College Essays – Required, NOT Optional!
At College Insights, we believe your college essay is one of the most important parts of your application package because it is your opportunity to reveal your best qualities and show an admissions committee what makes you stand out from everyone else. In our opinion, a compelling essay will complement your application package and make you differentiate yourself in all the “right ways” for your “right school.”
Therefore, we believe college essays are required, NOT optional!
To learn some basics about writing a great essay, we recommend you visit this page: How to Write a College Application Essay
In addition, we recommend you check out other resources to help you with writing college essays, including getting essay critiques. Start with your high school guidance department – many offer essay writing “courses” – you should take advantage of those. Plus, look for other counselors and/or services in your area that focus on essay writing and strategies.
Please note that for schools that require the Common Application (most private colleges and some public), there may be lots of essays that need to be completed. The primary writing section on the “Common App” is the “personal statement”. For this section you will have to pick one of the provided questions and write about it. Typically the Common App comes out on August 1st before your high school senior year in high school. You can look at the Common App and see what essay topics are given for that particular year. You want to take your time and pick your topic carefully. This essay gets sent with every Common App you submit.
It is very important to note, however, that schools are provided with the opportunity to add supplemental essays on top of the personal statement. Usually, this will consist of another writing sample or two on a question provided by the individual schools. These can be long answers or short answers at the discretion of the school. These are very important to go through as well, because these schools are asking the supplemental questions for a reason—they want to see how well you write and they want to see how you address the questions they have put in front of you—questions that the school believes are important to its admissions process.
In summary, do NOT overlook college essays – at College Insights: “required, NOT optional”!
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