Sample College Application Essays

Sample College Application Essays If a school uses an admissions committee the number could jump to three or more. In any case, what YOU can control is how well your essay describes who you are and gives the admissions person a chance to see things in you that will be an asset to the school. For many students, finding an objective evaluator who is not a relative to help edit the essay is the best bet. Having a degree in English and being a published writer of college planning articles, and having edited hundreds of essays for students, I would be happy to help you too. We administer the SAT, a test that helps admissions officers assess the reading, writing, and math skills of students across the country and around the world. We also administer the Advanced Placement program, which helps students earn credit for college-level work they do while in high school. Advanced Placement can help students discover and pursue a passion, but not if too many courses suffocate their time. Some students cram their schedules with AP courses to burnish their applications. While data show that taking up to five AP classes over the course of high school helps students succeed in college, there is no evidence that more than that is better. We therefore recently announced that taking more than five AP courses should provide no advantage in admissions. Students can take more AP if they want, but not to get into college. As the CEO of the College Board, I see this arms race up close. So if a school requires an essay it is VERY likely to be read. If a school has a writing section in their supplement to the Common Application you can rest assured that ALL of that writing is evaluated by admissions officers. Do your best and assume that it WILL be read and that it WILL have a bearing on your admission chances. There is no way to determine a typical scenario regarding a college’s method for reviewing applications. In all cases at least one admissions officer will look at your essay. We know these tools to be useful, but we also see how they can contribute to the arms race. The College Board can and will do more to limit the excessesâ€"more on that belowâ€"but there is more at stake than which tests kids take or don’t take. Instead, they’re high school students who need help writing their college application essay. You are offered cheap essay help that can properly address both yours and your college's requirements. It is okay for a parent to review a child’s essay; it is not okay for a parent to take over a child’s essay, tell her what words to use, what story to write, what message to send. College admissions officers tell us time and again that too many essays come to them sanitized. They want to read a genuine story written by the child in the child’s words and the child’s voice. When parents get too involved, the stories do not sound genuine. When a parent gets too involved, the story does not sound like an essay written by a 17-year-old student. We can tell when the student’s voice is missing; the colleges can tell too. There is a funny article in “The Daily Beast” by Kristina Dell that shares the anecdotes of college admissions counselors from this year’s record batch of applications. Many of the anecdotes revolve around silly or even comical things students do during the course of the college admissions process. The majority of these anecdotes are drawn from ridiculous mistakes college applicants make in their college essays. If you were to take bets on the percentage of essays read by college admissions personnel, I’d guess that it would be in the high 90’s. An essay is an important part of sharing who you are with a school. With increased competition for admission, the essay has become an important factor in consideration of your admissibility to a school. If your situation is one where parents can offer opinions that are helpful and if you are the kind of student who is open to listening to suggestions, then surely parents can be good editors. Further, if you have parents who know grammar and writing conventions and can recognize flaws, go ahead and ask parents to help.