How Not To Start Your College Essay

How Not To Start Your College Essay Being able to consciously choose to take a gap year feels a lot better than having to take one by default. Some schools will allow you to defer enrollment for a year, and if you reapply after taking a gap year, you’ll have new experiences and stories to share in your application. Even if I happened to read another essay about being a drummer in the marching band, there’s no way I could confuse it with this one. These details belong only to this student, and they show us her leadership qualities rather than just telling us. With a January 1 application deadline racing toward us, now is a great time to be brainstorming, creating, polishing and revising those essays. In September we published a blog post that provided a basic framework for how to write a killer college essay â€" and offered tips on how to incorporate the Outward Bound experience into the application. This month, we’re giving you another nudge â€" and a slightly different perspective from yet another expert. Contrary to popular belief, students should not write about a horrible life event that changed their life forever. The fact is that most of us have not had such a life changing situation before the age of 18 (so don’t make one up either!). Even if you have had such an experience, don’t write about it. But everyone has a different perception of their experiences, and the more you can share that, the more you’ll stand out in that stack of applications. Nothing has more impact than just being yourself. I worked with a student last year who had played in the marching band all of high school, which is something thousands of students can claim. These types of pieces can come off negatively, and sometimes a teenager’s perception of a life changing event is much different than that of a college admissions reader. I once had a student who wrote about how he observed a water droplet while on vacation. For most students, it takes about 10 hours to write a good college essay. If you’re applying to schools that request supplemental essays or do not accept the Common Application, you may have several different essays to write. I fell into the trap of reading a bunch of “successful” essays that were published online. Reading them made me feel like I had to have experienced a traumatic event or done something spectacular for admissions officers to notice my essay and application. When I started the whole essay writing process, I honestly felt really stressed out about feeling like I haven’t had experiences that were “worthy” of the Common Application essay. But I literally ended up writing about a time I performed a poem. One of my favorite Common Application essays is about a trip to Costco. Honestly, it doesn’t matter what you write about, but rather, why you write about it and what you’re trying to convey with it. We’re experts at helping students craft stellar college admission essays. For students thinking about taking a gap year, I would encourage them to apply to colleges during their senior year. Teenagers change a lot from August to May, and while you might feel sure in the fall that you want to take time off, seeing all your friends making college plans might make you feel differently in the spring. One of the things that helps students feel in control of this process is having options. This seemingly insignificant event caused him to think about why he loved art and philosophy over science and math. Evaluating a college essay, much like any piece of writing, is highly subjective. Two people might both like the same movie or song, but for totally different reasons. The problem is when a student seeks so many opinions from trusted adults. It's highly unlikely that any of these people have actually read college essays before â€" and certainly not as a member of a college admissions committee. Talking about how being in marching band taught you the value of hard work isn’t your story; that could be anyone’s story. Talking about how helping people feel good isn’t original; everyone experiences that. It’s just that admissions officers learn nothing new about you when you write something that anyone could claim. A lot of students feel anxious about this because they don’t feel like anything unique has happened to them. One time-tested method is writing a strong admissions essay. As a rule, a college application essay is about 500 words, and these words could make you a freshman or ruin your plans for the future careless student life. You might work hard writing your essay for a few days and polishing your paper several times, but admission officers have only a couple of minutes to evaluate your values. Use our tips to write an impressive application paper to catch the admission board’s attention. Taking a semester or a year before diving into college life can help students go into their freshman year with confidence, maturity, and some real-world perspective.