Posts Tagged essays
Tips for Better College Admission Essays
There is ample material available on how to write an essay that will tip the balance in your favor. You could use any of it to hone your admission treatise writing skills. Alternatively you could use the following simple tips to a better admission paper.
- Admissions officers are busy people do not force them to use a dictionary to try and understand what you have written. Try not to use words that are more than four characters long. This is not always possible. But when there is a smaller, simpler word avoid ones that are not used in daily speech.
- Write compelling. Choose an interesting topic. If your essay is to stand out in a crowd of essays that an admissions officer has to go through, then it has to be different. Use your creativity. And keep the interest going right through the paper.
- Give personal details. The admissions officer wants to know more about you. Let the essay reveal your character and your personality. But be subtle while doing this. You should not be saying what an altruistic person you are. The reader should understand this about you from an experience that you narrate.
- Be brief. In trying to be concise you consciously cut out the fluff. This way an admissions officer will not have to read through a sheaf of literature before your personality comes through. Try and keep the essay to the required length. Remember that admissions officers have to go through loads of other essays and will not have the time to go through an endless dissertation.
- Do not be informal. Avoid slang. The use of slang can be quite inappropriate.
- Always write in the active voice. You could use passive voice verbs where absolutely necessary. But unbridled use of passive voice verbs could make your admissions paper uninteresting.
- It would be a good idea to ask others to read your essay. Tell them in advance what they should look for in the paper and what it that should come out easily and clearly.
- Draft. Redraft. Go through your paper as many times as required. Be critical of what you have written.
- Make sure there is coherence between the paragraphs. Focus not just on simplicity and brevity of sentences but also focus of paragraph and sentence constructions.
- Make sure that your conclusion is strong. If it is not an effective summary of all that you have said before rewrite it till it comes out as something that will make it outstanding and leave a positive impression with the reader.
- There are scores of excellent admissions treatises. Go through a few to familiarize yourself with what an exceptional essay is.
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Colleges Degrees For Working Parents – Tips For Balancing Your Work, Home, and School Life
Time never seems to be on your side! You can barely make time to do all the extras after talking care of the kids. You don’t know where the time goes and now you have to entertain the idea of returning to school or completing your college degree.
Finances are an issue now adding a tuition check to each month’s budget does not seem like an option. What do you do? The US Census Bureau reports that about 20% of American families are single-parent households, and in most case the breadwinner is a mother. In addition 95% of the single parents make less than $75,000 a year in income. So, for many going back to school without some form of financial aid is not an option.
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The College Application Essay
I’m looking at the other side of college essays. This is not the side the admission officers see, but the side the students write, what they write and how they say it. So often we see guidelines on how to write the college essay. Directions like put it in the first person, make it creative, start with a grabber, finish strong, talk about you , and do this all in anywhere from 100 to 500 words are typical.
Consultants, counselors and English teachers are the ones who read them in their infancy, the rough stage, just when the thoughts are brewing. What I have seen and read is more authentic than the finished version on the applications. For the most part these are 17 year olds who have been taught in school how to write in the 3rd person, about the other thing and rarely about themselves. So, first there is the need to overcome that teenage insecurity, be humble, yet boast, sound confident and do all that in respectable English. I overlook the slang and instant messaging language so prevalent and work with students on extracting what I find so appealing about them. They all have it – that appealing thing. For some it is simply the way their closet looks and for others it is their personal experience of sitting together at a family meal. The good news is that these students are willing to open up with someone like me knowing that I do not evaluate, judge, grade or accept or deny them. It is an honorable and trusted relationship. I suppose what I see is what many admission officers would like to – the rough cut so to speak. Unquestionably, once student essays have been revised, edited and polished several times, they take on a new more formal look. Colleges are attempting to get the right look at students.
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