Heres What Admissions Officers Look For In A College Entrance Essay

Here's What Admissions Officers Look For In A College Entrance Essay This forces you to read each word individually and increases your chances of finding a typo. Reading aloud will also help you ensure your punctuation is correct, and it’s often easier to hear awkward sentences than see them. Don’t rely solely on the computer spelling and grammar check. Computers can't detect the context in which you're using words, so be sure to review carefully. They might be fine in a text message, but not in your college essay. As I studied Chinese at my school, I marveled how if just one stroke was missing from a character, the meaning is lost. I loved how long words were formed by combining simpler characters, so HuÇ' (火) meaning fire and Shān (å±±) meaning mountain can be joined to create HuÇ'shān (火山), which means volcano. I love spending hours at a time practicing the characters and I can feel the beauty and rhythm as I form them. I am on Oxford Academy’s Speech and Debate Team, in both the Parliamentary Debate division and the Lincoln-Douglass debate division. I write screenplays, short stories, and opinionated blogs and am a regular contributor to my school literary magazine, The Gluestick. Classroom is the educational resource for people of all ages. Whether you’re studying times tables or applying to college, Classroom has the answers. Read back through your essay and make sure that all of your examples prove your point adequately. Let your essay sit for a while before you proofread it. Approaching the essay with a fresh perspective gives your mind a chance to focus on the actual words rather than seeing what you think you wrote. Start with your main idea and follow it from beginning to end. All good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, so shape your story so that it has an introduction, body, and conclusion. Following this natural progression will make your essay coherent and easy to read. These pieces rarely showcase who you are as an applicant. The single most important part of your essay preparation may be simply making sure you truly understand the question or essay prompt. When you're finished writing, you need to make sure that your essay still adheres to the prompt. Take time to understand the question or prompt being asked. Regardless of how old we are, we never stop learning. Create an outline that breaks down the essay into sections. Get your creative juices flowing by brainstorming all the possible ideas you can think of to address your college essay question. Avoid sorting through your existing English class essays to see if the topics fit the bill. Upon our first meeting, she opened up about her two sons, her hometown, and her knitting group--no mention of her disease. Without even standing up, the three of usâ€"Ivana, me, and my grandmother--had taken a walk together. Have a friend read your essay and ask her what she thinks could be explained more clearly. List three to five topics that you are interested in or would like to write about. Brainstorm ideas for what you’re going to write if the assignment is specifically about one topic. Make a sub-list for each topic that you could write about. I have accumulated over 300 community service hours that includes work at homeless shelters, libraries, and special education youth camps. I have been evaluated by the College Board and have placed within the top percentile. The rules for writing a good essay are no different. After you brainstorm, you’ll know what you want to say, but you must decide how you’re going to say it. Volunteering at a cancer treatment center has helped me discover my path. When I see patients trapped in not only the hospital but also a moment in time by their diseases, I talk to them. For six hours a day, three times a week, Ivana is surrounded by IV stands, empty walls, and busy nurses that quietly yet constantly remind her of her breast cancer. Her face is pale and tired, yet kind--not unlike my grandmother’s. I need only to smile and say hello to see her brighten up as life returns to her face.