<p>Every student should do these things every time: (O.K. Let's help them out here, Parents. I'll start with an obvious one that appears to give them fits.)</p>
<p>Read the prompt and do what it says to do. </p>
<p>This may save some time. We'll just direct them here first. LOL. Next?</p>
<ul>
<li>Spell check. Then reread for words that are real words but are the wrong words, such as "is" instead of "in"</li>
<li>Have someone check your grammar.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>My personal advice (may not be universal but it works for me):<br>
- Write your essays early, let them sit for several days, then edit, then repeat. I'm always amazed at how much better the final version is, and you can't do this if you write the essay the night before it's due.
- Read your essays out loud - I catch more errors this way than when reading, especially awkward phrasing and consistent verb tense throughout.</p>
<p>Put the essay down, then read the essay as if you've never read it before - does it sound dumb? (Reading out loud helps with this).
Have 2 or 3 people read your essay for words and spelling - DD's had been read by 2 adults including her tough English teacher, and we still found a wrong word used - everyone kept mentally substituting the correct word.</p>
<p>Make a copy of everything, including your check.</p>
<p>Don't assume that your teachers or GCs will correct mistakes on grammar, spelling or punctuation. My son's english teacher and his GC both reviewed his essay and made notes in the margin (asking a question here or there). But, neither of them made corrections to some of the glaring mistakes...they just told him it was fine. It wasn't. I had a hard time convincing him to make corrections after I read it because he said "why wouldn't my teacher tell me if that was a problem?" (as though I had no idea what I was talking about).......I suppose the teacher wanted his essay to be a reflection of his work...not a manipulated revision with their corrections (i.e. using the word "manor" when he meant "manner").</p>
<p>After hearing that so many kids have a teacher's help, it's kind of alarming that he was coached to send in what he had.</p>
<p>I liked what the admissions officer at Connecticut College said, "Your essay should let us into your world." In other words, the essay, more than any other part of your application, is an opportunity for you to reveal your personality and character, to round out your scores and lists of ECs. Ideally, your essay should reinforce your passions, should enhance your strengths, and should mirror your recommendations. It could even subtlely explain or compensate for your weaknesses. Think of a word or two that you like to use to describe yourself (e.g. artist, traveler, dreamer, cowboy) and make sure that your essay fleshes out that perception.</p>
<p>Reread the essay to see if it states or implies any negative information about you that you don't want an adcom to read or infer.</p>
<p>And, the Yale information meeting student said something very helpful: make sure that you are writing about yourself in the essay, not the person you want to be or the person you think the adcom wants to meet. You are looking for a new home, and you want to be sure that it is really you who is being invited into that new home so that you will fit in and be comfortable and happy there.</p>
<p>I'll echo these thoughts with what I always tell the students asking for help. </p>
<p>Hang it out there a little. Speak with your own voice. If they are not going to like who you really are ,wouldn't you want to know that now instead of later?</p>
<p>I echo Momsdream's point. My son refused to take comments (even editorial) from me last year in the beginning of the application cycle because his teacher had read it and thought it was ok. Well, the teacher had 50 other essays to read on top of her primary responsibilty: to teach! </p>
<p>I would be careful about getting feedback from the internet, although I do give feedback to kids here. The people giving you feedback may not have your best interests at heart and you never know what their background is. </p>
<p>I think the best thing to do is to give the essay to people you know well who are good at writing, including family members and to get a broad range of opinions. Then to do what you think is best. Always write with your own voice, though.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Always write with your own voice, though.>></p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Advice like that makes me smile as I recall the comment my S's 9th grade English teacher made on his "what did I do last summer" report. He'd apparently adopted a staccato, Hemingway-inspired, tough guy voice (I can imagine Humphrey Bogart delivering parts of it). The teacher suggested he read some Faulkner!</p>
<p>I read his app essay. It did have a faint whiff of the tough guy persona. Funny: I don't see that in my S at all!</p>
<p>1) I did volunteer work in a third-world country/poor neighborhood/ethnic enclave and discovered that deep down inside, we are all the same.
