The Writing Process

The Writing Process Your essay should ultimately have a very narrow focus. 650 words may seem like a lot, but you can fill it up very quickly. This means you either need to have a very specific topic from the beginning or find a specific aspect of a broader topic to focus on. Your essay should add something to your application that isn't obvious elsewhere. The next step is to go through your ideas and determine which one will make for the strongest essay. You'll then begin thinking about how best to approach it. As for personal traits, Eva is really proud of her curiosityâ€"if she doesn't know something, she immediately looks it up, and often ends up discovering new topics she's interested in. Finally, take another, more detailed look at your essay to fine tune the language. Contrary to what you may have learned in elementary school, sweeping statements don't make very strong hooks. It's a trait that's definitely come in handy as a reporter for her school paper. I would also recommend starting with a longer personal statement before moving on to shorter supplementary essays, since the word essays tend to take quite a bit longer than word short responses. If you want to start your essay with a more overall description of what you'll be discussing, you still need to make it specific and unique enough to stand out. When deciding what part of your topic to focus on, try to find whatever it is about the topic that is most meaningful and unique to you. Once you've figured that part out, it will guide how you structure the essay. Of course, concentrating on an anecdote isn't the only way to narrow your focus. Depending on your topic, it might make more sense to build your essay around an especially meaningful object, relationship, or idea. As I touched on above, the narrower your focus, the easier it will be to write a unique, engaging personal statement. The simplest way to restrict the scope of your essay is to recount an anecdote, i.e. a short personal story that illustrates your larger point. Let's go through the key steps that will help you turn a great topic into a great essay. The brainstorming you do for the long essay may help you come up with ideas you like for the shorter ones as well. If you have one essay that's due earlier than the others, start there. You've decided on a topic, but now you need to turn that topic into an essay. To do so, you need to determine what specifically you're focusing on and how you'll structure your essay. It can be tempting to hang on to what you've already writtenâ€"you took the time and thought to craft it in the first place, so it can be hard to let it go. Taking this approach is doing yourself a disservice, however. No matter how much work you put into a paragraph or much you like a phrase, if they aren't adding to your essay, they need to be cut or altered. Before you start editing, put your essay aside for a week or so. It will be easier to approach it objectively if you haven't seen it in a while. Then, take an initial pass to identify any big picture issues with your essay. Once you've fixed those, ask for feedback from other readersâ€"they'll often notice gaps in logic that don't appear to you, because you're automatically filling in your intimate knowledge of the situation. Again, there are sections for all of your extracurriculars and awards; the point of the essay is to reveal something more personal that isn't clear just from numbers and lists. As you go through your ideas, be discriminatingâ€"really think about how each topic could work as an essay. But don't be too hard on yourself; even if an idea may not work exactly the way you first thought, there may be another way to approach it. Pay attention to what you're really excited about and look for ways to make those ideas work. Now you have a list of potential topics, but probably no idea where to start.