<p>Hello there! I'm aware that the application deadline is in a few months from now (actually, I think the admissions haven't even started yet?) but I've been preparing my application along with all the "resume" questions almost a year in advance! I started the essay 2 months ago and have been touching it briefly here and there, adding/removing things.. I'd like some advice and opinions from all of you on it! Here's the essay topic:</p>
<p>"In the space provided, please write a concise narrative in which you describe a meaningful event, experience or accomplishment in your life and how it will affect your college experience or your contribution to the UF campus community. You may want to reflect on your ideas about student responsibility, academic integrity, campus citizenship or a call to service."</p>
<p>There are some points that concern me on my essay such as:
- I mentioned more than one experience, technically. (You could see it as "one" experience as I talked about my departure from the US to Brazil, and everything significant that came thereafter)
- I love writing, and the 500-word limit was extremely restrictive so I -really- had to condense rough draft version, which might have lead to some inaccuracies.
- I'm an international student, but my native language is English. As you'll see, some of the vocabulary I used was a bit.. Eloquent? However, it's just a habit of mine, not really to sparkle up my essay. Will the admissions department raise an eyebrow seeing this?</p>
<p>Thank you in advance, and if any of you have an essay you'd like to have read, I can help out! </p>
<p>-AGoodFloridian (and hopefully a future Gator!)</p>
<p>Honestly only you know how to answer this prompt. You seem to be on the right track so that’s good, your story is interesting to me so far and you haven’t even explained it!
Make sure your essay makes sense even when you cut out a lot of it for the word limit. Just write as you normally do and be consistent with that so the admissions won’t find it odd.
Also keep in mind, the essay prompt might change (the application opens September 3rd), so don’t bank on this prompt just yet.
Good luck!
Chance me back? </p>
<p>Re: more than one experience - relax, they just want to hear about important and interesting stuff that happened in your life. If the essay is all over the place, jumping around to completely different events in such a way that the reader doesn’t understand how the events are connected, then it’s a problem. But, intrinsically, a story involves a thing happening at some point after another thing, or there’s no narrative arc. So they’re not going to be like, “Aha, you mentioned more than one thing happening in your life! FAIL.”</p>
<p>Re: condensing causing inaccuracies - this is normal for creative nonfiction. They’re not going to know, and as long as you’re representing your life in a truthful spirit, in good faith, without trying to mislead people into perceiving you in a way that is not only inaccurate but significantly so, you don’t have to worry about streamlining some details for the sake of wordcount, flow, etc. Basically, imagine if you were an admissions officer reading this essay, and you admitted the applicant on the basis of the essay, and then discovered the “inaccuracies” you speak of, would you feel like you had been tricked? Would you feel like the author of the essay was a significantly different person from how s/he had represented him/herself? Would you wish you had not accepted the applicant?</p>
<p>Re: eloquence - don’t say “plethora.” Don’t say “utilize.” Try to avoid “individual” as a noun (e.g. “I am a very determined individual”). If you write in a way that comes naturally to you, as you say you do, it will likely be okay. Realize also that nobody can read the mind of whichever admissions officers end up reading your essay, and if they reject you on the basis of one specific word, you probably don’t want to go to a school like that anyway. Admissions tend to be fairly holistic, and the hard and fast criteria usually pertain to stats (GPA, SAT, etc.) rather than particular words here and there in an essay.</p>