Writing Your Personal College Essay
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What Colleges Are Looking For
Writing your personal college essay is what shows the admissions committee why you are different from everybody else. It provides information about you that test scores, grades, and extracurricular pursuits just cannot.
Whenever I work with students on their admission essays, it’s always a struggle. It doesn’t matter how smart the child is, how creative, or how good a student. No one knows what to write in these things. Do I try to impress with my travels? Appear humble and altruistic with my charity work (even if that only includes required community service hours)? Try to get creative with it and throw some obscure references into the mix?
But, then, the question becomes: How do I sound? I don’t want to be snobby, and I don’t want to be boring, trite, or saccharine. How can I portray myself best?
Yes, worry about how you want to be portrayed, but think about this: the people reading these just want to know you’re a person, a person with some thoughts and insights and individuality. If you can prove that you are someone with a story to tell, they will want to learn more. The essay is just a way to catch their attention, because your grades, test scores, and recommendations are going to show them you can handle the academic rigors of their school.
10 Great Opening Lines from Stanford Admissions Essays
- I change my name each time I place an order at Starbucks.
- When I was in the eighth grade I couldn’t read.
- While traveling through the daily path of life, have you ever stumbled upon a hidden pocket of the universe?
- I have old hands.
- I was paralyzed from the waist down. I would try to move my leg or even shift an ankle but I never got a response. This was the first time thoughts of death ever cross my mind.
- I almost didn’t live through September 11th, 2001.
- The spaghetti burbled and slushed around the pan, and as I stirred it, the noises it gave off began to sound increasingly like bodily functions.
- I have been surfing Lake Michigan since I was 3 years old.
- I stand on the riverbank surveying this rippled range like some riparian cowboy -instead of chaps, I wear vinyl, thigh-high waders and a lasso of measuring tape and twine is slung over my arm.
- I had never seen anyone get so excited about mitochondria.
As you can see, these all are ‘hooks.’ They are a way of bringing in your reader, who wants to be excited to hear what you have to say. The rest of the essay needs to be good, of course, but if you can catch your reader’s interest in the first sentence, you’re golden.
They just want to know you can give them something beyond numbers–you are a person who can bring something to their school, and that’s all you need to prove.
Learn more at our seminar on August 4th at Roudenbush Community Center. Register here.
HOW TO MASTER THE PRIVATE SCHOOL AND COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAY (GR 7-12)
Instructor: Alexandra Berube of Boston Tutoring Services
Location: Roudenbush, 65 Main Street
RCC-E12433
Aug 4 (Tue) 6:30 pm-8:30 pm $42/$39
Alexandra Berube is the Managing Director and founder of Boston Tutoring Services. She is a Massachusetts-certified teacher (Pre-K-2) with a Master’s Degree in Education from Lesley University, and a Bachelor’s degree in English and Child Development from Sarah Lawrence College. Before founding Boston Tutoring Services, she started a pre-K afterschool program in Lawrence, and then went on to teach kindergarten in a private school in Westford. Her tutoring approach is based on tailoring instruction to the individual learning styles of her students. She is experienced in creating and implementing curriculum in a variety of educational settings and to a broad range of ages and abilities.