What Is An Essay?

What Is An Essay? As my mother’s vocabulary began to grow, I mended my own English. With my words I fight against jeers pelted at an old Asian street performer on a New York subway. She’s an award-winning journalist, playwright, and poet. In the summer, she teaches online Creative Writing classes. Catch her coffeehouse jumping and obsessing over the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Make sure you haven’t lost your personal touch to your story. Colleges want to get to know the real you, so be sure to weave your unique voice into your content wherever it fits most authentically. Do not try to be something you are not or try too hard to impress. Colleges love to see students who are very self-aware and that are taking the time to share who they truly are in their own voice. When you begin the process of writing the first draft, let your ideas flow. Imperfections are to be expected in early editions of your essay. Another set of eyes will always be able to pull out errors in grammar, spelling, continuity, and clarity that you might not be able to identify after having read your own work many times over. Ask them if they can hear your voice come through strongly in your writing? In this draft, try to answer the basic 5 W’s to make sure you are telling a complete story that is easy to understand for the reader. After you’ve exhausted your early ideas, it’s time to begin a more structured approach to writing your essay. Pull together all of your notes into an outline that has a clear introduction, body, and conclusion to give your ideas a more defined order. Approaching the essay can seem daunting, but like with everything else in your college search, the best way to approach it is to get organized early! Since the essay will take a significant amount of your time from brainstorming all the way through your final edits, start thinking about it early in August or September. She works directly with students, and trains school counselors, English teachers and independent educational consultants. A college application essay is all about reflection; it’s an opportunity for applicants to share something meaningful about themselves. Have a technique to fall back on any time you get stuck in writing, which may happen a zillion times over your lifetime. After Ye Luo rewrote his essay with a narrower, deeper focus, he was accepted by a number of colleges, including Wesleyan University, where he is now a freshman. You want the story to be thorough without any loose ends. Once you’ve chosen your prompt, it’s time to begin brainstorming! Jot down notes you have about the topic without any sort of order to them; this will allow you to get out a free flowing of ideas. If you start early, this will be one of the most rewarding parts of composing the essay. It’s where you have the time to get creative and excited about sharing your story without being restricted by formal writing rules. He hasn’t yet declared a major, but he’s studying Chinese in Wesleyan’s College of East Asian Studies. Develop the arc of your essay with an introduction, body and conclusion. Provide some details to help the reader see the setting and understand you better as a person. From the perspective that you have gained in life, discover the message or story line that is unique to you. Some essays work well chronologically, where the events are presented in the same sequence that they happened in time. Argumentative essays are often emphatic, where the least important points are presented first and build up to the most important. Cassandra Hsiao is a rising sophomore at Yale University. Her college application essay has reached millions across the world and factored into her acceptance by all 8 Ivy League Universities.