Personally, the college admissions process has to be one of the most stressful undertakings I have ever had to go through– especially the essays. College essays are all so specialized, precise, and important that you feel that you can not make a single error because those few hundred words could either set you apart or make an uneventful first impression to the admissions board; the people who read our essays want to dive into our minds and unwrap what we truly think and feel about ourselves. When I wrote my essays it took hours to get my ideas on the paper, and various revisions ( including self-revisions, peer revisions and revisions from teachers) to be able to get something I believed in. It is extremely hard to try to ‘brag’ about yourself, while still being humble and genuine, not to mention that you need to stay within the word limit. The whole process may seem very repetitive, monotonous and meticulous but it is necessary to write a good college admissions essay. The process and action of writing the essays makes you reflect on your past while looking towards your future. I think that when it come to writing these essays you have to have a certain level of professionalism in your tone, while still staying true to yourself because we are still young adults, we don’t have everything planned out perfectly and we still want to seem enthusiastic. When it comes to structure for college applications, I believe that there is a much looser agenda, simply because when it comes down to it you want to answer what the college are asking you don’t want fillers or repetition–it is not necessary to do a 5-paragraph essay.
The hardest essay I had to write was probably a response to question to what makes me unique, but thats a difficult question to answer, I know who I am and what I have been through, but how was I going to be able to bring out the most important aspects of myself and express what makes me me and write out my life story in 250 words. It took me a very long time to express who I was and why I am who I am, but I think its one of my best pieces. I think that through the process of college admissions essays I was able to better understand myself as a writer and person.
I agree with the several different points you made. The process of writing college application essays was stressful; the fact that these few essays represent our character and the story of our lives caused a lot of overthinking and panic. You clarified the stressful aspects through strong examples, such as the fear of making mistakes, the many revisions, and the word counts. You also used great vocabulary and variety of punctuation throughout the paragraph. I suggest providing a detailed example about what you wrote about yourself which made it difficult to highlight your strengths without seeming to brag. I think this will add a deeper understanding of this particular challenge. I enjoyed reading your post because you covered several different areas about the college essays and elaborated on the process as a whole to conclude your paragraph.
This is amazing, I think you hit every point and summarized perfectly exactly what we were supposed to write about! Instead of changing anything, maybe just add some of the expectations that you believed those reading the essay had, and maybe your goals for the paper and how you wanted those reading to perceive you- this also goes for their expectations for anyone who is writing a college essay, and what their goals should be as well. Also, just to add more, maybe cite a specific challenge that you experienced when writing the essay.