<p>Is it okay to have a chatty/informal style for an admissions essay? If this helps, the question was: What do you hope to find over the rainbow? (Chapel Hill)</p>
<p>I can probably change it to sound more formal, but I'm just curious. Is that an unknown rule for entrance papers?</p>
<p>College essays are meant to be informal, conversational. I don’t like the term ‘chatty’ though because, to me that implies a bunch of extraneous babbling. To get an idea of how they sound, use google and read a few. JHU, Tufts and Conneticut colleges are 3 that post essays they liked on their websites. I have read some essays on NPR and a book called Essays that Worked or similar is available partially online.</p>