Title: The College Application Essay
1The College Application Essay
- Presented by
- Chris McGovern Bater
- Class of 1980
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2Bronx HS of Science Alumni Mentor Program
3Anatomy of a College Application
- Personal Data
- Grades
- Scores (SAT, ACT, APs, SAT IIs)
- Raves
- Teacher Recommendations
- Extracurricular, Personal Volunteer Activities
and Work Experience - Short Answer
- Essay
- Supplemental Applications
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4Anatomy of a College Application
- How to showcase YOU.
- Gather all of your information.
- Determine the best way to present it.
- The College Application is a package.
- You dont want your essay to repeat or conflict
with other pieces of the application. - Fewer and fewer colleges offer the chance to
interview. - This may be your only chance to deliver your
personal message.
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5The Essay
- 500 words to personally introduce yourself to the
college of your choice.
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6The Essay
- SELL yourself to the school.
- Help the Admissions Committee categorize you.
- Coming from Bronx Science, you are already
categorized. - Now tell them something that they dont already
know about you. - TELL YOUR STORY.
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7The Essay
- What is more important?
- What you write?
- or
- How you write?
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8What is the Admissions Committee Looking for?
- Who are you and what is important to you as a
person? - How you grew as a person as a result of a
specific situation? - How you have grown in a position that you have
held? - How you have become the person you are now?
-
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9What is the Admissions Committee Looking for?
- Bryn Mawr College is very specific
- Demonstrate your ability to express your views
clearly and rationally, to resolve intellectual
problems and to make new discoveries, - and
- Illustrate that you are a good match for Bryn
Mawr by revealing your thoughts, attitudes,
experiences, aspirations, and personal qualities.
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10What is the Admissions Committee Looking for in
your Essay or Personal Statement?
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11What is the Admissions Committee Looking for in
your Essay or Personal Statement?
- Buzz Words
- intellectual curiosity
- passion
- dedication
- commitment
- accomplishment
- leadership
- sense of humor
- sensitivity
- tolerance
- compassion
- integrity
- motivation
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12Why your choice of essay topic matters
- The college regards your choices as a way to
evaluate your preferences, values, mental
processes, creativity, sense of humor, and depth
of knowledge. Your writing reflects your power of
persuasion, organizational abilities, style, and
mastery of standard written English.
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13How to get started
- Review several complete application forms
- Prewriting Brainstorming
- focus on strengths of character and personality,
NOT things that you have done - Create a self-outline
- look for patterns and connections that help prove
your point
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14The Essay
- Keep your focus narrow and personal.
- Your essay must prove a single point or thesis.
- The reader must be able to find your main idea
and follow it from beginning to end. - Essays that are to comprehensive may end up
sounding watered down.
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15The Essay
- Prove Your Point
- Develop your main idea with vivid and specific
facts, events, quotations, examples, and reasons.
There's a big difference between simply stating a
point of view and letting an idea unfold in the
details.
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16The Essay
- Three basic styles of essays
- Standard Essay
- Take two or three points from your self-outline,
give a paragraph to each, and make sure you
provide plenty of evidence. Choose things not
apparent from the rest of your application or
"light up" some of the activities and experiences
listed there. - Less is More
- In this format, you focus on a single interesting
point about yourself. It works well for brief
essays of a paragraph or half a page. - Narrative Essay
- tells a short and vivid story. Omit the
introduction, write one or two narrative
paragraphs that grab and engage the reader's
attention, then explain what this little tale
reveals about you.
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17The Essay
- Tell a Story
- Employ elements of story-telling including
action, sensory detail, even dialogue, to make
your essay compelling. - Remember that "action" can be physical or mental
(your thought process). - Use your true, unique voice to tell the story,
not a flowery, inflated or pretentious style. If
you are thorough and thoughtful in expressing the
meaning in your experience, this will be
impressive enough.
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18The Essay
- Defend a Belief or Value
- Pay attention to the issues you follow in the
news, discuss with your friends or write about in
your journal. Once you've identified why this
particular issue is important to you, ask
yourself, "So what?" Then answer this underlying
question with your essay, which also gives you an
opportunity to reveal your maturity and
perspective by demonstrating your connection to
the larger world. Bonus you'll also show that
you are ready to be an active participant in a
diverse community, such as a college.
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19The Essay
- Write a Character Portrait
- Reveal what aspects of character you value. Do
pay attention to the difference between exterior
and interior descriptions. - Do remember that this character portrait is meant
to reveal you not only who you are now, but who
you will become as a result. You would do well,
though, to show support or plan to support values
in college. Is there a research project, program,
application, or work of art that has personal
meaning and that you intend to pursue?
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20The Essay
- WARNING!
- Don't try to strategize or "game" the application
process. - There is no way you can ever really know what
"they" are looking for. - JUST BE HONEST AND TRUE.
