语言教学 | 普渡大学写作教学系列General Writing 93-Undergraduate Application(3)

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4、Advice for Writing Application Essays

Advice for Writing Successful Application Essays

When you sit down to write your application essays, there is very little left that you can control. You should have already taken, or retaken, the SAT and ACT, your grades from your first three years of high school are set on your transcript, and your recommenders all have their impressions of you that are unlikely to change before the recommendation deadline. The only thing that left in your control is your writing for the application essay.

As with all things related to your college application, you will need to start drafting your application essay far ahead of the due date. In fact, you should move each school’s deadline up two weeks so that no unexpected events prevent you from completing and submitting your application. The reason that you need so much time to work on your essay is primarily because many schools will ask you to write about similar topics, but to do so in different ways. You will need enough time to draft essays that address each of these questions or prompts for each school to which you are applying.

Don't use boilerplate essays. That is, resist the urge to reuse the exact same essay for different schools if each of them is giving you a slightly different writing prompt. You can, of course, adapt the same essay for similar prompts. Many schools do allow you to use the Common Application essay for admission to several participating schools. For more information on the Common Application and to check which schools participate as members, click here.

Although using the Common Application does simplify the processes, make sure that you review each of the schools’ application requirements. as many of these same schools also request that you submit a second essay along with the Common Application essay. For instance, in addition to answering one of the standard Common Application questions, Amherst College asks that you write an additional essay responding to one of several quotations.

Before you can start writing your essay, you will need to begin by reading the prompts and questions carefully. Even the Common Application has six prompts that you can choose from. Don’t feel as though you must choose one immediately after reading them. You should ask yourself what sticks out the most for you after having read through them. Think about what is most salient for you.

Brainstorm by putting your thoughts on paper. You can free write (writing without stopping or censoring yourself), create word association maps (visually clustering concepts that you feel go together), or keep a journal over the course of several days so that you can collect your thoughts in one place. See the Purdue OWL's PowerPoint on “Finding your Focus” for more details on these strategies.

After you have generated several ideas, reflect on where you find the most intensity or excitement in what you were writing. If nothing jumps out at you, keep brainstorming or talk with others about some possible topics until something grabs you.

Once you know what want to write about, put a rough draft on paper. Don’t be afraid of stray thoughts if they lead you to something more interesting than you had set out to write. Just make sure that you eventually come to have a rough draft that is about one thing.

Look over your draft and check for the following.

• Your writing should be personal. After reading your essay, does it seem like anyone could have written this? Make sure that your essay captures who you are.

• You writing should show, not tell, through vivid language. Successful essays relate an experience or analyze a pattern from the writer’s life. It is not enough to make general claims about what impacted your decision to go to college, for instance; you must elaborate by including evidence that answers “how” and “why” when you make your claims.

It is important to note that admissions officers care as much about your structure, style, and insights as they do about your content. That is not meant to add an extra layer of anxiety to your writing process, but to highlight the fact that you don’t necessarily need to have something life-changing to write about in order to write a successful essay. As Dowhan, Dowhan and Kaufman note in Essays that Will Get You into College, “Personal does not have to mean heavy, emotional or even inspiring” (10). In fact, as the authors explain, students might over rely on the significant event that they write about to speak for itself and don’t “explain what it meant to them or give a solid example of how it changed them. In other words, they do not make it personal” (10).

Finally, your writing should be about a sustained topic. You must use vivid description with a purpose. What is it that you learned because of this experience? What message can you decipher from the series of events that you present? What led you to your conclusions?

Once you have completed your rough draft, put it away for a few days. Afterwards, read the question again and look through your essay. Ask yourself if the essay answers the prompt. Is it personal? Does it use vivid language? Is it focused on one topic? Rewrite whatever needs to be strengthened. This is a great time to have other people look through your draft and get their reaction. Make sure that you ask someone early, and that you trust this person’s judgment; they will be putting in a lot of time to help you, so don’t disregard anything that is inconvenient or that you don’t want to hear.

Again, giving yourself plenty of time to work on this essay is vital. You should have enough time to rewrite or restructure your essay based on the feedback that you have received. As you are drafting and revising, feel free to fix any mistakes that you catch in terms of spelling, grammar, and mechanics, but don’t spend too much time editing early on in the writing process. Working on lower-order concerns can give you the impression that the essay is ready to submit prematurely. Instead, use this time to strengthen the main points of your essay.

5、Submitting Your Application and Financial Aid

Submitting Your Application

Although many schools have electronic applications, many still allow you to turn in your documents through the mail. There are advantages and disadvantages to each method. For instance, working on a hard copy application will cost money and time to ship, it might get lost in the mail, and it often requires careful attention when filling out the forms to avoid mistakes. However, working with an online application will mean frequently saving your work; remembering passwords, usernames, and emails that you use to register an account; and oftentimes printing out copies of your application essay in order to proofread and revise. A system that is being commonly implemented by colleges is the Common Application, an online application that once filled, can be submitted to a number of schools. According to the Common Application website, all applications using this system are considered equally along with those turned in via a colleges’ own electronic application systems. This option can save you time, but you may still need to create multiple accounts for some of your other schools, as not all schools currently accept the Common Application.

Applying for Financial Aid

In order to increase your chances of being considered for merit based scholarships, you should start creating and collecting evidence that you deserve aid as early in your high school career as possible. For instance, your transcripts should show not only that you earned good grades in your classes, but also that you challenged yourself by taking difficult courses. Other evidence of academic excellence include your SAT or ACT scores and any academic achievement awards you may have earned while in high school.

Frequently, however, scholarships are awarded to individuals who are also engaged outside of the classroom through extracurricular and volunteer opportunities in the communities. Quality matters more than quantity here. Make sure you can talk about your experiences in a few areas that interest you in-depth as opposed to listing off numerous activities that seem disconnected or unimportant to you. Typically, you are applying for scholarships provided through the college to which you are applying when you are filling out the main application form. However, you can also search for scholarships from outside the school through such sites as www.fastweb.com or www.scholarships.com, checking in with community organizations, or asking your guidance counselor which scholarships have been awarded to students in previous years.

You may also qualify for need-based financial aid, but you will have to fill out the Free Application for Financial Student Aid (FAFSA), available at www.fafsa.ed.gov . According to their website, the office of Federal Student Aid is “responsible for managing the student financial assistance programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. These programs provide grants, loans, and work-study funds to students attending college or career school.” In order to ensure that you have the best chance possible for receiving aid, you should check each college’s website for the FAFSA submission deadline, but plan on submitting the application as early in the new year as possible. For instance, some states request that the FAFSA be completed by March, while others provide funding on a first come first serve basis, and so they recommend that students apply right after January 1st.

The type of funding you might receive will depend on your circumstances. Federal Pell Grants vary according to a student’s financial need, and unlike loans, do not have to be repaid. You may also qualify for subsidized loans. Unlike with unsubsidized loans, you do not have to pay interest on the money you borrow while you are enrolled in school, during the six-month grace period after you graduate, or during any deferment periods in the future. For more information on federal aid, see the Office of Student Aid website: http://studentaid.ed.gov/

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