Ten things to ponder when applying to colleges
By FAN ZHOU Knight Ridder Newspapers Fan Zhou is in the process of applying to and choosing a college. He applied to ten schools, nine of which are ranked in the nation’s top fifty. Although he’s a bit atypical, we asked him to provide tips for teenagers who haven’t embarked on the application process. Here’s his take:
I have just finished applying to ten colleges, and during the five-month ordeal, I’ve learned some things that people -- you know, parents, guidance counselors, those so-called “friends” who’ve already moved on to college -- neglect to tell you.
So, for all of you out there who have yet to begin the college application process, here is some advice to help smooth out the impending bumps in the road.
And there will be bumps. Believe me.
10. Forget the rankings. Just because Harvard, Yale and others are preceded by their reputations doesn’t mean you will be happy going there. Just because USA Today, Time Magazine or U.S. News & World Report proclaims a school number one doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Find a school that complements your strengths. Where you get an education matters less than what you do with the knowledge you acquire.
9. Tests? Take some. You can never take too many tests, and colleges usually will look at only your best scores. So feel free to take the ACT and the SAT. SAT II’s are a great way to hone your Advanced Placement test skills because they usually are offered the week before Advanced Placement tests begin, and many of the subjects coincide.
8. Just getting in is expensive. It doesn’t matter how many colleges use the common application, you still have to pay to apply to each college. In my experience, these application fees ranged from $40 to $80. This does not include the postage, envelopes, fees for sending test scores, and additional costs for financial aid forms. Be prepared for the expense.
7. Organize or perish. Each application will be about five pages long, not including teachers’ recommendations, school reports, mid-year reports, common application supplements, special program forms and financial aid documents. You must be prepared to keep track of lots of paper, postage, envelopes, Web sites, passwords, due dates and addresses. Try creating a spreadsheet to track part of the application. Plus, do as much as possible online. It’s easier and faster.
6. Be ready to write. For some schools, you’ll probably have to write two essays, plus supplemental writing samples and short-answer prompts. Essays usually are 500 to 750 words, and most have no common ground. Be ready to revise, revise and, when you think you have the perfect essay, revise. Get an opinion on your essay from people you trust. Colleges expect to read your essays without having to think about that misplaced modifier or dangling preposition. Be a perfectionist.
5. The interview is very important. If the school you are applying to offers an alumni or phone interview, try to schedule one as you begin to apply. Frequently, the chat will include current events. You need to be ready for the conversation to switch from being about your application to the most recent court case to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court. Remember, your interviewer can be your greatest advocate or worst enemy when it comes time for the board to decide whether you get in.
4. Scholarships? When you’re a senior, your priorities must change. So if you’re a junior or younger, put applying for the big national scholarships at the top of your to-do list. As a senior, trying to win privately funded scholarships must be second among your priorities. This is because the average financial-aid packages to any university often will be several times the size of even the most extravagant scholarships. Furthermore, the competition for these national scholarships is even more intense than the Ivy League applicant pool, sometimes with more than 30,000 applicants and fewer than twenty “winners.” By focusing on your college essays and applications rather than scholarship essays, at least for the first semester of your senior year, you can reduce your amount of stress and increase your chance of getting accepted.
3. Don’t pad your resume. Admissions counselors are not stupid. They will realize that if you are president and founder of ten clubs, you could not possibly have the time to commit to each of them at the level you should. Don’t stress if, when compiling your application, you don’t fill in all the blanks on the awards page. A short list of significant awards will carry more weight than a long list of insignificant ones. Save yourself the hassle of typing up everything you’ve ever done, and just mention the highlights.
2. Judge me! That is what you are effectively saying to the evaluators every time you submit an application. So you need to be able to sit back and feel confident knowing that you painted a picture of yourself using nothing but words. Whatever they decide is just their opinion, which carries as much weight as you let it. And hey, you have back-up schools ... right?
1. Enjoy yourself. I know this might sound contradictory after I just told you to prepare and all that, but enjoy your senior year of high school. You need to stop freaking out about college because there are so many other things that are just as important and much more fun than filling out applications and reading test-prep books.
There is nothing I wouldn’t give for just a day when I didn’t have the real-world demon creeping down my neck and the only thing I was worried about was coloring between the lines. College is a life-altering process, but don’t forget to stop, hang out with friends, watch a movie, be stupid, and have a little fun, because life is way, way, way too important to take seriously.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
College Application Essay Assignment
COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
Assigned Friday, August12, 2011
Due Monday, September 12th, 2011 The college application essay is not a piece of prose or a business proposal - it is an interview in essay form. Many students agree that writing the college admissions essay is the most challenging part of the college application. The essay is important - after considering first the academic record, and then the SAT or ACT scores, the essay is the next opportunity the admissions official has to consider a student for acceptance.
The essay says, “I am a good fit for this college, and I can communicate in a way that is consistent with my education.” Since the essay is not a timed response, it should be error-free and clear. It should be edited and read by a parent or other adult, but not written or re-mastered by anyone other than the college applicant.
What to write:
Choose a topic that reflects you. Imagine you are in an interview, what question do you wish the interviewer would ask you? What would you love to talk about? Your work at an animal shelter? The beta testing you did for a new video game? The campout you went on with your best friends? Write about it! The essay is the best way to tell the admissions board the interesting things about you. You are the person who can describe yourself best; real examples from your life are interesting to the reader. If you can’t think of anything to write, write about one of the activities in the activities list you will include with your application. Be sure that you are telling why the activity is so important to you, why you stayed committed, and why you spent so much time participating. For the long essay (500 words or more) be sure to choose one topic only. If it is possible, make that topic something that will relate to your intended college major or future career interests. Tell it like it is, but follow proper essay format. Start with your main idea (response to the essay prompt), keep the examples in the body, and the attitude at the end.
Stay on topic - that is what editing is for. Your examples don’t have to be unique, thought provoking, or even exciting, they just have to be sincere. If you are relating a sad or tragic personal experience, use less than one hundred words to describe the experience (for a short essay, keep the description to a minimal). Focus on the positive outcome or lesson you learned.
Remember, this essay represents you to the college. Don’t give the mistaken impression of you as a “broken person.” A college may hesitate to admit a student who has emotional problems that may hinder his education. So, if your examples relate a negative experience, keep it short and near the beginning so you can highlight the positive outcome of your struggle and leave the reader with your positive attitude. Focus on your triumph.
How to begin:
Read the essay prompts and discuss your ideas with a good listener. Choose your examples and how you will present them to support your main idea. Determine your conclusion so you are sure to write each example with the correct goal and tone in mind.
Write as much as is possible in an hour, focusing only on content. Work on clarity and style at another time, since it may be difficult to edit and rework sentences during the creative process. At another time, read the essay aloud, cut out redundancies and unclear wording. Rework sentences and leave out any thing that does not relate to the main idea and final attitude. Expressing one idea clearly is more effective than a flood of words and ideas.
You are in control of this interview - keep to the point you want to make. Avoid listing small details that distract from your point. Consider when you have told a story and the listener keeps asking you questions about small details. You get frustrated because you feel he is missing the point of your anecdote. In the same way, too many small details only distract the reader from your point. Keep the examples moving towards your main idea.
Some Don’ts:
• Do not exceed the word limit - consider the reader. How would you feel if someone gave you more work to do?
• Avoid clichés - they do not distinguish you from other applicants since a cliché is someone else’s words.
• Avoid trying to say too much - stick to one topic. Remember that you have an accomplishment list elsewhere in the application.
• Avoid an excess of “big” words. The essay should be a readable picture of you. Be yourself; your message should impress, but being pretentious can be a turn-off.
• Avoid slang. You are introducing yourself, not selling yourself.
Some Dos:
• Speak in the first person - this is you talking. Use “I”. Don’t use “you” to describe yourself and your experiences and feelings.
• Allow enough time to read the essay many times.
• Edit. Write and rewrite to ensure clarity. Cut details that confuse or add nothing.
• Read your essay aloud to hear it and see how it flows. Make sure it is your voice.
• Ask others to read your essay and give their feedback. Ask that the feedback be constructive, such as; “I would love an example of that”; “What happened next?”; “This part confused me.” Ask the reader how he felt after reading the entire essay. His attitude will most likely be the same as the reader in the admissions office. Revise the ending to elicit the response you desire.
• With help, fix misspellings, errors and unclear writing. Ensure that your style and personality is represented, but don’t allow errors.
From Writing the College Essay by Lynn Scully. March/April, 2006. HomeEducator.com http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/14-2article6.html
Absolute no-nos: On par with shooting yourself in the foot
Plagiarizing another writer's work. While this may seem like the easy way out, it is disgraceful and unethical. Justice will eventually be served, and think of the grave humiliation at having to explain to your parents that you were rejected from college because you had cheated. Not cool.
Embellishing the facts. Much like plagiarizing, embellishing or inventing your history is both unethical and unhealthy. Living a lie is too much work because you have to remember all the lies you have told. The truth is eminently memorable. Present it in your writing on college application essays.
Not answering the prompts. Although you may have some fantastic things to say, keep your comments to the point. Think of yourself as your own press secretary during the application process. If the President's press secretary just decided to spout off about his favorite movies when reporters asked about the U. S.'s Middle East policy, he would appear both foolish and damaging to the administration. Keep your reporters happy and well-informed, not confused.
Wordiness. If you write incredibly long sentences or paragraphs that become run-on sentence and bore the admissions officers, you may not hold the attention of your most important audience and that would not be good. No, it wouldn't. No. No. No. Keep the admissions officers from diving headfirst into their coffee cups.
The "SHIFT + F7" syndrome. Also known as the "thesaurus tick," it involves students' proclivities to utilize polysyllabic dictums in order to manifest a latent brilliance that would never emerge without irreparably altering every third word that does not consist of three syllables. Admissions officers will be impressed to meet you, not your thesaurus.
Bad but salvageable: You missed your foot! Close call!
Self-contradictions. It is vital to maintain consistency within your essay. You lose your trustworthiness in introducing yourself to admissions officers.
