What are some secrets to writing a well-crafted college application essay?
When students learn how to write in high school, it's often third-person writing, where they are told to either research or write about another person, place, or thing. College essay writing is first person writing, and it's very hard for teenagers. Often they're a little self conscious and it's hard for them to be immodest and to really speak to their talents. I encourage that, I encourage them to really highlight themselves in the essay. Writing in first person is definitely what they want to do. Another tip for writing college application essays is to take an isolated experience, or passion - perhaps a person of influence - and make a little story out of it. I always like to say that these admission readers sometimes are reading thousands of these admissions essays, and they're reading them into the wee hours. I have heard college admission officers get up at conferences and say they read the first paragraph and the last and then decide whether they're going to read the rest of the application essay. They really are looking for something to capture them. Sometimes when I read these college essays, what I may do is extract the center of the essay and make it the beginning, because the students take a while to get going. By the time they get to the middle, they have a spectacular statement. Then I say, "Why don't you just start there?" I just think that there has to be a sense of stimulating, meaningful, passionate writing: something that the applicant honestly and sincerely care about.
