Most colleges these days require you to submit a personal statement or an essay as a part of your college application. Your college essay may even have up to 25% weightage of your college application. Many essay writing services also cite college admission essays to be a make-or-break factor for your admission. It may become a deciding factor in your acceptance, especially for the highly competitive and reputable colleges, where most of the applicants with exceptional test scores, good grades, and excellent extracurricular track records, apply to.

As an aspirant seeking admission to your dream college, you need to stand out in your college admission essay as this essay is an opportunity the college provides you to share who you really are apart from good academics, and why would you be a good candidate for admission.

What do Colleges Look for in the Admission Essays?

Many essay writing services have over time, analyzed and recognized what the admission officers of the colleges look for, in your application.

The essay writing helps professionals say that while filling out the college application forms, a student gets the opportunity to highlight their accomplishments and relevant academic or professional experience, but those things do not necessarily paint an accurate picture of who a student is, as a person.

Through your essays, the officers wish to understand your personality, background, and the values you inculcate in order to get a clearer picture of you beyond your grades and academic achievements. They often look for how well you have demonstrated your values and qualities, they wish to know about how vulnerable and authentic you are. Your essays are also a reflection of yourself and a great medium to get insights about yourself.

Writing these essays can be quite a nerve-wracking task for students as so many rides on this one essay. To many, it may sound like a big chore, and it will indeed require in-depth research on how to go about writing the essay. If you are an aspiring college applicant who wishes to know all the nitty-gritty of crafting an effective college admission essay, keep on reading further to gain more insights.

Getting Started on an Admission Essay-

Once you start filling out the application form for your dream college, the best way to finish everything within the deadline is to chart a timeline for everything that is due on the application. Give them an order of priority, and proceed accordingly.

The essay writing help experts suggest that if there are several essays including the statement of purpose, a student should start writing the longer statement first, before moving on to the shorter ones. This is because the longer 500–800-word essays tend to consume a bit longer of your time than shorter responses of 150-300 words. The brainstorming that goes into writing the longer essays will also help you to come up with ideas for your shorter essays.

General Guidelines for Writing an Admission Essay-

Before you jump in on what to write in your admission essays, the essay writing help experts recommend that you adhere to the following general guidelines-

1. Keep your essays brief-

Most of the college applications specify a word limit on their form for each required essay. This helps the students stay on track and write only the relevant answers in their essays. However, even when the applications do not specify a word limit, your essays should be concise and not go on for very long. It is observed by many essay writing services that the admission officers tend to start getting bored near the 500 wordmarks. Always aim to reach the minimum word count, but do not proceed to write a novel in the application.

2. Be authentic-

The point of an admission essay is not to brag about yourself or portray yourself as a hero to impress the ones reading it. The objective is to help the college understand who you really are as a person. Be authentic about your accomplishments, and keep in mind, showing a little vulnerability goes a long way.

3. Do a lot of brainstorming and research-

Do not refrain from digging a little deeper and doing a lot of brainstorming before finalizing your answer. Most college applications have a prompt that asks you to reflect on any significant experience in your life, but they don’t want you to simply retell the incident. As you are writing, make sure to keep the tone reflective and talk about how you felt, and what you learned from it.

4. Refrain from monotony-

Since most of the colleges ask for your resume and provide you with a separate section for writing about the extracurricular activities and achievements, there is no need to repeat all this information in your essays. Be concise, and only curate the answers as per the prompt specified in the application.

Things Most College Admission Essays Have in Common-

According to the essay writing help experts, and essay writing services, there are many things that all college application essays have in common-

1. All the essays have a sense of purpose-

A well-written essay does not just provide an answer to a question, but it serves the required purpose. That said, the purpose is to give the admission officer a glimpse into your personality, and who you wish to become after attaining higher education.

2. All the admission essays are the creation of careful planning-

A successful essay is planned out, with a good amount of time and effort invested in it. It is very easy to determine how much planning has gone into crafting an essay by looking at the quality of the content it has.

3. All good essays tend to tell a story-

There is nothing more than a college admission officer likes, than an essay that has a story backed up with strong evidence. Whenever you are telling a story or making a statement, be sure to back it up with an example from your life. Remember that you are trying to tell a story about your life through this essay.

4. All good essays retain the reader’s attention till the end-

Most essay writing help professionals insist that the first sentence of the essay must be so to capture the interest of readers. The sentence that follows, should leave your readers wanting for more. One means to do so is to write in a way that reflects your personality. Include some counterintuitive parts about your personality, like for example, you are a poet, who enjoys kickboxing in your spare time. This will intrigue the readers and make them want to learn more about you. 

5. All good essays are error-free-

Nothing distracts a person more than a glaring grammatical error smack dab in the middle of what could’ve been a perfect essay. It is always advised that one should either revise all the drafts, take the help of someone else to review your essay or take help from professionals that provide essay writing help or essay writing services for college admission essays.