Talking glowingly about your boyfriend or girlfriend. Dissing them in your application would not make sense either. College admissions officers generally have little interest in your love life and see such discussions as a sign of immaturity.
Overt criticism of your school or upbringing. Many individuals worldwide would feel blessed to have enjoyed the same opportunities you have had. Furthermore, tired and overloaded admissions officers don't want to join your pity party.
Name-dropping. If you are concerned about world peace, that's great. We recommend that you not toss in ideas about which you are only marginally concerned in order to sound better rounded. Name-dropping should stay in the realm of cocktail parties.
Clichés. "I want to improve the condition of the Everyman... " You may be a willing future Peace Corps volunteer, but six other clowns wrote the exact same thing and don't really mean it. Who should the admissions officer heed? Make your words authentic and thus yours.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 10: Using the same essay for all the colleges you apply to
All colleges have their own identity and mission statement. Pay attention to what their ideology is and think about what you can do to cater to it.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 9: Plagiarizing other students' work
DO NOT COPY FROM OTHER PEOPLE’S ESSAYS! Many students assume that if they copy directly from other people paper’s and sources that no one will find out. This assumption is definitely wrong. Often, the papers they copy from are littered with errors, and they don’t take the time to check.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 8: Using a thesaurus for too many words
This mistake can lead to a big awkward tangle of an essay. Many times if you use a thesaurus and extract overly verbose words, they will stick out like sore thumbs in your essay, and the first assumption the reader will make is that you used a thesaurus.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 7: Not streamlining the essay with the application
Many applicants do not pay attention to the unity of their essay and their actual application. It is jarring to the reader if the essay seems to portray a different picture of the student than the application. This can also happen when you plagiarize; things do not match up, and the reader will quickly discredit you.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 6: Trying to impress the essay reader
Do not try to impress the admission officer. They will be able to sense a pretentious voice beneath descriptions of grand earth-shaking events and ontological musings. Write about what you know and draw from your own life experience.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 5: Picking an inappropriate topic
In an attempt to be clever many people resort to self-deprecation and end up painting a less than flattering image of themselves. You may think it would be witty to write a paper about your less than perfect grades in high school, but this can come off as not taking responsibility for your actions.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 4: Making an essay into a resume
Many times people want to impress the reader so much that they completely ignore the essay prompt and make the essay into a list of their accomplishments. Unless this is specifically what they asked for, just don’t do it.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 3: Brownnosing
If you are sending a school an application, they will simply assume that you want to attend. You don’t have to “lay it on thick” by lauding their campus and faculty.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 2: PROOFREAD!
You CANNOT edit your essay too much!! Write several drafts and edit each draft thoroughly for syntax, grammar, spelling and general structure. Admissions officers will immediately discredit you for making petty errors that would be easily fixable.
College Admission Essay Mistake #1: Not answering the question
The admissions committee uses certain essay prompts for a specific reason: they want you to answer it! So beware of steering away from the point and running off on tangents.
From Top Ten College Admission Essay Mistakes by Katherine C. Lee. College-Admssion-Essay.com http://www.college-admission-essay.com/collegeadmissionessaymistakes.html
ASSIGNMENT: In one hundred to 500 words, complete a word-processed essay, responding to only one of the following prompts. Please include the number and the text of the complete prompt at the top of your essay.
1. Defend your least conventional belief.
2. What is your favorite word, and why?
3. Are you honorable? How do you know?
4. What can you contribute to a multi-cultural world?
5. What are the responsibilities of an educated person?
6. If you could invent something, what would it be, and why?
7. What invention would the world be better off without, and why?
8. Tell us what you think about a current scientific or social controversy.
9. Tell us the question you think a selective college should ask. Why?
10. Describe a risk you have taken and discuss its impact on your life.
11. What has been your most profound or surprising intellectual experience?
12. If you were to protest something, for or against, what would it be and why?
13. Respond to the question: How can I prepare educationally for a global society?
14.You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit page 217.
14. Relate an incident in your life in which honesty or character (or both) were at issue.
15. Recall an occasion when you took a risk that you now know was the right thing to do.
16. Relate a personal experience that caused you to discern or refine a value you hold.
17. Describe a situation in which your values or beliefs were challenged. How did you react?
18. If you were to write a book, on what theme or subject matter would it be based, and why?
19. Discuss an important personal relationship you have had and explain how it has changed your life.
20. First experiences can be defining. Cite a first experience that you have had and explain its impact on you.
21. Tell us about a situation where you have not been successful and what you have learned from the experience.
22. Tell us about the neighborhood that you grew up in and how it helped shape you into the kind of person you are today.
23. Once you have completed your education, will you return to your hometown to begin your adult life? Why or why not?
24. Identity and culture are clearly intertwined. How has your experience of culture influenced the development of your own personal identity?
25. Anatole France said, "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." On what subject do you disagree with most people, and why?
26.Tell us how a particular play, film, piece of music, dance performance, scientific theory or experiment or work of art has influenced you. If you choose a film or play, assume we know the plot.
27. What effect has any voluntary or independent research, reading or study, work in the arts, science project, etc. (outside of school), had on your intellectual and personal growth in recent years? Discuss what influence this involvement has had on your academic goals.
28. According to Stephen Carter, we can admire those with integrity even if we disagree with them. Are there people you admire even though you deeply disagree with them? What do you admire about them? How do you reconcile this apparent contradiction in your assessment?
29. Reflect on these words of Dorothy Day: "No one has the right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do." What is "the work to be done" for your generation, and what impact does this have on your future as a leader? Write a creative, reflective, or provocative essay.
30.The Committee on Undergraduate Admissions is interested in learning more about you. Please use this essay to relay information about you that cannot be found elsewhere on your application. You may choose to write about your future ambitions and goals, a special talent or unusual interest that sets you apart from your peers, or a significant event or relationship that has influenced you during your life.
31. You are hosting brunch for historical, literary, or other disreputable persons (think: Mad Hatter's Tea Party). What is your menu? Who are your guests? In answering this question, imagine a scenario: We want some exposition, serious or silly, we would accept some dialogue, and we are willing to trust you to respond in such a way that your brain power, your imagination, your sense of taste, and your capacity to tell a story reveal something true about you.
32. Names have a mysterious reality of their own. We may well feel an unexpected kinship with someone who shares our name, or may feel uneasy at the thought that our name is not as much our own as we imagined. Most of us do not choose our names; they come to us unbidden, sometimes with ungainly sounds and spellings, complicated family histories, allusions to people we never knew. Sometimes we have to make our peace with them, sometimes we bask in our names associations. Ruminate on names and naming, your name, and your names relationship to you.
33. Of all the activities you listed above, which one has proved to be the worst, use of your time, and why? Use one specific example to illustrate how this activity has not been worthwhile.
34. Sartre said "Hell is other people," while Streisand sang, "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world." With whom do you agree?
35. As a prospective 21st century college graduate, you will enter a workforce and live in a society with an increasingly global perspective. How will your current knowledge of international issues and cultures influence your undergraduate study?
36. Using a piece of wire, a car window sticker, an egg carton, and any inexpensive hardware store item, create something that would solve a problem. Tell us about your creation, but don't worry: we won't require proof that it works.
37. Describe your most important academic accomplishment or intellectual experience to date. We don't want to know about test scores or course grades, rather we want to know about your creativity, your willingness to take intellectual risks or your affinity for scholarly endeavors.
38. Describe an intellectual experience of the past two years that has given you great satisfaction.
39. Do you believe that your academic record accurately reflects your abilities? Explain.
40. What confuses you most in life, and why?
41. George Washington said, "Associate with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; it is better to be alone than in bad company." About which of your friends do you and your parents disagree? Why do you feel that the continued company of this friend is a good thing?
42. Explain how your experiences as a teenager significantly differ from those of your friends. Include comparisons.
43. If you were to look back on your high school years, what advice would you give to someone beginning their high school career?
44. Imagine that you are a "hero" or "heroine" for one day during any time period and under any circumstances. Write a creative essay describing your experience.
45. What is the best advice you ever received? Why? And did you follow it?
46. Tell us about a conversation you've had that changed your perspective or was otherwise meaningful to you.
47. Of all the things you hope or expect to gain from your college experience, which two or three would you place at the top of your list? Explain what you want to gain and why these experiences are most important to you.
48. You are about to write your future college roommate a letter. Please provide the roommate with a personal story that will give him/her some insight into your personality.
49. What single adjective do you think would be most frequently used to describe you by those who know you best? Briefly explain.
50.If you were to describe yourself by a quotation, what would the quote be? Explain your answer
51. Create a metaphor for yourself using something you would find in your kitchen or your garage. List as many similarities or relationships between yourself and this object as you can think of, then elaborate on this comparison in an essay. Why is this object a good representation of you?
52. Discuss how some negative experience (disability, illness, failure) has had a positive influence on your life.
53. Describe a personal habit that helps to define you as a person.
54. Discuss how a specific place can be used to help illustrate your personality.
55. If you had to describe yourself as an animal, what animal would you select and why?
56. Describe a fictional character. Be sure to point out what you do or do not like about the character and relate these attributes to yourself.
57. What have you undertaken or done on your own in the last year or two that has nothing to do with academic work?
58. Discuss how your travel experiences have affected you as a student and a citizen of the world.
59. If money and family obligations left you entirely free, how and where would you spend the summer before college?
60. If you were given the opportunity to spend one year in service on behalf of others, which area would you choose? Explain what you would do and why.
61. If you had a day to spend as you wish, how would you use your time?
62. Imagine that you have the opportunity to travel back through time. At what point in history would you like to stop and why?
63. What do you think has been the most important social or political movement of the twentieth century? Do you share a personal identification with this cause?
64. If you were to develop a Mt. Rushmore representing the 20th century, whose faces would you select and why?
65. If you could be a fly on the wall to observe any situation--historical, personal, or otherwise--describe what you would choose to observe and why. What would you hope to learn and how would it benefit you?
66. If you could spend a year with any real or fictional person in the past, present, or future, whom would you choose? Why?
67. If you could hold a conversation with someone (living or deceased) you consider significant, who would you talk to and what would you talk about? Describe your conversation.
