How to Find Your Required Essays
The first step to writing your college application essay is to figure out what applications you will use. Then you learn what essays they require and the prompts (essay questions) you need to write about.
To start, check out Essay Hell’s College Application Essay Guide that explains the main application systems (including The Common Application, University of California application, ApplyTexas application (all Texas universities and many colleges), the Coalition App, etc.
The College Application Essay Guide also has super helpful links to each application’s required essay prompts, as well as awesome writing tips, strategies and techniques on how to craft killer essays for them.
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Find a Hot Topic
Ready to find that unique topic that will set your essay apart from the pack?
Scroll through the blog posts below or start with some of the most popular posts
to the right. Once you land on a hot topic, you are off to an awesome start!
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more tips. pretty basic, but solid advice…
From article in the New York Times:
June 23, 2009, 12:22 PM
As an inaugural post, Martha C. Merrill, the dean of admission and financial aid of Connecticut College, and a graduate of the class of 1984, encourages incoming high school seniors (with her Top Ten tips):
- Write about yourself. A great history paper on the Civil War might be very well written, but it doesn’t tell me anything about the writer. Regardless of the topic, make sure you shine through your essay.
- Use your own voice. I can tell the difference between the voice of a 40-year-old and a high school senior.
- Focus on one aspect of yourself. If you try to cover too many topics in your essay, you’ll end up with a resume of activities and attributes that doesn’t tell me as much about you as an in-depth look at one project or passion.
- Be genuine. Don’t try to impress me, because I’ve heard it all. Just tell me what is important to you.
- Consider a mundane topic. Sometimes it’s the simple things in life that make the best essays. Some of my favorites have included essays that reflect on the daily subway ride to school, or what the family goldfish observed from the fishbowl perched on the family kitchen table. It doesn’t have to be a life-changing event to be interesting and informative.
- Don’t rely on “how to” books. Use them to get your creative juices flowing, but don’t adhere too rigidly to their formulas, and definitely don’t use their example topics. While there are always exceptions, the “what my room says about me” essay is way overdone.
- Share your opinions, but avoid anything too risky or controversial. Your essay will be read by a diverse group of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds, so try to appeal to the broadest audience possible.
- Tell a good story. Show me why you are compassionate; don’t tell me you are. Show me that you have overcome great difficulty; don’t start your essay with “I have overcome great difficulties.”
- Don’t repeat what is already in your application. If you go to a performing arts school and all of your extracurricular activities and awards relate to dance, don’t write about how much you love dancing. Tell me something I couldn’t know just from reading the other parts of your application.
- Finally, don’t forget about the supplements. The supplement questions are very important – you should plan to spend as much time on them as you do on your essay. A well-written essay won’t help if your supplement answers are sloppy and uninformative.
Long, but read every word. Read it twice. Pure gold.
How to Write a Killer Essay
New York Times Upfront , Dec 13, 1999 by Glenn C. Altschuler
An Ivy League dean offers six tips to steer your admission essay in the right direction:
1. Write about your world and your experiences. A 17-year-old inhabits a foreign country, and adults who work in colleges are curious about what it’s like to live within its borders. Essays about a friendship that was forged or one that failed, buying a pair of sneakers, an afternoon working at Dunkin’ Donuts, or getting robbed on the subway can provide glimpses of your ideas, values, and passions.
2. Avoid writing about national and global issues. You’ll sound like a teenager trying to sound like an adult.
3. Describe, don’t characterize. Minimize adjectives and adverbs. “The Coach Who Changed My Life” may be healthy, wealthy, and wise, but these qualities can best be conveyed in a narrative of what he actually said and did. In “Ode to Dad,” a Cornell applicant explained her father’s values by describing his hands, encrusted with dirt from a career as a truck farmer. It worked.
4. Resist the temptation to let others speak for you. A quotation from a philosopher, poet, or politician may appear to be the perfect opportunity to parade your erudition. More often than not, however, you will impress no one.
5. Establish distance from your subject. Distance discourages essayists from drawing the cliched moral. Every semester I yearn for the applicant who will declare that organized sports are not a metaphor for life, that the race is not always to the swift. Years ago we admitted a student whose essay, “Riding the Pine,” found that no enduring truths came from sitting on the bench for an entire baseball season. It’s OK to be just a bit confused, to find the meaning of life elusive.
6. Know yourself. Selection committee members are pretty savvy. They have learned to look for authenticity, not profundity. But knowing yourself, on paper, takes imagination, reflection, and time. Start early, let parents and friends read it, and then revise. The voice you find may be your own.
