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6 Grammar Rules You Should Break When You’re Writing Your College Essay
June 14, 2018 by Sharon Epstein Leave a comment
“You can do that?” she asked. “I’ve always been told not to use contractions.”
Like my student, you’ve probably been given a list of grammar rules to follow when you’re writing an English paper. But here’s the catch:
Your college essay isn’t an English paper. You’re telling a story. You’re writing in your own voice. You’ve got creative leeway.
Now to be fair, grammar rules are important. They help us clearly express what we want to say. They allow us to reach our reader in an effective way.
But it’s a big, creative world out there.
Look at me, for example. I wrote dialogue for soap operas. My characters didn’t avoid slang or contractions. If I wanted them to say, “Are you friggin’ kidding me, Alice? I’m outta here! I’m getting a divorce!”—they said that. I love how words sound and how I can combine them to make an impact. This is my style. The college essay is your style.
6 Grammar Rules You Can Break While You’re Writing a Great College Essay:
1. Don’t Use Contractions. Your essay should sound like you’re telling a story. It should be in a conversational tone. We all speak in contractions, so go ahead and use them. (Although, I avoid “would’ve” and “should’ve” because I think they’re too casual for college essays.)
2. Don’t Use Sentence Fragments. Surprise! You might actually want to use a sentence fragment in your essay. A sentence fragment is short, so it’s like putting an exclamation mark on an idea. Think about using one when you want to emphasize a point. Here are three examples of sentence fragments:
I needed to find a new way to study. Because mine wasn’t working out .
The mountain was the tallest I’d ever seen. Which is why I knew I had to climb it .
I finally remembered the answer. After the test had ended.
3. Don’t You Can Start Sentences With And , But and Or . Want to start a sentence with a conjunction? Go ahead. In fact, you’ll be in good company. Here’s a quote from the Chicago Manual of Style , a guide that’s widely used in publishing:
“There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but or so . In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice.”
4. Don’t End sentences with a preposition. We’ve been taught not to end sentences with prepositions, so we re-write our ideas to conform to this rule. For instance, when we want to say , “What space did you park the car in?” we change it to, “In which space did you park the car?”
This type of change often makes a sentence sound more formal. College application essays, though, should be more conversational, and that’s why ending sentences with prepositions is okay.
5. Don’t Use I. You probably know you should use “I” when you write your college essays. But it’s not always easy to write in the first person, especially if you’ve been taught not to voice your personal opinion. It can feel uncomfortable to make that transition.
You can disappear from your story if you write in the third person. For example, if you write, “A change in study habits was needed,” you’ve taken yourself out of the sentence. It feels like you’re a distant commentator, the outsider looking in. Put yourself back in your story. Use I. Instead, of saying, “A change in study habits was needed,” say, “ I decided that I needed to change my study habits.” And don’t be haunted by the third person.
6. No one-sentence paragraphs . One-sentence paragraphs can be amazing.
Toss the notion that all your paragraphs have to be at least three to five sentences. Sure, some paragraphs will be that long. But if a one-sentence paragraph will make your point, provide a transition, or be part of your creative flow, go for it. Don’t go overboard—you’re not writing a poem—but if it works with the rest of your essay, one-sentence paragraphs can do amazing things.
So, traveler, you’ve arrived in the territory of self-expression. You’ve traveled here to tell your story. You’ll still follow some important grammar rules: you’ll use descriptive words, choose the active voice, and make sure your subject agrees with your verb. But it’s time to stretch those creative limbs. And if you’re still not sure breaking these grammar rules is the right way to go, just open up one of your favorite books, by any good author, and read a few paragraphs. Some grammar rules are meant to be broken. So go right ahead.
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Author: Sharon Epstein
College consultant, teaching students how to write memorable college application essays, grad school and prep school essays, and succeed at job and college interviews.
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Grammar Do's, Don't of College Application Essays
Wise use of words, grammar and punctuation can help you write a strong, compelling essay.
College Application Essay Grammar Tips
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When writing a college application essay it's best to avoid using contractions, slang or cliches.
Serious college applicants spend a lot of time crafting and telling their stories in application essays. But it’s also critically important that the essay is well written as much as it is well planned, because a few spelling, grammar or style mishaps can give the reader a poor view of an otherwise amazing personal statement.
