College admissions officers are inundated each year with stacks of college applications and the same old hackneyed essays. So how can you make your essay stand out and rise to the top of the pack? While there is no foolproof formula, there are a few things that admission officers are looking for.
- Write in your own voice – If your essay doesn’t sound like you when you read it out loud, then adjust your writing voice. Everyone has their own unique way of wording things, and the reader is going to be more interested in your story if it sounds like a human speaking and not a well-formulated and typed rendition of an ordinary account.
- Make it unique by making it you – You may not have some incredible experience that no one else has ever had before, but you may have experienced the event in a different way because you’re a unique individual. So make your story special by telling it from your personal perspective and not how you think the admission’s officer would see it.
- Build a narrative – Stories have to be attention-grabbing at the beginning, and then have to hold the reader’s attention until the account reaches a climax. Since college essays are usually short, there’s no time for dead space or filler sentences.
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