25 Essay Mistakes that Guarantee Failure

1. Trying to be someone else. This may sound very obvious, and well, it is. But you’d be surprised at how many students don’t heed this simple piece of advice. A lot of students think that they need to be who the admissions officers want them to be;
but, in reality, the admissions officers want you to be you. They aren’t looking for the perfect student who is committed to every subject area, volunteers wholeheartedly for every cause, plays multiple sports with aptitude, and has no faults. Instead, they want to learn about the true you. Present yourself in an honest
way, and you will find it much easier to write an essay about your genuine thoughts and feelings.

2. Choosing a topic that sounds good but that you don’t care
about. Many students think that colleges seek students who have
performed a lot of community service, and it is true that colleges
value contributions to your community. However, this doesn’t
mean that you must write about community service, especially
when it’s not something that has played a major role for you. The
same holds true for any other topic. It’s critical that you select a

topic that’s meaningful to you because you will be able to write
about the topic in a complete and personal way.

3. Not thinking before writing. You should spend as much time
thinking about what you will write as actually putting words on
paper. This will help you weed out the topics that just don’t go
anywhere, determine which topic has the greatest pull for you,
and figure out exactly what you want to say. It can help to talk
yourself through your essay aloud or discuss your thoughts with
a parent, teacher, or friend. The other person may see an angle
or a flaw that you do not.

4. Not answering the question. While this seems simple enough,
many students simply do not heed this. The advice is especially
pertinent for those who recycle essays. We highly recommend
recycling because it saves you time to write one essay that you
use for many colleges, but the caveat is that you need to edit
the essay so that it answers the question being asked. It turns
admissions officers off when students submit an essay, even a
well-written one, that doesn’t answer the question. They think
that the students either aren’t serious enough about the college
to submit an essay that has been specifically written or at least
edited for that college, or that they just don’t follow directions.
Either way, that’s not the impression you want to leave.

5. Not sharing something about yourself. As you know, the main
purpose of the admissions essay is to impart something about
yourself that’s not found in the application. Still, many students
forget this, especially when writing about a topic such as a person
they’d like to meet or a favorite book or piece of literature.
In these cases, they may write so much about why they admire
the person or the plot of the book that they forget to show the
connection to themselves. Always ask yourself if you are letting
the admissions officers know something about yourself through
your essay.

6. Forgetting who your readers are. naturally you speak differently
to your friends than your teachers; when it comes to the
essay, some applicants essentially address the admissions officers
with a too-friendly high five instead of a handshake. In other

words, it’s important to be yourself in the essay, but you should
remember that the admissions officers are adults not peers. The
essay should be comfortable but not too informal. remember
that adults generally have a more conservative view of what’s
funny and what’s appropriate. The best way to make sure you’re
hitting the right tone is to ask an adult to read your essay and
give you feedback.

7. Tackling too much of your life. Because the essay offers a few hundred
words to write about an aspect of your life, some students
think that they need to cram in as many aspects of their life as
possible. This is not the approach we recommend. An essay of 500
to 800 words doesn’t afford you the space to write about your 10
greatest accomplishments since birth or about everything that you
did during your three-week summer program in Europe. rather,
the space can probably fit one or two accomplishments or one or
two experiences from the summer program. Instead of trying to
share your whole life, share what we call a slice of your life. By doing
so, you will give your essay focus and you will have the space
to cover the topic in greater depth.

8. Having a boring introduction. Students have started their essays
by repeating the question asked and even stating their names.
This does little to grab the attention of the admissions officers.
Sure, they’ll read the whole essay, but it always helps to have a
good start. Think about how you can describe a situation that
you were in, convey something that you strongly believe in or
share an anecdote that might not be expected. An introduction
won’t make or break your essay, but it can start you off in the
right direction.

9. Latching on to an issue that you don’t really care about. One
of the prompts for the Common Application is, “Discuss some
issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and
its importance to you.” The key to answering this question is to
carefully think about these words: “its importance to you.” This
is what students most often overlook. They select an issue and
write about the issue itself, but they don’t really explain why it
is important to them or how they see themselves making an impact.
If you write about an issue, be sure to pick one that is truly

meaningful to you and that you know something about. You’ll
probably score extra kudos if you can describe how you have
done something related to the issue.

10. Resorting to gimmicks. Applicants have been known to enclose
a shoe with their essays along with a note that reads, “now I
have one foot in the door.” They have also printed their essays in
different fonts and colors, sent gifts or food and even included
mood music that’s meant to set the mood while the admissions
officer reads the essay. A few students have even sent cash! While
gimmicks like this may grab some attention, they don’t do much
to further the applicants, especially those few who’ve sent money,
a definite no-no. It’s true that you want your essay to stand
out but not in a way in which the admissions officer thinks that
you are inappropriate or just plain silly. If you have an idea for
something creative, run it by a teacher or counselor to see what
he or she thinks first.

11. Trying to make too many points. It’s better to have a single, well
thought-out message in your essay than many incomplete ones.
Focusing allows you to go into depth into a specific topic and
make a strong case for your position. Write persuasively. You can
use examples to illustrate your point.

12. Not being specific. If you think about some of the best stories
you’ve been told, the ones that you remember the most are probably
filled with details. The storyteller may have conveyed what
he or she thought, felt, heard, or saw. From the information imparted,
you may have felt like you were there or you may have
developed a mental image of the situation. This is precisely the
experience that you would like the admissions officers to have
when reading your essay. The key to being memorable is providing
as many details as possible. What thoughts were going
through your mind? What did you see or hear? What were you
feeling during the time? Details help bring the admissions officers
into your mind to feel your story.

13. Crossing the line. Some students take to heart the advice to
share something about themselves, but they end up sharing too
much. They think that they must be so revealing that they use

their essay to admit to something that they would never have
confessed otherwise. There have been students who have written
about getting drunk, feeling suicidal, or pulling pranks on
their teachers. It’s possible that in the right context, these topics
might work. For example, if the pranks were lighthearted and
their teachers had a good sense of humor about them, that’s acceptable.
But for the most part, these kinds of topics are highly
risky. The best way to determine if you’ve crossed the line is to
share your idea with a couple of adults and get their reactions.

14. Repeating what’s in the application form. The essay is not the
application form, and it is not a resume. In other words, the essay
is the best opportunity that you’ll have to either delve into
something you wrote in the application form or to expound on
something new that doesn’t really fit on the application form. It
doesn’t help you to regurgitate what’s already on the application
form.

15. Not having a connection with the application form. While you
don’t want to repeat information from the application form verbatim
in your essay, it’s usually a good idea to have some continuity
between the form and your essay. If you write an essay
about how your greatest passion in life is playing the piano and
how you spend 10 hours a week practicing, this hobby should
be mentioned in the application form along with any performances
you’ve given or awards you’ve won. It doesn’t make
sense to write about how you love an activity in the essay and
then to have no mention of it in the application form. remember
that the admissions officers are looking at your application in its
entirety, and they should have a complete and cohesive image of
you through all the pieces, which include the application form,
essay, transcript, recommendations, and interview.

