The College Application Process

The College Application Process The examples, tips, topics and prompts outlined above should help you rock your college application essay. And hopefully, this is an illuminating part of the process, one that not only helps you get into the college of your choice, but one that also helps prepare you for success once you get there. When you construct an essay that satisfies you, ask a trusted teacher to proofread and critique it. Make any changes required, and type the essay into a word processor or text editor so that you can copy and paste it onto the electronic college application. However, do be careful with slang, colloquialism, and inappropriate language. You need to remember that you have no idea who will be reading your essay â€" it could be an admissions counselor in her early 20s, or a part-time admissions reader in his mid-70s. Don’t use words that aren’t consistent with the overall language and tone of the essay. Don’t use a thesaurus to find other words that you wouldn’t normally use. On the whole the admissions committee wants to hear your voice. This will help prevent errors and typos that might occur if you retype the essay into the essay window when you're filling out the application form. So you've got a list of college essay questions. Preparing your college applications and meeting various deadlines is an ordeal. Worrying about the essay questions you'll be asked -- and how many you'll have to answer -- is agonizing. It is best not to recite the facts of your life. Instead, take the reader between the lines to better understand you, as a thinking person. Colleges value diversity of thought in their classrooms. She tells me large schools receiving 30,000 to 60,000 applications are using software to crunch numbers and manage the volume of applications. There has always been speculation as to the value colleges place on the essay. Get the college essay help you need, right when you need it with the convenience of online lessons. See what you should do with them on the next page. Deciding which college you want to attend is stressful. Last year, CMC had eight admissions officers and 10 part-time readers for 7,100 applications. Both Stanford University and University of California Berkeley officials insist they read all essays. Patricia Krahnke, president of Global College Search and former assistant admissions director at Rutgers University and Vermont State Colleges’ dean of admissions, agrees with Stevens. Speaking of future drafts, one of the best things you can do is run your essay by a trusted family member, educator, advisor, or friend. Get feedback from somebody whose opinion you respect. This feedback will give you a sense of how well your ideas are coming across to the reader, how compelling your story is, and how you might be able to improve your essay. These additional eyes are also critical when it comes to proofing your work, catching typos you might have missed, and helping to refine writing that is unclear or off-topic. And if the topic is weird, feel free to write a weird essay. From this vantage point, Lombardi shared some awesome expert-level college essay tips. We also enlisted the help of a qualified expert in the field. Meredith Lombardi, Associate Director of Outreach and Education at the Common Application, offers a few tips on exactly what admissions officers are seeking from a great application essay.