10 Topics To Avoid In A College Admission Essay

10 Topics To Avoid In A College Admission Essay We asked our admissions counselors to share their perspectives on why the college essay matters and what matters most. We trust you’ll find this information useful as you prepare your college applications. Feel free to contact our admissions staff with additional questions. Think about your best personal trait, your interests, values and goals. Focus on one of these qualities and make it the theme of your essay. For example, your best trait might be determination, creativity, or compassion. Tell a story that makes that trait clear to the reader. Williams' essay brought widespread recognition from news outlets and social media, and demonstrated how admissions essays can help students add a personal touch to an otherwise faceless process. The piece highlighted her distinct literary style and fun personality, and it's a model that other applicants should emulate. Although custom college essays writing is our top priority, we also offer students the services of editing and proofreading. If you are not 100% confident in your writing skills, it’s better to ask professionals to check your piece of writing. When writing your college essay, avoid creating a list of your activities and accomplishments. Tell the reader something about yourself that isn’t evident in the rest of your application. Most students choose to write their college essay about a singular experience, which is what I ended up doing as well. Of course, this is not to say that this is the only way to write your essay, but it’s what I felt best grounded mine. For this post, we asked Shania the most frequently asked questions we see from students about how to write college essays. Shania graciously shared her experiences and insights as well as her drafts and the final version of her Common App college essay. On its admissions page, Hamilton lists multiple college essay examples written by students admitted to the school. But finding their voice can be a challenge for many students, Inzer notes, because they may have limited life experience. Also, she adds, they have been writing to the instructions of high school teachers up until this point, rather than for themselves. Finding their voice means students must get to know themselves and write authoritatively, sharing a sense of their lives with admissions officers. A common mistake that students make when tackling their college essays is to pick the wrong topics. Since the essay is a significant portion of the college application process, it benefits you and your teenager to put in the extra time and energy so that the writing can shine. Reviewers of these essays are looking for freshness. They are looking for focused, well-structured and original pieces of personal writing. Our veteran admissions counselors are frequently asked to share expert advice about writing compelling college essays. The essays should reveal their personalities, passions, dreams, weird talents, favorite foods, sickest playlists, inexplicable loves and undeniable quirks. The Common Application, which is accepted by nearly 800 colleges and universities, is a single-serving college application that allows you to create one admissions package for submission to multiple schools. Though Inzer declined to single out one essay, she says that the examples offer a diverse mix of student voices and backgrounds. The essay excerpted below, with the permission of Hamilton College, shows the student’s personality through a love of fly-fishing. This writer’s style clearly shows off her sense of humor. If one of the purposes of a college essay is to make yourself come to life off the page, then this essay hits the mark. Far from seeming unfinished or unedited, the somewhat stream-of-consciousness style establishes a humorous and self-deprecating tone that makes the reader instantly like the applicant. More than anything else, it is this writing style that elevates what could have been a fairly superficial statement of personal growth into a truly informative story that showcases the author’s personality. However, I felt like I spent too much on background information, and my essay lacked an overarching concrete experience for readers to grasp onto. It's a huge turn off, for instance, when applicants write about their sports exploits or their pets. Like everyone else impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, high school juniors are quarantined with a lot of time on their hands. Many have decided to use the extra time to get a head start on college essays â€" after all, applications are due this fall, when they're hoping to be back in high school. It can take some convincing for many kids and parents to believe that when it comes to writing the essays, in particular, college admissions officers care about who students are.