16. Not going deep enough. One of the best pieces of advice that
we give students is to keep asking, “Why?” As an example, let’s
say that you are writing an essay on organizing a canned food
drive. Ask yourself why you wanted to do this. Your answer is
that you wanted to help the homeless. Ask yourself why this was
important to you. Your answer is that you imagined your family
in this situation. You would greatly appreciate if others showed

compassion and helped you. Why else? Because you wanted to
gain hands-on experience as a leader. The point of this exercise
is to realize that it’s not enough to just state the facts or tell what
happened, that you organized a canned food drive. What makes
an essay truly compelling is explaining the “why.” You want the
readers of your essay to understand your motivation. Keep asking
yourself why until you have analyzed the situation as fully
as possible. The answers you come up with are what will make
your essay stronger.

17. Not getting any feedback. Practically every article that you read
in a magazine, book, or newspaper or on the Internet has been
edited. The reason is that writing should not be an isolated experience.
You may know exactly what you want to convey in
your own mind, but when you put it on paper, it may not come
out as clearly as it was in your mind. It helps to get feedback.
Ask parents, teachers, or even friends to read and comment on
your essay. They can help you identify what can be edited out,
what needs to be explained better, or how you can improve your
work.

18. Getting too much feedback. Asking one or two people for feedback
on your essay is probably enough. If you ask more than
that, you may lose the focus of your writing. Having too many
editors dilutes your work because everyone has a different opinion.
If you try to incorporate all of the opinions, your essay will
no longer sound like you.

19. Trying to be extraordinarily different. There are some people
who are extraordinarily different, but the truth is that most of
us aren’t. What’s more important than conveying yourself as the
most unique person at your school is that you demonstrate selfanalysis,
growth, or insight.

20. Ruling out common topics. There are topics that admissions
officers see over and over again such as your identity, your relationship
with your family, extracurricular activities, and the Big
game. While these topics are very common, it doesn’t mean that
you shouldn’t write about them. Your topic is not as important
as what you say about it. For example, many students choose to

write about their moms or dads. A parent can be one of the most
influential persons in a student’s life, and it makes sense that this
would be the topic of many students’ essays. So don’t rule out
mom or dad, but do rule out writing about mom or dad in the
way that every other person will write. Explain how your dad
made banana pancakes every morning and what that taught you
about family, or how your mom almost got into a fight with another
mom who made a racist comment. Make a common topic
uncommon by personalizing it.

21. Forcing humor. You’ve probably seen at least one sitcom on Tv
or one monologue by Conan O’Brien or David Letterman with
a joke that fell flat. Maybe you groaned at the Tv or gave it an
un-amused expression. Keep in mind that the jokes on Tv are
written by professional writers who earn large salaries to be funny.
now, remember that the great majority of us are not headed
down this career path. What this means is that you shouldn’t
force humor into your essay. If you’re a funny writer, then by all
means, inject some humor. Just be sure to ask an adult or two
to read the essay to see if they agree with you that it is funny. If
you’re not humorous, then it’s okay. You don’t need to force it.

22. Writing the essay the night before it’s due. Almost every student
has done it—waited until the last minute to write a paper
or do a project. Sometimes it comes out all right, but sometimes
not so much. It is not wise to procrastinate when it comes to
writing a college admissions essay. It takes time. Even if you are
able to write an essay the night before it’s due, it’s still better not
to. The best essays marinate. Their authors write, take some time
away from it and then return to it later with a fresh mind.

23. Failing the thumb test. As you are writing your essay, place your
thumb over your name. Could you put another name at the top
because it could be an essay written by many other students? Or
is the essay personal to you so that basically yours is the only
name that could be at the top? If you fail the thumb test, it’s time
to rethink the topic or your approach to it. You want your essay
to be unique to you.

24. Forgetting to proofread. Some students put the wrong college
name in their essays, a mistake that could easily be avoided by

proofreading. Many more students have spelling, grammatical,
or punctuation errors. While these types of errors usually aren’t
completely detrimental, they can be distracting at best and be
signs to the admissions officers that you’re careless and not serious
about their college at worst. Avoid this by not only using
your computer’s spell check but by asking someone else to help
proofread your essay. Twice is better.

25. Not writing to the specific college. In addition to learning about
you, admissions officers also hope to learn how you would fit
in at their college. Be as specific as possible about a college, especially
if you are writing an essay about why you’d like to attend
that particular college. Explain one or two things about the
school that make it the best one for you. Make sure that what
you are writing is not so general that it could be said of any other
college. In other words, it’s good to describe how you visited the
campus and had a conversation about Marx with a sociology
student. It’s not as good to state that you want to go to Harvard
because it offers a high quality education.

26. Not spending time on the rest of your application. remember
that the essay is one piece of the application. It can certainly help
your chances of being accepted, but you need to have everything
else in place as well. Sure, it takes time to work on the application
form, recommendation letters, and interviews, but you are
taking actions now that will affect the next four years of your life
and beyond. It’s worth the effort.
Read More: 25 Essay Mistakes that Guarantee Failure

Essays Writing: Telling story and Think Metaphorically

Telling a Story 
To translate our talk about concrete detail into slightly different terms, good essays use nouns and verbs while weak ones use adjectives. Strong essays “show” and weak ones “tell.” Or again, good essays describe action while weak ones are a series of static images. Allow us to explain. The adjective is a perfectly good part of speech, but only when serving strong verbs and nouns. An adjective by itself is an abstract category. If you say that your friend is “crazy,” “zany,” or even “off-the-wall,” you haven’t said much.

But if you describe the time when she got out of her car and locked it with the keys still in the ignition, you’re beginning to make progress. Or the time she got the hiccups during an assembly, couldn’t stop laughing, and had to run out the back of the auditorium. If you describe the basketball game when she grabbed a rebound, raced to the wrong basket, and sank a shot, then froze in her tracks and exclaimed “Oh s_ _ _” loud enough for everyone to hear…. Now we get the idea. After recounting a few anecdotes like these, you don’t need to tell the reader that she is crazy because you have shown what she is like. Strong verbs always drive interesting writing. But as essay writers grope and strain, too many of them reach instead for adjectives, as in the following:

It was a chilly, grey twilight as the enormous stadium
scoreboard announced the fourth quarter. I felt a damp,
cool hint of dew under my aching feet. My muscles were
tired but taut. The atmosphere was electric as the fans
watched expectantly…


Though it is only a fragment, notice how this passage seems to move in slow motion. It is a series of images without much action (verbs) to link them. The overworked adjectives are not necessarily weak words, but they weigh down the prose. A trying-too-hard quality creeps in. Nothing is happening, but the author attempts to convey significance by lingering on every detail of the scene. The passage sounds forced and self-important. A good essay consists of anecdotes and concrete observations that illustrate a story or make a point. 


Think Metaphorically 
Is your life boring? Does it leave you with nothing to write about? With metaphors (and similes), anybody’s life can be the subject of an engaging essay. Consider Essay 93, in which the author likens his middle school years to the Dark Ages in Europe. He had been an active learner in his elementary years—which he compares to Greek and Roman antiquity. After a middle-school slump, he experiences a renaissance in ninth grade which he likens to, well, the Renaissance. By twelfth grade, he has undergone an enlightenment worthy of the Enlightenment and written an essay with real substance about his relatively typical school career.

