4 Ways To Know If Youve Written A Good College Essay

4 Ways To Know If You’ve Written A Good College Essay And hopefully, this is an illuminating part of the process, one that not only helps you get into the college of your choice, but one that also helps prepare you for success once you get there. Speaking of future drafts, one of the best things you can do is run your essay by a trusted family member, educator, advisor, or friend. Get feedback from somebody whose opinion you respect. Every piece of advice you have ever received on the purpose of the college essay is wrong. She has 14 years of high school teaching experience, both at private and public high schools. In addition to teaching teenagers, Sarah has run writing workshops for both adults and children. Before teaching, Sarah worked as a freelance writer, newspaper reporter, fact-checker, and an assistant to a literary agent. These workshops will help them fine-tune their writing and come away with a strong personal essay. Some colleges and universities are actually notorious for their unusual â€" and in some cases, genuinely strange â€" college application essay prompts. According to Business Insider, Tufts University and the University of Chicago have both earned reputations for their out-of-left-field essay questions. From this vantage point, Lombardi shared some awesome expert-level college essay tips. We also enlisted the help of a qualified expert in the field. They will write the essay themselves, but the workshop will help them come closer to a finished product about which they will feel proud. Get the college essay help you need, right when you need it with the convenience of online lessons. However, do be careful with slang, colloquialism, and inappropriate language. You need to remember that you have no idea who will be reading your essay â€" it could be an admissions counselor in her early 20s, or a part-time admissions reader in his mid-70s. It makes it easier for your essay to make an impact on your admissions if you carefully pick a prompt, unlike the majority of applicants. By the time someone is considering your essay, they have reviewed your grades, your scores, two teacher recommendations and a guidance report, and your activity list. They know you in most ways that are relevant to admit you to a school. What will get you into college is writing an essay that will be distinguished from the rest. The purpose of the college essay is to get into college. Don’t use words that aren’t consistent with the overall language and tone of the essay. Don’t use a thesaurus to find other words that you wouldn’t normally use. Meredith Lombardi, Associate Director of Outreach and Education at the Common Application, offers a few tips on exactly what admissions officers are seeking from a great application essay. When you construct an essay that satisfies you, ask a trusted teacher to proofread and critique it. Make any changes required, and type the essay into a word processor or text editor so that you can copy and paste it onto the electronic college application. This will help prevent errors and typos that might occur if you retype the essay into the essay window when you're filling out the application form. So you've got a list of college essay questions. On the whole the admissions committee wants to hear your voice. The examples, tips, topics and prompts outlined above should help you rock your college application essay. When I am helping a student with an essay, there is little purpose in developing witty turns-of-phrase or glassy segues if you cannot tell what the student is trying to communicate in the essay through its content. Choose one that focuses on a specific anecdote rather than the three asking for your whole life story. This feedback will give you a sense of how well your ideas are coming across to the reader, how compelling your story is, and how you might be able to improve your essay. These additional eyes are also critical when it comes to proofing your work, catching typos you might have missed, and helping to refine writing that is unclear or off-topic. And if the topic is weird, feel free to write a weird essay.