Corollary: a black girl/white boy/Martian/axe murderer/disabled man/Asian/fill-in-the-blank moved in next door and we were deeply suspicious of each other, but we ended up best friends, discovering that deep down inside, we are all the same</p>
<p>2) Mom and dad paid $5,000 for an "opportunity"/Leadership Conference/Prestigious Youth Summit/whatever, and I really learned a lot about myself.<br>
Nota bene: if something is advertised as being "prestigious," it isn't.</p>
<p>3) My parents are old fashioned/old world/old school but I learned that with a little understanding we can make peace in the face of a culture clash, and besides, those old ways/old icons/old recipes/ old-time values really helped me learn a lot about myself, and deep down inside, we are all the same.</p>
<p>4) Any essay about a race/ironman/marathon/rock-climbing event/other
that begins something like, "As the icy mountain winds swriled about me, I stood there in my Lyra suit, scared to death," and ends, "I learned that I could overcome any obstacle to achieve victory, and the most important victory is over myself."</p>
<p>Marite, what you said is true. 16 or 17 year old kids are affected by what they read. Well, I'd still advise a kid to think about what he wrote and not change it just because his mom and dad says 'It's not you. It is too tough-guy'. At the moment he was writing the essay, he thought it was him speaking, so he should go with it.</p>
<ol>
<li> Some people will be angry about this, but I think the pleas for sympathy that got HUGELY popular in the 80s ("I lived in a car/cardboard box/paper bag for ten years while my mother/father/sibling had cancer/delirium tremens/halitosis and was in the throes of a divorce/jail sentence/intervention....") should be relegated to the trash bin. Their day is completely over.</li>
</ol>
<p>There are a few people that have truly undergone hardships - not a family divorce but some ghastly refugee trouble (I am tutoring a boy who watched his family being murdered in ethnic violence in Africa and walked through two countries selling used American clothes). So I am not including them. But as for the rest of the pool: let the Guidance Counselor give the school the heads-up if you had an operation junior year, then write about something positive that you can contribute to the school or that you've achieved (it's fine if has to do with starting an operation support group, but the hardship should not be the central point).</p>
<ol>
<li>It's probably just me, but I cannot bear to read another essay on some bizarro topic meant to be "quirky." On the old board someone once posted the most truly abysmal essay I have ever read or could ever imagine - anthropomorphizing her car. I learned absolutely nothing whatsoever about the person from the essay other than that she was whacko, but I learned a lot about the mindset that produced the old sitcom with Jerry VanDyke, "My Mother the Car."</li>
</ol>
<p>Boards don't transmit tone of voice and I am not trying to be mean...just exhausted after having read ten thousand bad essays!</p>
<p>Lord, voronwe, we're doomed, my daughter wrote about being short, and the experience (rock climbing) that showed her she could feel tall. At least it doesn't start like "As the icy mountain winds swriled about me, I stood there in my Lyra suit, scared to death," that is almost as good as "It was a dark and stormy night!".</p>
<p>Hers was more mundane - this was the way I used to be, here's when I did something nobody thought I could do, now I'm like this - at least it is mercifully brief!</p>
<p>LOL, Cangel! I'm sure it was a WONDEFUL essay! It IS possible to write on every single topic I wrote about above and do a good job! I was just tongue-in-cheek ranting!</p>
<p>Because I have learned so much from all of you, I am going to quote Garland's advice</p>
<p>Write from your heart, but use your head (G, hope I got that right :) )</p>
<p>My advice, </p>
<p>Writing is a process, don't expect to sit down on dec 30 and have your essay done for postmarking on Dec 31 (even though it does happen it is not the norm). Take a break from it if you are getting brain freeze.</p>
<p>Relax, keep a pen/pencil & paper near by, because sometimes when your mind is relaxed, your story can just poor out. there is a lot of value in free writing</p>
<p>What does anyone think of an essay on restoring a 1965 Mustang which had been off the road for 20 years (by a girl, with her father helping her and teaching her about cars). My daughter is not a science/engineering oriented person, but loves fixing things, working with her hands, etc and she had wanted to fix up the car since she was a little girl. Academically, she is interested in foreign languages, international studies, and art, but this is another side of her not shown anywhere else in her application. I hope it won't sound as offbase as the "My Mother the Car" topic mentioned above.</p>
<p>Carleton College has an EXCELLENT list of "15 Top Essay Tips from College Essay Readers" that should be read by every applicant to ANY college:
<a href="http://www.carleton.edu/admissions/essay/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.carleton.edu/admissions/essay/index.html</a></p>
<p>Voronwe: you had me laughing for the first time today--thanks!!!!</p>
<p>Sybbie-thanks for the kind reference. Rather than coming up with something new for this thread, I'm copying the one which that quote came from (which I forgot I wrote until you alluded to it:) )</p>
<p>I think that a really good college essay finds a moment (or moments) which encapsulates something about you, from which you can then expand to say more about yourself in general. I think it should strike a balance between narrative and exposition (a lot of essays I see on this forum are only narrative, with a "and this is who I am" line stuck at the end.) I think a good essay says good things about you, but w/o any chest-thumping.