There are numerous other examples in this book. In Essay 19, the author uses sailing as a metaphor for life. In Essay 69, the author describes being accepted as an adult in her family through the familiar experience of that first cup of coffee. In Essay 47, an author who grew up in the Caribbean imagines himself as a palm tree in conversation with a baobab tree that represents his African heritage. Metaphors and similes show a student’s ability to do bigpicture thinking. If you’re ever at a loss for what to write, think of analogies that apply to your life. Exploring such comparisons through simile or metaphor can transform mundane events into interesting ones.
Read More : Essays Writing: Telling story and Think Metaphorically

Be youself and Detail in Your Essays

Mention that you’re writing a college essay and you’ll probably get an earful of advice:
• “Write about your trip to Mexico,” offers your mom. “You can show that you’ve broadened your horizons.”
• “Community service always looks good,” says Dad. “Talk about your work with Habitat for Humanity.”
• “Write something funny,” advises your best friend. “They love essays that make them laugh.”
• “Make yourself stand out,” says your guidance counselor. “In a pile of one thousand essays, yours should be the one they remember.”

If you’re lucky, you won’t hear all of the above—at least not all at once. But the odds are good that you’ll get some of it, particularly the one about making yourself stand out. How, exactly, do you accomplish that one? Have you scaled Mount Everest? Overcome a terminal disease? Saved a toddler from a burning building?

Of course not. Neither have 99.9 percent of the rest of us. The best essays are seldom about a dramatic event or “significant experience” that changes the author’s life. Real people don’t get hit by lightning and suddenly realize that they should live their lives differently. Human development is a step-by-step, day-by-day process that happens almost imperceptibly.

Stand Out by Being Yourself
Instead of trying to be dramatic, be interesting. That’s all a good essay needs to be—interesting to the admissions officers who read it. Forget the idea that your essay needs to be the one in a thousand that jumps out of the pile. That’s too much pressure. Go for writing one that is among the 25 percent, more or less, that are reasonably interesting. It isn’t as easy as it sounds. Among your first thoughts might be to tell about a trip, describe a community service project, analyze a political issue, or talk about the significance of your sport.

Are any of these topics likely to be interesting? In the hands of a professional writer, they might have a fighting chance. In a college essay—even one written by a gifted student—these topics are likely to be painfully boring. Fortunately, there is a solution that does not involve phony dramatics. Any of the topics above can be extremely interesting provided that you use them to talk about yourself. Hear that? You are by far the most interesting possible topic. If this sounds crazy, think of the most popular magazine in the United States. It has a one-word name: People. The magazine sells so well because people are interesting: their hopes and fears, their relationships, what they believe, and how their minds work. Call it gossip, the inside dirt— whatever.

People are fascinating and you are a person. By happy coincidence, there is no topic in the world about which you are better prepared to write. If all the applicants in the country suddenly wised up and wrote about themselves, most would have good essays. Everyone is different, and people are endlessly interesting. If you’re still in doubt, think about the essay from the point of view of the admissions officers. They don’t wade through all those essays to learn about the importance of self-discipline, or that persistence pays off. They want to learn about the applicants as people:
their hopes and fears, their relationships, what they believe, and how their minds work. In one way or another, every good essay is about the person who wrote it.

Details, Details
Your English teacher has told you one hundred times: if you want to write a good essay, you need concrete evidence to back up whatever you say. We’ll take it a step further: you can’t write a good college essay without details, by which we mean anecdotes, thoughts, and observations that are unique to you. Look at the 109 essays in this book. Every one of them crackles with specific references. In Essay 27, the author is an actor gazing out into the audience before a performance. He doesn’t just see faces in the crowd. Nor does he see anything so generic as “a sea of faces waiting expectantly.” Instead, he sees “the homely older women looking around the crowd for a familiar face” and “the seven-year-old whose parents dragged him along to the theater.” In Essay 79, the author remembers an exchange student who lived in her home by “the tights scented with French perfume in my sock drawer.”

The author of Essay 101 writes about her trip to London. She didn’t merely see Westminster Abbey, or even “the ancient splendor of Westminster Abbey.” Instead, she was “moved almost to tears while wandering through Westminster Abbey, seeing the stained glass windows that had been pieced back together with such courage and diligence after being smashed during the bombings of the Second World War.” When stories involve people, a great way to make them more concrete is to use dialogue. Among the dozens in this book that use dialogue are Essays 3, 40, and 42. The author of Essay 65 gets concrete by building her entire essay around the “256 steps” that it takes to walk from her mother’s house to her father’s house. She writes, “Twelve steps up the road, I see the crack in the pavement and I remember the first time I rode a tricycle—a hot pink contraption with a white wicker basket.” Concrete detail is also crucial if you want to make your imagination become real, as the author of Essay 75 demonstrates:
There are two kinds of Perrier drinkers. There are those who are snobby and sophisticated who take small snooty sips from a glass while at a swanky café, and there are the free-spirited drinkers. I am the latter. I am one of the c’est la vie, I-have-class-but-appreciate-chaos, fine art loving, passionate drinkers. Even the most mundane paragraph is more engaging if it is concrete, such as this passage from Essay 21: No matter how tired I am, every Sunday morning I wake up, brush my teeth, put on my blue sweatpants and red sweatshirt, grab the keys to the car and head out into the driveway. Not even my puppy follows me outside; he likes to sleep till eleven o’clock on Sundays. I pull the car out into the driveway and position it just right so that the morning sun is blocked by the thick leaves and branches of the tall maple, and so that I can easily walk around the back end. Not the most exciting paragraph you’ve ever read, but we’ll bet that it held your attention.
Read More : Be youself and Detail in Your Essays

Write Right—College Essay Writing Techniques

Learning to write a cohesive and persuasive college essay is crucial to the financial aid process. Write right. Writing is the medium through which you communicate with the admissions officer, the financial aid officer, and the awards committee. It can determine how much aid you might receive. Avoid unnecessary words and redundancy. They waste your space, waste the reviewer’s precious time, and may confuse the reader. Never send your reader to the dictionary by using uncommon and unfamiliar vocabulary. Whatever you plan to write, say it once and say it right. Here are some tips to improve your writing skills.

Avoid Jargon
Using language that is used by a particular group, profession, or culture, especially when the words and phrases are highly technical for someone outside the discipline to understand, can be a disadvantage. Jargon can also convey a sense of pretentiousness and meaninglessness. If you must use a technical term, define it when you first use it. Here is an example of a sentence using jargon:
The Fresnel lens that was invented in 1822 revolutionized the study of pharology. If the reviewer does not know what a Fresnel lens is or what pharology means, your point and its significance are lost. You are making the reviewer’s job more difficult by using jargon.

Instead of being too specific about the Fresnel lens, which is a type of illumination introduced to lighthouses by France in the 19th century, and using the word “pharology,” which is the study of lighthouses (the word comes from the first recorded lighthouse in history, the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria around 290 B.C.), this sentence can be restructured so as to avoid jargon: The invention of the Fresnel Lens, which was a type of illumination used in lighthouses in the 18th century, revolutionized the study of lighthouses.


