College application essays are a brief summary of a high schooler’s senior year, consisting of critiquing supplements and essays multiple times, and trying to present yourself in the best manner possible. The process is extremely competitive and puts students from all around the world up against each other, in order to receive satisfaction if accepted, or despair if rejected. When deciding what colleges I wanted to apply to, I gained insight about what each college required from me, whether it was a few supplements, an essay, or an interview. Many schools that I applied to required variety of supplements to choose, plus main essay, to why you thought that specific school was the perfect fit for you. One of my top university choices in the United States was Pepperdine University, a private Christian college in Malibu, California. The application process consisted of a few supplements pertaining to ideals like volunteer commitments, and a main essay explaining what faith meant to you and how it has impacted you throughout your life. This was a fairly easy application process for me, given that I am religious and volunteered at multiple church camps throughout my life. However, for someone who did not consider themselves religious, this could be a rather difficult application process and they could struggle to try to compel the application readers when it came to acceptance or rejection. I grew up going to church and volunteering at youth church camps, so I could relate a lot Pepperdine’s emphasis on faith. Pulling from Dirk’s rhetorical situations, he believes that a genre isn’t just a specific type, just as Christianity is much more than just being a religion. Through volunteering at church camps, I learned to love volunteering in a faith enforced environment, and encased this when writing my essay. Faith is much more to me than going to church weekly, as volunteering and teaching children how to learn about Christianity made me become a leader and an overall better person. Writing about how faith made me become the person I am today is what I wanted to show to colleges.
Emily, tie this back to Dirk’s “Navigating Genres”, showing how you responded to the “rhetorical situation” of the college admissions essay, and how you took “location” into account. Based on what you have here, maybe focus on the essay you wrote for Pepperdine about the role of religious faith in your life.
I think this post paints a very good picture as to what college applications are trying to accomplish as far as what you are supposed to write about. I would maybe dive a bit deeper and explain the genre of the college essays. Think about who you are writing to, why you are writing the essay, and what type of response you want to get from the reader. I think this would tie in Dirk’s ideas of rhetorical situation and location a little more!
Hi Emily! It was really interesting to read the contrast between your applications processes in the United States and in Canada as there seem to be a drastic difference. I would like to hear more, however, on how you went about writing your application essay for Pepperdine. What aspects did you use to try and set your application apart from others? Did you draw on a certain event or more on character traits?