Every admission officer at any university in the world needs proper convincing from students seeking admission. A well-written essay telling the admission officer why you want to study at the university, and why should be considered ahead of other applying students should do the job.
Call it selling yourself and your capabilities to the school. While it may seem easy to just write down the first 500 words or thought that comes to your mind, it would take a lot more than thought out words to sell yourself.
Have you ever asked why so many students especially international students apply to a school, and very few actually get the admission? Yes, you might say they are just lucky, or more brilliant. Let us take an example; The University of British Columbia had a total of 16,540 student application and only 5,000 students were successful. Does that mean that 5,000 students were lucky and you are not? or the 5,000 students were more brilliant? Hardly.
The fact still remains that so many students will apply to a university, but only those who submit a good enough essay to convince the admission officer to stand a chance of being successful. If you have all your documents and other requirements complete and ready, then the next step is to write a well-organized essay that will determine your acceptance or outright rejection.
So, in this article, we will discuss some tips to help you write a great essay for college admission. Writing an essay back in high school looked like;
Good Essay Structure in High School
- You begin with a good Introduction
- Follow up with the thesis statement
- Give three paragraphs of good examples or evidence
- Then round up things with a nice conclusion.
These may have worked fine back then, but for this setting, you need to forget all of that because they are quite different. A college essay must be about significant moments in your life, good or bad, your goals, experiences, challenges, influences, or lessons, and how they have shaped and formed you.
You don’t start telling your life history else you bore the reader, think of it as telling the most important story about yourself and how it has made you unique from other students.
All these should fall in line with what the reader wants. And the only way to know what the reader wants (in our case the Admission Officer), is by proper research and planning.
7 ideas to create a great college essay
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Read The Instruction Carefully
This is very important, you must write according to the topic given to you, read the instructions for the essay, understand them, and write accordingly.
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Prepare Yourself and Do Proper Research
Do rigorous research, find out what is expected of you, what the college wants, what is expected from applying students, how best to approach or begin your essay.
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Outline Your Goals and A good Story
Here, you should focus more on the stories that have impacted some changes in your life and how it has transformed you.
Everything must not be based on academics, think of it as a face to face interview with the admission officer, and you are given the opportunity to share important information about yourself.
Pick a story, use it to convey your thoughts, abilities, achievements, goals, and beliefs to the officer.
- Read Other Peoples Essays for Ideas
You can read successful essays for ideas but do not copy anybody. This should help you create your own ideas, and have a clear picture of what you should and should not do.
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Present Your Ideas with A Good Example
You should explain some of your ideas with a good example so you don’t lose the attention of the reader. You have enough time to write your essay so ensure that everything you write is articulate and also supports your viewpoint.
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Write Different Letters
Write so many letters and key points that you would later combine to produce the perfect one. It may seem a difficult task, but when you write the first and you begin the second you will see visually the errors on the first.
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Let People Proofread For You
Let other people read your finished work and point out some of your errors. My advice for you is to find someone with years of academic experience in the language you are writing with (e.g. English Language), ask them to help you proofread your work and point out errors