Just like you could spend months designing the perfect outfit for the prom but have it ruined by wrinkles or stains, you’ll want to make sure that your application essays are free from distracting elements that detract from what you want your audience to see of you.
As you edit your college essay, use this checklist to ensure you produce your best work.
- Write in active voice.
- Vary punctuation.
- Balance paragraphs.
- Don't use contractions, slang or cliches.
- Don't try to sound like Shakespeare.
- Don't jump around chronologically.
Write in Active Voice
In English, many actions can be expressed in either passive voice or active voice. For instance, you can say, “I was accepted by NYU” (passive) or “NYU accepted me” (active).
While the passive voice has its place in writing, the active voice is usually more desirable on college applications. Not only is it more concise, but it also reads as more powerful and proactive.
Consider, for example, the difference in meaning between “I was offered an internship opportunity” and “I pursued an internship opportunity.” The active voice works better because it highlights the applicant’s take-charge attitude, an attribute that colleges value.
Vary Punctuation
A few less-common yet well-placed punctuation marks can give your application essay a sophisticated edge.
For example, consider adding a semicolon to connect two closely related sentences, a colon to introduce an explanation for a claim or a set of em dashes to enclose an important interruption within a sentence. The key is to not get carried away repeating the same mark too many times or using rarer marks where a simple comma or period would do the trick.
Before submission, check your essay for comma splices, the mistake that occurs when a comma is used to separate two full sentences.
Balance Paragraphs
Even though the content may be high quality, an essay containing some short paragraphs and some lengthy ones is visually unpleasing. Readers — admissions counselors, in particular — like to see relative uniformity, or balance, in writing. Because these individuals often skim hundreds of essays a day, coming across a particularly long paragraph can be daunting.
So, keep your paragraphs on the shorter end of the spectrum. Try to limit them to five to seven sentences each, or fewer if your sentences are long. Your paragraphs do not all need to be the same length, but you should avoid significant differences in length that could be jarring.
Don’t Use Contractions, Slang or Cliches
Avoid contractions like "don’t," "it’s" and "they’re" in your essay because they will give your writing an informal feel. Instead, separate and write out the full words.
For this same reason, avoid slang and overused words like “cool” or “amazing” and replace them with longer and less-common words, such as "exhilarating" or "memorable." Also, steer away from cliches, well-known expressions such as “the last straw” or “the light at the end of the tunnel.” Rather than using recycled language, try to express the idea in your own words.
Don’t Try to Sound Like Shakespeare
In response to the previous tip, students sometimes take formal language to an extreme, endeavoring to include as many four- or five-syllable words as possible in their essay. However, this is ill-advised because it will make your essay read as stuffy and unnatural.
Your essay should sound like something you wrote, but have a few sophisticated words peppered throughout it. To that end, you may wish to consult a thesaurus a few times as you craft your essay or after you are finished. This step will help you to substitute common words for more elegant ones. However, you should not change so many words that readers would need a dictionary to make sense of your essay.
Don’t Jump Around Chronologically
In a college application essay, it is inevitable that you talk about the past (your experiences), the present (your interests) and the future (your goals). As you outline your essay, give some thought to how you will order these ideas.
Many students prefer to start with the past and progress chronologically toward the future. Others may start with the present, then discuss the past and end with the future. There is no right or wrong sequence; the order of events should match the type of narrative you want to tell.
However, jumping around too often — for example, from past to future to present within the same paragraph — could dizzy your reader. Therefore, it may be best to limit each paragraph to one general time frame.
10 Ways to Discover College Essay Ideas
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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, is it okay to use contractions in my college essay.
Hi everyone, I'm working on my essay for college applications and I was wondering if it's acceptable to use contractions like 'I'm' and 'they're'. Will using contractions make my essay seem less formal or unprofessional? Thanks in advance for any advice!
Hi there! It's great that you're putting thought into your college essay. In general, using contractions like 'I'm' and 'they're' is usually acceptable in your essay. College essays are meant to showcase your personality and unique voice, so it's important for your writing to sound natural and genuine. Contractions can help achieve that by making your essay feel more conversational.
That being said, you should still be mindful of maintaining an appropriate balance between formal and informal language. Try reading your essay out loud and see if the contractions sound natural or if it makes the piece feel too casual. If you find that the contractions work well in context, go ahead and use them. Just remember to proofread your essay carefully for consistency in style and tone. Good luck with your application!
