Dreading Writing Your College Application Essay? Tips From The Pros

Dreading Writing Your College Application Essay? Tips From The Pros They want to read a genuine story written by the child in the child’s words and the child’s voice. When parents get too involved, the stories do not sound genuine. When a parent gets too involved, the story does not sound like an essay written by a 17-year-old student. Schools which require essays, however, use the essay input to form a more complete picture of the applicant, over and above the numbers, grades, lists, and so on, which are entered onto the application form. The essays may form the most deciding part of the application after the student has met basic application criteria â€" grades, standardized test scores, etc. Again, the number of readers for each essay would depend on individual institutional practices. One way to signal to colleges that you are a strong candidate for the rigorous ways of thinking, learning, and living that the schools can provide is to show just what kind of a risk-taker you are. Instead, my tips are more abstract, perhaps even metaphysical pieces of advice to help guide you through the admissions process and beyond. I’m going to switch gears a bit in today’s posting and give my in-depth analysis of SAT-II problems a breather. Instead, I will be talking about college admissions essays, and sharing with you some ways to help maintain perspective during the writing process. At first blush, the college admissions essay seems a very particular piece of writingâ€"it is a hybrid form of personal narrative, argumentative prose, epic poem, and impassioned plea. It can make all the difference in your admission decision. Different colleges have varying review processes. At almost all selective colleges however, every college essay will be read by multiple people. If a student is on the fence, not an early admit or deny, essays will probably be read multiple times by multiple people while an applicant is being discussed. If you were to take bets on the percentage of essays read by college admissions personnel, I’d guess that it would be in the high 90’s. If a school uses an admissions committee the number could jump to three or more. In any case, what YOU can control is how well your essay describes who you are and gives the admissions person a chance to see things in you that will be an asset to the school. We can tell when the student’s voice is missing; the colleges can tell too. Essays give admission officers real insight into the applicant. You might wonder how a huge school would manage reading thousands of essays, but you can trust that they hire extra staff, if necessary, to make sure the entire application gets a close look. The number of readers depends on how “borderline” the applicant is, and the number of applicants being processed. Even colleges who say their essay is “optional,” you shoulod definitely write one. Do your best and assume that it WILL be read and that it WILL have a bearing on your admission chances. There is no way to determine a typical scenario regarding a college’s method for reviewing applications. In all cases at least one admissions officer will look at your essay. An essay is an important part of sharing who you are with a school. With increased competition for admission, the essay has become an important factor in consideration of your admissibility to a school. So if a school requires an essay it is VERY likely to be read. If a school has a writing section in their supplement to the Common Application you can rest assured that ALL of that writing is evaluated by admissions officers. In other instances, each essay is distributed to several readers, who will then compare their impressions when the admissions committee meets to decide upon student admissions. In this instance, the essay would be read by several people. Again, the number of readers for each essay would depend upon individual institutional practices. Many large schools don’t require essays at all because they don’t have the personnel resources to process the huge number of admission essays which would be submitted. Based on my experience, we read every essay at the institutions were I served. Typically, applications received two reads and a third if the decisions were split. The number of reads and the process for reviewing application essays vary from college to college. Among the top 250, I know my colleagues review essays because some are moved to “check” authenticity or to contact the school source to verify veracity of the context as provided by the student. It is my understanding that if essays are required by an institution, they are actually read. There are many different kinds of schools, however, so it would be impossible to know how each of them handles the essays which are submitted. I do know that some schools have a group of readers, each receiving one set of essays, with each individual essay being read by just one person.