That is all.
Basically summarize your ideas and restate your thesis. For extra points, add some kind of a call to action. I’m no English major, but this worked pretty well for me throughout high school.
@concar Sorry, I should have clarified. I’m asking about whether or not college application essays should have conclusions.
Ha. I bet my kids spent more time on the last sentence or two of every essay than on the couple pages of text leading up to it. They never said, “In conclusion…”. But they did have sort of a capping couple of sentences about why the topic was important and maybe how it would serve them in the future.
It depends on the essay, but I think it is better to have at least a couple of sentences that tie everything up nicely and leave the reader feeling satisfied. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a whole paragraph, but a few sentences highlighting what you learned or how your changed shows self-awareness.
I would probably tie the ending the something you mentioned in the introduction.
Well… that would be “standard academic essay” writing. But that is not what this is. I agree it needs to be capped off, but just repeating your “thesis” (and these essays usually don’t start with a thesis, more of a hook if you can figure one out) isn’t really going to be a good way to end it.
Just make sure the last sentence signifies that the story is over. You don’t need a concluding paragraph, just don’t leave the reader wondering “so what?” or “and then what?”.
Here is the way I answer your question for my students. College essays do not have a conclusion. Instead they have an ending. There is a difference.
The starting point for seeing the difference is knowing that a college essay in not a five-paragraph essay of the sort you write in high school. If it were, then a conclusion summing up points made would work. A college essay is a story written with a narrative structure. That structure is very different than the five paragraph essay structure.
The easiest way to understand this is to think about movies. Almost all Hollywood movies use narrative structure to convey meaning. The end of a movie is an emotional moment. We feel the conclusion, which is not stated. What would be the effect of James Bond turning to the camera and telling the audience that he had just kicked some butt and saved the world? It would wreck the ending. That is the effect of an on-the-nose five paragraph essay style conclusion of a college essay.
If you have told your story well, and shown the reader who you are, there will be no need to tell the reader what he or she just read.
Hope this is helpful.