Big No No’s – College Application Essay

I’m usually a positive person, but I’d like to focus on some negatives right now: the things one should avoid doing when writing a college application essay. Keeping these in mind when writing your essay just may make the difference in getting you into that top-choice school.

1. Don’t brag, whether about your heroism or how you won the game. Sure you’re proud, but was the moment honestly transformative?
2. Don’t write about pop culture icons or about predictable people: MLK, Einstein, even mom, dad & siblings. The former make you look shallow, and none of them have met you personally save mom, dad and your siblings, whom every student claims is their hero. You need to find a story unique to you.
3. Don’t write about your drug use, sex life, time in jail, or make any deep confessions. Yes, they’ve all been done, and yes, they are all too risky.
4. Don’t repeat information that is already on your application. The college already has lots of information about you the student.
5. Don’t lecture or preach whether about social, political, or religious beliefs. These topics are not taboo, however, you need to be careful how you write about them. You never know who your audience will be.
6. Don’t write using clichés, use too many quotes, or overly rely on the thesaurus. Quality writing matters!
7. Don’t try to flatter the school you’re applying to. The school wants to know about you. They’re confident in their ability to educate you.
8. Don’t fake it. Don’t make yourself out to be someone you’re not. Admissions officers can sniff out a fraud, and when you write about a story that’s sincerely impacted your life, your writing reflects this.

Test Preps’ Essay Workshop for the College Application covers these and many more “don’ts”, but this list will get you started in avoiding some of the most common pitfalls when writing those application essays. And now that you know what not to do, how about those things you should be doing? Sign up for a class and wait for our next blog post!

Worth a BIG Effort – the College Application Essay

You’ve racked up great scores on the ACT and SAT tests, you’ve worked hard to get good grades and your recommendations are stellar. Yet you find yourself on your preferred school’s waiting list. A casual effort on the college application essay may be the reason.

Over the past 10 years the college application essay has become an increasingly important metric for getting into college. The reason? Colleges get multiple looks at you as a student through test scores, grades and teacher recommendations, but little sense of you as a person. The college application essay is often the only means that admissions officers get to know the person behind the scores. And this is often the difference between getting into the college you’ve dreamed of  versus settling for your “safe” school.

The essay is also the best way to differentiate yourself from the crowd. Have solid SAT and ACT scores? Great GPA? Active in athletics and a number of clubs? Studied abroad in France? So have thousands of other students across the country, many of whom share a resume that looks exactly like your own. The essay is the only part of the application where students present themselves as real people who hold sincere values and vulnerabilities, with distinct personalities and problems to overcome.

At Test Preps, Inc., we tutor hundreds of students each year who put many hours into studying SAT vocabulary and pacing themselves on ACT tests only to dash off an essay with little guidance. Parents and students need to know that an essay alone cannot make up for a poor academic record, but admissions officers admit that you can write yourself into a school. To do so, however, students need to know the essentials of a successful college application essay and the pitfalls to avoid, which will be the topic of our next blog.