68. If you could become another person, real or fictional, for one day, who would you become and why?
69. If you had the power to change three things in your community or in the world, what would you change and why?
70. If you could change the course of a singular event in history, what event would you affect, and why? In addition, please provide insight on how you would implement your decision.
71. If you could go back and change one day in your life, what would you change and why?
72. Please write a personal journal entry as if the date were Sept. 20, 2030.
73. It has been said [by Andy Warhol] that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. Describe your fifteen minutes.
74. Recent developments in technology have revolutionized the way we gather information, communicate with one another, and even express ourselves as individuals. If there is a computer in your life, tell us how you use it. If there is not a computer in your life, tell us how you would.
75. Select a technological innovation of this century and discuss its effects on your family, local community or nation.
76. Elvis is alive! Okay, maybe not, but we have been persuaded that recent Elvis sightings in highway rest areas, grocery stores and laundromats are part of a wider conspiracy involving five of the following: the metric system, the Mall of America, the crash of the Hindenberg, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, lint, J.D. Salinger, and wax fruit. Construct your own theory of how and why five of these items are related.
Higher education
Not just academics
Assigned Friday, August12, 2011
Due Monday, September 12th, 2011 The college application essay is not a piece of prose or a business proposal - it is an interview in essay form. Many students agree that writing the college admissions essay is the most challenging part of the college application. The essay is important - after considering first the academic record, and then the SAT or ACT scores, the essay is the next opportunity the admissions official has to consider a student for acceptance.
The essay says, “I am a good fit for this college, and I can communicate in a way that is consistent with my education.” Since the essay is not a timed response, it should be error-free and clear. It should be edited and read by a parent or other adult, but not written or re-mastered by anyone other than the college applicant.
What to write:
Choose a topic that reflects you. Imagine you are in an interview, what question do you wish the interviewer would ask you? What would you love to talk about? Your work at an animal shelter? The beta testing you did for a new video game? The campout you went on with your best friends? Write about it! The essay is the best way to tell the admissions board the interesting things about you. You are the person who can describe yourself best; real examples from your life are interesting to the reader. If you can’t think of anything to write, write about one of the activities in the activities list you will include with your application. Be sure that you are telling why the activity is so important to you, why you stayed committed, and why you spent so much time participating. For the long essay (500 words or more) be sure to choose one topic only. If it is possible, make that topic something that will relate to your intended college major or future career interests. Tell it like it is, but follow proper essay format. Start with your main idea (response to the essay prompt), keep the examples in the body, and the attitude at the end.
Stay on topic - that is what editing is for. Your examples don’t have to be unique, thought provoking, or even exciting, they just have to be sincere. If you are relating a sad or tragic personal experience, use less than one hundred words to describe the experience (for a short essay, keep the description to a minimal). Focus on the positive outcome or lesson you learned.
Remember, this essay represents you to the college. Don’t give the mistaken impression of you as a “broken person.” A college may hesitate to admit a student who has emotional problems that may hinder his education. So, if your examples relate a negative experience, keep it short and near the beginning so you can highlight the positive outcome of your struggle and leave the reader with your positive attitude. Focus on your triumph.
How to begin:
Read the essay prompts and discuss your ideas with a good listener. Choose your examples and how you will present them to support your main idea. Determine your conclusion so you are sure to write each example with the correct goal and tone in mind.
Write as much as is possible in an hour, focusing only on content. Work on clarity and style at another time, since it may be difficult to edit and rework sentences during the creative process. At another time, read the essay aloud, cut out redundancies and unclear wording. Rework sentences and leave out any thing that does not relate to the main idea and final attitude. Expressing one idea clearly is more effective than a flood of words and ideas.
You are in control of this interview - keep to the point you want to make. Avoid listing small details that distract from your point. Consider when you have told a story and the listener keeps asking you questions about small details. You get frustrated because you feel he is missing the point of your anecdote. In the same way, too many small details only distract the reader from your point. Keep the examples moving towards your main idea.
Some Don’ts:
• Do not exceed the word limit - consider the reader. How would you feel if someone gave you more work to do?
• Avoid clichés - they do not distinguish you from other applicants since a cliché is someone else’s words.
• Avoid trying to say too much - stick to one topic. Remember that you have an accomplishment list elsewhere in the application.
• Avoid an excess of “big” words. The essay should be a readable picture of you. Be yourself; your message should impress, but being pretentious can be a turn-off.
• Avoid slang. You are introducing yourself, not selling yourself.
Some Dos:
• Speak in the first person - this is you talking. Use “I”. Don’t use “you” to describe yourself and your experiences and feelings.
• Allow enough time to read the essay many times.
• Edit. Write and rewrite to ensure clarity. Cut details that confuse or add nothing.
• Read your essay aloud to hear it and see how it flows. Make sure it is your voice.
• Ask others to read your essay and give their feedback. Ask that the feedback be constructive, such as; “I would love an example of that”; “What happened next?”; “This part confused me.” Ask the reader how he felt after reading the entire essay. His attitude will most likely be the same as the reader in the admissions office. Revise the ending to elicit the response you desire.
• With help, fix misspellings, errors and unclear writing. Ensure that your style and personality is represented, but don’t allow errors.
From Writing the College Essay by Lynn Scully. March/April, 2006. HomeEducator.com http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/14-2article6.html
Absolute no-nos: On par with shooting yourself in the foot
Plagiarizing another writer's work. While this may seem like the easy way out, it is disgraceful and unethical. Justice will eventually be served, and think of the grave humiliation at having to explain to your parents that you were rejected from college because you had cheated. Not cool.
Embellishing the facts. Much like plagiarizing, embellishing or inventing your history is both unethical and unhealthy. Living a lie is too much work because you have to remember all the lies you have told. The truth is eminently memorable. Present it in your writing on college application essays.
Not answering the prompts. Although you may have some fantastic things to say, keep your comments to the point. Think of yourself as your own press secretary during the application process. If the President's press secretary just decided to spout off about his favorite movies when reporters asked about the U. S.'s Middle East policy, he would appear both foolish and damaging to the administration. Keep your reporters happy and well-informed, not confused.
Wordiness. If you write incredibly long sentences or paragraphs that become run-on sentence and bore the admissions officers, you may not hold the attention of your most important audience and that would not be good. No, it wouldn't. No. No. No. Keep the admissions officers from diving headfirst into their coffee cups.
The "SHIFT + F7" syndrome. Also known as the "thesaurus tick," it involves students' proclivities to utilize polysyllabic dictums in order to manifest a latent brilliance that would never emerge without irreparably altering every third word that does not consist of three syllables. Admissions officers will be impressed to meet you, not your thesaurus.
Bad but salvageable: You missed your foot! Close call!
Self-contradictions. It is vital to maintain consistency within your essay. You lose your trustworthiness in introducing yourself to admissions officers.
Talking glowingly about your boyfriend or girlfriend. Dissing them in your application would not make sense either. College admissions officers generally have little interest in your love life and see such discussions as a sign of immaturity.
Overt criticism of your school or upbringing. Many individuals worldwide would feel blessed to have enjoyed the same opportunities you have had. Furthermore, tired and overloaded admissions officers don't want to join your pity party.
Name-dropping. If you are concerned about world peace, that's great. We recommend that you not toss in ideas about which you are only marginally concerned in order to sound better rounded. Name-dropping should stay in the realm of cocktail parties.
Clichés. "I want to improve the condition of the Everyman... " You may be a willing future Peace Corps volunteer, but six other clowns wrote the exact same thing and don't really mean it. Who should the admissions officer heed? Make your words authentic and thus yours.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 10: Using the same essay for all the colleges you apply to
All colleges have their own identity and mission statement. Pay attention to what their ideology is and think about what you can do to cater to it.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 9: Plagiarizing other students' work
DO NOT COPY FROM OTHER PEOPLE’S ESSAYS! Many students assume that if they copy directly from other people paper’s and sources that no one will find out. This assumption is definitely wrong. Often, the papers they copy from are littered with errors, and they don’t take the time to check.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 8: Using a thesaurus for too many words
This mistake can lead to a big awkward tangle of an essay. Many times if you use a thesaurus and extract overly verbose words, they will stick out like sore thumbs in your essay, and the first assumption the reader will make is that you used a thesaurus.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 7: Not streamlining the essay with the application
Many applicants do not pay attention to the unity of their essay and their actual application. It is jarring to the reader if the essay seems to portray a different picture of the student than the application. This can also happen when you plagiarize; things do not match up, and the reader will quickly discredit you.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 6: Trying to impress the essay reader
Do not try to impress the admission officer. They will be able to sense a pretentious voice beneath descriptions of grand earth-shaking events and ontological musings. Write about what you know and draw from your own life experience.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 5: Picking an inappropriate topic
In an attempt to be clever many people resort to self-deprecation and end up painting a less than flattering image of themselves. You may think it would be witty to write a paper about your less than perfect grades in high school, but this can come off as not taking responsibility for your actions.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 4: Making an essay into a resume
Many times people want to impress the reader so much that they completely ignore the essay prompt and make the essay into a list of their accomplishments. Unless this is specifically what they asked for, just don’t do it.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 3: Brownnosing
If you are sending a school an application, they will simply assume that you want to attend. You don’t have to “lay it on thick” by lauding their campus and faculty.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 2: PROOFREAD!
You CANNOT edit your essay too much!! Write several drafts and edit each draft thoroughly for syntax, grammar, spelling and general structure. Admissions officers will immediately discredit you for making petty errors that would be easily fixable.
College Admission Essay Mistake #1: Not answering the question
The admissions committee uses certain essay prompts for a specific reason: they want you to answer it! So beware of steering away from the point and running off on tangents.
From Top Ten College Admission Essay Mistakes by Katherine C. Lee. College-Admssion-Essay.com http://www.college-admission-essay.com/collegeadmissionessaymistakes.html
ASSIGNMENT: In one hundred to 500 words, complete a word-processed essay, responding to only one of the following prompts. Please include the number and the text of the complete prompt at the top of your essay.