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10 Guidelines for Highly Readable College Essays
You’ve probably had this happen to you — after reading for a long time, the lines start to blur together, and you look at the words on the page, but they don’t register in your brain.
Admissions officers deal with this daily, as they have to scan through thousands of applications each cycle. The volume of applications makes it all the more important to write an essay that’s highly readable, both in terms of physical readability, and how engaging your story is.
In this post, we’ll share our top 10 tips for writing a college essay that will make admissions officers pay attention.
How to Write a Readable College Essay
1. start your essay with an engaging introduction..
Do you sometimes close out of a video or article because the introduction was boring? With so many things vying for our attention in the modern world, it’s important for introductions to grab our attention right away. This is equally true for college essays.
You want the first lines of your essay to make us want to read more. Some ways to do that are using dialogue, or starting your essay in media res , in the middle of action.
Here’s an example of an essay introduction that uses dialogue and the technique of in media res .
“1…2…3…4 pirouettes! New record!” My friends cheered as I landed my turns. Pleased with my progress, I gazed down at my worn-out pointe shoes. The sweltering blisters, numbing ice-baths, and draining late-night practices did not seem so bad after all. Next goal: five turns.
And here’s an example of an essay that begins in media res :
Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the garb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire.
You’ll see that with these introductions, we’re plunged into the writer’s world, and we get to observe the moment as it’s happening. This makes it easier to relate to the writer, and also makes us wonder what happens next in the story.
2. Break up long paragraphs.
No one wants to read a huge block of text, and this can be another deterrent from paying attention to your essay. The ideal paragraph length is 3-5 sentences, or 50-100 words. This allows you to separate your ideas and to include natural breaks in your writing.
For example, let’s take a look again at the previous excerpt from a student’s essay on starting a fire. The introduction would’ve been easier to read with a new paragraph beginning with the “As a child” line. This line is a fitting place to separate paragraphs, as it goes from the present moment to a description of the writer’s childhood.
Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the garb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears.
As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire.
As you read your draft, go through and see if there are any places you could naturally begin a new paragraph, especially if your paragraphs are long. On the flip side, do make sure that not every paragraph is super short. While having one or two standalone lines is fine for dramatic effect, it can look gimmicky to have too many, and it will also diminish their impact.
3. Include dialogue in your anecdotes to bring readers into the moment.
Dialogue is a powerful tool not only at the beginning of your essay, but also throughout. You can and should use it any time you want to draw attention to what specifically was said, or to bring your essay to a specific moment.
Using dialogue tends to be much more engaging than summarizing what was said in your own words. Take this excerpt as an example:
No dialogue: My brother told me that I ruined his life. After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain.
With dialogue: “You ruined my life!” After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain.
Between the two excerpts, the first feels more like a summary of events than a real glimpse into the writer’s life. Adding dialogue takes the reader to the specific moment that the brother actually uttered those words.
Of course, dialogue should also be used judiciously, as dialogue can’t always reveal important details like your thoughts during a conversation, what the setting was like, or how you felt. Too much of anything is never a good thing, even if it’s a useful writing technique. (Of course, you could make your essay primarily dialogue if you write it in the form of a script for a movie, but that’s a whole other story).
4. Show, don’t tell.
You may also know this technique as “indirect characterization” from your English class. If you want to describe a personality trait or event, highlight it through your actions, thoughts, and feelings instead of explicitly stating it. Otherwise, your essay will just read like a report of your experiences, which is boring.
Here’s an example: say you want to say that someone is arrogant.
If you were “telling” or “directly characterizing” them, you’d write: Bill is arrogant.
If you were “showing” or “indirectly characterizing,” you’d write: Bill swaggered into the meeting late, with his perpetual sly grin. He shooed the presenter away and shut off the projector. “Hey my dudes, I have a killer idea you just won’t believe. It’s my greatest idea yet, and it’s gonna change the world.” Accustomed to Bill’s exaggerated claims, those in attendance gave each other knowing looks.
While the second version is longer, it gives us a better understanding of Bill’s personality, and it’s much easier to relate to the situation. Simply stating that someone is X or Y trait, or summarizing how something happened, is much less illustrative. As you’re writing, think about ways you can use anecdotes to convey what you want, as these are more engaging.
