College Application Essay

College Application Essay Other students may want to use it as a checklist. Once they have written the first draft of a paper, they might compare their paragraphs to the list, noting what is missing and rewriting the paragraphs as appropriate. In the five paragraph essay, each paragraph had a topic sentence and then a bunch of support —support which often consisted of a hodgepodge of examples sort of thrown at the reader in a kind of barrage. Consequently, essays all rely not only on the validity of the facts they communicate but also on the selection, critical evaluation, organisation, and presentation of these facts. When you write an essay you are making a case for the validity of a particular point of view, analysis, interpretation, or set of facts or procedures. Believe me, those admissions officers are experienced and they can definitely spot the difference between a 50 year-old businessperson’s phraseology and a 17-year-old senior’s own voice and manner of expression. No matter what type of essay is being written, all body paragraphs need to be fully developed and provide supporting detail. For most essays, one well-developed paragraph is sufficient for a conclusion. In some cases, a two-or-three paragraph conclusion may be appropriate. As with introductions, the length of the conclusion should reflect the length of the essay. Broaden your focus a bit at the end of the essay. Check your assignment carefully for any directions about what to include in your introduction or conclusion. If your essay deals with a contemporary problem, warn readers of the possible consequences of not attending to the problem. A good last sentence leaves your reader with something to think about, a concept in some way illuminated by what you’ve written in the paper. While writing your essay, you have to keep your ego in check. Although you want to come off as the best version of you, sometimes you can get carried away with the story and lose yourself in over exaggeration. You want to approach writing your essay as if it were a creative writing piece. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that it’s a creative nonfiction piece. Parents should always help their child in a positive way as long as they are not writing the ideas for the student. Editing is vastly different from original writing so this needs to be clarified first, as it has to be the voice and personal memories of the applicant not the parent. The sooner the family treats this as a team effort it will be much easier for the 12th grader to feel as though they are not alone in this process. My preference (and admissions officers’) would be that parents are minimally involved in the essay. Be aware, however, that different genres have their own special expectations about beginnings and endings. Some academic genres may not even require an introduction or conclusion. An annotated bibliography, for example, typically provides neither. A book review may begin with a summary of the book and conclude with an overall assessment of it. A policy briefing usually includes an introduction but may conclude with a series of recommendations. This detail can come in the form of personal examples, statistics, and/or quotes from an expert. When writing an essay that requires the use of research and outside sources, this information should be used to support the topic sentence. The term body paragraph refers to any paragraph that follows the introduction and comes before the conclusion. The majority of any essay consists of multiple body paragraphs, and it is in these paragraphs where the main information is presented. The longer an essay is, the more body paragraphs there will be. An essay is an extended piece of writing that presents and supports a thesis or proposition. The word ‘essay’ derives from the Latin word ‘exagium’, meaning the presentation of a case. Always think about your audience when writing a scholarship essay. What organization is issuing the scholarship, and how can you tie that into your writing? Because the body paragraphs present the important facts and information from an essay, having well-written body paragraphs is essential in writing a successful essay. Most of the advice in this handout pertains to argumentative or exploratory academic essays. This means you are telling a true story in a creative form. You can bring creativity into your essay through the hook, a conceit, or through your syntax and diction.