10 College Application Essay Dos And Donts

10 College Application Essay Dos And Don'ts Instead, mention how your education can help your career. If you stop at one point to say, “Why did I mention that? Mention hobbies, experiences and goals that match what the review committee is looking for. That same year, the rest of the Ivies came in under 14%; Northwestern, Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt admitted about 10% of their applicants; Notre Dame accepted 18%. The most selective public school was the University of California, Berkeley at 14.8%, followed by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (25.8%) and the University of Virginia (28%). In 2016, Stanford became the first school in the nation to drop below a 5% admit rate. Remarkably, that figure plummeted from the previous decade. Showcase the best elements about yourself in a fluid and cohesive manner. Past struggles that do not pertain to the essay topic. You can briefly mention struggles from your past, as long as you mention how you’ve learned from them. I knew I didn’t want a job that would be that stagnant. That’s when I got the idea to work in law enforcement, because there would always be a new challenge for me to tackle. After researching the field even more, I set my sights on crime scene investigation. I come from a small town where drugs, gang violence, and crime are on every corner. My family lived in a tiny two-bedroom house right next to the town meth lab. If you were on the review board, what would you want to learn about each applicant? What would make you choose one applicant over another? Something about you that relates to their organization. With any scholarship essay, you should try to connect yourself with the organization providing the funding. Do not make your essay a long story about the hard life you’ve led. Save time and concentrate on what's really important to you. Note that you do not have to throw all this information into one essay. I started exploring the career more when I decided that a desk job just wasn’t for me. Throughout high school I struggled because of the routine nature of it all. I saw the same people and attended the same classes every single day. Start by introducing yourself and your educational status. You may not have room to mention how the scholarship will help your education. We never reported the activities from next door because, quite frankly, we were scared to. Then one day, there was an accident in the garage that caught the house on fire. It was early in the morning, and the only people to help were the volunteer firefighters nearby. They couldn’t control the flames in time, and our house was burned as well. They took me to someone who specialized in psychological testing for children. Her evaluation showed that I didn’t have ADHD at all, just a combination of dyslexia and dysgraphia . She put us in touch with a therapist who helped me learn how to work around my conditions, and my life improved tremendously. I went from being a lifeless student with barely passing grades to an honor roll student full of joy and excitement.