Seven Ways To Make Your College Essay Stand Out

Seven Ways To Make Your College Essay Stand Out Whether it’s one lesson or seven, you decide what to spend. DON’T let your tutor or your teacher or your parents take over your essay. The resulting essay will not reflect you and thus will not accomplish its goal, no matter how “good” it seems to be. DON’T be pretentious or overly formal â€"this is not the time to play the role of Albert Einstein or Mother Teresa if that’s not who you are. Don’t restate something in your resume and then just add “and everyone thanked me” at the end. Think outside of the box and say something different. You are familiar with this construct, work to do at given to you by a school, due by a certain date, otherwise known as homework. The “Why this college” or “Why us” prompts are fairly common. For lots more information on applying to college, see the links on the next page. We remain dedicated to serving you during these challenging times of COVID-19. Even if you didn’t visit, you can still establish a strong connection to the school. In that case, you might share a story about why you’re interested in studying a certain program that you can only find there â€" grounding it in an anecdote from your past â€" or a professor you want to study with. You don’t have to solely focus on academics, although you should make them a main point of your essay. Resist the temptation to portray yourself as a saint with a 4.0â€"you’re better off presenting the real you. DO be yourself â€" your essay should sound as if it could have been written by no one else. As you begin to edit and refine the idea, challenge your word choices. Are they essential to conveying the key messages? Doing so is unnecessarily redundant and can limit your ability to take a more expansive approach with your essay. Find creative solutions to conveying ownership of your thoughts. Don’t use the word “I” to start sentences any more than is necessary. You don’t need to remind the reader at the start of each sentence. Did you know that Babson has a Writing Center on campus? Staffed by professors and peer consultants, it offers a supportive environment to practice and refine your writing. Risa C. Doherty is a copy editor and education and parenting writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Working Mother and Boston Parents Paper, among others. In a 2007 Boston magazine article, Harry Lewis, former dean of Harvard College, drew a parallel between professional essay editing and hiring an imposter to sit for the SAT. Word and character counts can be paralyzing if you allow them to dictate your approach to an essay topic. Then, take a step back in order to gain perspective. “All this scribbling has almost nothing to do with whether the student gets in,” he wrote. Finally, when you think you are finished with your essay, dare to make it great! Doing so will force you to examine every word, thought and article of punctuation. Even if you are not able to reduce by 10%, making an honest attempt at it will make your essay better. Don’t worry about the word count until you have developed a complete draft. You can also include traditions, extracurricular activities, and the campus itself. Prestige and rankings are another topic to avoid. Yes, Yale is very prestigious and consistently ranks among the top three universities in U.S. Your familial connections may also factor in, but they shouldn’t be your sole reason for applying. Finally, if you can find pretty much all the reasons you give through a cursory look at the website or brochure, that’s a sign that it’s time to dive a little deeper.