Explain Acronyms and Terms
Make yourself clear. You cannot assume that readers who will judge your proposal will know the same acronyms or buzzwords that are common to your organization or field of interest. While they may understand
that HUD refers to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a self-coined acronym like CARA, for the Connecticut Arts Response Action, can confuse the reader. Give readers the full name or title on first reference, followed by the acronym in parentheses.

Write Short Sentences
A sentence gains clarity when it is brief. Avoid long sentences. When sentences get too long, wordiness creeps in and it is easy for the reader to get lost in the phrases and lose your train of thought. By the end of the sentence the reader may have forgotten what was written at the beginning. Eliminate wordiness as it is likely to lead to grammatical errors. Take a look at the following sentence:
“Give Peace a Chance” was a dance recital that our high school presented, in which I played a leading role in depicting movements of conflict from around the world.
Here is how you can make life easier:
“Give Peace a Chance” was a dance recital presented by our high school in summer 2008. I played the leading role of performing scenes of conflict and despair faced by people living in war-torn countries.
You want to get your point across, not bury it in words. Your prose should be clear and direct. If an admissions officer has to struggle to figure out what you are trying to say, you are in trouble. Make your presentation as strong as possible and keep it to the point.

Write Cohesively
Organize your thoughts clearly. Arrange the elements of your thoughts in a way that creates a particular structure within the proposal. Cohesion is key. Organizing your thoughts forces you to eliminate unnecessary

details that make the essay disconnected. Make your sentences short and powerful. Repeating the same things over and over  again will lead the reviewer to believe that your academic and extracurricular background lack substance, just like your writing does. The following is an example where the thoughts are disjointed. The request is made by an individual applicant to seek funding for a photographic project:
I will be visiting Varanasi, India, to conduct a photographic documentary on Varanasi, India. It is one of the oldest living cities in the world. It captures the essence of India. I want to show how old ideas exist with modern trends. Here is how you can organize your thoughts better:
“Varanasi, India, is one of the oldest living cities in the world. In many ways, Varanasi captures the essence of India, filled with contrasts between the old order and the new, ancient civilizations versus contemporary globalization, and the sacred and the secular. My goal is to conduct a photojournalism project titled Tradition vs. Modernism in Varanasi, India. “The theme of the photo project will be to study how traditional rituals are being assailed and benefited by modernism and globalization.

Avoid Expressions of Uncertainty
The language in a college essay needs to be authoritative. Uncertain words and sentences like “may,” “basically,” “it appears to me,” and “I might be able to,” show uncertainty on the part of the applicant. Such phrases leave the reader to wonder whether or not the applicant offers promise. The following is an example of a sentence expressing uncertainty:
It appears to me that there is a shortage of classical chamber music performances in the university curriculum, I think.
The college essay equivalent of the above statement is as follows:
Less than 30 percent of all classical music recitals in the university curriculum  feature chamber music.

Avoid Using Former and Latter
Using the words former and latter slows the reader down. Some reviewers may have to reread the previous text to determine what was “former” and what was “latter.” Here is an example:

Trans fat foods in public schools have led to unhealthy eating while green salads, although less popular, add nutritional value to meals. There is a national effort to eliminate the former and increase the latter food type.
Here is a clearer sentence:
Although many schools around the country continue to use trans fats there is a push for green salads to replace them. Salads are considered healthier and add more nutritional value to meals.

Get Rid of Puny Language
A little amount of emotion may be helpful in college essays, but too much of it is likely to ruin your chances of winning aid. If you think that the reviewer is going to be touched by your emotional statements and not facts, then you may be in for a surprise. Although most people are sensitive and can be swayed by emotions, too much emotional writing can be a disqualification. Emotional sentences are referred to as puny. They try to communicate your project through feelings, and not through facts. Lamenting about your mortgages, unpaid utilities, and ill health within a proposal may not be the best strategy to crafting a proposal that requests funds to buy a guitar to advance your musical career. Grant proposals require a straightforward and matter-of-fact style of writing. Get rid of puny language and convey your ideas pungently and precisely.

The following is an example of a sentence that is puny:
Our Board feels that the establishment of gallery space is a wonderful idea. It will give local people the opportunity to display their fascinating works of art. Unfortunately, though, the recent loss of our executive director, who died of a terminal illness, the fire that destroyed our office space, and an increase in rent have crushed our organization financially. We are trapped in a sad situation and truly need your help.
Here is a better way of writing it:
The establishment of a gallery space will enable local artists to display their work free of charge. It will also bring our arts council a monthly income through juried art shows, entry fees, and the sale of artwork, thereby
enabling our organization to advance financially.

Avoid Tag Questions
A tag is a short question that is added to the end of a sentence or command. We are used to adding tags in conversations. The following is an example of a tag question used in conversation:
You mailed the greeting cards to the client, right? When it comes to grant proposals, however, there is only one thing to do with tag questions: lose them. Here is an example of a tag question:

Public art is one of the most ubiquitous forms of art, don’t you agree? In writing college essays the above sentence needs to be rephrased as follows: Public art is one of the most ubiquitous forms of art.

Spell Check, Stylistic and Grammar Checkers
Spell checkers are now generally integrated into word processing programs. Some of these programs automatically alert you to the presence of misspelled words as you type. Word processing programs can generally check for the following types of incorrect or poor usage:
• Sentences that are too long
• Paragraphs that are too long
• Passive versus active verb constructions
• Adjacent identical duplicate words
• Vague phrases
• Incorrect punctuation
• Missing spaces
• Too many spaces between words or sentences
• Overused words

You want to get your point across, not bury it in words. Your prose should be clear and direct. If an admissions officer has to struggle to figure out what you are trying to say, you are in trouble. Make your presentation as strong as possible and keep it to the point. If your essay is filled with misspellings and grammatical errors, admissions representatives will conclude not only that you do not know how to write but also that you are not smart enough to get help. Use a spell check. Be especially careful about punctuation. Check (and doublecheck) for typographical errors. Above all, submit a clear and readable essay.

Don’t Disappoint the Reader
Be aware that a heading, a subheading, or a topic sentence is essentially a “promise” to the reader about what he/she will find in the text that follows. Remember to include them. For example, if you write, “The chart
below gives an indication of how many elderly residents in nursing homes have experienced falling injuries at Sunny Hill Nursing Home in 2007” but there is no chart, you are betraying the reader.


Don’t Blow Your Own Horn
Remember the adage, “Tis the empty can that makes more noise?” Don’t brag about your project to the funder as being the best. It might go against you. Show substance in your achievements and allow them to speak for you. Avoid an undue amount of self-praise. Let your data speak for you.
Avoid statements like the following:
Our outstanding and exceptional method of...
Our organization is the best in the continent for...

Be Politically Correct
Be politically correct, particularly when you are writing your college essay. Say “people with reduced mobility,” not “disabled people.” Use “minority individuals,” or terms such as African-American or Native American when you have to be specific about ethnicity. “People of color” or “minority individuals” is safer than “colored people”; “developing countries” sounds better than “third world.” Use inclusive, nonsexist language by substituting she/he and his/her.