How to Craft an Effective College Admission Essay-

According to the essay writing help experts, the admission officers are more interested in looking at how you present your experiences, rather than just hearing about them. A remarkably written essay will stand apart from the crowd, and the admission officers will spend more time reading it. To write such an extraordinary essay, you can make use of literary devices like metaphor, rhetoric questions, etc. to catch the attention of your readers. Literary devices work as they often go well together and complement each other. They can be used to weave an essay that is original, creative, and brilliant.

To craft an extraordinary essay, the following steps should be followed-

Step 1: Start early

Essay writing experts say that the best way to start an application is to set a timeline and apply as early as two months before the deadline. This gives you a lot of time to brainstorm and come up with the perfect answer for all the prompts. Remember to plan in a way that you have enough time for breaks in between each brainstorming, writing, and editing stage.

Step 2: Choose an exclusive prompt

If you want to write an essay that leaves a mark on the admission officers, you should choose a unique topic or prompt to write the essay. Think carefully about how to make that topic personal to you. You will need to have a deep insight and craft your story in a way that preserves the authenticity of your personality. You can choose a topic that is either-

a. personal, or holds meaning for you,

b. has an unusual angle or is uncommon, or

c. reveals something unique about your personality.

There are many universities and colleges that use a shared portal for college applications (Common App, Coalition App, or UCAS in the case of UK-based universities). These applications have a set prompt for personal statement questions.

For example, the University of Washington has a set of questions like- “Tell a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it.”

OR

“Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. The community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW.”

Such questions are commonly asked by all universities. Thus, the essay writing services recommend and often help with developing a common answer, and then curating it based on the university.

Step 3: Brainstorm

Brainstorming not just stops at finding a good topic to write about, but it extends to brainstorming about what you are going to write about, and how you are going to tell your story in a way that entices the readers. There are several steps involved in the brainstorming process for writing a college admission essay-

1. Analyse the topic-

One way to finalize a topic is to think about it, about what it is asking you, and break it apart to find answers for each word individually. For example, in the above-mentioned question by Washington University ``Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. The community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW.”

This question is essentially asking you about your personal history, your childhood, family, and the groups you identify with, who all contributed towards shaping you as the person you are at present. This question opens a possibility of several angles to be explored for curating a final answer. You can either talk about your family if there were any struggles or challenges growing up in your family or about your cultural history or heritage. You also get the liberty to choose whether you want to talk about the positives or the negatives of the effects that the home environment had on you. No matter how you proceed with it, the readers finally wish to read about your academics and plans for the future.

2. Consider important experiences or events in your life

The goal behind writing an essay is to convey your story in a few words. Brainstorm about what experiences or events you wish to share with the admission officers and how you wish to convey these events. The rule of thumb is that everything in that essay should define ‘what makes you, you?’

3. Brainstorm on how would you proceed to write about an event-

Regardless of your essay’s topic, try to craft a surprising story angle or any original insight you have over the topic. This should be given more emphasis if you are writing about a common topic such as who is your role model.

Step 4: Outline your essay

Once your topic and ideas are finalized, organize these ideas as an outline for your essay. This will keep you on track while writing. Essay writing helps experts say that there is no set structure for a college admission essay. You can toy around with expressions and approaches, and use literary devices while crafting your essay. However, there are two common approaches to structure your essay as a series of vignettes, or as a solo narrative.

1. Vignette series approach-

The vignette, or the montage structure, interlaces together several stories that have a common theme. Each story in this structure should portray your values or qualities and should conclude with an acumen, or future outlook. This structure helps to provide a glimpse into your background, personality, and identity and shows the admission officers how your qualities are reflected in various areas of your life.

2. Single narrative structure-

A single narrative structure uses a chronological storyline to show the character development of a student over time. This narrative is effective if you wish to demonstrate personal development or tell how you have overcome a significant challenge in your life.

Step 5- Essay Structure

As per the essay writing help experts, the best structure for writing effective essays can be summed up in the following points-

1. Start your essay with an unexpected statement to pique the curiosity of readers.

2. Continue the storyline by showing the aspects of your personality, not just telling it.

3.  Paint vivid imagery through your words. Use appropriate style and tone to do so.

4. If you are using any quotes or excerpts from other sources, give them proper citations.

5. Craft a very strong and impactful conclusion.

6. Respect the word counts.

7. Make sure you revise your drafts and show it to others to receive constructive feedback.

Still, Struggling with What to Write?

If you are still struggling with how to write a perfect college application essay, you can get help from essay writing services or essay writing help like helpinhomework.org. Your dedicated writer at helpinhomework.org will provide you with the best essay writing help and craft a perfect college essay for you.

Our essay writing services experts will learn about your background and interests, brainstorm the essay topics and prompts, and give you a step-by-step walkthrough of the essay writing process.

With the help of our essay writing help experts, you will get a unique, well-curated, and personalized essay to proudly submit with your college applications. Our essay writing services are available round the clock to help you meet your deadlines without any issues or delays. Our essay writing help experts are well versed in all subject matters including law, English, and geography. The in-house essay writing helps experts know how to brainstorm and create a perfect structure for your essays, and will help you craft a unique essay that fits your needs.

To avail of the best round-the-clock essay writing help and essay writing services, reach out to us at helpinhomework, and we will get your essay started right away.