Application essays offer an invaluable chance for you to present yourself to colleges—and they are the one and only piece of your application which you have total control over. Regardless of your grades, scores, or extra curricular activities, essays give you the flexibility to introduce to an admissions committee who you are and what you care about.
An original, thoughtful, genuine essay can delight and impress admissions officers. In an applicant pool full of students with great — but identical — grades and test scores, the essay could even be the one element that sets you apart from your fellow applicants.
College essays are an unusual genre: they are intensely personal, but have specific purpose and a specific audience. Your goal is to express who you are, but in a way that tells colleges that you are a good fit for them intellectually, emotionally, ethically, and otherwise. The essay must also convey your ability to write and think clearly.
In the Common Application Personal Essay is the most important essay you will write. College is about academics, so make this essay about your scholarly focus and offer the reader a sense of what you're going to bring to the classroom.
If you write about how you like to help save the blue wjales or read all of Classics, that’s fine if it speaks well of you, but you must demonstrate the connection between the you and the topic. If your essay is a conversation about merely liking whales or being obsessed with the Iliad and Odessey, it can only go so far.
No one cares if you’re in love with Mr. Crabtree, and Mr. Crabtree isn’t reading your application. If you bolster your essay with descriptions of research you’ve done on ocean pollution or on the ways that Classical Literature affected notions of romance and social graces in the times they were written with the way things are done today, and paraellel it to you, then you’ve presented something that can spur curiosity and interest from an admissions officer.
Spend time working on your essay– it matters!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for submitting your thoughts.