1. Defend your least conventional belief.
2. What is your favorite word, and why?
3. Are you honorable? How do you know?
4. What can you contribute to a multi-cultural world?
5. What are the responsibilities of an educated person?
6. If you could invent something, what would it be, and why?
7. What invention would the world be better off without, and why?
8. Tell us what you think about a current scientific or social controversy.
9. Tell us the question you think a selective college should ask. Why?
10. Describe a risk you have taken and discuss its impact on your life.
11. What has been your most profound or surprising intellectual experience?
12. If you were to protest something, for or against, what would it be and why?
13. Respond to the question: How can I prepare educationally for a global society?
14.You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit page 217.
14. Relate an incident in your life in which honesty or character (or both) were at issue.
15. Recall an occasion when you took a risk that you now know was the right thing to do.
16. Relate a personal experience that caused you to discern or refine a value you hold.
17. Describe a situation in which your values or beliefs were challenged. How did you react?
18. If you were to write a book, on what theme or subject matter would it be based, and why?
19. Discuss an important personal relationship you have had and explain how it has changed your life.
20. First experiences can be defining. Cite a first experience that you have had and explain its impact on you.
21. Tell us about a situation where you have not been successful and what you have learned from the experience.
22. Tell us about the neighborhood that you grew up in and how it helped shape you into the kind of person you are today.
23. Once you have completed your education, will you return to your hometown to begin your adult life? Why or why not?
24. Identity and culture are clearly intertwined. How has your experience of culture influenced the development of your own personal identity?
25. Anatole France said, "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." On what subject do you disagree with most people, and why?
26.Tell us how a particular play, film, piece of music, dance performance, scientific theory or experiment or work of art has influenced you. If you choose a film or play, assume we know the plot.
27. What effect has any voluntary or independent research, reading or study, work in the arts, science project, etc. (outside of school), had on your intellectual and personal growth in recent years? Discuss what influence this involvement has had on your academic goals.
28. According to Stephen Carter, we can admire those with integrity even if we disagree with them. Are there people you admire even though you deeply disagree with them? What do you admire about them? How do you reconcile this apparent contradiction in your assessment?
29. Reflect on these words of Dorothy Day: "No one has the right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do." What is "the work to be done" for your generation, and what impact does this have on your future as a leader? Write a creative, reflective, or provocative essay.
30.The Committee on Undergraduate Admissions is interested in learning more about you. Please use this essay to relay information about you that cannot be found elsewhere on your application. You may choose to write about your future ambitions and goals, a special talent or unusual interest that sets you apart from your peers, or a significant event or relationship that has influenced you during your life.
31. You are hosting brunch for historical, literary, or other disreputable persons (think: Mad Hatter's Tea Party). What is your menu? Who are your guests? In answering this question, imagine a scenario: We want some exposition, serious or silly, we would accept some dialogue, and we are willing to trust you to respond in such a way that your brain power, your imagination, your sense of taste, and your capacity to tell a story reveal something true about you.
32. Names have a mysterious reality of their own. We may well feel an unexpected kinship with someone who shares our name, or may feel uneasy at the thought that our name is not as much our own as we imagined. Most of us do not choose our names; they come to us unbidden, sometimes with ungainly sounds and spellings, complicated family histories, allusions to people we never knew. Sometimes we have to make our peace with them, sometimes we bask in our names associations. Ruminate on names and naming, your name, and your names relationship to you.
33. Of all the activities you listed above, which one has proved to be the worst, use of your time, and why? Use one specific example to illustrate how this activity has not been worthwhile.
34. Sartre said "Hell is other people," while Streisand sang, "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world." With whom do you agree?
35. As a prospective 21st century college graduate, you will enter a workforce and live in a society with an increasingly global perspective. How will your current knowledge of international issues and cultures influence your undergraduate study?
36. Using a piece of wire, a car window sticker, an egg carton, and any inexpensive hardware store item, create something that would solve a problem. Tell us about your creation, but don't worry: we won't require proof that it works.
37. Describe your most important academic accomplishment or intellectual experience to date. We don't want to know about test scores or course grades, rather we want to know about your creativity, your willingness to take intellectual risks or your affinity for scholarly endeavors.
38. Describe an intellectual experience of the past two years that has given you great satisfaction.
39. Do you believe that your academic record accurately reflects your abilities? Explain.
40. What confuses you most in life, and why?
41. George Washington said, "Associate with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; it is better to be alone than in bad company." About which of your friends do you and your parents disagree? Why do you feel that the continued company of this friend is a good thing?
42. Explain how your experiences as a teenager significantly differ from those of your friends. Include comparisons.
43. If you were to look back on your high school years, what advice would you give to someone beginning their high school career?
44. Imagine that you are a "hero" or "heroine" for one day during any time period and under any circumstances. Write a creative essay describing your experience.
45. What is the best advice you ever received? Why? And did you follow it?
46. Tell us about a conversation you've had that changed your perspective or was otherwise meaningful to you.
47. Of all the things you hope or expect to gain from your college experience, which two or three would you place at the top of your list? Explain what you want to gain and why these experiences are most important to you.
48. You are about to write your future college roommate a letter. Please provide the roommate with a personal story that will give him/her some insight into your personality.
49. What single adjective do you think would be most frequently used to describe you by those who know you best? Briefly explain.
50.If you were to describe yourself by a quotation, what would the quote be? Explain your answer
51. Create a metaphor for yourself using something you would find in your kitchen or your garage. List as many similarities or relationships between yourself and this object as you can think of, then elaborate on this comparison in an essay. Why is this object a good representation of you?
52. Discuss how some negative experience (disability, illness, failure) has had a positive influence on your life.
53. Describe a personal habit that helps to define you as a person.
54. Discuss how a specific place can be used to help illustrate your personality.
55. If you had to describe yourself as an animal, what animal would you select and why?
56. Describe a fictional character. Be sure to point out what you do or do not like about the character and relate these attributes to yourself.
57. What have you undertaken or done on your own in the last year or two that has nothing to do with academic work?
58. Discuss how your travel experiences have affected you as a student and a citizen of the world.
59. If money and family obligations left you entirely free, how and where would you spend the summer before college?
60. If you were given the opportunity to spend one year in service on behalf of others, which area would you choose? Explain what you would do and why.
61. If you had a day to spend as you wish, how would you use your time?
62. Imagine that you have the opportunity to travel back through time. At what point in history would you like to stop and why?
63. What do you think has been the most important social or political movement of the twentieth century? Do you share a personal identification with this cause?
64. If you were to develop a Mt. Rushmore representing the 20th century, whose faces would you select and why?
65. If you could be a fly on the wall to observe any situation--historical, personal, or otherwise--describe what you would choose to observe and why. What would you hope to learn and how would it benefit you?
66. If you could spend a year with any real or fictional person in the past, present, or future, whom would you choose? Why?
67. If you could hold a conversation with someone (living or deceased) you consider significant, who would you talk to and what would you talk about? Describe your conversation.
68. If you could become another person, real or fictional, for one day, who would you become and why?
69. If you had the power to change three things in your community or in the world, what would you change and why?
70. If you could change the course of a singular event in history, what event would you affect, and why? In addition, please provide insight on how you would implement your decision.
71. If you could go back and change one day in your life, what would you change and why?
72. Please write a personal journal entry as if the date were Sept. 20, 2030.
73. It has been said [by Andy Warhol] that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. Describe your fifteen minutes.
74. Recent developments in technology have revolutionized the way we gather information, communicate with one another, and even express ourselves as individuals. If there is a computer in your life, tell us how you use it. If there is not a computer in your life, tell us how you would.
75. Select a technological innovation of this century and discuss its effects on your family, local community or nation.
76. Elvis is alive! Okay, maybe not, but we have been persuaded that recent Elvis sightings in highway rest areas, grocery stores and laundromats are part of a wider conspiracy involving five of the following: the metric system, the Mall of America, the crash of the Hindenberg, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, lint, J.D. Salinger, and wax fruit. Construct your own theory of how and why five of these items are related.
Higher education
Not just academics
Ten things to ponder when applying to colleges
Ten things to ponder when applying to colleges
By FAN ZHOU Knight Ridder Newspapers Fan Zhou is in the process of applying to and choosing a college. He applied to ten schools, nine of which are ranked in the nation’s top fifty. Although he’s a bit atypical, we asked him to provide tips for teenagers who haven’t embarked on the application process. Here’s his take:
I have just finished applying to ten colleges, and during the five-month ordeal, I’ve learned some things that people -- you know, parents, guidance counselors, those so-called “friends” who’ve already moved on to college -- neglect to tell you.
So, for all of you out there who have yet to begin the college application process, here is some advice to help smooth out the impending bumps in the road.
And there will be bumps. Believe me.
10. Forget the rankings. Just because Harvard, Yale and others are preceded by their reputations doesn’t mean you will be happy going there. Just because USA Today, Time Magazine or U.S. News & World Report proclaims a school number one doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Find a school that complements your strengths. Where you get an education matters less than what you do with the knowledge you acquire.
9. Tests? Take some. You can never take too many tests, and colleges usually will look at only your best scores. So feel free to take the ACT and the SAT. SAT II’s are a great way to hone your Advanced Placement test skills because they usually are offered the week before Advanced Placement tests begin, and many of the subjects coincide.
8. Just getting in is expensive. It doesn’t matter how many colleges use the common application, you still have to pay to apply to each college. In my experience, these application fees ranged from $40 to $80. This does not include the postage, envelopes, fees for sending test scores, and additional costs for financial aid forms. Be prepared for the expense.
7. Organize or perish. Each application will be about five pages long, not including teachers’ recommendations, school reports, mid-year reports, common application supplements, special program forms and financial aid documents. You must be prepared to keep track of lots of paper, postage, envelopes, Web sites, passwords, due dates and addresses. Try creating a spreadsheet to track part of the application. Plus, do as much as possible online. It’s easier and faster.
6. Be ready to write. For some schools, you’ll probably have to write two essays, plus supplemental writing samples and short-answer prompts. Essays usually are 500 to 750 words, and most have no common ground. Be ready to revise, revise and, when you think you have the perfect essay, revise. Get an opinion on your essay from people you trust. Colleges expect to read your essays without having to think about that misplaced modifier or dangling preposition. Be a perfectionist.