Avoid Using Modifiers
Examples of modifiers include “very,” “really,” and “certainly.” Use these sparingly in your essay. Using them frequently is an indication that you are trying to get the attention that is slipping by you because you have limited vocabulary to write what you want. Using excessive modifiers also indicates one’s insecurity in relying on simplicity. The following is an example using a modifier:
The Center for Organic Foods, which is an extremely credible organization in the industry, promotes a very important message about eating very healthy foods.
A more effective way of writing it is as follows:
The Center for Organic Foods plays a strategic role in raising awareness about eating healthy foods.

Use Metaphors to Strengthen Your Argument
A metaphor is a figure of speech that enhances the meaning of a sentence with colorful imagery. A metaphor helps to create a written painting with words and adorns your style of writing. Notice how the quality of the following sample is enhanced by a metaphor:
Despite the ongoing peace treaty several signs have indicated that the country is treading unsteady territory. War can erupt at any moment. The grant writing equivalent, using a metaphor, is:

The peace treaty is hanging by a thread.

Create a Visual Painting with Your Words
Make your paragraphs create images appealing to the visual, aural, and gustatory senses when possible. This will entice the reviewer to read your proposal further. Make your writing style a work of art. The longer a funder lingers on your essay, the more likely it is that you will get funding. Adopt an arresting writing style that will grab the reader’s attention and make him not want to stop reading. The following is an example of creating a visual painting with your words:
Aromatherapy massage is relaxing to give as it is to receive. Concentrated essences extracted from plants have been valued throughout history for their therapeutic properties. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks greatly appreciated fragrance. Cleopatra is said to have indulged in herbal essences as part of her beauty regimen and healthy lifestyle. The goal of my project is to promote aromatherapy massage as a healer. Lotus Spa will produce herbal essences that are healthy for the skin.
Lotus Spa will incorporate a wide variety of essential oils into massage treatments. Basic massage strokes such as fan stroking, kneading, and circular pressures work effectively in aromatherapy massage. Massage with aromatic oils softens the skin and aids healing. Some of the herbs used to create essential oils are juniper, lavender, geranium, marjoram, and rosemary. Lotus Spa will offer clients an array of choices on aromatherapy massage, fragrance products, and healing methods.

Stick to One Tense
Avoid changing tenses within the proposal. Using present tense in one section and past tense in another can confuse the reader. Here is an example: A CD recording of the music helped to increase awareness of the different types of singing found in Native American reservations. It was released in record stores last week. The recording is helpful to schoolchildren. It was also helpful to musicians, healers, and scholars. Schoolchildren are listening to the CD in the classrooms.
Here is the college essay writing equivalent:
A CD recording of the music helped to increase awareness of the different types of singing in Native American reservations. It has been widely received by schoolchildren, musicians, healers, and scholars.


Give your College Essay the Human Touch
Don’t get too technical and dense your essay writing style. It can be a turn-off for the reviewer. Most people have feelings. It is up to the writer to reach out to those feelings through writing. Use anecdotes, provide reallife examples, supply actual quotes from those who have benefited or will benefit from your services, emphasize the needs of those you serve, not your own, and describe the situation in terms that are not only factual but also of human interest.

Don’t Be Romantic in Your College Essay
Remember—this is not a romantic letter. Timing your cover letter to get there on Valentine’s Day and pasting pictures of Cupid or provocative photos of yourself on the application pages is not going to increase your
chance of getting into college. Don’t pester the essay reviewer with such childish behavior.

Don’t Put Down Other Applicants
Avoid assuming that you are the only applicant worthy of being accepted to a specific college. By putting down other applicants and giving the impression that you are the only individual worthy of acceptance,
you are likely to hurt your chances of winning any aid. Acting in isolation does not sit too well with today’s thinking. The strategy is to show how your acceptance can blend well with the rest of the student body. When
you put down another applicant, it looks bad on you.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
Create a healthy mix of college applications. Apply for private as well as state colleges. Spending six months on only one application is not recommended. Work on several simultaneously. Diversifying is key.

Avoid a Tone of Arrogance
Remember, it is up to the college to decide whether or not to accept you. They are on the higher end as far as admission is concerned. Demanding admission arrogantly from a college is never a good idea. Humility creates more positive overtones than arrogance.

Do Not Use a Cookie-cutter Approach
A cookie-cutter approach is when you submit the same college essay to ten different colleges without tailoring each one separately. It is also known as the shotgun approach. Using the cookie-cutter approach is disadvantageous because the guidelines of each college are different. You may have to reduce the word count, rewrite some of the paragraphs, and do some editing of text. It is critical to tailor your proposal for

each college and to format it specifically to the individual funding source. Writing a single “boilerplate” college essay that can be sent out to many colleges is not recommended. A single college essay is right only for the funder for which it is written. Sending it to dozens at once is usually a waste of resources. Sending a boilerplate proposal skips over the important steps of matching the potential college with your program and presenting the match in a way that the particular reviewer will find pertinent and compelling.
Read More : Write Right—College Essay Writing Techniques

Writing College Essays

Often, the essay may be the entry point of saying hello to a college. Writing essays is one of the most essential components of your scholarship search when applying for college and financial aid. Essay composition is required for most college and private scholarship applications and is probably the most important part. This is the spot where admission reviewers get to see what you are like as a person and what you want out of life. In addition, they simply get to see how you develop an argument and where your writing skills are in comparison to those of other applicants. Either way, the essay is extremely important and a good one can make your application stand out.

Learning to write a good essay is important to your success. In many cases, this letter may be an applicant’s first and only chance to make a good impression. In fact, there are many scholarship competitions that are based solely on the quality of your essay. The essay is your opportunity to take charge of the impression you
make on a college or a scholarship committee and to provide information that does not appear in grades, test scores, or other materials. The main purpose of the essay is to give an in-depth view of you as a unique individual.

Most essay questions are designed to help evaluators discover the values, ideals, achievements, and traits that make up your personality. Therefore, a well-written essay may give evaluators a glimpse of your inner self through your ability to compose a cohesive, well-thought-out writing sample. The essay allows you to reveal your talent, intelligence, sense of humor, enthusiasm, maturity, creativity, sincerity, and writing ability. These factors all count in an admission evaluation and financial aid.

When admissions officers read essays, they search for evidence of curiosity, strong moral character and the capacity to commit to meaningful endeavors. They want to get a sense of your unique voice and distinctive
qualities. Write in a way that holds the reader’s interest. The admissions reviewers and scholarship judges read plenty of really boring essays about “how wonderful I am” and “my plan to end world hunger.” You will likely be asked to provide an essay related to a specific topic. Different schools might ask for different essay topics. The idea of writing dozens of essays for the possibility of a scholarship award may seem like a waste of your vital time and effort. But if you gather your potential scholarship applications together and review the specifics of what the essays are supposed to address, then you may find that one or two well-crafted essays
can be used for multiple applications.

