Five Helpful Tips For Writing A College Admission Essay

Five Helpful Tips For Writing A College Admission Essay Having a clear idea of the question is SO important to remain organized as you do your research. Okay -- that’s a bit of an extreme example, but the reasoning holds true. Before you start writing like a determined maniac, you need to also have an outline first -- otherwise, you could end up scrapping most or all of what you wrote in the first place. Finish by making a decision, tell the reader what the answer is. Start with something other than the cliche 'to conclude' or ‘ultimately.’ Teachers are tired of hearing those words, and often, they can be left out. Once your topic sentence is written, it's time to turn your notes into sentences to supporting the claim made in your topic sentence. The majority of your body paragraph should be backing up your paragraph’s point with evidence, facts and quotes. This is one reason why a teacher may give an assignment length in words instead of pages - page length can be faked by changing the margins and fonts. If you're asked to submit a paper with single spacing, you will be writing two-and-a-half pages. If you're using 1.5 spacing, it would be around three pages. Worse, all three of these answers reveal a lack of understanding of the marketplace in which writers are trying to sell storiesâ€"the same marketplace where we agents are selling stories. Go with ‘ultimately’ however if you feel like your conclusion is incomplete without this transitional phrase. If you can, save a nice interesting fact to hit the reader with in the conclusion. This is your chance to essentially say 'so basically I was right and the previous paragraphs are the proof of it'. Facts you’ve researched that don’t quite fit with your argument should be kept in another section -- that will be for your counter-argument. Trust me -- you will get brownie points for addressing these points later in your essay. So make sure you know the content and collect your notes -- do whatever you need to prepare. Many teachers will specify this, too, so be sure to check! Along with these standard formats, you're likely to be assigned a standard font size, too. Get ready to see 12pt written somewhere in your teacher's instructions. Different fonts and different font sizes will affect the number of pages you write. At the end of your paragraph, relate back to the question (don't forget your key-words) and make a judgment about this individual point in reference to your thesis. You’ve already determined what your three major points are and which notes/facts should support which points. I wrote an essay of 1550 words and it was barely 4.5 pages . This is a great guide, but people should be aware that these are just estimates. This includes collecting your stationery and paper etc, so that before you know everything you want to write about. and constantly refer to it and use the keywords to show the reader/examiner/your teacher that you are addressing the question. So go back to your screen, accept that the first draft is going to be DARN AWFUL, and challenge yourself to write that first sentence -- then another -- and another. The tendency toward perfectionism is the enemy of all progress. The biggest mistake I ever made was repeatedly re-reading everything I wrote, going back to edit, realizing I hated my writing, and then getting in the way of any progress I was making.