5. The interview is very important. If the school you are applying to offers an alumni or phone interview, try to schedule one as you begin to apply. Frequently, the chat will include current events. You need to be ready for the conversation to switch from being about your application to the most recent court case to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court. Remember, your interviewer can be your greatest advocate or worst enemy when it comes time for the board to decide whether you get in.
4. Scholarships? When you’re a senior, your priorities must change. So if you’re a junior or younger, put applying for the big national scholarships at the top of your to-do list. As a senior, trying to win privately funded scholarships must be second among your priorities. This is because the average financial-aid packages to any university often will be several times the size of even the most extravagant scholarships. Furthermore, the competition for these national scholarships is even more intense than the Ivy League applicant pool, sometimes with more than 30,000 applicants and fewer than twenty “winners.” By focusing on your college essays and applications rather than scholarship essays, at least for the first semester of your senior year, you can reduce your amount of stress and increase your chance of getting accepted.
3. Don’t pad your resume. Admissions counselors are not stupid. They will realize that if you are president and founder of ten clubs, you could not possibly have the time to commit to each of them at the level you should. Don’t stress if, when compiling your application, you don’t fill in all the blanks on the awards page. A short list of significant awards will carry more weight than a long list of insignificant ones. Save yourself the hassle of typing up everything you’ve ever done, and just mention the highlights.
2. Judge me! That is what you are effectively saying to the evaluators every time you submit an application. So you need to be able to sit back and feel confident knowing that you painted a picture of yourself using nothing but words. Whatever they decide is just their opinion, which carries as much weight as you let it. And hey, you have back-up schools ... right?
1. Enjoy yourself. I know this might sound contradictory after I just told you to prepare and all that, but enjoy your senior year of high school. You need to stop freaking out about college because there are so many other things that are just as important and much more fun than filling out applications and reading test-prep books.
There is nothing I wouldn’t give for just a day when I didn’t have the real-world demon creeping down my neck and the only thing I was worried about was coloring between the lines. College is a life-altering process, but don’t forget to stop, hang out with friends, watch a movie, be stupid, and have a little fun, because life is way, way, way too important to take seriously.
By FAN ZHOU Knight Ridder Newspapers Fan Zhou is in the process of applying to and choosing a college. He applied to ten schools, nine of which are ranked in the nation’s top fifty. Although he’s a bit atypical, we asked him to provide tips for teenagers who haven’t embarked on the application process. Here’s his take:
I have just finished applying to ten colleges, and during the five-month ordeal, I’ve learned some things that people -- you know, parents, guidance counselors, those so-called “friends” who’ve already moved on to college -- neglect to tell you.
So, for all of you out there who have yet to begin the college application process, here is some advice to help smooth out the impending bumps in the road.
And there will be bumps. Believe me.
10. Forget the rankings. Just because Harvard, Yale and others are preceded by their reputations doesn’t mean you will be happy going there. Just because USA Today, Time Magazine or U.S. News & World Report proclaims a school number one doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Find a school that complements your strengths. Where you get an education matters less than what you do with the knowledge you acquire.
9. Tests? Take some. You can never take too many tests, and colleges usually will look at only your best scores. So feel free to take the ACT and the SAT. SAT II’s are a great way to hone your Advanced Placement test skills because they usually are offered the week before Advanced Placement tests begin, and many of the subjects coincide.
8. Just getting in is expensive. It doesn’t matter how many colleges use the common application, you still have to pay to apply to each college. In my experience, these application fees ranged from $40 to $80. This does not include the postage, envelopes, fees for sending test scores, and additional costs for financial aid forms. Be prepared for the expense.
7. Organize or perish. Each application will be about five pages long, not including teachers’ recommendations, school reports, mid-year reports, common application supplements, special program forms and financial aid documents. You must be prepared to keep track of lots of paper, postage, envelopes, Web sites, passwords, due dates and addresses. Try creating a spreadsheet to track part of the application. Plus, do as much as possible online. It’s easier and faster.
6. Be ready to write. For some schools, you’ll probably have to write two essays, plus supplemental writing samples and short-answer prompts. Essays usually are 500 to 750 words, and most have no common ground. Be ready to revise, revise and, when you think you have the perfect essay, revise. Get an opinion on your essay from people you trust. Colleges expect to read your essays without having to think about that misplaced modifier or dangling preposition. Be a perfectionist.
5. The interview is very important. If the school you are applying to offers an alumni or phone interview, try to schedule one as you begin to apply. Frequently, the chat will include current events. You need to be ready for the conversation to switch from being about your application to the most recent court case to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court. Remember, your interviewer can be your greatest advocate or worst enemy when it comes time for the board to decide whether you get in.
4. Scholarships? When you’re a senior, your priorities must change. So if you’re a junior or younger, put applying for the big national scholarships at the top of your to-do list. As a senior, trying to win privately funded scholarships must be second among your priorities. This is because the average financial-aid packages to any university often will be several times the size of even the most extravagant scholarships. Furthermore, the competition for these national scholarships is even more intense than the Ivy League applicant pool, sometimes with more than 30,000 applicants and fewer than twenty “winners.” By focusing on your college essays and applications rather than scholarship essays, at least for the first semester of your senior year, you can reduce your amount of stress and increase your chance of getting accepted.
3. Don’t pad your resume. Admissions counselors are not stupid. They will realize that if you are president and founder of ten clubs, you could not possibly have the time to commit to each of them at the level you should. Don’t stress if, when compiling your application, you don’t fill in all the blanks on the awards page. A short list of significant awards will carry more weight than a long list of insignificant ones. Save yourself the hassle of typing up everything you’ve ever done, and just mention the highlights.
2. Judge me! That is what you are effectively saying to the evaluators every time you submit an application. So you need to be able to sit back and feel confident knowing that you painted a picture of yourself using nothing but words. Whatever they decide is just their opinion, which carries as much weight as you let it. And hey, you have back-up schools ... right?
1. Enjoy yourself. I know this might sound contradictory after I just told you to prepare and all that, but enjoy your senior year of high school. You need to stop freaking out about college because there are so many other things that are just as important and much more fun than filling out applications and reading test-prep books.
There is nothing I wouldn’t give for just a day when I didn’t have the real-world demon creeping down my neck and the only thing I was worried about was coloring between the lines. College is a life-altering process, but don’t forget to stop, hang out with friends, watch a movie, be stupid, and have a little fun, because life is way, way, way too important to take seriously.
College Application Essay
COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
Assigned Friday, August12, 2011
Due Monday, September 12th, 2011
The college application essay is not a piece of prose or a business proposal - it is an interview in essay form. Many students agree that writing the college admissions essay is the most challenging part of the college application. The essay is important - after considering first the academic record, and then the SAT or ACT scores, the essay is the next opportunity the admissions official has to consider a student for acceptance.
The essay says, “I am a good fit for this college, and I can communicate in a way that is consistent with my education.” Since the essay is not a timed response, it should be error-free and clear. It should be edited and read by a parent or other adult, but not written or re-mastered by anyone other than the college applicant.
What to write: Choose a topic that reflects you. Imagine you are in an interview, what question do you wish the interviewer would ask you? What would you love to talk about? Your work at an animal shelter? The beta testing you did for a new video game? The campout you went on with your best friends? Write about it! The essay is the best way to tell the admissions board the interesting things about you. You are the person who can describe yourself best; real examples from your life are interesting to the reader.
If you can’t think of anything to write, write about one of the activities in the activities list you will include with your application. Be sure that you are telling why the activity is so important to you, why you stayed committed, and why you spent so much time participating. For the long essay (500 words or more) be sure to choose one topic only. If it is possible, make that topic something that will relate to your intended college major or future career interests. Tell it like it is, but follow proper essay format. Start with your main idea (response to the essay prompt), keep the examples in the body, and the attitude at the end.
Stay on topic - that is what editing is for. Your examples don’t have to be unique, thought provoking, or even exciting, they just have to be sincere. If you are relating a sad or tragic personal experience, use less than one hundred words to describe the experience (for a short essay, keep the description to a minimal). Focus on the positive outcome or lesson you learned.
Remember, this essay represents you to the college. Don’t give the mistaken impression of you as a “broken person.” A college may hesitate to admit a student who has emotional problems that may hinder his education. So, if your examples relate a negative experience, keep it short and near the beginning so you can highlight the positive outcome of your struggle and leave the reader with your positive attitude. Focus on your triumph.
How to begin:
Read the essay prompts and discuss your ideas with a good listener. Choose your examples and how you will present them to support your main idea. Determine your conclusion so you are sure to write each example with the correct goal and tone in mind.
Write as much as is possible in an hour, focusing only on content. Work on clarity and style at another time, since it may be difficult to edit and rework sentences during the creative process. At another time, read the essay aloud, cut out redundancies and unclear wording. Rework sentences and leave out any thing that does not relate to the main idea and final attitude. Expressing one idea clearly is more effective than a flood of words and ideas.
You are in control of this interview - keep to the point you want to make. Avoid listing small details that distract from your point. Consider when you have told a story and the listener keeps asking you questions about small details. You get frustrated because you feel he is missing the point of your anecdote. In the same way, too many small details only distract the reader from your point. Keep the examples moving towards your main idea.
Some Don’ts:
• Do not exceed the word limit - consider the reader. How would you feel if someone gave you more work to do?
• Avoid clichés - they do not distinguish you from other applicants since a cliché is someone else’s words.
• Avoid trying to say too much - stick to one topic. Remember that you have an accomplishment list elsewhere in the application.
• Avoid an excess of “big” words. The essay should be a readable picture of you. Be yourself; your message should impress, but being pretentious can be a turn-off.
• Avoid slang. You are introducing yourself, not selling yourself.
Some Dos:
• Speak in the first person - this is you talking. Use “I”. Don’t use “you” to describe yourself and your experiences and feelings.
• Allow enough time to read the essay many times.
• Edit. Write and rewrite to ensure clarity. Cut details that confuse or add nothing.
• Read your essay aloud to hear it and see how it flows. Make sure it is your voice.
