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Admissions officers
review numerous applications, frequently reading as many
as fifty per day. Although it's impossible to predict
exactly what a particular college is looking for in its
applicants, colleges generally want to admit a mix of
students who can handle the academic workload and make a
positive contribution to the college experience--for
themselves and for their classmates.
To get a favorable
reaction from admissions officers, your application
should demonstrate:
- Serious intent to
pursue a college-level education
- Genuine desire to
attend the particular college
- Correspondence
between your abilities and interests and what the
school needs and has to offer
- Ability to think
clearly, logically, and creatively
- Ability to write
engaging, thoughtful essays that keep your reader's
attention and differentiate you from the other
applicants
What Admissions
Officers Look For
You - The person
behind the GPA, the test scores, the extracurricular
activities, and even the mailing address.
Surprise - An
unexpected angle on your topic, even if the experience
you're writing about seems ordinary.
Genuineness -
Writing as yourself, without pretension and without
taking yourself too seriously; relying on your own
vocabulary, rather than the thesaurus or the words your
parents think you should use. Simply stated, lying can
provide grounds for automatic rejection. No matter how
confident you are that you won't get caught, never fudge
the facts in an essay or on any other part of your
application.
Thoughtfulness -
Consideration of your experiences and their meanings,
both to yourself and to others, and showing through your
reflection that nothing is lost on you.
How To Help Them
Find It
Think About Who Your Audience Is - Five or six
recent graduates of the college you're applying to and
an experienced director of admissions, all of whom have
spent the last month reading thousands of applications.
This is an overworked audience on whom your essay needs
to make a vivid and memorable impression.
Think About Your Purpose - Not ''selling yourself
'' or ''getting in,'' but simply being yourself--which
usually means writing about yourself in human, rather
than superhuman, terms. For example, if your transcript
reveals that you are a stellar student of French, you
might write about the time a Parisian pointedly
responded in English to your request in French for
directions to the Louvre.
Focus - Instead of generalizing about your
experience (e.g. "I enjoy sports"), be as specific as
you can be. Write about the thrill of catching a fly
ball deep to centerfield just before it became a home
run, or of a Little League career spent waiting for
someone, anyone, to hit the ball to your position so
that you could stop studying the grass and watching the
butterflies.
Use Precise And Economical Language - Imagine
that each word you write costs you a dollar, and that
you don't have unlimited funds. Instead of writing ''On
a yearly basis, we would spend five hours driving to the
lake, where I never gave up the hope of meeting the boy
that would be my Prince Charming,'' write ''Every
August, we trekked to Lake Apponaug, where I always
hoped to meet my Prince Charming.''
Give Your Essay Momentum - Make the parts work
together and move toward a thoughtful conclusion. In an
essay about the summer you spent working in a marine
research laboratory, a paragraph on the unreliable bus
that took you there each day should be eliminated.
Use Correct Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation -
Don't distract your reader from what you're stating by
stating it incorrectly. Misspellings, typos, and
grammatical errors--such as subjects that don't agree
with verbs--make the reader's task more difficult and
suggest that you don't care much about the impression
you make. Although nobody's perfect, strive for
perfection on your application. Unfortunately, your
reader may interpret your mistakes, no matter how
innocent, to be signs of laziness, indifference, or even
dishonesty. |
