<p>Hemingway Hemingway Hemingway Hemingway.</p>
<p>Forget trying to aim for Hemingway - he was a deceptively simple writer and a far better writer than any college applicant has any hope of emulating. Just be yourself, and strive to let your voice be heard through your essay. Don’t undermine the content of your essay with basic grammatical errors like misplaced punctuation or with cliches. If you have something of value to say, and you can communicate that in a way that rings true, then your admissions essay should be well-received. I recently scored about a thousand university-level essays written by students for some academic classes, and the greatest sin committed by the majority of the students was damning superficiality. They were assigned meaty topics but, because they had spent little time reflecting on the material, they had nothing to offer, and, in many cases, just cut-and-pasted Wikipedia articles (and still were unable to convey anything worth reading.)</p>
<p>As far as what kind of vocabulary to use, use the vocabulary words you like to use and that best express your thoughts. If you have not been in the habit of building your vocabulary using a thesaurus, then it’s probably not a good time to start doing that now with your college admissions essay.</p>
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<p>Nah. Some essays are so pretentious that only seventeen-year-olds could have written them. </p>
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<p>No one should ever have this habit if you ask me…you learn more about words reading an actual book than you do reading a thesaurus.</p>
<p>My rule for powerful, effective writing: Use lots of words of Anglo-Saxon origin and go easy on the words of Latin origin.</p>
<p>Latinate words usually sound high-flown and “scientific,” so it’s easy for a high school student seeking to impress to go overboard on them. But, especially when used a lot, they can also sound phony and even arrogant.</p>
<p>Write “teach” instead of “educate.” Say “dog” instead of “canine.” Write “blaze” instead of “conflagration.” When tempted to write “erudite” use “smart” instead. </p>
<p>Embrace the Saxon; go easy on the Latin.</p>
<p>^^^^^
Smart man.</p>
<p>Vocabulary is only one component of language. If your big words are aligned with all the other aspects of your writing, fine. But so often with young writers the words wrench the meaning right out of what they are trying to say.</p>
<p>Finally, I would propose Coetzee’s “Disgrace” as the best example of deceptive simplicity in modern fiction.</p>
<p>I think very few people in my school know how to write well. I’ve heard even many college students don’t write well. I’m nervous about college essay.</p>
<p>So admission officers can read your essay without referring to a dictionary every 5 seconds.</p>
<p>^ I disagree — so the admissions officers don’t roll their eyes every 5 seconds.</p>
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<p>Superb! drexter!</p>
<p>words from heart will be, well. best. not as good as those “hard words”.
with this sentence, I was mocking with the notion of hard words.</p>
<p>If you know yourself to be a good writer, focus on the writing. </p>
<p>If you are afraid of writing, focus on what you need to say.</p>
<p>I’ve been told that college essays should be written about you and your unique experiences. This way, admissions would have more to see than just your academic record. Hopefully, they factor that in as much as one’s academic record!</p>
<p>My point wasn’t that you should copy Hemingway, but that you don’t need to write with complex words to make your writing good.</p>
<p>Also, the admission officers might be vexed if the essay contains too complicated words that are beyond their vocab knowledge. Am I right?</p>
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<p>No, you are not right. College admissions officers may not all have majored in English, but they all have college educations, often from the same university to which you are now applying for admission. They may not be more intelligent than you, but they are most certainly better educated.</p>
<p>The written word is a means to convey an idea. If the idea you want to convey is your belief that you are superior to your reader, you can certainly do that, by whatever means you prefer. You can use pretentious vocabulary to impress, or you can limit yourself to overly simplified vocabulary so as not to overwhelm. Just don’t expect your reader to like you.</p>
<p>LOL: this has got to be one of the most one-sided threads in CC’s history! 50+ posts decrying the OP’s premise. The OP hasn’t appeared since the first note.</p>
<p>^^ helpful!</p>
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<p>Lol, no…keep dreaming. </p>
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<p>More often than not this has the effect of making the essay sound weird and academic. I recommend using transitions, but not necessarily transition words. </p>
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<p>I agree with this, but I think you should wait a week or so before you read it out loud to yourself…I read all my written assignments out loud to myself, but that doesn’t stop me from writing badly if I just wrote the paper and I’m still attached to it. You have to come back to your essay later with a different mindset. </p>
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<p>I agree that you shouldn’t use the same words over and over again, but you can’t just use words you’ve never seen before and expect to use them correctly.</p>
<p>One comment-Admissions officers are not as stupid as posters here seem to be positing. Most come from schools comparable to the schools at which they work and have reasonably extensive vocabularies. In some ways that makes the use of big words for the sake of using big word more dangerous, in that you’re writing for an audience that can usually hear the difference between a word correctly and incorrectly used.</p>
<p>Not everybody who applies to college is a fanatic reader or has Asperger’s Syndrome, you know.</p>