College Application Essay

What is a college application/admission essay?

An application or admission essay is a written piece by the applicant, usually in the form of an essay. A prospective student often includes it as a part of the application process for a graduate school, college, or university.

It is also called a statement of purpose or a personal statement.

The college admission essay is a common part of the university and college application process. Some applications require multiple essays as a mandatory part of the admission process. In contrast, others have essays as supplementary or optional parts.

Country specific requirements

1. United States

The Common Application requires a general admissions essay, and many American universities use it for undergraduate admissions. However, some member institutions require additional admissions essays. The Common Application offers students a choice of admissions essay prompts. It give applicants a chance to describe the interesting and unique things about themselves. Additionally, it is an opportunity to provide information about oneself that would otherwise go unnoticed.

2. United Kingdom

The prospective students at a UK university write a personal statement as a part of the application they send to UCAS. In it, the students narrate their plans for a UK university course. In addition, they describe what they want to do after completing the course and their primary motivation for applying to a particular university.

Importance of a college application essay

Admission officers use application essays to analyze the student’s seriousness for pursuing higher education and the purpose of applying to an institution. As a result, the college admission essays play a significant role in the college and university intake.

The presentation and logical reasoning of a student’s perspective in the essay convey a person’s goals, strengths, identity, interests to the admission committee. It is also the chance for the student to showcase their language and writing abilities.

How long should college essays be?

College essays usually have to be pretty concise: the lowest word limits are around 150 words, whereas it is rare to find word limits higher than 650 words. Due to it, the clarity of ideas, articulation, and presentation of thoughts matter even more. If word limits or a range is given, which is most commonly 500 words, it is advisable to stick to it.

 

How to write college application essay

A college essay must serve its purpose of getting you admission to your institution of choice. You can completely write it yourself if you feel you can produce a high-quality written piece to achieve this goal.

Suppose you think that you don’t have enough time or experience to write powerful essays. In that case, we recommend you take help to craft at least the statement of purpose before sending them to colleges. If your most prized institutions require supplemental essays, you can consider getting an expert to help you with it, too.

Suppose you think you can use some professional assistance to make it better so that it stands out from other application essays. In that case, you can partially or fully take help for the following 3 things, namely, Intro, Body, Conclusion.

Let us have a more detailed look at the anatomy of an admission essay.

1. Introduction

It plays the all-important role of virtually introducing the applicant to the person reading the essay. You must mention the college application essay prompt that you selected. You shall also mention a thesis statement to discuss the main idea.

Hence, selecting an impressive title or topic that represents you and your personality most suitably is paramount. You shall clearly outline your thoughts, keeping the topic in mind. It sets the tone of the admission essay about your uniqueness as a person.

How to start college application essay

It shall have an opening hook to draw the reader’s attention from the very beginning. You shall use the opening paragraph to introduce the subject matter and the critical points. You shall use this part of the essay to lay out the introduction of the topic, your ideas, and your arguments. The opening is to be rounded up by a thesis statement.

2. Body

This section is the bulk of the essay carrying maximum details. Accordingly, it is the part of your college essay to which you shall devote the maximum effort and time. You must write the body to be relevant to the topic of the essay’s main body. You shall add relevant examples, facts, and evidence to support your thoughts and make them sound credible.

3. Conclusion

You shall write a fitting conclusion stating how you are a deserving candidate for securing admission to that coveted college seat.

As the examiners have to go through tons of applications, they tend to take an incoherent or poorly formatted essay less seriously or entirely overlook it.

Importance of Essay conclusion

It is vital to write an effective conclusion to build a successful college essay. You shall make a personal statement, offer new insights related to the topic, and reemphasize the thesis by restating it creatively. At the same time, it shall not introduce entirely new arguments or analyze any off-topic statements.

To summarize, you must realize the essays’ considerable weightage in college admission. We recommend you spend significant effort and do the due diligence to produce an essay that makes a compelling case for your candidature for the college program of your choice.

Helpful resources on College application essay

Many online resources provide valuable guidance for writing more effectively.

Essay template

The college essay section at The Template Archive is a great resource to get a template for your admission essay.

University admission essay examples

If you cannot proceed due to writer’s block or feel stuck due to a lack of ideas, you can look up some excellent examples at Grammarly.

College admission essay topics

The college application essay prompts vary from completely open-ended to highly specific. The seven 2021-22 Common Essay prompts mainly allow the students to describe a personal achievement, realization, motivation, an event prompting gratitude, an engaging preoccupation, or an event where they challenged an established belief. One of the prompts gives the student the choice of selecting the topic.

College admission essay format

A good essay must follow proper formatting guidelines. Here is how you can do it:

• Use standard font styles – The recommended fonts are Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman, and the font size is 12.
• Write a page heading – The heading shall be in bold font written in ten words or fewer. You shall write it on the top left corner of the page.
• Compose a suitable title – The title gives the reader an idea of the content of the essay that follows. It must summarize and capture the essence of the writing. The title goes below the page heading.
• The essay instructions mention the citation style. The most common styles are APA, Chicago, MLA, or Harvard. You shall follow them correctly to compose a properly cited paper.
• Attach the necessary documents – The attachments must follow the file type guidelines for submission.

Take help from an expert, if needed

At My Engineering Buddy, we provide the following Essay Writing Services:

Essay coaching – You can choose to undergo some coaching to learn effective writing or sharpen your existing skills. Our essay writing coaches can mentor you to improve your essay writing overall.

Essay tutor – Application essay writing is a vast subject in itself. Suppose you require help with specific areas in essay writing like writing style or idea generation. In that case, we have tutors to guide you with these things in focused 1:1 tutoring sessions.

Essay consulting – An essay consultant can help you with essay writing and matching your suitability for different universities and colleges.

Essay proofreading service – The proofreaders can help you avoid any mistakes in grammar and punctuation. Additionally, they also assist you with the finer points like the tone and the intent of the written piece.

Essay editing services – The essay editors can play an important role by effectively editing your writing to communicate the right ideas to the reader. You must strictly follow the word limit, so editing the essay is vital.

Essay writer – If you think you don’t have enough experience in writing or want a professional to do it from scratch to meet the deadline, you can contact us for professional essay writing services.

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