Selling Yourself through Your Admissions Essay
Before you write your personal statement, you probably read a lot of sample essays as guide. This is actually effective. By reading excellent personal statement samples, you will know the do’s and don’ts of essay writing. However, there’s a danger to it. For one, reading other personal statements and using them as guide will give you the risk of imitating the voice of other writers, and worse, plagiarizing them. The College Puzzle shares some tips on how you can sell yourself through your admission essay.
Reveal your good points on your essay
How can you engrave your essay on the minds of the admissions panel? One way is by talking about the things that make you a better applicant than others. And you can do this by talking about your positive traits, skills, and sense of creativity.
This does not mean you can go overboard with absurdity, or egotistically fluff yourself to the point of caricature, but it means that with a good topic, well organized thoughts, and actual writing, that you can show your smarts, innovation, creativity and thought process all rolled into one piece.
You just have to be careful not to sound boastful. Through your choice of words and organization of ideas, you can talk about your accomplishments without sounding proud and boastful.
Show your uniqueness and originality on your personal statement
The admissions committee read hundreds or even thousands of essays, this is why to grab their attention, you have to show what separates you from the flock of other applicants. You can do this by being original. You have to choose topics that will reveal who you really are. You also have to use your own voice.
Try discovering an essay topic in that way. Allow your voice to show through. When you struggle to make the essay formal and stiff, it will lose its appeal very quickly. You want to hook the admissions person who is reviewing yours, out of a pile of others.
Don’t plagiarize other essays
Sometimes other essays are so notable that you may be tempted to copy a line or two from them. However, you must not do this because worse things will happen if you the readers found out about this. Aside from this, statements from other essays will not really sound right on your essay because those statements do not come from your heart.
After reading these tips, start your preparation. You have to write as early as possible. According to this blog you should not wait for the deadline before you start writing.
If you don’t take action early, thousands of other students will be ahead of you and just might take the opening at your favorite college that should have been yours.
In order to ensure a slot to the university of your dreams, you need to start brainstorming for your essay right now. To have more chances of admissions, make sure that you write in your own voice, show your uniqueness, and never plagiarize on your essay.