• Ask others to read your essay and give their feedback. Ask that the feedback be constructive, such as; “I would love an example of that”; “What happened next?”; “This part confused me.” Ask the reader how he felt after reading the entire essay. His attitude will most likely be the same as the reader in the admissions office. Revise the ending to elicit the response you desire.
• With help, fix misspellings, errors and unclear writing. Ensure that your style and personality is represented, but don’t allow errors.
From Writing the College Essay by Lynn Scully. March/April, 2006. HomeEducator.com http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/14-2article6.html
Absolute no-nos: On par with shooting yourself in the foot
Plagiarizing another writer's work.
While this may seem like the easy way out, it is disgraceful and unethical. Justice will eventually be served, and think of the grave humiliation at having to explain to your parents that you were rejected from college because you had cheated. Not cool.
Embellishing the facts. Much like plagiarizing, embellishing or inventing your history is both unethical and unhealthy. Living a lie is too much work because you have to remember all the lies you have told. The truth is eminently memorable. Present it in your writing on college application essays.
Not answering the prompts. Although you may have some fantastic things to say, keep your comments to the point. Think of yourself as your own press secretary during the application process. If the President's press secretary just decided to spout off about his favorite movies when reporters asked about the U. S.'s Middle East policy, he would appear both foolish and damaging to the administration. Keep your reporters happy and well-informed, not confused.
Wordiness. If you write incredibly long sentences or paragraphs that become run-on sentence and bore the admissions officers, you may not hold the attention of your most important audience and that would not be good. No, it wouldn't. No. No. No. Keep the admissions officers from diving headfirst into their coffee cups.
The "SHIFT + F7" syndrome. Also known as the "thesaurus tick," it involves students' proclivities to utilize polysyllabic dictums in order to manifest a latent brilliance that would never emerge without irreparably altering every third word that does not consist of three syllables. Admissions officers will be impressed to meet you, not your thesaurus.
Bad but salvageable: You missed your foot! Close call!
Self-contradictions. It is vital to maintain consistency within your essay. You lose your trustworthiness in introducing yourself to admissions officers.
Talking glowingly about your boyfriend or girlfriend. Dissing them in your application would not make sense either. College admissions officers generally have little interest in your love life and see such discussions as a sign of immaturity.
Overt criticism of your school or upbringing. Many individuals worldwide would feel blessed to have enjoyed the same opportunities you have had. Furthermore, tired and overloaded admissions officers don't want to join your pity party.
Name-dropping. If you are concerned about world peace, that's great. We recommend that you not toss in ideas about which you are only marginally concerned in order to sound better rounded. Name-dropping should stay in the realm of cocktail parties.
Clichés. "I want to improve the condition of the Everyman... " You may be a willing future Peace Corps volunteer, but six other clowns wrote the exact same thing and don't really mean it. Who should the admissions officer heed? Make your words authentic and thus yours.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 10: Using the same essay for all the colleges you apply to
All colleges have their own identity and mission statement. Pay attention to what their ideology is and think about what you can do to cater to it.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 9: Plagiarizing other students' work
DO NOT COPY FROM OTHER PEOPLE’S ESSAYS! Many students assume that if they copy directly from other people paper’s and sources that no one will find out. This assumption is definitely wrong. Often, the papers they copy from are littered with errors, and they don’t take the time to check.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 8: Using a thesaurus for too many words
This mistake can lead to a big awkward tangle of an essay. Many times if you use a thesaurus and extract overly verbose words, they will stick out like sore thumbs in your essay, and the first assumption the reader will make is that you used a thesaurus.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 7: Not streamlining the essay with the application
Many applicants do not pay attention to the unity of their essay and their actual application. It is jarring to the reader if the essay seems to portray a different picture of the student than the application. This can also happen when you plagiarize; things do not match up, and the reader will quickly discredit you.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 6: Trying to impress the essay reader
Do not try to impress the admission officer. They will be able to sense a pretentious voice beneath descriptions of grand earth-shaking events and ontological musings. Write about what you know and draw from your own life experience.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 5: Picking an inappropriate topic
In an attempt to be clever many people resort to self-deprecation and end up painting a less than flattering image of themselves. You may think it would be witty to write a paper about your less than perfect grades in high school, but this can come off as not taking responsibility for your actions.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 4: Making an essay into a resume
Many times people want to impress the reader so much that they completely ignore the essay prompt and make the essay into a list of their accomplishments. Unless this is specifically what they asked for, just don’t do it.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 3: Brownnosing
If you are sending a school an application, they will simply assume that you want to attend. You don’t have to “lay it on thick” by lauding their campus and faculty.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 2: PROOFREAD!
You CANNOT edit your essay too much!! Write several drafts and edit each draft thoroughly for syntax, grammar, spelling and general structure. Admissions officers will immediately discredit you for making petty errors that would be easily fixable.
College Admission Essay Mistake #1: Not answering the question
The admissions committee uses certain essay prompts for a specific reason: they want you to answer it! So beware of steering away from the point and running off on tangents.
From Top Ten College Admission Essay Mistakes by Katherine C. Lee. College-Admssion-Essay.com http://www.college-admission-essay.com/collegeadmissionessaymistakes.html
ASSIGNMENT: In one hundred to 500 words, complete a word-processed essay, responding to only one of the following prompts. Please include the number and the text of the complete prompt at the top of your essay.1. Defend your least conventional belief.
2. What is your favorite word, and why?
3. Are you honorable? How do you know?
4. What can you contribute to a multi-cultural world?
5. What are the responsibilities of an educated person?
6. If you could invent something, what would it be, and why?
7. What invention would the world be better off without, and why?
8. Tell us what you think about a current scientific or social controversy.
9. Tell us the question you think a selective college should ask. Why?
10. Describe a risk you have taken and discuss its impact on your life.
11. What has been your most profound or surprising intellectual experience?
12. If you were to protest something, for or against, what would it be and why?
13. Respond to the question: How can I prepare educationally for a global society?
14.You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit page 217.
14. Relate an incident in your life in which honesty or character (or both) were at issue.
15. Recall an occasion when you took a risk that you now know was the right thing to do.
16. Relate a personal experience that caused you to discern or refine a value you hold.
17. Describe a situation in which your values or beliefs were challenged. How did you react?
18. If you were to write a book, on what theme or subject matter would it be based, and why?
19. Discuss an important personal relationship you have had and explain how it has changed your life.
20. First experiences can be defining. Cite a first experience that you have had and explain its impact on you.
21. Tell us about a situation where you have not been successful and what you have learned from the experience.
22. Tell us about the neighborhood that you grew up in and how it helped shape you into the kind of person you are today.
23. Once you have completed your education, will you return to your hometown to begin your adult life? Why or why not?
24. Identity and culture are clearly intertwined. How has your experience of culture influenced the development of your own personal identity?
25. Anatole France said, "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." On what subject do you disagree with most people, and why?
26.Tell us how a particular play, film, piece of music, dance performance, scientific theory or experiment or work of art has influenced you. If you choose a film or play, assume we know the plot.
27. What effect has any voluntary or independent research, reading or study, work in the arts, science project, etc. (outside of school), had on your intellectual and personal growth in recent years? Discuss what influence this involvement has had on your academic goals.
28. According to Stephen Carter, we can admire those with integrity even if we disagree with them. Are there people you admire even though you deeply disagree with them? What do you admire about them? How do you reconcile this apparent contradiction in your assessment?
29. Reflect on these words of Dorothy Day: "No one has the right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do." What is "the work to be done" for your generation, and what impact does this have on your future as a leader? Write a creative, reflective, or provocative essay.
30.The Committee on Undergraduate Admissions is interested in learning more about you. Please use this essay to relay information about you that cannot be found elsewhere on your application. You may choose to write about your future ambitions and goals, a special talent or unusual interest that sets you apart from your peers, or a significant event or relationship that has influenced you during your life.
31. You are hosting brunch for historical, literary, or other disreputable persons (think: Mad Hatter's Tea Party). What is your menu? Who are your guests? In answering this question, imagine a scenario: We want some exposition, serious or silly, we would accept some dialogue, and we are willing to trust you to respond in such a way that your brain power, your imagination, your sense of taste, and your capacity to tell a story reveal something true about you.
32. Names have a mysterious reality of their own. We may well feel an unexpected kinship with someone who shares our name, or may feel uneasy at the thought that our name is not as much our own as we imagined. Most of us do not choose our names; they come to us unbidden, sometimes with ungainly sounds and spellings, complicated family histories, allusions to people we never knew. Sometimes we have to make our peace with them, sometimes we bask in our names associations. Ruminate on names and naming, your name, and your names relationship to you.
33. Of all the activities you listed above, which one has proved to be the worst, use of your time, and why? Use one specific example to illustrate how this activity has not been worthwhile.
34. Sartre said "Hell is other people," while Streisand sang, "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world." With whom do you agree?
35. As a prospective 21st century college graduate, you will enter a workforce and live in a society with an increasingly global perspective. How will your current knowledge of international issues and cultures influence your undergraduate study?
36. Using a piece of wire, a car window sticker, an egg carton, and any inexpensive hardware store item, create something that would solve a problem. Tell us about your creation, but don't worry: we won't require proof that it works.
37. Describe your most important academic accomplishment or intellectual experience to date. We don't want to know about test scores or course grades, rather we want to know about your creativity, your willingness to take intellectual risks or your affinity for scholarly endeavors.
38. Describe an intellectual experience of the past two years that has given you great satisfaction.
39. Do you believe that your academic record accurately reflects your abilities? Explain.
40. What confuses you most in life, and why?
41. George Washington said, "Associate with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; it is better to be alone than in bad company." About which of your friends do you and your parents disagree? Why do you feel that the continued company of this friend is a good thing?
42. Explain how your experiences as a teenager significantly differ from those of your friends. Include comparisons.
43. If you were to look back on your high school years, what advice would you give to someone beginning their high school career?
44. Imagine that you are a "hero" or "heroine" for one day during any time period and under any circumstances. Write a creative essay describing your experience.
