Yes.
From this article, you’ll know:
- Why an essay is the most important part of a document pack;
- 5 steps to write an essay;
- What not to write about in any case;
- Important tips on essay writing
You can have good or even satisfactory marks, and you still can enter Harvard. Average results on TOEFL and GMAT can lead you to Stanford. This often happens, essay writers of our service greatpaper.co.uk/essay-writers know that for sure. The point is in good writing, which shows your goals and ambitions, discloses your talents and potential. Usually, when entering a high school, you need to write one or two essays.
As many professors say, an essay is the part of documents they remember the most. Through essays, the admission committee tries to see you as a person, to find out what your real qualities are. A thousand of applicants has similar points for exams and marks, and it is your writing task that distinguishes you and shows your personality.
Additionally, an essay shows how you can position yourself, analyze information, communicate with other people in written form. Admission committee workers not only get the information about you and judge about you by grammatical constructions you use while reading your admission writing task. They pay attention to what you say and what ideas you represent in your essay, too.
The Most Popular Essay Questions
There can be various questions, starting from “Tell about yourself” and “What is your favorite book?” We gathered a list of the most popular questions below:
- Tell about your achievement you think to be the most important.
- How do you spend time after classes? Describe two kinds of activities and their importance.
- Describe a person that influenced you and how.
- If you could improve one of your skills or talents, what would it be and why?
- What course, person, project or book influences you? In what way?
- Describe your plans for future.
- What course would you like to pass and how would it help you in future?
- Basing on your own experience and that of your family, what would you like to tell us about yourself?
- Describe a difficult situation you lived through.
- Where could you use qualities of a leader?
- What additional information about yourself would you like to tell us?
If you bring documents to 10 universities, this does not mean you will have to write 10 different essays. There is a technique called “Recycling”. It consists of a simple change of a part of your writing depending on a topical question.
See the example. One university asks you to write an essay: “Tell about the experience that influenced you significantly”, the other university gave you the following task: “Tell about the conversation that changed your view on your life”.
Topics seem to be different, but they are not. You can write about how your father’s breakfast cooking formed your outlook. This essay will answer the first question for sure. If you start your essay with a phrase like “Despite having many dialogues with my father during my life, the most important one never happened…”, then you will answer the second question. This intro will fit for another topic: “Tell us about the saddest moment”. Do not come to a single topic when writing an essay, write it in the way you could change some details and create an essay for another university.
Five Steps to Write a First Class Essay
Step 1: Getting Topics for Essay
Get all your topics together and write them down on a list. Start reminding yourself about your life experience that can be used in those topics. Write anything that comes to your mind. These questions will be helpful for you to concentrate your mind:
- What do you like to do the most? What are your hobbies?
- Do toy have certain skills or a talent?
- Who influenced your life most of all? Who do you remember the most?
- What did you do during past vacations?
- What is your best day? Describe it.
- What changed in your life during last 4 years?
- Remind of the moment with your friends/relatives/teachers that you remembered the most.
- What achievements are you proud of?
- What makes you unique?
- What is your most important quality?
- Whose life philosophy do you keep up to?
- What was the most difficult task you had to complete?
- When and where did you show your leadership qualities?
Write everything that comes to your head. A good idea is to ask your parents or teachers to answer these questions, too, because you could forget something they remember.
Step 2: Make Your Topic List Excellent
Sometimes it turns out that way, everyone writes the same. Your goal is to be different. Your essay should be original and not looking like other ones. Make sure words you write to touch original topics (they usually write about travelling, parents, sports). You need to demonstrate a unique approach. Your idea should be supported by good examples or stories. Admission committee experts are going to analyze your essay, so it will be good if there are no usual ideas, and it would be possible to think on certain things.
It is important to remember, that people in the admission committee do not have certain knowledge, which means you should not write specific definitions or things that are difficult to be understood by your friends, parents and admission committee experts. Read your essay once more and make sure it shows you as a person, the topic really is interesting for you and you were able to show that interest and find original approach.
Step 3: Answer Questions While Listening to Yourself
Be yourself. Do not think about what workers of admission committee would like to see. Choose topics that you can explore and that matter for you. Express your ideas and share your experience.
Start from an interesting introduction. You need to start your essay in the way they would like to go on reading it. For instance, you can start from a statement that you are afraid of weapon sounds. Many people will guess the essay is going to be about war or any shooting. And you share your secret about having a phobia of dentists. Just don’t forget that the intro can’t be too long, because your essay volumes are limited.
Share info about yourself. An essay is a rare possibility to communicate with the university before entering it. The essay you write is to show what you think about, your attitude to life and you as a person. Focus on yourself.
Write about what will be remembered and able to attract the reader. Put questions to readers, share feelings, so the committee workers could feel what you have felt. Ask yourself if you could be interested in reading your essay.
Use original language. You need to read your essay several times in order to make sure that you used interesting words and grammar constructions. Be careful with humor, people are rare to use it correctly.
Show your growth and development. Admission committee wants to see how you grew up after passing a certain situation, how your life changed. They estimate if you are able to study at the university. Write down about your changes and difficulties, and about what you learned during the process obligatory.
Show clear examples. Do not just write you are an absolute leader. Describe situations; show examples how you demonstrated your leadership qualities.
Finish your writing in the way for admission committee to remember you. You can finish your ideas with questions to make them think on that.
Step 4: Check, Rewrite
Check your essay many times; ask your friends and relatives for help. You can contact students of your chosen university and ask them about help, ideas or corrections for your essay. Harvard students recommend asking two-three editors for assistance.
Step 5: Make Your Essay Excellent
To make sure there are no mistakes and misspells in your essay, there is a good technique: read it from the end. When you read the essay like that, you are not focused on your mistakes, but on words and their spelling. Check any doubtful words with a dictionary.
Count words. If they ask you to write 500 words, do not write more that 10-20 words above that limit.
What is Forbidden to Write
Do not try to be someone else. You won’t be able to cheat on admission committee workers who read thousands of essays and will notice your description does not match with other documents.
Do not take topics and ideas that are too complicated. In Harvard, they receive a lot of essays where schoolboys and schoolgirls try to show they understand difficult ideas and topics, but in reality things are totally different.
Do not use popular cliches, they show you can’t describe ideas on your own.
Do not use many quotes, they make people think you do not have your opinion.
Have a good luck!