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With early decision deadlines inching ever closer, the rush to get those college essays written is real. But fear not, dear applicants! Our Uncommon Essay Approach, will help you can craft winning essays in just 20 minutes a day for 10 days! (Or condense the process and get it done in even less time!) Just follow these easy steps:
The essay plays a different role than your grades or test scores. It is your one opportunity to speak to admissions in your own voice – and to jolt them awake from their application-reading-induced slumber. What do you want your essay to tell admissions that they couldn’t learn anywhere else on your application? How will you grab and hold their attention?
Even if you have other essays to write for your early decision or early action school of choice, the Common App essay is the place to start. Read through this year’s prompts and wrap your brain around what the questions are really asking. Then, hide them away and don’t look at them again until you have written a draft. At the end of the day what is most important is the story you want to tell. You can almost always back into one of the Common App prompts once you have honed your topic to perfection.
Stop waiting for divine inspiration. Go out into the world and look for clues. Whether you create lists, take notes on your daily habits, or call up your grandma for ideas, devoting time to brainstorming is the only sure way to uncover your magic topic.
Once you have brainstormed your way to a magic topic, set aside some time (perhaps three different times throughout the day) to freewrite on what that subject means to you. Get your first thoughts on the page in full and without judgment. Dig for details. You’ll never know what’s inside your brain until you allow it to come out on the page.
Review your freewrites and you’ll probably start to notice patterns. What particular moment or individual sticks out in all of your notes? Is there a word or image that seems significant? Use these clues to organize your story into a preliminary outline. We bet you can even pull complete sentences and paragraphs from your freewrites into your first draft.
How can you make sure that first draft is transformed into a mind-blowingly memorable essay? Read it over at least three times. Edit for story. Then edit for clarity at the sentence level. Finally, edit for grammar.
Most supplemental essays fall into one of a few classic categories, so organization is key. If you are applying early to just one school, make sure you do your research thoroughly so you can fill your essay with relevant details. If you are applying to more than one school, group similar assignments together and work on those essays from longest to shortest.
We know you know that feeling. Your mind is fuzzy. You’re not really feeling like yourself. Every time you sit down in front of the computer your head hurts and your fingers cramp. You can cure this horrible feeling with a few small mental changes. For starters, lower your standards. Not like, forever. Just for the beginning of the process. You will raise your expectations of yourself later as you refine and polish. When you start, quality is not the issue. The issue is that you turn that scary blank page into one filled with ideas.
Poring over dozens of sample college admissions essays immediately before sitting down to write your own can be a debilitating exercise because you may feel compelled to compare your earliest ideas to these final, polished essays. That doesn’t seem fair! That said, we do think that it can sometimes be helpful to read through a few (just a few) to help direct your brain towards the style of the personal narrative.
After all of your hard work, if you are still wondering if your topic is worth its weight in hamburgers; if you’re not sure whether your story structure is strong enough to support your big idea; even if you’re just wondering whether or not your overall story will create enough fireworks to hold the attention of an admissions advisor for your allotted two minutes of admissions essay fame, CALL US! Or email us: info@collegeessayadvisors.com. We will personally extract the winning ideas from your noggin with our magic powers (of conversation).