Basic Steps in the Essay-Writing Process
Writing an admissions essay involves much more than simply putting pen to paper. There are no hard and fast rules on what steps you should follow. Adhering to some of the steps described below may help. Here is how to get through the process, from the first inkling to the final revision.

Brainstorm
You will need to brainstorm to come up with some ideas for topics. Even though you may be given a prompt on the application, you will still most likely need to come up with a unique and creative topic that allows you to write an interesting and compelling essay. Brainstorming involves more than coming up with a topic, however. It also involves seeing whether or not you can expand upon a topic. Basically, you have to determine whether or not a topic is worth writing about.

Outline
With your subject securely implanted in your mind, it is time to do some preliminary writing work. You need to flesh out the topic into an outline for your essay. You can do this by thinking of the various approaches
you can take on a topic. If the essay is to be argumentative, you will need to develop an outline that emphasizes the main argument and the supporting points you will make. If you are writing about your life, you may want to steer clear of the five-paragraph essay and go for something a little more linear or narrative in form, as though you were telling a story. The outline of the essay will mirror the structure the essay will take, and the structure the essay will take is based heavily on the content your essay will contain.

Talk with People
Before you dive into actually drafting your essay, take some time to talk to someone who is familiar with the process of essay writing. Your high school counselors are there to help you with precisely this sort of
thing, so be sure to take advantage of their services. If you don’t have a counselor, why not ask for help from an instructor? More often than not, they are delighted to help students who want to go to college.
You need to talk to someone before you set your draft down onto paper so that you get an idea of what is at stake and what your competition is like. You will probably be able to get your hands on sample essays, and your counselor can give you some hints and tips on what admissions reviewers are looking for. Don’t go into the essay-writing process without having this knowledge.

Write It Out
With all of this fresh knowledge in your head and your outline in hand, you can finally begin drafting your admissions essay. Don’t worry too much about structure at first. After all, you want to get your most creative ideas out on paper first, before you start complicating it with structure. You probably have the ideas in your head, so just let them flow out as naturally as possible. Once you have them all down on the page, try to set the whole thing aside for at least a week—preferably, two. This is the “marinade” stage. This way, you can come back to the table with a fresh perspective.

Revise
Revision is probably the most important step of the entire essay-writing process. When you revise your essay, you will be looking first at the content you have created. Do you support your points logically? Is your thesis clear? Is the focus of your essay concise? Do you provide enough examples for each point you make? Is any one point “heavier” in content than another? If you find issues in these areas, fix them first. You will also want to double-check your facts, if any, at this time.

Next, you will need to revise for structure. Does your essay have a solid introduction, supportive body paragraphs and a strong conclusion? Do you make smooth transitions from one paragraph to the next? Does anything seem out of place? If so, rework these parts until they are clear and consistent. You want one sentence to flow logically to the next.

Edit, Edit, Edit
Once you have completed the big revisions on your essay, it is time to get down to the nitty-gritty stuff like fixing grammar issues and spelling errors. Edit your essay several times. Cross out unnecessary words, fix punctuation errors, and watch your word usage. These may seem like nit-picky things to be concerned with, but you have to show the admissions reviewers that you take your writing very seriously. The more you edit it, the stronger it becomes. Avoid doing the writing, editing, and submission of the application in one sitting. Come up with a fairly finished draft and let it sit for a few days. You will notice things you may have overlooked had you done it all in one sitting.

Peer Edit
Once you have gotten your essay as good as it can be, let someone else have a glance at it. There is always room for improvement in writing and another set of eyes can help catch those small mistakes you might have
skipped over. Peer editors usually don’t catch big mistakes, but they do catch grammatical errors. Make sure you select someone you trust for this duty, like a counselor, teacher or parent.

Adhere to Deadlines
Keep track of your deadlines. As you start researching colleges, you will find that there are many places where you can apply. Being aware of their deadlines is important. Develop your own method of keeping track
of deadlines. Technologically savvy writers can use Outlook. Old-fashioned writers can jot down the deadlines on a calendar or post them on the refrigerator door.
Don’t put off writing your essays until the last minute. Plan them during the summer before your senior year, if you can, or early in your senior year, and write an individual essay for each college. Spend quality time
with your essay. Give each application individual attention. Don’t rush your writing because you have to meet an overnight deadline. Simmer your writing, research your topic, and spend time with your application. Seasoned reviewers can detect whether or not an application has been crafted at the last moment.

Attune Yourself with the College
Attuning, or finding your voice, refers to the way you decide to approach the essay. During the process of attunement, you are likely to find your unique voice. There are several ways of seeking attunement. Visiting
the college website is an excellent start. Although every college website is different, most of them follow similar formats and include the academic calendar, student activities, financial aid, faculty, course curriculum, and more. Know your prospective college: research, research, and research some more. Obtain as much information as possible about a prospective college. Understand the mission of the college, and study its programs and focus. Be sure to make a note of any academic preferences and/or limitations. See if your ideas fit within the guidelines of the college. Read through them and get a feel for the school.

When possible, talk with someone in the financial aid college who has a decision-making role or capacity. This gives you a sense of their preferred style of communication. Note whether their style is formal, scientific/
technical, or community oriented.
Read More : Writing College Essays

Essays Writing: Dotting the I’s and Crossing the T’s

If you’re looking for the simplest way to improve your essay, we can summarize it in three words: edit, edit, edit. Then proofread and edit some more. Too many students spend countless hours on their essays, then get an itchy trigger finger and submit them before correcting obvious spelling mistakes, grammatical inconsistencies, words that have been left out—and worse.

Don’t underestimate your ability to make silly mistakes when you’ve been staring at your essay for a week. When students are under pressure they just want to be done, but to do your best essay it may be necessary to prolong the agony a little longer. We’ll assume that you’ve followed our advice about doing your essay in time to edit it properly. Once you get a draft we think you need at least two weeks. Set it aside for the first week without looking at it.

When you do pick it up again, you’ll be able to look at it with fresh eyes. Material that seemed to flow logically after you had been staring at it for hours may now seem disjointed. Errors that had camouflaged themselves will jump out. After you have gone over the essay yourself, get an adult such as your English teacher, guidance counselor, or parent to read it. Hopefully, he or she can give you two kinds of advice:

• Big-picture feedback about your ideas and whether your essay says what you want it to say.
• Micro-level feedback on details like typos, word choice, and spelling.