5. Use impeccable grammar and spelling.
This should go without saying, especially since college admissions officers also use your essay to gauge your writing skills. If your essay has several misspelled words or uses improper grammar, it could make an otherwise engaging essay unreadable.
Use spell check, take the time to proofread carefully, and ask others to give you feedback. And before you submit, print your essay out and read it aloud with a pen in your hand. You’d be surprised at the typos you catch. After you read a document over and over, you start to fill in the words that should be there, and can easily miss a mistake.
6. Vary the length of your sentences.
The best essays flow almost rhythmically. If you use too many short sentences, your essay will feel choppy. If all your sentences are long, readers may get lost or bored.
You don’t have to alternate short or long sentences in a robotic pattern, but try to naturally incorporate varied sentence length. Similar to the tip about paragraph length, break up any sections with many long sentences by creating new, shorter sentences out of the originals. To do this effectively, choose points where the writing shifts, whether that’s in terms of ideas, time periods, or the subject.
7. Make sure that your essay is logically consistent throughout.
It’s important that different parts of your essay don’t contradict each other. For example, if you describe yourself as shy in one section, don’t paint yourself as outgoing later on, unless it’s clear there was a period of change or personal growth.
This point is especially important if you’re writing a more academic essay, like the fourth Common App prompt . This prompt asks you to describe a problem you’d like to solve, its personal significance, and potential solutions. Say you want to write your essay on food waste, and your argument is that most of the waste is happening at the production/corporate level, and is due to improper distribution. In this case, don’t write your entire essay on ways individuals can reduce their food waste.
8. Be consistent with your use of slang, acronyms, etc.
Similarly, your language should be as consistent as possible. For example if you use an acronym to describe an organization, you might spell it out the first time with the acronym in parentheses, i.e. “National Honor Society (NHS),” but use the acronym the rest of the time.
Or, if you use slang like “gonna” in your dialogue, keep using it in the rest of the dialogue, unless the person speaking actually has a more formal tone (which you should make clear). Of course, keep in mind that you probably shouldn’t be using slang like “gonna” in parts of your essay that aren’t dialogue.
You can, however, use contractions, and they can be a great way to not only lower your character count, but also make your essay feel more conversational. Just be sure to stay consistent with them as well.
9. Avoid excessive repetition of words and phrases.
If you find yourself using the same word over and over again in your essay, consider using synonyms, or rephrasing the sentence. An exception, of course, would be repetition for emphasis. In that case, it should be clear that the repetition is intentional. Otherwise, using the same words and phrases can come off as lazy, and your writing can seem unpolished.
10. Make sure that your verb tenses are consistent.
Use the same tense throughout your essay, or make sure that there are clear lines of demarcation where you shift tenses. There are few reasons to need to shift tenses, but the most common one is incorporating flashbacks into your essay, or changing time periods. In that case, it would make sense to use present tense for the most recent time period, and past tense for the less recent one.
Here’s an example of an essay that does a good job shifting tenses:
Night had robbed the academy of its daytime colors, yet there was comfort in the dim lights that cast shadows of our advances against the bare studio walls. Silhouettes of roundhouse kicks, spin crescent kicks, uppercuts and the occasional butterfly kick danced while we sparred. She approached me, eyes narrowed with the trace of a smirk challenging me. “Ready spar!” Her arm began an upward trajectory targeting my shoulder, a common first move. I sidestepped — only to almost collide with another flying fist. Pivoting my right foot, I snapped my left leg, aiming my heel at her midsection. The center judge raised one finger.
There was no time to celebrate, not in the traditional sense at least. Master Pollard gave a brief command greeted with a unanimous “Yes, sir” and the thud of 20 hands dropping-down-and-giving-him-30, while the “winners” celebrated their victory with laps as usual.
Three years ago, seven-thirty in the evening meant I was a warrior. It meant standing up straighter, pushing a little harder, “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am”, celebrating birthdays by breaking boards, never pointing your toes, and familiarity. Three years later, seven-thirty in the morning meant I was nervous.
The room is uncomfortably large. The sprung floor soaks up the checkerboard of sunlight piercing through the colonial windows. The mirrored walls further illuminate the studio and I feel the light scrutinizing my sorry attempts at a pas de bourrée, while capturing the organic fluidity of the dancers around me. “Chassé en croix, grand battement, pique, pirouette.” I follow the graceful limbs of the woman in front of me, her legs floating ribbons, as she executes what seems to be a perfect ronds de jambes. Each movement remains a negotiation. With admirable patience, Ms. Tan casts me a sympathetic glance.
