What Makes A Great College Essay?

What Makes A Great College Essay? You might be used to turning in your writing assignments on a page-limit basis. While some colleges provide page limits for their college essays, most use a word limit instead. This makes sure there's a standard length for all the essays that a college receives, regardless of formatting or font. In my opinion, one of the best ways to write a successful college essay for your college application is by learning from real college essay examples that worked. Emphasize to students the importance of writing an informed essay. For example, they should not write about a fantasy meeting with a famous artist and get the titles of the artist’s paintings wrong. Just as important, it’s uncommon for an ACT or SAT essay to be a significant negative factor on an application. With a minimum amount of practice, most students can reach the 25thâ€"75th percentile score ranges of even the most elite colleges in the country. In other words, there is more upside than downside when looking at an extended test day. Your encouragement, ideas and overall support can go a long way in helping your students write their essays. In smaller to mid size colleges they are certainly read, at least by two readers, and all Honors College essays are read. Many schools have a strong commitment to a holistic review of each application and sometimes have two or three readers for each file. Usually one to two admissions officers read an essay. Some colleges will choose only to look at your GPA, Course Rigor and SAT/ACT scores. If you GPA and Test Scores are high enough, they may not feel that and essay is necessary. Did you separate dialogue correctly from the rest of your text? Policies on viewing essay results are all over the place at essay optional schools. Many admission officers would view it as a “plus factor.” It’s wonderful that your daughter did so well. Despite the decline in colleges requiring an SAT or ACT essay, Compass still advises many of our students to make the essay a part of their testing plans. Skipping the essay can leave a student scrambling to fit in an additional test date should his or her college plans change. Some colleges requiring the essay will not superscore test dates without the essay. In the college essay, you need to contextualize your examples for the reader. If you are writing a good complex essay, even your topic sentence will require more explanation than just one sentence. I cannot make that claim, but I do believe that most of them are read. She wants to apply to both as Early Action, but doesn’t have time to retake ACT without writing for that deadline. Do you think reporting her 33 ACT with the poor writing score will hurt her at UNC or Michigan, even though they say it is not required, and UNC says it is discouraged? OR should we send her 1450 SAT without a writing score? As much as I rail against the essay, I still recommend that students take it â€" at least once. Your daughter didn’t waste her time, she created some options. A really good essay can be a strong addition to the application file. Other schools might be so overwhelmed by the sheer number of applications that they make their admit decisions based strictly on statistical requirements. You can often find out how a file is reviewed by attending an information session at the schools on your college list. Check out our article on the most common mistakes in college essays for more tips to ensure your essay reads well. My daughter is trying to get in as an out of state student to University of North Carolina and University of Michigan as her top 2 choices. She scored a 33 on ACT with a 6 writing, which she took because Michigan said it was required. She clearly wasn’t prepared for the writing section, so she just took it again and scored a bit lower on her composite but the same on the essay. Then we went to a college fair and spoke to a Michigan Admissions Officer who said Michigan has decided NOT to require writing.