Drafts
A rough sketch on the whirlwind that is writing the college essay.


After yet another recheck, my writing teacher said, "Wait, let's work on this a little bit more. This should be the best essay you have ever written in your life."

He was insane. My writing's bad, but not that bad.

The bad thing about writing is that you can't really tell anyone how to write. You can teach them sentence structure and grammar and the past tense of "be," but that's about it. No one can tell you the right way to string a sentence together or a group of ideas together to form a paragraph, or group paragraphs together to form an essay.

In writing college entrance essays, all you can do is answer the essay prompt the best way you can and have one trusted writing coach or teacher check your work.

Here are some tips:

Don't be afraid to "put yourself out there."
The purpose of these essays is to do just that. The people who will be reading your essays will not have known you for 18 years; you need to be able to give them a grasp of who you are (more specifically the good things about you) in the limited space you are given.


Take note of the limit on length, but don't worry about it too much.
If you go over the limit by a few words or sentences, it's fine! The limits are there to make sure you don't write a one-sentence response or a ten-page paper. I've gone over as much as 50 words over the limit and encountered no problems. Take advantage of smaller font sizes as well, if you can.


If you know that you don't write as well as everybody else, don't worry about it.
Make up for it by having exceptional content. Also, take advantage of spellcheck, grammar checks, and the thesaurus in your word processing program, but don't overuse the thesaurus _ they'll know you don't really use those words that often.


And, for the most important tip we can give you: BE YOURSELF!
If you're funny, be funny! If you're emotional, be emotional! Don't force yourself to be somebody you're not. They can easily sense fakeness.


Tips by Lloyd Guerra, YFC-Maryland/Virginia

If you want more writing tips, click HERE. These are the guidelines we use to coach those interested in writing for THE WORD, this newsletter.




Real-life education


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The College Essay:
Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3