The writing should be grammar-perfect and non-pretentious. It should sound like it comes from a high school student, but a clear-thinking, educated, intelligent one. It should come from the heart, shaped by your head.</p>
<p>The list posted by Carolyn is excellent. I used to have file that contained a number of links to good sites. Since I cannot locate the file today, I will simply repost from memory. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Know your audience and tailor write every essay
It is very important to do some homework and find out the type of essays your target school tends to favor. Checking the admission's and the english department's website is a must. For instance, a college like Connecticut College favors a style that is very different from the mainstream. CT College's adcoms have posted example essays on their website to give potential applicants a hint of their preferred style. I think it is fair to assume that submitting the same essay to CT College and at a number of elite schools could be a disaster, as most schools would look at the Fabio-esque purple prose suggested by CT College with absolute scorn.</p></li>
<li><p>Generic advice
Do not overthink the process. Forget the concept of having to explain your life and impress someone. The best essays have a couple of things in common: they are simple, written from the heart and sound true. Do not attempt to use a list of accomplishments to try to impress the adcoms. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>A good essay should be very similar to a letter or email to your best friend. Just think about what you would tell your best friend when coming back from a trip to Italy or India. You would not try to impress her about the architecture you saw or the museums you visited. You may tell her what you felt when seeing a young beggar's huge brown eyes along a murky river. Let your eyes and heart speak! </p>
<p>The very best topic are extremely personal, a story that only you could tell. Yes, people will tell you "Show, do not tell" but you have to tell a story, any story that is about you ... it does not have to be your life story. Some people suggest that an essay should show your love of learning. I tend to disagree: let the adcom find that information in your application and recommendation letters. Your 500 words are too important to waste on reciting information found elsewhere.</p>
<p>The simpler you keep it, the better your essay will be. Do not worry too much about finding the perfect topic. Start with a few simple ideas and write randomly. Save your files and review them later. You will discover that writing 500 words is not that difficult. </p>
<p>Your essays can be small windows -or a vignette ... to use a favorite SAT word- in your world that let the adcoms discover a different angle of your life. You do not have to reduce your entire life into 500 words. It could be as simple as a story where you were the only girl who preferred to play with math books instead of a Barbie Doll, or that you wanted to steal the chemistry set of your brother. Think about events in your life that made you cry or laugh ... anything that could show the person behind the austere application. Inspiration will come when you least expect it. Just get going!<br>
The key to a successful essay is to be different and compelling. They need to engage the adcoms and even evoke emotion. The objective on an application essay is to make the adcoms want to want you, and you will do this if they feel that they know WHO you are through your essays. Your essays are your only real voice among all the numbers. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>On the issue of reviewers
Be very cautious when asking teachers and GC to review your essay. The application essay is very different from a typical high school essay. Expect most advice received at school -and this includes your friends- to be very suspect. For instance, if you ask your english teacher, make sure to tell him that you look specifically for grammar and spelling help. Do not let them convince you that the essay should follow the formulaic approach that is so commonly taught.</p></li>
<li><p>On the issue of bad topics
Use common sense in avoiding contentious subjects such as race, religion, criminality, and politics. While a great writer could overcome such subjects, they are best left alone. The key: why take an unnecssary risk? </p></li>
</ol>
<p>By now, most everyone knows about the hackneyed subjects of overcoming injuries in sports or overcoming adversity. Again, leave them alone and look for something fresh and new.</p>
<p>Lastly, if anyone recommends to list achievements or explain poor grades, run away! The only time you should explain poor performance is if the school asks for it specifically. For instance, UT-Austin allows students to submit such essay as a complement to the admission application's package.</p>
<ol>
<li>Good source books
Try to locate a copy of Harry Bauld's book for preliminary help. The Barron's book on writing essays is also very good. It was written by writers who operate one of those essay mills. Despite this obvious shortcoming, the authors did succeed in producing a very helpful guide.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>Oh well, that is it for the moment!</p>