Nervous About College Essay Writing?

Nervous About College Essay Writing? Highlighting one event, activity or relationship allows you to provide interesting details and share your passion. Write about something that is important to you.It will be a much easier essay to write if you care about your topic. Spend some quality time with the essay prompts.The essay prompts on the Common Application and the Coalition Application are intentionally broad and can easily be interpreted in a variety of ways. “Kids made fun of me because I was a Chinese kid who could only speak Spanish,” he says. His family was very poor and lived in a cramped, one-room apartment. They shared a bathroom and kitchen with other tenants. You can write conversationally, but the grammar and spelling still need to be correct. And don’t solely rely on your computer’s spell-checker. Leverage your native culture, traditions, and experiences. If you’re an international applicant, Native American, or otherwise non-traditional student, don’t try to “Americanize” or “mainstream” your application. The goal is to stand out and not appear to be like all the other applicants. Nothing can ruin a good essay like a bad typo. Have a couple other people read the essay for typos and coherence. You shouldn’t sit down and try to write the essay straight away. This essay is going to convey who you are as a person, so you should start by jotting down ideas, examples and fragments that might form an essay. Put the essay down and read it with fresh eyes. Try to imagine the impression the reader will have of you. Ye Luo says that their words gave him a sense of pride and determination to succeed. “It was the first time I really looked at myself,” he recalls. I tried to adapt socially and academically.” Ye Luo enjoyed high school far more than middle school, he made friends, joined the wrestling team, and took his GPA from a 1.9 to a 4.0. As a Chinese person in Panama, he never felt that he fit in. Ye Luo became withdrawn and discouraged, and he was failing in school. Ye Luo wasn’t accepted at Middlebury and he was devastated. “We listen to their experiences and give them feedback,” says Urrutia Gedney. These are the kinds of things colleges want to know,'” says Urrutia Gedney. You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To submit a letter, comment or column, check oursubmission guidelines. “I never saw a phenomenal essay suddenly make up for everything” Heaton agreed. “The essay does not have to be about something huge, some life-changing event,” says Calvin Wise, director of recruitment at Johns Hopkins University. This is the one caveat to the last sentence above. Looking back, he thinks he may have been rejected, at least in part, because his essay was so scattered. He went back to ScholarMatch, and this time he wrote about his family’s move from Panama, and the challenges he faced starting over in a new country where he didn’t speak the language. Many first-to-college kids don't realize they have stories that colleges want to hear.