If you don’t agree with the advice, get a second adult and see what he or she says. Though we respect the fact that some students want the essay to be theirs alone, we cannot overemphasize the importance of having another pair of eyes go over it.
The following is a laundry list of things to look for when you edit:

• Lack of a main idea—The college essay is often a one-shot deal, and the impulse to cram in as much as possible can be strong. If you start out talking about why you love debate and finish with a discussion of your relationship with the debate coach—who also happens to be your English teacher—you may need to sharpen your focus and expand on one or the other.
• Weak verbs—How strong and precise are your verbs? List every one of them in your essay and see how good they are. Too many “to be” verbs are a bad sign, as in, “Jessica’s dance across the floor was graceful.” Better would be “Jessica danced gracefully across the floor.” Best would be “Jessica glided across the dance floor.” Notice that a strong verb—“glided”—provides a much more vivid description than “danced gracefully” or “was graceful.”
• Passive voice—Sometimes, the person doing the acting disappears altogether, as in, “It is clear that the job must be done.” Even if the sentence were to say, “The job must be done by Tom,” it would still be convoluted and passive. An active sentence would say, “Tom must do the job.” Notice, too, that passive voice uses a “to be” verb. Avoid it.
• Failure to use “I”—Most students have had at least one teacher who told them never to use “I” in a paper. (Instead of “I think,” you might say something like “One can conclude.”) But in a college essay, always use “I” when you’re talking about yourself. It is far more honest and direct than cloaking yourself in phony third-person omniscience.
• Double-dipping adjectives—If you describe a “cool, clear, sparkling mountain stream,” you’ve overdone it. Instead of using two or three adjectives at a time, choose the one best, as in “the sparkling mountain stream.” Go back over your essay and see how many times you used one adjective versus two or three. Were two really necessary? Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no.
• Too many simple sentences—A few simple sentences are great for effect—just make sure that your entire essay isn’t made up of them. A bunch of simple sentences merely list disconnected ideas; compound and complex sentences establish relationships between those ideas and allow you to explore nuances. For instance: “I had a headache. I went home.” Or again: “I went home because I had a headache. “ Or finally: “Though I went home with a headache, it wasn’t as bad as the one that sent me to the hospital last year.” The first example makes no connection between the headache and going home; the second describes a cause-and-effect relationship; and the third retains the relationship while adding more perspective.
• Wordiness—Even good essays are full of words that aren’t necessary. Any word that does not add insight or specificity should be cut. Likely candidates include clauses like “as you can see” and “it is obvious that” and words such as “basically,” “perhaps,” and “additionally.” Scrutinize your essay one word and one clause at a time. Is everything necessary? If you think your prose is wordy but have trouble cutting, ask a reader to mark words and passages that seem superfluous. It is always easier to cut someone else’s essay than to cut your own.
• Messed up tenses—When in doubt, use the present tense rather than the past. When both the present and past are technically correct, the present is more immediate. When we refer to the essays in this book, we say that the author “writes” about a particular subject rather than “wrote” about it. While this may be a matter of preference, it is crucial is to avoid inconsistency among tenses from one sentence and paragraph to the next.
• • Trusting the spell check—It won’t catch some of the most common errors, like when you write “an” and mean “and,” when you leave out a word, or when you write “there” and mean “their.” Definitely do the spell check, but don’t make it a substitute for human editing.
• • Unwillingness to start over—Sometimes it takes three or four hours of work, and maybe even a complete first draft, to realize that your topic isn’t working. Some students can’t bear to let what they have written go to waste, and end up with an inferior essay. Don’t be afraid to cut out entire sections or chuck the whole thing—even if some of it is good material. Two really good pages that don’t mesh will make a worse essay than one good page standing alone.

When you finally think you’re ready to click on “send,” hit “save” instead and come back again for one last review. The vast majority of essays, even the good ones, include at least one misspelling, typo, or other error. Only after you have proofread yet again, and found nothing, should you consider yourself done.
Read More : Essays Writing: Dotting the I’s and Crossing the T’s

Essays Writing: How Long Should It Be?

We ask this question tongue-in-cheek—it drives teachers crazy. Students keep asking, of course, and the real answer is going to sound teacherly. An essay should be long enough to be good. One of the best essays in this book, Essay 107, is also the shortest. It includes all of seventy-eight words on why the author wanted to attend Yale. (He got in—and the admissions office made a point of commending the essay to his school counselor.)

The longest, Essay 99, tips the scale at 1,172 words. There are times when it is possible to be more precise about a suggested length. For those who still apply on paper, colleges sometimes ask that students “use the space provided.” In such cases, we recommend doing so. (Play with your margins if you need to shoehorn in a few extra lines.) Online, students may occasionally find that their cursors stop moving at the end of the allotted space. If you simply can’t wedge your essay into the field, consider applying on paper, or contact the admissions office to get help with your dilemma.

A few colleges specify a word length. In recent years, Princeton has asked for essays on various topics of about 250 and 500 words, respectively. Two hundred forty or 520, respectively, would fill the bill, but not 700 or 1,227. When the question specifies neither a length nor an amount of space, a reasonable target for those in doubt is not more than four to five hundred words, which means about two-thirds of a page to a page, single-spaced. (Write less for a sidebar essay about your favorite activity or why you are interested in the college.)

There is an interesting footnote to the length issue that we must fess up about. In previous books, notably The Fiske Guide to Getting into the Right College, we have preached the virtues of brevity, or at least of not going on forever. Yet in sifting through the essay submissions for this book—all from successful applicants to highly selective colleges, all identified as excellent by college counselors— we were surprised by the number of nominations that were longer than five hundred words. (There were also plenty of short and sweet ones like our seventy-eight-word masterpiece.)

Our theory is that when an essay is outstanding—really outstanding— the reader doesn’t mind if it goes on longer. Doing so gives the author more space to add the concrete details that make it memorable. You’ll see a number of these longer essays in this book. We are at pains to add that the number of brilliant long essays is far outnumbered by the long ones that could be improved by cutting, sometimes ruthless cutting. If you’re in doubt, consult a teacher who can give you feedback. We’ll say more about that in chapter 3. There are good essays and bad essays of all lengths. We recommend that your first concern be writing a good one.
Read More : Essays Writing: How Long Should It Be?

Essays Writing: What Do You Want to Show?

Many applicants don’t begin with a theme for their essays. They just write what comes naturally. Others choose a theme before they write. Either method can work, but at some point in the process, think about whether your essay conveys the qualities that you most want to emphasize. One applicant we know intended to write an essay about her love of reading. She talked about some of her favorite books, but the essay turned out to be about how she used reading as a retreat from the world.

The girl had many other outstanding qualities—she was a campus leader and one of the most adventuresome students in the school—but her essay made her appear much more withdrawn than she really was. The essay was well written and an accurate portrayal of part of her life, but it did not highlight her most appealing qualities. There is, however, a balance to be struck. Some applicants are so worried about pandering to the admissions officers that they aren’t true to themselves. Others are so packaged by college counselors or consultants that their voices are drowned out. Still others are so focused on their theme that they are heavy-handed and tell rather than show.
There are innumerable qualities that you might emphasize in an essay, including that you:

• have a sense of humor
• value diversity
• embrace learning
• notice the little things
• are deeply committed to an activity or idea
• can overcome adversity
• have initiative

Colleges want people who are passionate about life and learning, and who will add to their community with participation and leadership.

There are also qualities that can be real turn offs. They generally appear unbeknown to the author and can undermine anything good in the essay. Avoid any suggestion that you:

• are cynical
• think you are a finished product
• are likely to turn inward in college
• are depressed
• are self-destructive
• lack integrity
• tend to blame others

Colleges don’t want people who are complainers, or people who will withdraw from a community rather than embrace it. Many students do all the “right” things but lack real passion, a fact that can be revealed by a passionless essay. Feel free to talk about the challenges in your life, including some that may be ongoing, but

avoid giving information that could raise red flags about your mental health or the potential for destructive behavior of any kind. Your essay may be the only time that the admissions office gets to hear your voice. Think of it as you on the page.