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21The Essay
- The Topic
- should be personal to you
- dont be afraid to reveal your thoughts,
feelings, and opinions - The Tone
- find your natural voice for expressing these
ideas
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22Consider Your Audience
- During admissions season, admissions officers
read for six to eight hours per day. Processing
up to 30 files per day. - Your essay may only get 90 seconds of attention.
-
- MAKE IT COUNT!
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23Consider Your Audience
- Make the essay memorable.
- While the essay should be bold, it should also be
tasteful. - The best remembered essays are those that move us
emotionally or strike a familiar chord. - Admissions officers read hundreds of essays, so
sameness is detrimental.
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24Writing Tips from Stanford University
- Answer the question, understand the purpose of
the essay, and consider your audience. - Tell a story
- Tell a story only you can tell.
- Reflect on the meaning of the story.
- Write about the specific rather than the general.
- Don't insult your readers' intelligence by
turning the essay into a resume in prose or by
attempting to explain away some short coming. - Avoid gimmicks of any kind.
- Don't exceed the suggested length.
- KEEP IT SIMPLE. Don't use "big" words just to
use them. Construct short sentences.
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25The Process
- Pique the reader's interest
- Hook them in.
- Tell the story. Be Specific.
- Sum it up.
- Leave them wanting more.
- Leave them wanting to meet YOU!
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26How to be a better writer?
- Be a better reader!
- Read well. Read good prose by good writers, and
read carefully, looking not only for information,
but for logic, structure, interesting turns of
phrase, and anything else that makes the writing
work. Read a variety of things, including
British, American, and even Australian authors
read The New Yorker and Harper's read the NY
Times editorial page and compare the styles of
the better columnists. Read literature,
philosophy, and poetry read good scientific
writers and non-fiction writers read The NY
Review of Books and The Times Literary
Supplement read the NY Times Magazines Lives
essays. Enjoy reading good writing, even in
popular genres, but balance it with enough
challenging material.
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27General Writing Tips
- Avoid clichéd topics
- Adventure travel
- Community Service
- how I helped save the world
- how the project made me feel lucky
- Dead relatives/pets
- How we/I won the game.
- Comparing a sport to the game of life
- My favorite coach
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28General Writing Tips
- Eliminate unnecessary adjectives and adverbs.
- Use sharp descriptions and spare dialog.
- Be personal, not impersonal.
- Put away the thesaurus.
- Don't attempt to tackle a topic that can't
possibly be covered in 500 words.
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29General Writing Tips
- Show, dont tell.
- Be as specific as you can when recounting events.
- Give the reader that "you are there" feeling.
- Be vivid.
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30How to finish the Essay
- Draft
- Edit
- Let it cool.
- Feedback time.
- Edit down.
- Proofread, proofread, proofread!
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31Essay Checklist
- Is the essay interesting?
- Will it stand out because it shows who I really
am? - Is it about something important to me?
- Do I show how I think?
- Do I illustrate the issue, story or experience?
- Is my presentation neat, logical, and clearly
stated? - Are there good transitions between separate
ideas? - Did I make a conclusion rather than ending with a
summary?
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32Sample Essay Topics
- Common Application Topics
- Evaluate a significant experience, achievement,
risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have
faced and its impact on you. - Discuss some issue of personal, local, national,
or international concern and its importance to
you. - Indicate a person who has had a significant
influence on you, and describe that influence. - Describe a character in fiction, a historical
figure, or a creative work (as in art, music,
science, etc.) that has had an influence on you,
and explain that influence. - A range of academic interests, personal
perspectives, and life experiences adds much to
the educational mix. Given your personal
background, describe an experience that
illustrates what you would bring to the diversity
in a college community, or an encounter that
demonstrated the importance of diversity to you. - Topic of your choice.
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33Sample Essay Topics
- NYU Supplemental Application
- If you were a member of the committee that was
reviewing your application what is the single
most important aspect of the application that you
would emphasize in order to convince the rest of
the committee to offer this candidate admission? - Please tell us about something you did last
Sunday afternoon (or the Sunday before that or
the Sunday before that). - Many students apply to NYU because of its NYC
location. Other than location, please tell us
why you feel that NYU is a good match for you. - Please tell us what led you to select your
anticipated academic program and what interest
you most about the discipline.
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34Sample Essay Topics
- Princeton University Short Questions
- Your favorite book.
- Your favorite recording.
- Your favorite website.
- Your favorite source for inspiration.
- Two adjectives that your friends would use to
describe you. - Favorite word.
- Favorite keepsake or memento.
- Favorite movie.
- Using one of the quotes below (or your favorite
quotation) as a jumping off point, tell us about
an event or experience that helped you define one
of your values.
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