Writing a successful college application essay is completely different from writing an academic essay. It is something that breathes life into your college application and makes sure that you find your place in the college of your dreams. The common issue that students face is the urge to squeeze all of their stories in that word limit. But it is not just about putting in as much information as you can in one essay. It is more about writing an engaging content that shows your acumen and skills to the admission officers. Here are some of the tips to help you write your college application essay.
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Contents
Knowing your Prompt
Take your time to understand the prompt of the essays as only then you will be able to write something that is to the point. The college application essays focus on one or two cause and effect essay topics which aim to challenge your insight and creativity. Read the question well and understand what is being asked of you before beginning to answer. Understand if the essay demands you to inform, defend, or expand upon a topic.
Brainstorming about the Topic
The brainstorming session more often than not feels more tedious than writing the essay. Begin by thinking of experiences that you can draw from and mentally collect the pointers to your essay. Write down all of the points that come to your mind in one place. You can sort out from the ones to include or omit later on. This will help you in the way that even if you forget some of the points while writing, you will be able to recollect those.
Creating an Outline
The outline for your essay is like a blueprint that will help you give shape to your essay. After the brainstorming session, you have an idea about what you want to write, and now it is about how you are going to say it. Create an outline that has a beginning, middle, and end. After you have thought about what you want to include in each of the parts, start considering how you want to open the essays. Keep the writing style as natural as possible by putting the words that reflect your own voice. Admission officers know the difference between an original essay and a recycled or plagiarized one.
Writing the Essay
You have the complete idea about how and what you want to write by now so you can begin. Since you have spent all that time in preparing that essay now the writing process is going to get easy. You can still go for a rough draft if you do not feel confident about going for the final copy right away. Make sure that when you start writing, you follow the main idea from the beginning to the end. Try to adorn your essay with as many detailed and vivid facts as possible instead of going for generic or clichéd phases. Another valuable tip is to be concise in your writing as you do not need to write fifty words where just five suffices.
Proofread the Document
This is the final step of essay writing, and you can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Proofreading is important as any grammatical errors, or spelling mistakes can mean carelessness on your part. After you are done with writing, leave the essay for a few hours before sitting down to proofread it. Sitting after a few hours clears out your mind so you can go for the editing with a fresh mind. Do not rely only on software to edit your work as no software knows the context in which you have used the words. So, give a reading to the entire piece and do the visual checking just to be sure.
Writing the college application essay is not as much of a herculean task as it is made out to be. It can be fun if you go about it the right way. The tips can hopefully help you in getting some idea on how to do the work.
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