Crafting An Unforgettable College Essay

Crafting An Unforgettable College Essay While your essay should convey your best qualities, you want to avoid bragging too much. If you write about an activity or an experience, focus not on how good you are or what you have accomplished, but instead on what the experience/activity means to you. Membership includes a 10% discount on all editing orders. We serve students who have not yet begun the college application process, students who may already have a draft they want to polish, and students who are anywhere in-between. Good essays are always quite personal without being sentimental. Admissions officers read thousands of essays every year. Yours doesn’t have to be the most creative; it just has to be a good read. My College Options ® is an online college planning program that connects millions of high school students with colleges and universities. Before you begin to tackle this essay prompt, there are a few points of which you should be aware. First off, don’t reiterate information that can be found in other parts of your application. Careful proofreading shows the reader you care and you aren’t sloppy. Before you send your essay to colleges, have someone you trust read it and provide feedback. Usually, your English teacher will be happy to take a look. Your college essay gives you the chance to talk about your best assets. Outside of my high school work, I’ve found myself enjoying books written by authors such as Naomi wolf and Germaine Greer. Books like the Female Eunuch have inspired me to read more Feminist books, and have encouraged me to become further involved in local activism. I’ve volunteered for a number of women’s organizations, most recently I worked with women’s aid to help to fundraise for a domestic violence awareness event. Finally, you’ll need to be able to strike a balance between being self-effacing and being a braggart. The moral to the college essay is that there need not be a moral. You are writing a personal narrative, not a parable, so don’t feel compelled to conclude with a lesson learned or a happy ending. You don’t need to have worked on a cure for AIDS or helped send a rocket into space to write a compelling essay. Don’t just say that volunteering in a soup kitchen allowed you to see the importance of helping others. Admissions committees really want you to speak to the experience and really explain the impact it had. As part of my membership, I was required to complete at least fifty hours of service. I decided the easiest way to complete the requirement was to set up a regular volunteer project and so I agreed to work at the local soup kitchen every other Saturday morning. For the first year, I went on my designated mornings, helped out, and went home, but I began to notice that other student volunteers frequently missed their allotted time and left the facility understaffed. I was that “that” teenager who told his parents at the end of high school that he needed to “find himself” and who received a collective eye roll from every adult in a 5 mile radius. Instead, use this opportunity to showcase an additional side/aspect of yourself. Secondly, you must recognize that schools don’t only view “big” achievements as a viable topic. Regardless of the topic about which you choose to write, be sure the essay reveals more about you than the other characters or places in the story. Alex Tiso, 18, wrote his college application essay on burrito bowls and got into his dream school. New York teen Alex Tiso wrote his college essay on burrito bowls and got into his dream school. I will be honest â€" I initially joined Key Club International, a service organization, because I thought it would look good on a college application. I did not know who I was or what I wanted, but I knew I was not ready to go to college. I also knew that I did not want to be one of those “spoiled rich kids” that sat home playing video games and partying on the weekends. Instead, I took the $2000 I had saved up from my afterschool job; bought a backpack, tent, and sleeping bag; and had an adventure that has forever changed my life and prepared me to go to college. My greatest musical achievement happened at the end of my junior year when I participated in the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America. I stopped working afterschool my last two quarters and doubled my practice time to prepare for the audition. I remembered what I learned going as far back as sixth grade and gave one of the best performances of my life. I then spent a few weeks in New York with a group of students from around the country studying music with an impressive cast of professional musicians. We worked ten to twelve hour days and learned to push our lungs to new levels.