There is no time to wallow in the misery that is my right foot. Taekwondo calls for dorsiflexion; pointed toes are synonymous with broken toes. My thoughts drag me into a flashback of the usual response to this painful mistake: “You might as well grab a tutu and head to the ballet studio next door.” Well, here I am Master Pollard, unfortunately still following your orders to never point my toes, but no longer feeling the satisfaction that comes with being a third degree black belt with 5 years of experience quite literally under her belt. It’s like being a white belt again — just in a leotard and ballet slippers.
But the appetite for new beginnings that brought me here doesn’t falter. It is only reinforced by the classical rendition of “Dancing Queen” that floods the room and the ghost of familiarity that reassures me that this new beginning does not and will not erase the past. After years spent at the top, it’s hard to start over. But surrendering what you are only leads you to what you may become. In Taekwondo, we started each class reciting the tenets: honor, courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, courage, humility, and knowledge, and I have never felt that I embodied those traits more so than when I started ballet.
The thing about change is that it eventually stops making things so different. After nine different schools, four different countries, three different continents, fluency in Tamil, Norwegian, and English, there are more blurred lines than there are clear fragments. My life has not been a tactfully executed, gold medal-worthy Taekwondo form with each movement defined, nor has it been a series of frappés performed by a prima ballerina with each extension identical and precise, but thankfully it has been like the dynamics of a spinning back kick, fluid, and like my chances of landing a pirouette, unpredictable.
The shift of tenses in this essay is very clear, and it marks a transition from seven years ago to the present day.
Final Thoughts
The readability of your essay is just as important as the content. If your essay is hard to read, it’s unlikely that admissions officers will pay attention. Follow these tips to present your essay in the best possible light, and to make it as engaging as possible. With that, we wish you the best of luck on your essays!
For more inspiration and advice on your college essays, check out these posts:
How to Format and Structure Your College Essay
11 Cliché College Essay Topics + How to Fix Them
How to Use Literary Devices to Enhance Your Essay
Want help with your college essays to improve your admissions chances? Sign up for your free CollegeVine account and get access to our essay guides and courses. You can also get your essay peer-reviewed and improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.
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Supplemental Essay Mistakes: Common Errors to Avoid
- October 5, 2021
As you work on your personal statement and activities list, you hopefully have supplemental essays as an upcoming task on the back of your mind. College applicants often underestimate the importance of supplemental essays and mistakenly put them off until the last minute. They make up a crucial component of your application, and there are several common supplemental essay mistakes that are easy to make.
From misunderstanding the prompt to repeating information that you’ve already provided in your application, supplemental essay mistakes might seem obvious, but even if you accidentally make them, your admissions decision could be on the line. So read on and make sure you’ve avoided these common errors.
Not Conducting Enough School-Specific Research
While your personal statement goes to every school, supplemental essays are school-specific. As a result, it’s extremely important that you read up on the school as much as possible. Colleges use supplemental essays to determine fit. If the college sees that you’ve written an essay that can be applied to any school, they’ll know that you have no idea what the school stands for—and therefore, you’re not a good fit. This is one of the easiest supplemental essay mistakes to avoid. Be as specific to the school as possible.
Schools can really tell if the things you’ve provided in the “why school” essay are generic. If it’s relevant to every single school, you’re doing it wrong. If there’s information that’s easily found on the first page of the school’s website you’re doing it wrong. The “why school” essay really needs to include information that’s unique to that school. So include names of classes, names of professors, names of programs, extracurricular activities, specific things that only exist in that school that you’d take advantage of and why.
Don’t Forget to Write About You
Speaking of fit, remember that you must not just list a few appealing resources in a row and think that schools will know you’re perfect for them. If you leave yourself out, they’ll have no idea what makes you good for their institution. As they read your application, they’ll ask the question, “Are you the right kind of student for them or could they picture you more at a different university?” So, you must think about how you’d contribute to campus and convince them that you’ll take advantage of their resources and that you’re the kind of student they want. College admission is increasingly competitive, and it’s not just about being perfect. Fit can outweigh your test scores and grades—of course, those are important too—but it’s also important that you address how much you fit the school and why their unique facilities are perfect for you specifically.
