The Common Application went live today and many students (and their parents) may be feeling their nerves take flight when they call the timeline for their college essays to mind.
Fear not. Start early and banish the butterflies. In addition to the cardinal college essay rules (see below), the one surefire way to write a successful college essay is to start early. It's much easier to find topics that have power and meaning for you, and to unearth the details that make unique and compelling stories, if you give yourself time.
Then just follow these tips to get started:
1) RELAX and write honestly about a simple truth in your life. Have fun with it. Gee -whiz, you're applying to college (!) with a generation of other teenagers, and colleges want to know what kids of teens will be filling their dorms. So don't use the essay to try to impress the college - let your application do that. This is where they get to know the real you, so just breath and show a bit of your real self in words.
2) SHOW don't tell. Fill your stories with the juicy details that you'd share with a trusted teacher or while telling a story to friends. The details are what distinguish you from all the other teens - you have your own details that no one else shares. Share them in the essay.
3)Write in your own VOICE - Sound like yourself in your essays. This is not a paper for english class. This is personal story. If it doesn't sound like you would actually say it, you'll miss the chance to have the reader relate to you as the teenager that you are. Keep it clean, but keep it real.
4)DON'T WASTE THE SPACE - The essay is the part of the application where the college gets to know you. So don't waste the space repeating information they can find elsewhere on the application or probably already know about from the thousands of other students who have mistakenly used their essays to write about familiar and broad topics in impersonal ways. Remember, think SMALL, think DETAILS, think PERSONAL TRUTH, think ENTERTAINING and even FUN. Describe specific anecdotes, experiences, memories or events that only you could have had, then you are on to something.
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