45. What is the best advice you ever received? Why? And did you follow it?
46. Tell us about a conversation you've had that changed your perspective or was otherwise meaningful to you.
47. Of all the things you hope or expect to gain from your college experience, which two or three would you place at the top of your list? Explain what you want to gain and why these experiences are most important to you.
48. You are about to write your future college roommate a letter. Please provide the roommate with a personal story that will give him/her some insight into your personality.
49. What single adjective do you think would be most frequently used to describe you by those who know you best? Briefly explain.
50.If you were to describe yourself by a quotation, what would the quote be? Explain your answer
51. Create a metaphor for yourself using something you would find in your kitchen or your garage. List as many similarities or relationships between yourself and this object as you can think of, then elaborate on this comparison in an essay. Why is this object a good representation of you?
52. Discuss how some negative experience (disability, illness, failure) has had a positive influence on your life.
53. Describe a personal habit that helps to define you as a person.
54. Discuss how a specific place can be used to help illustrate your personality.
55. If you had to describe yourself as an animal, what animal would you select and why?
56. Describe a fictional character. Be sure to point out what you do or do not like about the character and relate these attributes to yourself.
57. What have you undertaken or done on your own in the last year or two that has nothing to do with academic work?
58. Discuss how your travel experiences have affected you as a student and a citizen of the world.
59. If money and family obligations left you entirely free, how and where would you spend the summer before college?
60. If you were given the opportunity to spend one year in service on behalf of others, which area would you choose? Explain what you would do and why.
61. If you had a day to spend as you wish, how would you use your time?
62. Imagine that you have the opportunity to travel back through time. At what point in history would you like to stop and why?
63. What do you think has been the most important social or political movement of the twentieth century? Do you share a personal identification with this cause?
64. If you were to develop a Mt. Rushmore representing the 20th century, whose faces would you select and why?
65. If you could be a fly on the wall to observe any situation--historical, personal, or otherwise--describe what you would choose to observe and why. What would you hope to learn and how would it benefit you?
66. If you could spend a year with any real or fictional person in the past, present, or future, whom would you choose? Why?
67. If you could hold a conversation with someone (living or deceased) you consider significant, who would you talk to and what would you talk about? Describe your conversation.
68. If you could become another person, real or fictional, for one day, who would you become and why?
69. If you had the power to change three things in your community or in the world, what would you change and why?
70. If you could change the course of a singular event in history, what event would you affect, and why? In addition, please provide insight on how you would implement your decision.
71. If you could go back and change one day in your life, what would you change and why?
72. Please write a personal journal entry as if the date were Sept. 20, 2030.
73. It has been said [by Andy Warhol] that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. Describe your fifteen minutes.
74. Recent developments in technology have revolutionized the way we gather information, communicate with one another, and even express ourselves as individuals. If there is a computer in your life, tell us how you use it. If there is not a computer in your life, tell us how you would.
75. Select a technological innovation of this century and discuss its effects on your family, local community or nation.
76. Elvis is alive! Okay, maybe not, but we have been persuaded that recent Elvis sightings in highway rest areas, grocery stores and laundromats are part of a wider conspiracy involving five of the following: the metric system, the Mall of America, the crash of the Hindenberg, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, lint, J.D. Salinger, and wax fruit. Construct your own theory of how and why five of these items are related.
Higher education
Not just academics
Assigned Friday, August12, 2011
Due Monday, September 12th, 2011
The college application essay is not a piece of prose or a business proposal - it is an interview in essay form. Many students agree that writing the college admissions essay is the most challenging part of the college application. The essay is important - after considering first the academic record, and then the SAT or ACT scores, the essay is the next opportunity the admissions official has to consider a student for acceptance.
The essay says, “I am a good fit for this college, and I can communicate in a way that is consistent with my education.” Since the essay is not a timed response, it should be error-free and clear. It should be edited and read by a parent or other adult, but not written or re-mastered by anyone other than the college applicant.
What to write: Choose a topic that reflects you. Imagine you are in an interview, what question do you wish the interviewer would ask you? What would you love to talk about? Your work at an animal shelter? The beta testing you did for a new video game? The campout you went on with your best friends? Write about it! The essay is the best way to tell the admissions board the interesting things about you. You are the person who can describe yourself best; real examples from your life are interesting to the reader.
If you can’t think of anything to write, write about one of the activities in the activities list you will include with your application. Be sure that you are telling why the activity is so important to you, why you stayed committed, and why you spent so much time participating. For the long essay (500 words or more) be sure to choose one topic only. If it is possible, make that topic something that will relate to your intended college major or future career interests. Tell it like it is, but follow proper essay format. Start with your main idea (response to the essay prompt), keep the examples in the body, and the attitude at the end.
Stay on topic - that is what editing is for. Your examples don’t have to be unique, thought provoking, or even exciting, they just have to be sincere. If you are relating a sad or tragic personal experience, use less than one hundred words to describe the experience (for a short essay, keep the description to a minimal). Focus on the positive outcome or lesson you learned.
Remember, this essay represents you to the college. Don’t give the mistaken impression of you as a “broken person.” A college may hesitate to admit a student who has emotional problems that may hinder his education. So, if your examples relate a negative experience, keep it short and near the beginning so you can highlight the positive outcome of your struggle and leave the reader with your positive attitude. Focus on your triumph.
How to begin:
Read the essay prompts and discuss your ideas with a good listener. Choose your examples and how you will present them to support your main idea. Determine your conclusion so you are sure to write each example with the correct goal and tone in mind.
Write as much as is possible in an hour, focusing only on content. Work on clarity and style at another time, since it may be difficult to edit and rework sentences during the creative process. At another time, read the essay aloud, cut out redundancies and unclear wording. Rework sentences and leave out any thing that does not relate to the main idea and final attitude. Expressing one idea clearly is more effective than a flood of words and ideas.
You are in control of this interview - keep to the point you want to make. Avoid listing small details that distract from your point. Consider when you have told a story and the listener keeps asking you questions about small details. You get frustrated because you feel he is missing the point of your anecdote. In the same way, too many small details only distract the reader from your point. Keep the examples moving towards your main idea.
Some Don’ts:
• Do not exceed the word limit - consider the reader. How would you feel if someone gave you more work to do?
• Avoid clichés - they do not distinguish you from other applicants since a cliché is someone else’s words.
• Avoid trying to say too much - stick to one topic. Remember that you have an accomplishment list elsewhere in the application.
• Avoid an excess of “big” words. The essay should be a readable picture of you. Be yourself; your message should impress, but being pretentious can be a turn-off.
• Avoid slang. You are introducing yourself, not selling yourself.
Some Dos:
• Speak in the first person - this is you talking. Use “I”. Don’t use “you” to describe yourself and your experiences and feelings.
• Allow enough time to read the essay many times.
• Edit. Write and rewrite to ensure clarity. Cut details that confuse or add nothing.
• Read your essay aloud to hear it and see how it flows. Make sure it is your voice.
• Ask others to read your essay and give their feedback. Ask that the feedback be constructive, such as; “I would love an example of that”; “What happened next?”; “This part confused me.” Ask the reader how he felt after reading the entire essay. His attitude will most likely be the same as the reader in the admissions office. Revise the ending to elicit the response you desire.
• With help, fix misspellings, errors and unclear writing. Ensure that your style and personality is represented, but don’t allow errors.
From Writing the College Essay by Lynn Scully. March/April, 2006. HomeEducator.com http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/14-2article6.html
Absolute no-nos: On par with shooting yourself in the foot
Plagiarizing another writer's work.
While this may seem like the easy way out, it is disgraceful and unethical. Justice will eventually be served, and think of the grave humiliation at having to explain to your parents that you were rejected from college because you had cheated. Not cool.
Embellishing the facts. Much like plagiarizing, embellishing or inventing your history is both unethical and unhealthy. Living a lie is too much work because you have to remember all the lies you have told. The truth is eminently memorable. Present it in your writing on college application essays.
Not answering the prompts. Although you may have some fantastic things to say, keep your comments to the point. Think of yourself as your own press secretary during the application process. If the President's press secretary just decided to spout off about his favorite movies when reporters asked about the U. S.'s Middle East policy, he would appear both foolish and damaging to the administration. Keep your reporters happy and well-informed, not confused.
Wordiness. If you write incredibly long sentences or paragraphs that become run-on sentence and bore the admissions officers, you may not hold the attention of your most important audience and that would not be good. No, it wouldn't. No. No. No. Keep the admissions officers from diving headfirst into their coffee cups.
The "SHIFT + F7" syndrome. Also known as the "thesaurus tick," it involves students' proclivities to utilize polysyllabic dictums in order to manifest a latent brilliance that would never emerge without irreparably altering every third word that does not consist of three syllables. Admissions officers will be impressed to meet you, not your thesaurus.
Bad but salvageable: You missed your foot! Close call!
Self-contradictions. It is vital to maintain consistency within your essay. You lose your trustworthiness in introducing yourself to admissions officers.
Talking glowingly about your boyfriend or girlfriend. Dissing them in your application would not make sense either. College admissions officers generally have little interest in your love life and see such discussions as a sign of immaturity.
Overt criticism of your school or upbringing. Many individuals worldwide would feel blessed to have enjoyed the same opportunities you have had. Furthermore, tired and overloaded admissions officers don't want to join your pity party.
Name-dropping. If you are concerned about world peace, that's great. We recommend that you not toss in ideas about which you are only marginally concerned in order to sound better rounded. Name-dropping should stay in the realm of cocktail parties.
