Great Essay Writing

Last week, I gave you a list of things to think about before writing your college essay. The first thing on the list was: “Make Yourself Interesting!”  This is not only the first thing on the list, but also the most important thing.  Your goal is to stay in the mind of your reader.

Think of yourself (for a moment) as the admissions counselor at Perfect U.  You’re new on the job and you are determined to admit the best students from the pile of applications on your desk. Your workday is spent reading and sorting essays. At night, you take the rest home for a little more bedtime reading. It might be ten o’clock by the time you reach the bottom of the pile.  And there you find an essay detailing the last moments of the soccer game for the club championship and how this student made the final goal.  Hurray!  No, not hurray. You’ve already read ten of those stories today. Saddened, you mark the page and let it slide to the floor.

To avoid a sure loser of a topic, start a journal.  Start it today. Every day, write about something in your life. Write about building a tree house for the kids down the street, write about the bird watching you’ve done with the retirement home, write about an injustice you’ve witnessed, or the blog you’ve started writing. Care deeply about something and write about it.  Read something that moves you and write about it. 

Write every day for the rest of the summer. You’ll find that in no time at all, you’ll have some dandy and fine choices for your application essay. And when you are ready, you will write a winning essay that will stay in the mind of the admissions counselor at Perfect U, wherever that may be!