GLENN C. ALTSCHULER is a dean and professor at Cornell University.
The Common App:
This is a super helpful link to specific ideas and tips on each of the six prompts (questions/options) on The Common Application. It also includes sample essays under each prompt. My favorite is Felicity’s essay answering Prompt #4 on how she used Lisa Simpson (from TV show, The Simpsons) as her role model for her vegetarianism. Another strong sample essay was by Lora, answering Prompt #6, especially for her descriptive writing and unique topic choice.
Click here: http://collegeapps.about.com/od/essays/a/EssayPrompts.htm
How to Handle Sensitive Essay Topics
“Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don’t be afraid of your material or your past….If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability.”
This is from Anne Lamott, from her popular how-to writing book called Bird By Bird. (I highly recommend this guide, especially if you want to read one of the best books on learning how to write.)
Lamott takes a lot of risks with her writings, especially in her memoirs, and has the courage to splash all her insecurities, flaws and mistakes all over the pages.
But because she sticks to the often-blemished truth, she is both poignant and hilarious.
With these college admissions essays, I think that you can write the most compelling pieces if you are willing to take a hard, honest look at yourself and life—especially something that you weren’t necessarily proud of but somehow turned around or learned from or changed for the better—and share some of that with the reader.
When you write about any type of problem, include how it made you feel. Open up. Share your thoughts and opinions. Be vulnerable.
It is always a tough question about picking a topic that is too controversial or sensitive when writing college admissions essays.
You certainly don’t want them to think you are a total freak.
But my opinion is that if your topic helps you reveal something special or unique about yourself—go for it!!
One trick when writing about potentially loaded topics is to write more generally about the sensational parts, such as describing someone’s illness or injury.
In other words, if something is really graphic, just provide enough information so the reader understands what you are talking about.
If you get the sense that what you are writing about is a total turn-off or is just trying to shock or push hot buttons, of course, avoid it.
But if you are genuine and truthful, I think it’s worth a try.
Always have someone you trust read your work to get some neutral feedback.
You can always tone it down, if necessary.
Choosing a College Application Topic: Another Trick
Some college counselors advise students to think of their life as a book and write down some chapter titles. Then pick one you like and expand upon it. This naturally directs the essay into a narrative (story-telling) delivery.
I thought of a few from my own background as examples:
“Chasing grizzlies in Wyoming”
“Playing cribbage with my new blind friend”
“Burning crepes at the Magic Pan”
“Working the graveyard shift at White Castle”
“How I became student body president–by accident”
“The day I spent in the New York bus station”
See what you come up with. You might be surprised that you have a bestseller! Click HERE for other posts to help you find the magic topic!
Essay Topic Ideas: Start Small
So many students have trouble finding an essay topic. It is such a tough assignment to be asked to write a short essay that shows what you are about. The tendency is to try to include as many cool things as possible–their good works, their achievements, their everything.
When students try to cram too many points or subjects into their essays, they become broad and the meaning and ideas then spread thin. Students who understand the idea of picking one smaller highlight or mini-story and use that to illustrate something about themselves tend to produce essays that naturally reveal something deeper.
Think of how water sinks into the ground: wide and shallow, or contained and deep. It’s one of those things that is hard to explain, but easier to recognize when you see it.
For example, here are just a couple topic ideas I have heard in recent weeks from students:
“I make a mean grilled cheese sandwich”
“The time I learned to drive a stick shift”
“Finding creme for my coffee at the Paris airport”
You can see how these students could describe these little moments and then develop them into metaphors about their interests and passions and show something about who they are.
Aren’t these so much better than “I love to cook” or “I am passionate about French”?
Read about how you can tell a story and how to write anecdote in your college application essay.
So, start small and see where it takes you!
Read this post on how to find a topic for your college application essay!
Choosing a Topic: a jumpstart
My daughter will be a senior this year, and has started working on her college admissions essays. Like a lot of kids, she has a hard time just getting going–especially in the middle of summer!
We talked about how these essays are supposed to be a student’s “personal introduction” to the college she or he wants to attend. So the key is to make them genuine. (And obviously, answer the question posed in the prompt!)
To do that, though, take some time to explore what is most important to you. Then you can move on to choosing a compelling topic. I typed out a mini-assignment for my daughter to help jump-start the process. See if this works for you:
If you can zero in on something you have done or experienced that illustrates one of your unique qualities as well as explores a subject that means a lot to you, you could have found a strong essay topic.
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