College Essay Season

College Essay Season June 9 The summer before senior year is the ideal time to work on college admissions essays (photo credit: Chensiyuan). Tis the season to get started on college admissions essays! Rising seniors, when schools out for summer, when youve put down all your pencils and your books, its time to get started on your college admissions essays. Dont wait until the fall of your senior year when youre inundated with schoolwork. Dont wait until youre busy with after-school activities and cramming for an AP Calculus exam. Do them over the summer, when youve got some more time on your hands and youre entirely less stressed. And if you think you dont need assistance with your college admissions essays, we beg to differ. And no, your English teacher, mommy, daddy, your neighbor two doors down, or the clown who performed at your fourth grade birthday party likely arent the experts you need. And by likely we mean definitely not. But if you had a choice between the clown and your high school English teacher, our moneys on the clown. Whys that, you ask? Because English teachers have a habit of helping students write the absolute worst college essays weve ever read. Many times, they read something like this: Riding the bench of my high schools soccer team has taught me the value of teamwork, perseverance, and dedication. In spite a plethora of losses, my team demonstrated a camaraderie on the soccer field that was quite exceptional. Thus, I didnt mind that I was riding the bench for I was a part of something greater than myself. So whats wrong with this? If you dont already know, all we can say is oy vey! What isnt wrong with this? Its trite, trite, trite with a side of trite. English teachers love to start sentences with words like however, nonetheless, and thus. But starting sentences in such a way is the mark of a bad writer! And remember when your English teacher taught you to never begin a sentence with words like and or but as we did in the last two sentences of this post? Ignore them! College essays are meant to be written in a colloquial fashion. It can be quite powerful to begin sentences this way. Oh and stop using words like plethora. Everyone knows that plethora is an SAT word. Youre not impressing us with your big vocabularyespecially because so many students use this word in their college essay. And if theyre not using plethora, theyre using copious, another SAT word. Dont use a ubiquitous, big SAT word when a small word will do. You see what we did there with ubiquitous? Have a question about college essays? Let us know your question by posting a Comment below.