You’ll need plenty of time go over it—both for yourself and for any adults or friends that you recruit to help. Your most important task is to make sure that the essay says what you want it to say with as much flair and pizzazz as you can muster. The second one, no less important, is to make sure that typos, spelling mistakes, and grammar errors are edited out.
The Opening Paragraph
We’ll give you one guess as to the most important sentence in your essay. (The title of this section is a hint.) To understand why the first sentence, and the first paragraph, are so crucial, consider the plight of a typical admissions officer (AO). At the peak of application reading, she probably has a quota somewhere between thirty and fifty per day. Admissions officers spend as little as ten minutes per application, of which perhaps three minutes may be devoted to the essay.
When the AO finally gets to your application, while munching on cold pizza at 1:47 a.m. having read forty-nine others that day, it is crucial that your opening paragraph grab her attention before she nods off. The way you begin will shape the admissions officer’s perceptions of the whole essay and may even determine whether she reads or skims.There, you’ll find the opening lines of every essay in this book. Each one is unique, but they fall into three basic categories:
- An anecdote—The most tried and true way to begin is to describe an incident or event that relates to your main point.
- A zinger—Some excellent writers don’t need an anecdote. They may begin with humor, wordplay, or some other creative twist to grab the reader.
- A straightforward statement—Though good anecdotes and zingers are hard to beat, a simple beginning is preferable to a failed attempt at either of the former.
Many essays in this blog begin with an anecdote. In Essay 48, the author describes volunteer work for an Indian cultural organization that often has her working late and neglecting homework: “I’m tired and a little bit desperate. My clock angrily glares at me through its neon green dial. It’s 11:24. The biology exam tomorrow will be murder. I resolutely pass over my textbook, and instead return to the screen where Pandit Jasraj stares back at me.” Another of our contributors begins her essay standing at the blackboard in English class, drawing a figure to illustrate her reaction to a line in John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:
Now I was at the front of the classroom, using what little artistic coordination I had to draw a great big figure on the board: yes, those had to be eyes, an L-shaped nose, wrinkled eyebrows, a gaping O for a mouth. I added little stress lines on either corner of the cheeks, just to show how intent my hastily composed figure was on examining this “Sylvan historian, who canst thus express a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme” (Essay 3).
Notice how deftly she relates a necessary fact—that she is writing at the board—without breaking the flow of her narrative. The essay continues with dialogue between her and the teacher. It takes skillful writing to achieve a zinger opening, but a number of our authors were equal to the task. One student writes about the pitfalls of being known as a feminist. Her essay begins, “Sometime between waking up at the crack of dawn and fourth period I became a teenage werewolf. No, wait, I mean feminist.” Another of our authors with an active funny bone turns his attention to the college search with this opening:
Do you ever have those dreams where you’ve arrived at school and suddenly realize you’ve forgotten to wear pants? Well, for most high school seniors that dream becomes a reality, at least figuratively. We must bare our souls, not to best friends, or family, but to complete strangers who may not even want to hear about it and may even flat out reject us. What twisted institution would ever subject young adults in the formative stages of emotional growth to this experience? Oh, right. College (Essay 73).
Don’t feel bad if you can’t pull off a stream of consciousness like this; most of us can’t. Straightforward openings can work well when you have a lot of information to convey. One of our student authors writes about a robot he designed, opening this way: “‘E2V2’ was my own creation and I would drive it in BattleBotsIQ 2003, a national robotics competition. I felt my body tense for the battle against the spinbot, Chromedome” (Essay 9). With most of the crucial information conveyed, the rest of the essay describes the battle between the two robots. Another of our contributors writes about how his self-image changed when he decided to experiment with an acting class. The essay begins, “Before last year I had always thought of myself as a very shy, uncreative, introspective individual. And I was happy that way. I had found my little niche in the Kinkaid society. I was the jock who excelled in sports and also managed to make pretty good grades as well” (Essay 33). By outlining all of his preconceptions about himself upfront, he sets the stage for talking about his change in attitude after taking a drama class.
Read More : Narrative Essays : The Opening Paragraph
