Kerry Dirk defines the location of an essay as “among the situational elements that lead to expected genres and to adaptations of those genres in particular situations,” (Dirk 255). Location was definitely a factor while I wrote my college admission essay. The Common Application provided the applicants with a few prompts, and they would choose from two prompts and respond with an essay. The prompt I chose asked about a time where I experienced failure and how I overcame it. I felt that this was the most fitting topic because I have always believed in encountering obstacles in order to succeed. During the process, I experienced a little writer’s block and had trouble conveying my words onto the essay. However, I started to get the hang of it and put together a well-written essay. I talked about two experiences. The first experience was my freshman year when I got cut from my basketball team. After hard work, persistence, and prayer, I made the team the next year. My second experience was during my junior year when I was supposed to move to Los Angeles, but we decided to stay in San Diego last minute. I enrolled in school late, and I was forced to take pre-calculus with AP Physics (Mechanics), a course that required calculus. After studying for countless hours, I passed the AP test and got an A.
The colleges want to get to know what kind of students the applicants are, and the only way to fulfill that is to answer their prompts uniquely and correctly. Kerry Dirk wrote, “You needed to consider how your particular teacher’s [in this case, people who review the essays] expectations would help to shape your assignment,” (Dirk 255). While writing my essay, I thought about how the colleges would react to my experiences. They want to see how the applicants deal with adversity, socializing, academics, and being an all-around student. The “location” of writing this essay was crucial for me, as well as all of the other applicants.
This is a really great essay already and I don’t think you need to make any changes, but maybe just add a little more. Maybe you can say why you chose to write about those topics and how you thought it would make you come across to the people reading it, for example it shows that you are hard working, dedicated, able to face challenges head on, and will not give up when you are faced with failure- you will overcome it. Then you can go on to explain that your experiences fit perfectly for a college essay because those are some of the characteristics of a student that colleges are looking for. Also, explain the expectations that those reading the essays have and what you want to achieve in your writing, basically what I said above. If you want you can maybe say some of the challenges you faced when writing the essay too.
Your response was very well put together. I appreciated that you stuck to the topics of Kerry Dirk’s writing and her statements to compose your reflection. I would add more about why you chose to essays topics you did and what you wanted the admissions office to learn about you. I would also add more about the process of writing these essays, I know that they can be very stressful, but I would want to here more about what challenges you may have had.