The Best College Essay Tips To Help You Stand Out

The Best College Essay Tips To Help You Stand Out

Admissions into college are getting more competitive by the year. In 2020, elite schools such as Harvard and Stanford had admissions rates of 5.4% and 4.8% respectively – that’s 19 out of 20 applicants receiving a dreaded rejection letter. Getting into your first choice college can be hard work, but the good news is there’s lots you can do to increase your chances. Once you’ve secured good grades, it’s time to turn to the college essay.

Why Is Your College Essay So Important?

Whilst college applications often focus on grades, GPAs and awards, these tell a deeply impersonal story. For those working in college admissions, it’s impossible to compare candidates on these quantitative terms alone. A college essay offers your chosen college’s admissions department an insight into who you are as a person – and as a young person growing into a responsible student and engaging adult, at that.

Nobody in a college admissions department sees a 4.0 GPA and emails it around the office – but a college essay, striking the right tone of personal insight, development and growth can stand out in a way that demands to be shared. If you’ve got the whole college admissions team reading your essay, you’re onto a winner.

Let’s take a look at the fundamental tips of writing a college essay that will help you stand out.

Show The Reader How You Think

Because the college essay is the only place in your application you can offer admissions officers an insight into your mind, it’s important to place some emphasis on the intellectual and emotional journey you’ve been on. The essay prompts are open-ended, encouraging you to explore the events of your life but allowing space for you to take that further. You can talk about what happened to you, but by taking the reader on a journey through your thoughts and feelings, you’ll really stand out from the crowd.

Play With Language

In your college essay you’re going to take your language up a notch. There’s a delicate tightrope to walk between upgrading the language you’d usually use in speech and conversation to something a little more academic, whilst maintaining the authenticity of your voice in the text.

You can bring your college essay to life with the language you use. Even the grammar can give your college essay a vibrancy if you select energetic verbs which dance off the page. You don’t need to be pretentious or have your nose buried in the thesaurus – pick words that are meaningful to you, but be creative.

Write About Growth

Whilst everyone knows that their college essay should tell a story, one thing that’s often neglected as applicants focus on the action is growth. Every good story, from novels to memoirs, involves the growth of the characters and your college essay isn’t an exception from this rule – in fact, as admissions officers are using this essay to predict your trajectory through college, it’s all the more important.

Many essay prompts end with a question like: “and in what way did that affect you?” This is what your whole college essay should hinge on, rather than being a brief afterthought once the action has taken place. Make your journey the centre of the story.

Fill The Gaps In Your Transcript

Admissions officers make their decisions based on two things – your transcript and your college essay. Whilst your transcript tells a story of your academic career – grades, awards and extracurricular achievements – your college essay can tell a different kind of story. Use it to reveal what doesn’t appear on the transcript.

Writing about your awards and extracurriculars might be a relevant subject, if you were facing personal challenges that reveal a journey behind the achievements. Use your college essay to fill the gaps in your transcript – that means your experience should be at the forefront.

I Must Admit…

Crafting the perfect college essay is an undertaking like nothing in high school. It’s a transformative experience that is, in fact, part of your preparations for college where you’ll continue to learn and grow. Use these tips to create an admissions essay which reveals that you’re already on that journey and you’ll stand out from the crowd. 

Ashley Halsey is a professional writer at Essay Writing Services and Gum Essays. From starting her own blog in the early 2000s to becoming a professional writer exploring topics of political and personal development, writing has, for Ashley, been inextricably linked to her journey through the world. She is also a blogger at Research Papers UK.