Clichés. "I want to improve the condition of the Everyman... " You may be a willing future Peace Corps volunteer, but six other clowns wrote the exact same thing and don't really mean it. Who should the admissions officer heed? Make your words authentic and thus yours.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 10: Using the same essay for all the colleges you apply to
All colleges have their own identity and mission statement. Pay attention to what their ideology is and think about what you can do to cater to it.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 9: Plagiarizing other students' work
DO NOT COPY FROM OTHER PEOPLE’S ESSAYS! Many students assume that if they copy directly from other people paper’s and sources that no one will find out. This assumption is definitely wrong. Often, the papers they copy from are littered with errors, and they don’t take the time to check.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 8: Using a thesaurus for too many words
This mistake can lead to a big awkward tangle of an essay. Many times if you use a thesaurus and extract overly verbose words, they will stick out like sore thumbs in your essay, and the first assumption the reader will make is that you used a thesaurus.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 7: Not streamlining the essay with the application
Many applicants do not pay attention to the unity of their essay and their actual application. It is jarring to the reader if the essay seems to portray a different picture of the student than the application. This can also happen when you plagiarize; things do not match up, and the reader will quickly discredit you.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 6: Trying to impress the essay reader
Do not try to impress the admission officer. They will be able to sense a pretentious voice beneath descriptions of grand earth-shaking events and ontological musings. Write about what you know and draw from your own life experience.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 5: Picking an inappropriate topic
In an attempt to be clever many people resort to self-deprecation and end up painting a less than flattering image of themselves. You may think it would be witty to write a paper about your less than perfect grades in high school, but this can come off as not taking responsibility for your actions.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 4: Making an essay into a resume
Many times people want to impress the reader so much that they completely ignore the essay prompt and make the essay into a list of their accomplishments. Unless this is specifically what they asked for, just don’t do it.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 3: Brownnosing
If you are sending a school an application, they will simply assume that you want to attend. You don’t have to “lay it on thick” by lauding their campus and faculty.
College Admission Essay Mistake # 2: PROOFREAD!
You CANNOT edit your essay too much!! Write several drafts and edit each draft thoroughly for syntax, grammar, spelling and general structure. Admissions officers will immediately discredit you for making petty errors that would be easily fixable.
College Admission Essay Mistake #1: Not answering the question
The admissions committee uses certain essay prompts for a specific reason: they want you to answer it! So beware of steering away from the point and running off on tangents.
From Top Ten College Admission Essay Mistakes by Katherine C. Lee. College-Admssion-Essay.com http://www.college-admission-essay.com/collegeadmissionessaymistakes.html
ASSIGNMENT: In one hundred to 500 words, complete a word-processed essay, responding to only one of the following prompts. Please include the number and the text of the complete prompt at the top of your essay.1. Defend your least conventional belief.
2. What is your favorite word, and why?
3. Are you honorable? How do you know?
4. What can you contribute to a multi-cultural world?
5. What are the responsibilities of an educated person?
6. If you could invent something, what would it be, and why?
7. What invention would the world be better off without, and why?
8. Tell us what you think about a current scientific or social controversy.
9. Tell us the question you think a selective college should ask. Why?
10. Describe a risk you have taken and discuss its impact on your life.
11. What has been your most profound or surprising intellectual experience?
12. If you were to protest something, for or against, what would it be and why?
13. Respond to the question: How can I prepare educationally for a global society?
14.You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit page 217.
14. Relate an incident in your life in which honesty or character (or both) were at issue.
15. Recall an occasion when you took a risk that you now know was the right thing to do.
16. Relate a personal experience that caused you to discern or refine a value you hold.
17. Describe a situation in which your values or beliefs were challenged. How did you react?
18. If you were to write a book, on what theme or subject matter would it be based, and why?
19. Discuss an important personal relationship you have had and explain how it has changed your life.
20. First experiences can be defining. Cite a first experience that you have had and explain its impact on you.
21. Tell us about a situation where you have not been successful and what you have learned from the experience.
22. Tell us about the neighborhood that you grew up in and how it helped shape you into the kind of person you are today.
23. Once you have completed your education, will you return to your hometown to begin your adult life? Why or why not?
24. Identity and culture are clearly intertwined. How has your experience of culture influenced the development of your own personal identity?
25. Anatole France said, "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." On what subject do you disagree with most people, and why?
26.Tell us how a particular play, film, piece of music, dance performance, scientific theory or experiment or work of art has influenced you. If you choose a film or play, assume we know the plot.
27. What effect has any voluntary or independent research, reading or study, work in the arts, science project, etc. (outside of school), had on your intellectual and personal growth in recent years? Discuss what influence this involvement has had on your academic goals.
28. According to Stephen Carter, we can admire those with integrity even if we disagree with them. Are there people you admire even though you deeply disagree with them? What do you admire about them? How do you reconcile this apparent contradiction in your assessment?
29. Reflect on these words of Dorothy Day: "No one has the right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do." What is "the work to be done" for your generation, and what impact does this have on your future as a leader? Write a creative, reflective, or provocative essay.
30.The Committee on Undergraduate Admissions is interested in learning more about you. Please use this essay to relay information about you that cannot be found elsewhere on your application. You may choose to write about your future ambitions and goals, a special talent or unusual interest that sets you apart from your peers, or a significant event or relationship that has influenced you during your life.
31. You are hosting brunch for historical, literary, or other disreputable persons (think: Mad Hatter's Tea Party). What is your menu? Who are your guests? In answering this question, imagine a scenario: We want some exposition, serious or silly, we would accept some dialogue, and we are willing to trust you to respond in such a way that your brain power, your imagination, your sense of taste, and your capacity to tell a story reveal something true about you.
32. Names have a mysterious reality of their own. We may well feel an unexpected kinship with someone who shares our name, or may feel uneasy at the thought that our name is not as much our own as we imagined. Most of us do not choose our names; they come to us unbidden, sometimes with ungainly sounds and spellings, complicated family histories, allusions to people we never knew. Sometimes we have to make our peace with them, sometimes we bask in our names associations. Ruminate on names and naming, your name, and your names relationship to you.
33. Of all the activities you listed above, which one has proved to be the worst, use of your time, and why? Use one specific example to illustrate how this activity has not been worthwhile.
34. Sartre said "Hell is other people," while Streisand sang, "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world." With whom do you agree?
35. As a prospective 21st century college graduate, you will enter a workforce and live in a society with an increasingly global perspective. How will your current knowledge of international issues and cultures influence your undergraduate study?
36. Using a piece of wire, a car window sticker, an egg carton, and any inexpensive hardware store item, create something that would solve a problem. Tell us about your creation, but don't worry: we won't require proof that it works.
37. Describe your most important academic accomplishment or intellectual experience to date. We don't want to know about test scores or course grades, rather we want to know about your creativity, your willingness to take intellectual risks or your affinity for scholarly endeavors.
38. Describe an intellectual experience of the past two years that has given you great satisfaction.
39. Do you believe that your academic record accurately reflects your abilities? Explain.
40. What confuses you most in life, and why?
41. George Washington said, "Associate with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; it is better to be alone than in bad company." About which of your friends do you and your parents disagree? Why do you feel that the continued company of this friend is a good thing?
42. Explain how your experiences as a teenager significantly differ from those of your friends. Include comparisons.
43. If you were to look back on your high school years, what advice would you give to someone beginning their high school career?
44. Imagine that you are a "hero" or "heroine" for one day during any time period and under any circumstances. Write a creative essay describing your experience.
45. What is the best advice you ever received? Why? And did you follow it?
46. Tell us about a conversation you've had that changed your perspective or was otherwise meaningful to you.
47. Of all the things you hope or expect to gain from your college experience, which two or three would you place at the top of your list? Explain what you want to gain and why these experiences are most important to you.
48. You are about to write your future college roommate a letter. Please provide the roommate with a personal story that will give him/her some insight into your personality.
49. What single adjective do you think would be most frequently used to describe you by those who know you best? Briefly explain.
50.If you were to describe yourself by a quotation, what would the quote be? Explain your answer
51. Create a metaphor for yourself using something you would find in your kitchen or your garage. List as many similarities or relationships between yourself and this object as you can think of, then elaborate on this comparison in an essay. Why is this object a good representation of you?
52. Discuss how some negative experience (disability, illness, failure) has had a positive influence on your life.
53. Describe a personal habit that helps to define you as a person.
54. Discuss how a specific place can be used to help illustrate your personality.
55. If you had to describe yourself as an animal, what animal would you select and why?
56. Describe a fictional character. Be sure to point out what you do or do not like about the character and relate these attributes to yourself.
57. What have you undertaken or done on your own in the last year or two that has nothing to do with academic work?
58. Discuss how your travel experiences have affected you as a student and a citizen of the world.
59. If money and family obligations left you entirely free, how and where would you spend the summer before college?
60. If you were given the opportunity to spend one year in service on behalf of others, which area would you choose? Explain what you would do and why.
61. If you had a day to spend as you wish, how would you use your time?
62. Imagine that you have the opportunity to travel back through time. At what point in history would you like to stop and why?
63. What do you think has been the most important social or political movement of the twentieth century? Do you share a personal identification with this cause?
64. If you were to develop a Mt. Rushmore representing the 20th century, whose faces would you select and why?
65. If you could be a fly on the wall to observe any situation--historical, personal, or otherwise--describe what you would choose to observe and why. What would you hope to learn and how would it benefit you?
66. If you could spend a year with any real or fictional person in the past, present, or future, whom would you choose? Why?
67. If you could hold a conversation with someone (living or deceased) you consider significant, who would you talk to and what would you talk about? Describe your conversation.
68. If you could become another person, real or fictional, for one day, who would you become and why?
69. If you had the power to change three things in your community or in the world, what would you change and why?
70. If you could change the course of a singular event in history, what event would you affect, and why? In addition, please provide insight on how you would implement your decision.
71. If you could go back and change one day in your life, what would you change and why?
72. Please write a personal journal entry as if the date were Sept. 20, 2030.
73. It has been said [by Andy Warhol] that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. Describe your fifteen minutes.
74. Recent developments in technology have revolutionized the way we gather information, communicate with one another, and even express ourselves as individuals. If there is a computer in your life, tell us how you use it. If there is not a computer in your life, tell us how you would.
75. Select a technological innovation of this century and discuss its effects on your family, local community or nation.
76. Elvis is alive! Okay, maybe not, but we have been persuaded that recent Elvis sightings in highway rest areas, grocery stores and laundromats are part of a wider conspiracy involving five of the following: the metric system, the Mall of America, the crash of the Hindenberg, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, lint, J.D. Salinger, and wax fruit. Construct your own theory of how and why five of these items are related.
Higher education
Not just academics
Friday, November 5, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
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