12 tips for writing your college application

Written by Sarah Joe

​Writing a college application is probably the last thing you want to do when you’ve already written countless essays and studied an insane number of hours for standardized tests.  But fantastic applications make the job easier for the admissions officers, get you scholarship money, and force you not to slack off your senior year (oh, and did I mention getting you into college?).  That being said, here are a few things I found helpful when coming up with my application.

1. Keep a calendar of deadlines.  While this isn’t actually writing the application itself, printing out a calendar page for each month with all the deadlines separate from your normal planner will allow you to see all the application deadlines without mixing them with everything else on your calendar.  Hopefully, it’ll keep you from forgetting which essays you have to write and missing your application deadlines.  And include deadline reminders on the calendar a week or two in advance to plan your time more effectively.  Consider this your bonus tip. :)
2. Go through your planner/calendar to track what you’ve done over the past four years & write it down so you have a base to start brainstorming.  Having a concrete list to refer to is really helpful so you can go down the list and see which one best fits the prompt you’ve chosen (or the other way around).  
3. Understand the prompts and pick just one.  The Common App/Coalition App prompts may seem generic when you first read them.  But understanding the nuances of each one allows you to pick the one that gives you the best opportunity to showcase who you are. Once you start writing, actually answer the prompt and follow your main idea throughout the entire essay without changing halfway through.  This may seem basic, but it’s easy to get distracted throughout your essay and try to cover as much as you can because you’re afraid that admission officers won’t get to see the side if you that’s not in the essay.
4. Tell your story.  Why are you the only one who can write the application you’ve submitted?  There are hundreds of other students that have the same passion as you do, so use your essay to show who you are.  The essay is about you, and it’s the one place where you can stand out from the statistics and the one chance admission officers have to get to know you.  You’ve already worked hard to get the GPA & test scores you want, so use your essay to reflect your character, personality, and passion.
5. Have a narrow focus.  You are an incredible person, but it’s impossible to capture all aspects of who you are in less than 500 words.  Instead, focus on one thing and hone in on part of your personality/character that you want the admission officers to know about you.  Whether it’s dragon boating or pin collecting or volunteer work, choose to write about something that you care about.  You can’t do everything and do it all well, and you can’t try to be everything and do that well in your essay, either.
6. Show, don’t tell.  Stories, analogies, humor, and vivid details make your essay less generic and more personal and human.   Just make sure they all connect with your main idea.  
7. Go beyond surface level and remember your why.  What fires you up and sets your soul on fire, and how does that affect the way you see the world?   Why do you continue to do what you do?  If you’re writing about a specific event or situation, how did it shape who you are and your perspective on life?  After you write your essay, go through each phrase and line and check to make sure that each sentence helps to develop your why and the main idea you were trying to communicate.  
8. Start small!  Break down the essay process, whether it’s brainstorming or editing or actually sitting down to do the writing.  And celebrate your progress to stay motivated. 
9. Be succinct.  Don’t elaborate on a point more than you need to or fill your essay with fancy words to try and impress the admission officers.  Instead, write in your own voice and utilize your unique writing style in a concise manner, but also be professional.  Along the same lines, don’t ramble just to make your essay look longer - it’s distracting and boring to read through.
10. Grammar check.  It’s so overstated, but it’s absolutely true because it makes essays easier to read and shows the university that you care about the small details.  
11. Use a writing checklist.  My English teachers used to give me a 2-page writing checklist that we’d have to initial before we turned our papers in, and it covered everything from style to punctuation to checking transitions in paragraphs and the number of times we’d used passive verbs.  Having a comprehensive checklist will make sure that you don’t miss anything and that your essay flows (and that you’re not starting 7 sentences with the same word). 
12. Read your essay out loud and get feedback from other people who don’t know you well.  This helps you to pick out grammatical errors and understand your essay’s impression on someone like an admissions officer who isn’t familiar with your passions and personality.  Also get feedback from people who do know you - they’ll be able to tell if the essay truly reflects who you are as an individual. 
13. Bonus tip: recycle essays & tweak them for other scholarship competitions to save time.

Happy writing!  It can seem like torture at times, but remember that this is only a season and that you’re almost there!