Application Essays Tips for Writing Your Way Into Your Top Choice School

Nearly all colleges rate application essays as either important or very important in their admissions process. A poorly executed essay can cause a stellar student to get rejected. On the flip side, exceptional application essays can help students with marginal scores get into the schools of their dreams. The tips below will help you win big with your essay.

Avoid the List
Many college applicants make the mistake of trying to include all of their accomplishments and activities in their application essays. Such essays read like what they are: tedious lists. Other parts of the application provide plenty of space for you to list extracurricular activities, so save your lists for the places where they belong.

The most engaging and compelling essays tell a story and have a clear focus. Through carefully chosen detail, your writing should reveal your passions and expose your personality. A thoughtful and detailed narration of a difficult time in your life tells far more about you than a list of competitions won and honors achieved. Your grades and scores show that you’re smart. Use your essay to show that you’re thoughtful and mature, that your personality has depth.

A Touch of Humor (but just a touch)
While it's important to be thoughtful and mature, you don't want your college application essay to be too heavy.

Write About Something That Made You ‘Feel Deeply’

The essay rules may be changing on the Common Application, but that doesn’t change some basic rules about creative writing.

Anxious college applicants who are worried about their essay topics might feel relieved to know that Michael Winerip, our New York Times colleague, has written a piece on Booming in which he shares college essay advice that he’s given to his neighbors:

They come to me browbeaten and defeated. They ask if it really is true what the 19-year-old campus tour guide told them — that most people have a first draft by eighth grade. They are convinced their child’s future depends on this. They have blown up the essay until it’s as big as the complete works of Leo Tolstoy.

So much worry for 250 to 500 words about something important that has happened to them.

Mr. Winerip’s piece may have come just in time; at least some of the advice he describes seems universal enough to apply to any essay prompt. He encourages writers to learn more from failure than success and to be honest about who they are. One student who was “terrific” at partying, Mr. Winerip writes, wrote an essay about his knack for organizing social events. He was accepted into the college of his choice.

Tips for writing an Effective Application Essay

When you apply to college, you’ll need to complete an essay as part of your application. This is your opportunity to show admission officers who you are and to provide information about yourself that didn’t fit in other areas of your application. The essay also reveals what you can do when you have time to think and work on a writing project.

The number one piece of advice from admission officers about your essay is “Be yourself.” The number two suggestion is “Start early.” Check out these other tips before you begin.

Choose a Topic That Will Highlight You
Don’t focus on the great aspects of a particular college, the amount of dedication it takes to be a doctor or the number of extracurricular activities you took part in during high school.

Do share your personal story and thoughts, take a creative approach and highlight areas that aren’t covered in other parts of the application, like your high school records.

Keep Your Focus Narrow and Personal
Don’t try to cover too many topics. This will make the essay sound like a résumé that doesn’t provide any details about you.

Do focus on one aspect of yourself so the readers can learn more about who you are. Remember that the readers must be able to find your main idea and follow it from beginning to end. Ask a parent or teacher to read just your introduction and tell you what he or she thinks your essay is about.

Essay of Harvard Accepted International Student (from Nepal)

Essay of Harvard Accepted International Student (from Nepal). Got full ride at most ivy leagues.

The Flag waves, duty calls…

On the morning of August 15, 2003, I awoke to the alarming sound of gun shots. A moment of sinister silence followed; my skin tightened, and in the dark corners of my mind I could already envision what had just taken place. With tears impairing my sight and fright impeding my thoughts, I speedily stumbled and staggered my way down the stairs, out of the house and onto the road. The scene I saw there that morning changed my life.

On the indifferent dirt road, in a pool of blood lay the body of my uncle, dead. Three young Maoist rebels had just taken the life of this army colonel outside his own house. Lying flat on the street, he had died in the same uniform that his father and grandfather before him had once worn for their country. Weak and still breathless, I stood there watching as the rest of the family, army-men, and pedestrians dragged his motionless corpse into the army jeep, hoping against hope that he would come back to life. The three bullets in his chest not only killed my uncle that morning, they killed the future of his children, the aspirations of his family, and his dreams of one day becoming a general like his father. The ongoing bloody rivalry between the people of Nepal and the revolutionary Maoist extremists, who have been using violence in trying to usurp democracy, had found another victim.

As I walk the rugged and cramped streets of Kathmandu, I often reminisce about a place far away, a place where I spent my childhood, New York City. The son of a Nepalese diplomat, I was raised in a world that seems very distant today. The wide streets of Manhattan, the extravagantly expensive Fifth Avenue shopping malls, the idyllic smells of Central Park in the winter, hotdogs in the summer, and the nonchalance of childhood; all just memories now of a life I used to know. It is different here in Kathmandu. Insurgency, poverty and political unrest are a part of everyday life.