Repeating Your Personal Statement or Activities List
One of the most common supplemental essay mistakes that students make is repeating themselves. You need a balance. Supplemental essays should contain new information and provide a broader picture of you. Ideally, you’ll paint the kind of picture that the school you’re applying to wants, because every set of supplemental essay questions is unique to that specific school. Since admissions officers read hundreds of applications, they do not want to read about the same things over and over!
That being said, the idea of having a central theme to your application is incredibly important. You want to come off as someone who knows what you like and why you like it. If you are completely all over the place—for example, if in your personal statement you talk about chemistry, and in one of your supplemental essays you talk about business, and in another supplement you talk about your theater arts group, and your activities list has entries related to engineering, admissions officers will be confused!
So while you shouldn’t repeat information word for word, your application should maintain a common theme.
Not Answering What the Question Has Asked For—And Wasting Words in the Process
Supplemental essays require you to be specific because they ask you for very specific things. They also tend to have very tight word limits. As a result, one of the supplemental essay mistakes you must avoid is misunderstanding the prompt and adding unnecessary information. Read the question very carefully, prioritize the content necessary to get your narrative across, and cut anything that isn’t adding anything important. Each sentence should provide new information that makes you memorable in the reader’s mind. If you go over the limit—or start repeating your personal statement—it’s time to make cuts and keep what’s new and relevant.
Not Leaving Enough Time to Work on Them
Let’s face it. You have a lot of work to do and many components to get through as part of the college application process. While this isn’t technically among the content-related supplemental essay mistakes that students make, remember that you’ll have a lot of essays to write. Colleges can ask any number from one long essay to about 6-7 supplemental essay questions. If you don’t leave yourself plenty of time to plan, write, and edit your essays, you won’t be able to properly convey why you’re a strong fit for these schools. Don’t leave them for the last minute!
Supplemental essays are designed to help colleges understand why you’re a perfect fit for their institution. Avoid the most common supplemental essay mistakes and make sure that understand what schools look for from the different prompts, then convey how you would uniquely contribute to campus. If you convince admissions officers that you will make the most of the school’s resources, and you’re a strong fit, you’ll give yourself a fighting chance in the admissions process. You got this!
Tags : college essays , how to write supplemental essays , college supplemental essays , supplemental essay mistakes , supplemental essays for college
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DEFINE YOUR GOALS, MAXIMIZE YOUR IMPACT: A LEADER’S GUIDE TO UNLOCKING EVERY STUDENT’S POTENTIAL
- Who do you want to be? Application Personas
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If your essay is conversational and reflects your authentic voice, contractions can help it flow more naturally and make it more relatable to the reader. Colleges appreciate an essay that sounds like a real student wrote it, not like it’s been overly formalized or edited by an adult.
This guide to how to format the Common App essay and other college essays is dedicated to helping you take some of the guesswork out of punctuation, style, grammar. We’ll also share some common college essay grammar mistakes students make and show you how to fix them.
6 Grammar Rules You Can Break While You’re Writing a Great College Essay: 1. Don’t Use Contractions. Your essay should sound like you’re telling a story. It should be in a conversational tone. We all speak in contractions, so go ahead and use them.
When writing a college application essay it's best to avoid using contractions, slang or cliches. Serious college applicants spend a lot of time crafting and telling their stories in...
Can I use contractions in a college essay? Yes. The college application essay is less formal than other academic writing—though of course it’s not mandatory to use contractions in your essay.
Your concern about using contractions in your college essay is valid, as striking the right balance between conversational and formal can be tricky. Contractions can make your essay sound more genuine and like your natural voice, which is a plus. However, it's important to use them judiciously.
In general, using contractions like 'I'm' and 'they're' is usually acceptable in your essay. College essays are meant to showcase your personality and unique voice, so it's important for your writing to sound natural and genuine.
You can, however, use contractions, and they can be a great way to not only lower your character count, but also make your essay feel more conversational. Just be sure to stay consistent with them as well.
While students can use the same main essay on the Common App for multiple schools, we always recommend that students tailor their supplemental essays to the individual colleges. Telling Caltech why you want to attend MIT is a quick way to end up in the “no” pile.
Supplemental essays are designed to help colleges understand why you’re a perfect fit for their institution. Avoid the most common supplemental essay mistakes and make sure that understand what schools look for from the different prompts, then convey how you would uniquely contribute to campus.