College Admission Essay: Brainstorming Session–Part II
If yesterday’s brainstorming session on the college admission essay didn’t cure your writer’s block, then maybe these ideas will get the ball rolling:
Cheat. Asking for help isn’t really cheating.It’s a way of bouncing ideas off others. So ask for help from parents, friends, co-workers etc.If you can’t characterize yourself and your personality traits don’t automatically come to mind, ask your friends and family to write a list of your five strongest personality traits. Then ask them why they chose these particular ones. Think up experiences in your life that formed and illustrate these traits.
Go back to your childhood. We don’t mean literally nor as a way to avoid having to write your college admission essay. There might be moments in your life that have shaped you, inspired you and lead you to the path that you would like to pursue at college. Make sure not just to talk about your childhood in your application essay. Admissions officers are way more interested in hearing about the last two to four years of your life and not how eating worms with Jimmy when you were four years old led you to study marine biology. But these early experiences can show you how you have always been dedicated to a specific area of study.
Find the hero in you. Think of the people that have been your role models and have influenced you. How did they have an impact on you? How would you like to emulate them? You can then discuss how your education and that particular college (everyone likes to hear a little bit of flattery) can help you realize these goals.
Score a goal. Figure out what goals you want to achieve. Why do you want spend 2-6 years of your life at a particular college, graduate school, or professional school? How is the degree necessary to the fulfillment of your goals? When considering goals, think broadly. Few people would be satisfied with just a career. How else will your education fit your needs and lead you to a fulfilling life?
Read Sample Admissions Essays. Before you sat down to write a poem, you would certainly read past poets. Before writing a book of philosophy, you would consider past philosophers. In the same way, we recommend reading sample admissions essays to understand what topics other applicants chose.
Basically, you want to pick a topic where you can illustrate your goals, important life experience, research experience, special non-acedemic accomplishments etc. But you want to jazz it up. Everyone is going to include those things. So add a little creativity and think outside of the box. You’ll also want to mention how the college itself can help you realize your dreams. So make sure you check out the college through our college search so you can show how you will fit into the program and what you hope to bring to their academic environment.
With all of these ideas, you are sure to come up with one that will suit you and make you shine in your college admission essay.
Now that you’ve got your topic (or you’re on your way), you’re ready to put pen to paper—or rather fingers to keyboard.
So tomorrow we’ll give you some tips on how to write and organize your college admission essay.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Applications, College admissions essays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
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