College Admission Essay- Analyzing it From a Different Perspective

Uncovering the truth, that is the ultimate goal. The college admission essay was like the last barrier I needed to surpass to finally not only dream, but act.

The same revolving question asked in many different ways, leading to the inevitable fact that college admission essays are a genre in itself. Our audience, in this case several institutions, tried to get to know us with the aid of only a couple hundred words, and that is impossible, if not extremely challenging to achieve. “Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time.” When I was confronted by this question I absolutely did not know where to start. Considering that a genre is created when a question is posed and then a set of responses resembling the first one follow, I knew that I could research how others had reacted to those same questions and then formulate my own response with the use of my personal experience and writing style.

A genre must have a strong foundation on the response it is trying to get from the audience. Therefore, the college admission essay genre is one that is deeply influenced by location. All of us had a certain degree of pressure to exceed the expectations the recruitment teams had, and because of that, we had to consider the context of the genre and what we were trying to achieve. For that same reason, location modified to some extent our inner voice.

Ultimately, the college admissions team focused on unearthing our souls, searching for the qualities that setted us apart, the ones that made us the purple cows.

3 thoughts on “College Admission Essay- Analyzing it From a Different Perspective”

  1. I would suggest including more information about what college admissions teams specifically expect to see from the students’ essays . What should they write about? What language would be acceptable? How should they format? I like the fact that you included a description of your own personal experience, but I feel like it can’t hurt to try and include a general statement. Try and explain why college admission essays are a genre and how to successfully write an essay for that particular. Mention Kirk, and how her definition of a genre applies to college admission essays. Overall, go more in depth of the specific writing style and details a student must include in their essay. Make sure to base these details of of Kirk’s examples such as location, previous works, audience etc.

  2. I would suggest expanding more on genre and location. I felt that this had a lot of personal experience intertwined, which is good, but there should be more expansion on how you view the experience now that you have read navigating genres. Bringing personal experience into this new perspective would have made for a stronger piece. I also felt that you spent too much space trying to elaborate on the intentions of the college essay readers;
    you should bring in more of your own perspective by establishing how you attempted to fulfill the expectations of the college admissions. Overall, I like your writing style, with a few minor changes to the foundations I think it would be a very strong piece.