How To Write A College Essay

How To Write A College Essay The emphasis must be on “help” and not, “take over.” Parents, with only the best intentions, will often offer lots of input and comments, which their child will gratefully accept. The danger there is that the essay starts sounding more like a forty something adult, instead of a high school senior. There is a certain “voice” that defines a young person about to start college and if it is lacking in an essay, Admissions Directors will quickly pick it up. But resist the urge to rewrite everything in the way you might express it. More than any other element of the application, the essay gives insight into who a student really is. So it should “sound” like the applicant, revealing personality, interests, quirks, personal style, and voice. Some parents can act as a sounding board without taking over the project, while others cannot. More commonly, a great essay takes you from being just another kid among many with great qualifications and moves you to an applicant an admissions officer will lobby for. They’ll share your story and their vision for why they believe you deserve a spot on campus. And at the more selective colleges, that’s about the best you can reasonably hope for in this processâ€"one person who’s convinced, who will make an effort to convince the rest of the committee. If you are given the topic, you should think about the type of paper that you want to produce. Should it be a general overview of the subject or a specific analysis? If they read through and make light edits, grammatical and typos, yes. If the parent re-writes or writes the essay the answer is no. Yes, it is perfectly okay to have your parents edit your essays. The body of your essay argues, explains or describes your topic. Each main idea that you wrote in your diagram or outline will become a separate section within the body of your essay. Each body paragraph will have the same basic structure. Begin by writing one of your main ideas as the introductory sentence. Next, write each of your supporting ideas in sentence format, but leave three or four lines in between each point to come back and give detailed examples to back up your position. However, the key is to edit, not to write them for you. They can help with typos, grammatical errors, and help you to be clear, concise and compelling. They know you best, sometimes more than you know yourself so they may have good suggestions. However, you do want the essays to sound like you; it should be your voice. There should be some consistency between the essays and interviews. Those distinctions are best answered by honest, revealing essays that help admissions officers get to know you. If the answers to those questions work in your favor and there is plenty of room for students like you on campus, then the essay is less important. Put another way, if the committee doesn’t need to turn away qualified applicants, then the essay is not as important. Now that you have developed your thesis and the overall body of your essay, you must write an introduction. The introduction should attract the reader’s attention and show the focus of your essay. They’re the last thing you can actually do something about. I think it is always best for a student to have an impartial person do the proofing. It is difficult for parents to remain unbiased and often it can cause a lot of added tension between the student and parent. It is, however, a good idea for the parents to help the student brainstorm ideas for the essay prior to writing it. Fill in these spaces with relative information that will help link smaller ideas together.5. You may have your topic assigned, or you may be given free reign to write on the subject of your choice. You can use shocking information, dialogue, a story, a quote, or a simple summary of your topic. Whichever angle you choose, make sure that it ties in with your thesis statement, which will be included as the last sentence of your introduction.6.