Expanding Higher Ed Access With The Great College Essay Project

Expanding Higher Ed Access With The Great College Essay Project Simply recanting facts will not distinguish you from other candidates with equal class rank, grades and test scores. Making your scholarly endeavors personal will pique curiosity and demonstrate your potential to contribute to an academic community. If you can make the reader laugh, say “I get that” or “me too”, you are on your way to a strong application. In addition, you are sharing something about yourself that is not anywhere else in your application. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. To identify key ingredients of a good college essay. If I had to assign the MVP of the college application essay, it would be the very first sentence. Selective institutions often employ supplemental essay prompts to sort the whimsically submitted applications from those that are more intentional. They can clearly demonstrate the synergy that exists between themselves and the institutions in question. Admission officers want to get past the facts of your application to better understand how you think. Anyway, writing about something due to of personal experience will be much easier than writing about something you have had to make-up. You may not always have a choice of your essay topic. However, you will always have a choice on exactly what you write about within the topic guidelines. Your passion about the topic will show through your writing and make your essay stronger. Your motivation to write will become stronger if you are excited about the topic. Finding a cure for cancer, saving the whales singlehandedly, or traveling abroad to build homes for orphans does not automatically make a great essay. It’s all about the delivery, the reflection, the conversational tone, showing not telling that will make for a winning essay. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, please share your story. Trust that you are interesting and have powerful stories to tell. Do not make things up or use things that have happened to other people. A strongly written essay about a fight you had with your parent and how you solved the problem will be much better than a made-up story. All colleges take integrity and honesty very seriously. Any uncovered dishonesty would have serious consequences on your future. Do not focus on the things you cannot do or highlight your weaknesses. Acceptance into college is dependent on your strengths and academic abilities. Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. Discuss how your disability has made you the person you are today. Emphasize how it has made you stronger, think outside the box, or overcome adversity. Selective colleges are most interested in students whose sense of purpose is illustrated in their recognition of compatible learning opportunities on their campuses. When they ask the “why do you want to come here” question, they are not interested in knowing whether you can recite their institutional superlatives. Rather, they want to see if you have made the conscious connection between your sense of purpose and the opportunities that exist within their educational environment. Instead, take the reader between the lines to better understand you, as a thinking person. Colleges value diversity of thought in their classrooms. The essay is your opportunity to reveal that element of diversity that can be found uniquely within you. You’ll hear a lot from “experts” about taboo topics (sports, death, disease, divorce, pets, etc.) and generic essays on related topics are not a good idea. On the other hand, if you have experienced something intensely personal and profoundly meaningful within such a topic, help the reader to know how the experience affected you. Focus on ways you have internalized and personalized academic research and demonstrate how this will enhance the university’s academic community. Writing about hiking the Appalachian Trail or obsessively reading “To Kill A Mocking Bird” is noble but not memorable.