10 College Application Essay Dos And Donts

10 College Application Essay Dos And Don'ts Check out our article on the most common mistakes in college essays for more tips to ensure your essay reads well. While there is no magic topic that will automatically ensure admission at the college of your dreams, there are experiences everyone has that you can use to find your strongest possible application essays. In the college essay, you need to contextualize your examples for the reader. If you are writing a good complex essay, even your topic sentence will require more explanation than just one sentence. Did you separate dialogue correctly from the rest of your text? However, they should not write or re-write the essay. Essay’s should always been seen by someone else to look for grammatical and spelling errors. Many students do need help selecting a topic and organizing the essay. They should seek guidance from their counselors or teachers for this. The essay should be in the student’s voice and parent’s are not always the best advisors for this part of the application. Then we went to a college fair and spoke to a Michigan Admissions Officer who said Michigan has decided NOT to require writing. She wants to apply to both as Early Action, but doesn’t have time to retake ACT without writing for that deadline. Do you think reporting her 33 ACT with the poor writing score will hurt her at UNC or Michigan, even though they say it is not required, and UNC says it is discouraged? OR should we send her 1450 SAT without a writing score? No matter how qualified you are, you can kill your chances with a bad essay. On the other hand, if you are minimally qualified or even if something fall bellows the minimum, like your test scores, the essay can be your chance for redemption. My daughter is trying to get in as an out of state student to University of North Carolina and University of Michigan as her top 2 choices. She scored a 33 on ACT with a 6 writing, which she took because Michigan said it was required. She clearly wasn’t prepared for the writing section, so she just took it again and scored a bit lower on her composite but the same on the essay. Let’s look deeper into the four main reasons that colleges require essays as part of the application process to see why they’re worth your time and attention. Rest assured that admissions officers do, in fact, read your essays. Also, admissions officers view them as an important part of your application. Despite the decline in colleges requiring an SAT or ACT essay, Compass still advises many of our students to make the essay a part of their testing plans. Skipping the essay can leave a student scrambling to fit in an additional test date should his or her college plans change. Some colleges requiring the essay will not superscore test dates without the essay. Just as important, it’s uncommon for an ACT or SAT essay to be a significant negative factor on an application. With a minimum amount of practice, most students can reach the 25thâ€"75th percentile score ranges of even the most elite colleges in the country. In other words, there is more upside than downside when looking at an extended test day. But, if they start writing the essay know that the college may very well determine that the work was not yours. Is your parent going to write your essays that are assigned by professors while you are in college? The college cares how you write not how your parent writes unless they are also applying to the same college as you. Still not convinced that your essays are important? The college is learning about you from what you write. Not what anyone else writes including your parent. As much as I rail against the essay, I still recommend that students take it â€" at least once. Your daughter didn’t waste her time, she created some options. Policies on viewing essay results are all over the place at essay optional schools. Many admission officers would view it as a “plus factor.” It’s wonderful that your daughter did so well.