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The summer is winding down, which means you’re going to be heading back to school in just a few weeks! If you’re looking at this, chances are you still haven’t started your college essay. What’s your excuse?
Yes, we know, it’s hard. But, the closer it gets to the deadline, the harder it’s going to be to write an essay that highlights your personality and individuality in 500-650 perfectly sculpted words, sentences, and phrases. If you’re making one of the excuses on this list, then stop immediately and get to writing!
And yet what better time to start a daunting task? When you get back to school, you’re going to have work piling up and the stresses of after school activities and sports. Use the free time granted to you by summer vacation to at least begin the writing process. Finding the perfect topic and sculpting a winning college admissions essay is going to take some time and effort. No better time than the present to start!
True…however, you know as well as we do that once school starts and homework starts to pile up, November is going to feel like it’s just around the corner. Plus wouldn’t you rather have your essay out of the way well in advance? Starting now will give you time to really think through your strategy, revise multiple drafts and get opinions from the trusted editors and proofreaders in your life.. Perhaps even more convincing is the fact that some colleges you are applying to may have rolling admissions, so the earlier you hit submit, the earlier your acceptances will roll in!
Yes, your GPA and Standardized test scores do matter to admissions officers. However, the essay can be an even more convincing measure of the value you will bring to a school’s campus.Admissions officers want to get a taste of your true voice and personality. Are you a good fit for the environment? Are you someone an admissions officer would really want to meet? A killer essay can be the tipping point that convinces an admissions officer to place you in the “yes” pile.
Trust us. You have all the experience you need to start writing your essay now. Take some time to sit down and brainstorm potential topics. Raid your journal. Call your grandmother. Make a list of things you love and the things you hate. Write every single idea down because you never know when you’re going to hit gold. The perfect topic is there for the plucking, so search hard and then take a chance and DECIDE. Free write about your chosen subject. Let the words flow, even if you don’t like what you’re writing while you’re writing it. You can always move forward with another topic if your first choice turns out not to be the right one. It’s all part of the process.
You mean to say you plan on going to your English teacher without so much as a sentence of your essay written? That doesn’t seem like the best idea, now does it? Your teacher cannot assess what is not on the page. Even if you don’t have an award-winning novel drafted by the time school starts, get something and anything written down. Exercise those creative muscles so your teachers and anyone else that might advise you can give you recommendations based on fleshed out ideas, not untested plans for the future.
Believe it or not, pens, paper and even your computer work outside too! Grab a notebook or your laptop and pull up a lounge chair. Find a nice shady spot and jot down whatever pops into your mind. Maybe the beautiful day will spark an idea for an awesome essay. Maybe you’ll only write down a couple topic ideas or a few sentences of the first paragraph, but that’s totally okay! Once you do this a few times, you may see that progress is starting to be made.
And in the end, when you’re done and relaxing — and writing — and your friends are scrambling to finish their essays, you’ll thank us.
