What has challenged you to become who you are? What is your greatest failure (achievement)? What story is central to your identity? Where are you happiest? Who are you?

Admissions or scholarships: Almost ALL applications require an essay Goal: Distinguish yourself from thousands others with similar grades, activities and ACT/SAT scores Goal: Paint a picture of your personality and character Goal: Show the admissions officer or scholarship committee where you fit within their incoming class!

Top Ten “Do’s” for YOUR College Essay 1. DO: Unite your essay and give it direction with a theme or thesis—the thesis is the main point. 2. DO: Before you begin to write, choose what you want to discuss and the order in which you want to discuss it. (Outline it!) 3. DO: Use concrete examples from your life experience to support your thesis and distinguish yourself from other applicants

Top Ten “Do’s” for YOUR College Essay 4. DO: Write about what interests, excites, and motivates you. 5. DO: Start your essay with an attention-grabbing lead-in anecdote, quote, questions, or engaging description of a scene. 6. DO: End your essay with a conclusion that refers back to the lead and restates the thesis

Top Ten “Do’s” for YOUR College Essay 7. DO: Revise your essay at least three times. (That includes Spell Check!) 8. DO: In addition to your own editing, ask someone else to critique your essay for you, then ask your College Advisor! 9. DO: Be authentic and tell a story only YOU can tell. 10. DO: Write clearly and succinctly.

Common Essay Mistakes 1. Not answering the prompt/question! 2. Starting your essay with boring generalities: “I was born in…” or “My parents came from…” 3. Writing an autobiography or re-writing your resume in prose form.

Common Essay Mistakes 4. Providing a collection of generic statements and platitudes or use a thesaurus to use bigger words when smaller words will suffice 5. Making excuses. Please don’t give weak excuses for your GPA or ACT/SAT scores and blame teachers for your performance. 6. Making things up! Everyone has a story, and we will find yours, too!

Tips for Better Writing Express yourself in positive language Use transitions between paragraphs Vary your sentence structure - use simple, complex and compound sentences Understand the words you write. Write to communicate, not to impress. When you choose a word that means something other than what you intend, you neither communicate nor impress

Tips for Better Writing Explain any abbreviations. The rest of the world does not know what POL’s, TPOL,s and SLC’s are. Be succinct. Example: During tenth and eleventh grades, there was significant development of my maturity and markedly improved self-discipline toward homework. Say this:– During my sophomore and junior years, I matured and my self-discipline improved tremendously.

Tips for Better Writing Make every word count. Do not repeat yourself. Avoid qualifiers such as rather, quite, somewhat, probably, possibly, etc. Avoid “I think…” and “I believe…”

Tips for Better Writing Avoid clichés like the plague; Find a fresh original expression GET TO THE POINT quickly. With 30,000 applications, there simply is not enough time for much more than the minimum! If there is word limit, abide by it. Your admissions officer will thank you! Use the active voice Compare the following: The college essay was written by the student. The student wrote the college essay.

Writing is discovering! Ideas to write about: Events Passions People Places This is an overarching area of identity, the one that encompasses most of the other events of life Big or small, these successes and failures shape you as an individual. Tell me about an event means “tell me a story” which is what you will do in your personal statement

Steps to writing your essay Plan and outline your essay Organize your ideas and focus on what the essay will specifically be about Brainstorm about the general topic and narrow down to an even more specific topic. Once a topic has been chosen, follow the 10 steps in Escape Essay Hell.

Resources Read and re-read Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White Escape Essay Hell: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Standout College Application Essays