideas off of and to receive assurance if they were going in the right direction and advice if they weren’t. When I first began, I had my counselor and history teacher read my draft because I felt very unsure about the intention and content of my essay. Don’t turn in your essay without someone else reading through it, Corner advises. Grammar or punctuation errors are the most unnecessary â€" and unfortunately common â€" mistakes that appear on The Common App. Every year, a student will address the essay to a specific school and not realize the application is sent to every school the student applied to, she said. Some schools will tell you that two separate readers evaluate every essay in its entirety. It told a story of the struggle between two cultures that many immigrant students experience, and furthermore, it didn’t reveal anything about me that felt unique or essential to my personality. I didn’t want to be labelled as just another Asian immigrant by college admissions. I started brainstorming as early as June before my senior year, but I didn’t actually start writing my first draft until mid-August. I finished right before my first deadline on October 15, and hardly touched my Common App essay afterwards. While I met my deadlines, I remember desperately wishing during late-September and early-October that I had finished at least the first draft of my Common App essay before school started. I wish I had kept in mind that college applications were not my only priority during senior year and planned more proactively accordingly so I that wouldn’t get stressed out.