Application+Essays

Be Prepared before You Apply The best advice that I can give you when it comes to writing a college application essay is to be genuine and to be yourself. Think of this essay as a job interview. You need to highlight your skills that would be most appealing to a college. Most colleges look for communication skills, the ability to overcome hardships, thinking outside the box, community involvement, and uniqueness. Many students find it difficult to write about themselves. Writing about yourself might make you uncomfortable because it seems like you are bragging, but try not to think of it that way. A college can’t possibly meet and interview every applicant, so the essay is used to get to know you on a more personal basis than your transcripts.

Below are some dos and don’ts to follow:
 * Avoid discussing things that can be easily found on your transcripts.
 * Be honest!
 * Focus on what the prompt is asking, and don’t wander off topic!
 * Write more about you than your family or friends. The biggest mistake students make is focusing too much attention on how other people helped them—you are applying to college, not your friend or cousin.
 * Don’t think that you have to sound like a genius in your essay—if you don’t know what a word means, don’t use it! If you overuse the thesaurus trying to sound “smart,” you lose clarity; also, the important words that you used correctly will lose their effect.
 * Come as close to the required word limit as possible, without going over.
 * Be creative with your approach to the prompt—admissions officers read hundreds if not thousands of essays. Beginning your essay to UK by saying that you are a fan of UK basketball sounds exactly like the other 5,000 essays that officer has had to read.

Many colleges reuse application prompts year after year, or they borrow prompts from other colleges. If you save all of these practice application essays, then there’s a really good chance that you won’t have to rewrite any essays when you start applying to colleges at the beginning of next school year. Still nervous? Use this sheet to help brainstorm some ideas.

** Real Application Prompts **
 * Semester One[[image:uk library2.jpg width="293" height="174" align="right" caption="UK Library"]]**
 * 1) University of Kentucky, Honors Program
 * 2) University of Kentucky
 * 3) Northern Kentucky University, Honors Program
 * 4) University of Louisville, Honors Program


 * Semester Two**
 * 1) [[file:Georgetown College Honors Program (2013).pdf|Georgetown College, Honors College]]
 * 2) [[file:Transylvania University Application Essay (2012).pdf|Transylvania University]]
 * 3) [[file:Common Application 2013-14.pdf|Common Application]]
 * 4) [[file:UofL Scholarship (2013).pdf|University of Louisville, Freshman Scholarship]]

© 2014. Scott Gibbons--All Rights Reserved.