College Essay Edit/input/suggestions?

[hippomania7]

Yeap, that time in a guy's life- applying to college.
I wrote this one essay, and I would appreciate it if someone could edit it or give some suggestions. I'll be editing it at school sometimes, and they don't look favorably upon hookah forums so I was hoping to do this through email.

I'll upload it from here and then any input you have, I'd prefer an email, but a post could work too I guess.
All input is welcome

thank y'all very much!!

oh and email is hippomania7 at yahoo Edited December 10, 2008 by hippomania7

[gaia.plateau]

There are some terms and phrases you should just never use formally, as in an essay.

"Perused", "Oddly Enough", and "basically" are among these.

Honestly I would throw out the several paragraphs focusing on ethnicity, both yours and the ethnic geography of the school in question. You want to sell yourself to the school, rather than explain why you're choosing it. Emphasize what you want to do with your degree, how you are up to the challenges that you will face in university, etc. etc.

Overall I would just suggest that you try to be a little more dispassionate in your appeals and a lot more sophisticated in your language. Your letter strikes me as an explanation and a negotiation- you need it to be an argument.

Good luck. Edited December 10, 2008 by gaia.plateau

[wilarseny]

As someone who's worked with college admissions people before, I've heard a lot of their standard complaints. Mostly it's kids trying to sound smart, using unnatural vocabulary that they'd never actually use in real speech. That's not to say you should be conversational--and on the opposite extreme, this should NOT be a formal essay--but words like perused, stumbled upon, oddly enough, these all contribute to a tone that sounds, to be completely honest here, phony and forced.

This issue has two main problems. Rigid, fake language is a uniting factor in admissions essays, and if you sound like that, you blend in with all of the other applicants headed toward the rejection pile. Perhaps worse, it undercuts any genuine excitement you have about the school to which you're applying. Needless to say, I doubt you want the tired, bored admissions officer coming away with either of these impressions about you after reading your essay.

I'll start with your first paragraph. Here's what you wrote:

During this past summer before my senior year, I perused Princeton Review's The Best 366 Colleges. Feeling particularly ambitious during one summer day, I made a list of criteria on which I would create my college list. I browsed through the book matching my SAT scores, GPA, ideal size, and location with prospective schools. However these categories only resulted in a broad group. What made Lehigh one of the select few out of the 366 colleges in that book were the little things.

The opening clause is clunky and awkward. What's wrong with something as simple as "Last summer", or "The summer before senior year"? As I mentioned before, your essay is dragged down by words like "perused", which are in a language register outside of anyone's normal writing or speaking voice; it's a tone you should avoid. Think about the difference between your first two sentences, and this rephrasing: "Last summer I sat down with the Princeton Review's college rankings. I needed to narrow down my list, but after finding the schools that matched my GPA and SAT scores, I wasn't any closer. But once I found out from Lehigh students what life there was like, once I found out about the little things like [insert sample of little things here] that make Lehigh different, I was sold." Okay, that's a bit drab, but do you see the difference? In one you sound like a real person; in the original, the reader knows nothing more about you, the person, the student or the writer, after reading. You can tell the writer in the rephrased example is actually excited about this college, which is what admissions officer want to hear.

The thing to keep in mind is your tone. Voice is everything in college essays; they want to see how you can write, they want to see that you're excited about coming to the school and that you'd be a good fit, and both of these goals is best fulfilled by strong, developed voices, voices where a reader can easily see the writer as a real person. If you listen to anything I've said, I hope it's this.


I have a fair bit of experience editing personal essays, so if you'd like help with further drafts, feel free to email me at wilarseny at uchicago dot edu.


Hope that helps, and good luck with your college applications,

Will















Edited December 10, 2008 by wilarseny

[hippomania7]

thank you so much will and all other who replied. I really appreciate all of your advice!








Edited December 15, 2008 by hippomania7

[jschoenith]

i do have to say i took a course in my junior year of high school and it was a college level english course and one of the grades was writing a college admission letter and i learned that you should write at your level and not any smarter or dumber because the colleges want to know who you are and not what you can type.

so just stick to what you know and how you know how to do it.