Mastering College Admission Essays: A Powerful Writing Exercise
In the journey toward higher education, college admission essays hold a unique significance. They offer a rare opportunity for students to transcend their academic records and standardized test scores, giving admissions committees a personal glimpse into their lives, aspirations, and character.
To craft an impactful college admission essay, you must engage in a thoughtful and introspective process.
The Writing Exercise: Crafting Your Narrative
Before delving into the specifics of a great essay and the actual activity itself (which is at the bottom), let's explore effective writing exercises that will guide you in the right direction.
Step 1: Self-Reflection
Begin by asking yourself thought-provoking questions about your experiences, values, challenges, and aspirations. What events have shaped you? What drives your passions? How have you grown from difficulties? Jot down your thoughts and anecdotes.
Step 2: Identify a Theme
Review your reflections and look for patterns or themes that emerge. Do you find a recurring motif that encapsulates your journey or character? This theme will be the foundation of your essay.
Step 3: Crafting the Narrative
Build your essay around the chosen theme. Weave your personal anecdotes, experiences, and insights to create a coherent narrative that showcases your uniqueness. Remember, this is your chance to tell your story in your voice.
The benefit of using the activity below is that it provides an easy way for you to reflect and identify a them, making crafting the narrative much easier.
The Merits of a Strong Essay:
Personal Connection: A well-written essay establishes a personal connection with the admissions committee. It goes beyond numbers, enabling them to see you as a three-dimensional individual.
Differentiation: In a sea of applications, a strong essay sets you apart. It showcases your distinctive qualities and contributions, making it easier for the admissions committee to remember you.
Communication Skills: Effective writing demonstrates your communication prowess. An essay that is clear, concise, and engaging reflects your ability to convey ideas effectively.
Critical Thinking: Crafting a compelling narrative requires introspection and critical thinking. A strong essay showcases your ability to analyze experiences and extract meaningful insights.
Demonstration of Fit: Your essay is an opportunity to illustrate how you align with the college's values, culture, and academic offerings. It highlights why you're a suitable candidate for their institution.
Top 5 Qualities of a Good Essay:
Authenticity: A sincere essay reflects your genuine self. Authenticity resonates with readers and leaves a lasting impression.
Engaging: Start with a captivating hook that draws the reader in. An intriguing beginning sets the tone for the rest of the essay. But don’t forget to keep that going throughout.
Clear Structure: A well-structured essay flows logically. Use paragraphs to transition between ideas and maintain a coherent progression.
Vivid Detailing: Utilize descriptive language to paint a vivid picture of your experiences. Engage the reader's senses and emotions.
Reflective Insight: Move beyond recounting events; delve into the lessons learned and personal growth. Show how your experiences have shaped your perspective.
Challenges --> What I Learned Activity (Below):
Admission essay writing can be challenging, but it's also a transformative process. If you are faced with obstacles or writer's block, or just simply don’t know where to start, feel free to use this exercise to get you moving in the right direction and on the path of writing a memorable and impactful admission essay.
Remember, your college admission essay is your chance to shine. By engaging in this writing exercise, understanding the merits of a strong essay, and embodying the qualities of a good essay, you'll be well on your way to creating a compelling narrative that captures the attention of admissions committees and showcases your true potential.
I hope you’ve found this helpful and I wish you the best of luck in your writing process. If you are looking for more information, please visit my website- Higher & Hire. If I can be of assistance to you, please reach out to me here.
Many Thanks!
Valerie Palmer
The Challenges → What I Learned Activity Explained
All you need is:
Piece of paper OR the PDF to this exercise, which is FREE!
Pen/pencil
Will take you about 15-20 minutes. Find somewhere quiet because it will take your focus.
Note- If you use the blank piece of paper, you’re going to need to write the headers at the top of each column. Start by taking your blank paper and turning it sideways. You are going to write a few things across the top, 6 to be exact so don’t write too big.
The first column is going to be for your challenges.
What do I mean when I say challenges?
I mean the tough things that you’ve been through. This could look like moving around a lot, divorced parents, or anything that you felt challenged you. They don’t all have to be big like that, they can be smaller.
If you don’t feel like you’ve had any tough challenges, you can use experiences.
The next column is effects.
Based on each of the challenges that you’ve written down, you need to determine what effect it had on you. Everyone experiences things differently. I’m not talking about feelings (yet, we will get there), think only about the impact this event had on you.
For example, many students (including me) have divorced parents. But not every divorce is the same. My parents fought a lot and then my mom moved us to a different state. So the effect that had on me was dealing with lots of yelling from my parents and consistently having to travel 3 hours to see my dad.
The third column is for feelings.
For each effect you felt, there were emotions tied to that. It can be hard to think about our feelings, so the PDF has a list of feelings that you can use to identify how you were feeling in the moment.
In my example, the effect was lots of traveling just to see my dad and limited interaction with him during the 2 weeks between visits. This made me really sad and sullen because I was really close with my dad and I missed having that interaction. It also made me feel a bit resentful towards my mom for moving us so far away. And lastly, it made me worried that I would have to listen to them fighting. So on my sheet, I would have sad, sullen, resentful, and worried in this column.
For each of these effects, write down your emotions. These emotions may contradict each other and that’s okay because that’s part of life.
Next, we get into needs, which is the fourth column.
Here, we take this a little deeper. For every feeling you felt there was a need that either was or wasn’t being met.
It can be challenging to identify what needs you have, so on the PDF, there is a needs section. In this column, write down what need you had as a result of that experience.
For me, I had a need for connection with my dad and that need wasn’t being met as a result of my parent’s divorce. I also had a need for security and stability.
In the fifth column, we have “what I did about it.”
You experienced certain challenges, which led to certain effects, which made you feel particular feelings, and those feelings were connected to feelings that either were or were not being met. In this column, we look at how you handled that, and what you did about it.
Now, you might think that you didn’t do anything, you just went on living your life. But think about it this way, your hobbies or extracurriculars or whatever you spend your time doing is how you are doing to get that need met.
When I was in high school, I stayed busy, I joined organizations that were time-consuming, in particular, band. We had 3 seasons and often had 2 practices a day. I also played the trumpet, which was the same instrument that my dad played when he was in high school. Now when I was joining band, I didn’t say to myself “I have a need for stability and connection, let me go join this club that is going to take a lot of my time and force me to form close bonds with other students,” but in hindsight, I can see that is exactly what I did. For me, I would write down band/trumpet.
So, think about what you are involved with and how you spend your time and see if there is a connection between that and your needs.
You can also reverse engineer this if you find that you were meeting additional needs that you had with how you spent your time.
“What I learned” is what is in the last column.
On the second page of the PDF, you can see the values that I like to talk to my clients about and get them to explore as we are going through their application processes.
Think of these values as the qualities you developed based on what you did based on the needs you had. You can see how this is all related now, I’m sure.
When you are selecting the values/qualities, don’t forget to include the other qualities that you developed as a result of the activity.
So, I had a need for connection, which I got through band. I developed a sense of community and loyalty, but I also built up my creativity, honed my efficiency at getting tasks done (as I often needed to juggle school work with lots of hours outside of school doing band), and cultivated my competitive nature. So I would write down community, loyalty, creativity, efficiency, and competition.
You can see how this list grows quickly.
Now, it’s your turn to write down 3-5 values that you cultivated.
When you are all done doing this for at least 2-3 experiences, you’ll notice that you have a lot of content on your sheet.
The next thing you need to do is circle major themes and draw arrows between related concepts or ideas.
Now that you have that complete, you can see what areas are good for writing about in your admission essays!
Best of luck on your writing journey.
