It’s time to write your college admissions essay. You sit down, turn on the computer, open a new Word document, then … nothing. You start to write, but the words just won’t come. You find yourself falling asleep at the keyboard.
Important fact: if you are bored when you write your essay, we are incredibly bored when we read it.
So what’s a student to do? Here are some tips to help ease your essay-writing nerves.
1. Show us that you can write well. “Well” is the key word here. Your essay should appropriately respond to a topic, be organized and coherent, demonstrate a skillful use of semantics and showcase your creativity.
2. You may use one of our suggested topics or write about one of your own. You should always write with a purpose and display your critical thinking abilities. Don’t just tell us that recycling is important. We’re going
green at Elon – we know that recycling is important. Move beyond the obvious and develop an original idea about the importance of recycling.
3. Demonstrate your clear-thinking abilities by organizing your essay. Your thoughts should follow a logical progression. A true essay is made of multiple paragraphs, not just one or two. These paragraphs should all be related to the same topic. To test your focus, have someone read your essay. If he/she cannot explain the main point of your essay in two sentences, you need to make some adjustments. Go back through and
ask yourself: How does this paragraph help the reader understand my reason for writing?
4. Use varied sentence structures and vocabulary. Impress us. Know this, though: We can tell when you’ve used the Word synonym feature on your entire essay. If you don’t know what a word means, don’t throw it in because you think it sounds good. Inevitably it will end up a detriment to your essay.
5. Give us personality! The rest of your application does not offer many opportunities for personality. This is your chance to be creative and unique. We can always tell when a student enjoyed writing his or her college essay – it comes right through the page!
Janell Martin, Assistant Director of Admissions