Behind every college essay is a student whose goal is to be accepted. It may be their dream school, a parent’s alma mater, or they may be just applying as a backup option. Whatever the reason for applying, the time spent working on applications is tedious and requires a lot of research and dedication to making it the best it can be. Different college essays require different prompts but most students have a similar genre in how they write it. Students tend to focus on what qualities about the school they are interested in, and what about the school sets it apart from the countless others. Dirks describes this concept as rhetorical location, writing in a specific way based on your audience. Another addition students tend to add in college essays are personal stories or experiences, which Dirk explains as rhetorical situation. This addition that allows the admissions to learn about who they are and gives them a glimpse of their background.
In my college essay to USD I made sure to utilize as many strategies as possible. I used rhetorical location when I wrote about how I would feel connected to my Catholic values at USD. This is something I didn’t mention in essays to public colleges because the religious aspect is something that’s special to private colleges like USD. I grew up with Catholic values to uphold to and I mentioned how I would love to be at a school that instills those same values. I used rhetorical situation to explain more about myself and help them to understand a little bit about who I am. I mentioned sports and activities I participated in-such as the cheer and dive team, jobs I have had, and the experience of having someone in my family become really ill and how my family got through that difficult time period. I explained how all these things shaped me and helped me grow each in a different way. Understanding the type of genre that was most persuasive to USD admissions was crucial for my success at being accepted.
I think you do a really good job of bringing up the concept of rhetorical question in your second paragraph and specifically addressing topics covered in Dirk. I think you could strengthen your piece by adding more specific examples from Dirk’s reading into your first paragraph, and could weave it into the definition of genre. I think you do a good job of explaining the specificity of what you chose to write about for your college essay, but I think you could go into more detail surrounding the rationale for your decision to write about those subjects if you want to strengthen your piece. I would also consider rereading over your last sentence, because I think there is possibility for you to strengthen it if you are interested.
Good job about being specific about your own experience and connecting it to your college essay, but maybe go more in depth about the genre and possibly more reasoning behind why they give stories (the importance). You can maybe also add the emotions that the author tries to evoke. Overall you wrote it well and good conclusion.
Mary, this is pretty good, you should just develop the second paragraph to be a little more explicit about the ways in which you’re using Dirk’s definitions and terminology. Minor fixes: “parent’s alma mater” and “Catholic values”.