Red More : Essays Writing: What Do You Want to Show?

Essays Writing: Brainstorming for a Topic

For words of wisdom about choosing your subject, we turn to our contributors. A number of them cite the importance of staying as stress-free as possible. Says one, “Sitting down knowing that you’re writing a big, scary college essay can make your writing start to sound really wooden and formulaic. Instead, have fun writing about yourself, or remembering something important to you, in whatever your most natural writing style is” (Essay 90).

Another student author believes that picking a topic isn’t such a big deal. “I don’t think the topic is as important as the tone of the essay. It’s like two people can say the same thing, but you’ll be attracted to the person whose personality shines even when they say a simple ‘hello’” (Essay 59). Even if there are many topics that could work, you still must pick one, or at least a way to open your essay.

One of our contributors made a list of fifteen possible essay topics, then gradually eliminated choices until she had her topic (Essay 17). Another writes that she “reflected on what was important to me, and what aspects of my personality I felt were those most worth knowing” (Essay 51). Yet another student suggests a stream of consciousness. “Write down things that make you happy, or random things that cross your mind, or that one weird thing that happened that one time,” she says. “Get any and all ideas down on paper somewhere, and if one of them stirs your imagination, go with it” (Essay 70).

If you have plenty of time, consider beginning a journal to test out ideas. If you put down one hundred words a night, or at least every few days, the odds are good that you will hit on something interesting. For those without a topic or any notion of where to begin, we offer the following five ideas to get you unstuck. Try writing about:

• An article of clothing—Many people have an item such as a favorite sweater, a beloved T-shirt, or a well-worn pair of shoes. One student author in this book writes about all the shoes in her closet, and how each pair reflects different facets of her personality (Essay 15). It is often possible to spin stories around an item that has been with you through many experiences, or that can be made to represent truths in your life.
• The groups in your school and where you fit in—Every school has groups of people who associate together based on common interests or traits—jocks, musicians, Goths, skaters, cheerleaders, “smart” kids, and everything in between. Not that you want to reduce anyone to a stereotype, but some perceptive comments about social life at your school can be very effective. Have you tried to bridge the groups? Ever gotten caught in a test of loyalty between them? One of our authors wrote a superb essay about how his mind was opened when some of the toughest football players in the school joined the choir (Essay 39). Another, a football player himself, writes about joining a drama group and expanding his circle of friends (Essay 33).
• A family gathering or tradition—You could pick anything from your family at the dinner table to an annual trip to the beach. You may decide to write about an extended family gathering, and thereby give yourself more characters and interactions to describe. One of our authors writes about the morning cup of coffee with her family (Essay 69). Another writes about family vacations, and the lessons she draws are not the ones a reader—or her mother—might have predicted (Essay 98).
• Your walk or ride to school—Any trip that you take on familiar ground, day after day, is a good possibility. A walk through your neighborhood would allow you to reflect on experiences that you have had at each place you pass. Essay 65 is a classic in this genre. If you are a runner, another idea would be to describe a course that you have run many times, and your thoughts along the way. If you’ve lived in your house a long time, a look around the backyard could bring to mind good times with family or friends that might come together in an essay.
• Your favorite things—One of our authors writes about “Seven Wonders”—ranging from potter’s clay to the dualdensity midsoles on his shoes—and tells how each is meaningful to him. Another student describes herself via twelve items on her desk, from a piece of cheesecake to a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (Essay 22).

An advantage of the topics here is that they give you plenty of opportunity to drop out of factual description and probe your thoughts and feelings. Whether you choose one of these or something else, make sure it is a topic about which you are passionate, enthusiastic, and/or otherwise entertained. In the words of one of our contributors, “If you can write about something you enjoy, the writing will be much easier and your voice will come through much better.” No matter what direction you take, you are the real topic.
Read More : Essays Writing: Brainstorming for a Topic

Narrative Essays : The Opening Paragraph

Once you’ve picked a topic and gotten a reasonable amount on paper, the real work begins. If you’re a one-draft writer who cranks out perfect prose on the first try, more power to you. For most people, polishing an essay takes time and several pairs of eyes. If at all possible, get your first draft done at least two weeks, and preferably two months, before you plan to submit the essay.

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

Narrative Essays : Managing the Flow

Once you’ve gotten the reader’s attention with your opening, you should have a story to tell. But first, it is often necessary to pull back from the narrative to fill in background information. Beginning writers often struggle with how to manage the balance between describing an experience and reflecting on it, and how to create seamless transitions between the two. Below is one example of how it’s done from Essay 44:
“Hey, Nickelback, I know that band. You like them?” I ask, leaning over Chipu’s shoulder to look at the stickers and pictures she has all over the front matter of her binder. “Yeah,” she looks up at me with her big brown eyes and smiles, clearly as relieved as I am to find something in common. It’s my first day tutoring at Webster Middle School. I’m working with Team Prime Time, an organization that provides a place for children to go after school where their parents can pick them up after work…. “Oh that’s cool,” I say, “I listen to Nickelback all the time. What’s your favorite song?” The conversation moves haltingly on from there as we both become more comfortable.

The beginning of this essay is also the beginning of a conversation between the author and a girl whom she is tutoring. In order for the scene to make sense, the author drops out of the anecdote in the second line of the second paragraph to explain that it is her first day tutoring at Webster Middle School and that she is working with Team Prime Time. Having conveyed the necessary information, she jumps back into the conversation about Nickelback. The ability to pull back from a narrative also comes in handy when you want to interject your thoughts and feelings, or if you simply want to broaden your scope to include more general reflections. In Essay 30, the author explains the significance of a figure in a Renoir painting that hangs on her wall and then begins a broader examination of dance, art, and creativity:
The lady in the red hat represents a side of myself not often seen, one that dances in the street without a care in the world… Renoir’s painting constantly reminds me not to completely let go of that spontaneity. Dancing is an act of passion; it is an act of freedom. Sometimes I search for this type of freedom in life, but at times, it can only be found in the subtleties of artwork.

It is logical to jump from an analysis of a Renoir painting to a more general discussion of art, but many students fail to make similar transitions that are just as obvious. One of the surest marks of a well-written essay is a concluding “kicker”—a final sentence that echoes the beginning or provides an unexpected twist. One of our student authors (Essay 7) writes about why AOL Instant Messenger “symbolizes many of my generation’s positive attributes, but also symbolizes many of our negative ones, too.”

After analyzing the issue throughout the essay, he ends with a wink: “I would love to explain in more detail, but I just got IMed.” In response to a question about what she would do if given a year to spend any way she wished, another of our authors (Essay 2) responds that she would read books. Among them was Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which, she writes, she has been “trying to finish for the last three years.” After discussing other books, she concludes the essay with the thought that a year of reading would “not only expand my mind further—I could finally find out what happens to Anna and Count Vronsky!”
Read More : Narrative Essays : Managing the Flow