College Essays

Your college essay?

  • Bland, didn't care for it

    Votes: 6 12.8%

  • Lied a lot and made it exaggerated with fluff and drama

    Votes: 6 12.8%

  • Honest essay, had a lot to talk about myself

    Votes: 11 23.4%

  • Just listed extracurriculars

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Could've done better, worked hard on it

    Votes: 7 14.9%

  • Fucking amazing

    Votes: 17 36.2%
  • Total voters
    47

Berserker

I'm pretty sure the people going to be seniors on this board are working on (or thinking about) their college essays. I've talked with a few people already about their essays; some are overly insane about them, getting anxiety and panic attacks, while some are just apathetic (due to their already high GPA, or the complete opposite).

What was your essay like? Elaborate? Straightforward? Humorous? TRAGIC AND TEAR JERKING?!?! Or was it even truthful at all?

I already finished most of mine, still need to edit them, but I think I'm good.
 
edit: ok i now get what a college essay is

to be honest i didnt put too much thought into mine, just followed the guidelines and wrote about what i enjoyed and what i wanted to learn. seemed to do the trick
 
I still don't know if I'm gonna have to write one. I mean, I'm doing split High School / College this year, and I have a 29 on my ACT, so I'm assuming no, but then again, who knows?

I'll prolly only write one to my top pick, because anything less is community college. =P
 
Be honest and talk up your achievements. It's an essay to essentially brag about yourself while staying within reasonable bounds.
 
Actually polis4rule, don't do that. Its not a brag sheet at all, thats your application.

Basically, elaborate on who you are, and what makes you YOU. My college essay is about a life experience that I had, and how I got into tennis because of it. Its slightly tearjerking, but not over the top. It just explains who i am, and how committed I am to tennis and why.

A Duke admissions officer put it in a great way. I'm going to paraphrase him: You don't need to blow us away with the topic. A well written essay about a mundane topic is a well written essay. A poorly written essay about an amazing topic is a poorly written essay."

Just make sure you can make yourself stand out without writing a laundry list, since again, there's a space on the application for that.
 
being honest and able to express one's self is the point of the essay. if you merely brag the entire time, you will look too much like a douche. just answer honestly and clearly. a couple allusions also help, as they show you to be well taught (ex. you want to be an architect, maybe reference "the fountainhead" by ayn rand, or "my name is asher lev" if you are going into art, etc.)
 
Is this like the personal statement section in UCAS? If so, I've basically got about 300 characters (including spaces) left to talk about how I'm not all about video games, which is a bit peculiar if you ask me since the course I'm going for is a course in video game design/development.
 
LMPL said:
What does the essay specifically ask? I want to start planning mine out as I am generally bad at expressing myself through writing.
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Write a ~500 word essay on any of 6 topics, one of which is "Topic of your choice"
 
The way I look at it is the more obscure you're experiences, the better your college essay will be. Don't talk about your academic achievements and shit, they've already seen all that and probably have had more than enough with it. Write about something unique about yourself, something that separates you from the crowd. Don't be so bland as to talk about 'hey I could have done better in HS if x, y, and z happened or didn't happen'. I wrote about a religious experience I had in India which I thought was surreal and impossible, yet happened in front of my eyes. Experiences always translate to better college essays than accomplishments do.
 
Tearjerkers work if you can pull them off and pererably if they really happened. I wrote about my grandmother's house (where I basically grew up) having to be sold and torn down.
 
I didn't do a personal statement, just left it blank. For my question essay that was something like "what will you bring to school name?" I wrote some shitty thing in about 20 mins. Lucky for me I had very good grades and test scores. I'm a tad lazy and was probably overly confident that I would get in, but regret doing such a shitty job since it could of ruined my very high chances of getting into the school I wanted. Anyway good luck with your essay and getting accepted.
 
my college essay was about my experience working in south africa at a summer camp for the make-a-wish foundation. a lot of it was completely exaggerated and not a small part of it was entirely fabricated. the focus of the essay was my account of a lifechanging experience i had with an entirely made-up AIDS orphan named mboso.

it got me into school.
 
A college essay Im gonna guess is a essey someone has to write as a senior in college? right?

Or is it a essey someone has to write to go into their dream college?
 
XxJohny2haixX said:
A college essay Im gonna guess is a essey someone has to write as a senior in college? right?

Or is it a essey someone has to write to go into their dream college?
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Yes, for senior year.

It's not only for your dream college but any college you apply to.
Usuall, they require 2-3 on different subjects.
 
Kisk said:
Yes, for senior year.

It's not only for your dream college but any college you apply to.
Usuall, they require 2-3 on different subjects.
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Lesser schools require only one 500 word essay, usually from the common application. Higher-end schools require the 500 word essay with a supplement, basically "why are you applying/what can you bring to this school". I haven't seen a school require three.
 
I got into my top choice school, so I guess my essay must have kicked some ass. :pimp:

Not that I worked too hard on it though, all I did was actually go through and edit to make it concise and shit at the end.
 
tennisace said:
Lesser schools require only one 500 word essay, usually from the common application. Higher-end schools require the 500 word essay with a supplement, basically "why are you applying/what can you bring to this school". I haven't seen a school require three.
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The supplement usually has a lot of other things though. For Yale, it is the common app essay, the extracurricular essay, the Why Yale essay, a 2nd essay, and then the short takes.

:(
 
I wrote mine the night before it was due. I remember it being about how martial arts shaped me as a person. I honestly don't see why people go overboard with it.
 
Mine was about breaking into an abandoned building. I got accepted into all my top choices but one despite having a terrible GPA. But then again, I also had pretty good recommendations and specifically applied to schools where grades weren't a big deal (Antioch, Friends World College, Hampshire, etc).
 
I just finished my extracurricular essay.

It was a decision to write about violin and tennis. I decided to go for violin because it has been a more emotionally involving activity compared to tennis, which is just trying to stay calm and getting adrenaline.
 
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