How to Write a College Admissions Essay

How to Write a College Admissions Essay

Students coming out of high school shouldn't underestimate the importance of writing a good college essay for their prospective universities. That's why when students start early, applying to colleges and planning to write their essays, they should get a solid grasp on how to start an application essay.

Good college essay examples answer the prompt specified by each college while being packed with life experiences, extracurricular activities, and a personal statement. In order to understand how students ought to structure and execute the best college essay they can, high school students should read our guide on how to write an admissions essay.

How to Start Writing

Once a student receives their college's app essay prompt, they will be tasked with choosing a topic. Students want to pick a topic that allows them to input their personal experiences and gives them the opportunity to persuade those who read their essay that those experiences led to a personal breakthrough.

When thinking of college essay topics, students should make sure they're unique from previous college app essays they submitted. No on should ever be reusing their admissions essays.

Every college has unique tastes, campus communities, and academic philosophies, so researching each and choosing a topic based on target audience is helpful.

Take the time to read other college app essay examples that effectively got the applicant enrolled. Then take notes on structure, tone, format, and voice from those application essay examples.

Lastly, students should always start writing early and be ahead of the pack no matter what types of essays they're being asked to write. If students need help brainstorming a topic, AI assistants can be leveraged to give them ideas that will apply to their personal lives and the prompt in question.

Write a Strong Opener

Every powerful sample college essay features a strong opener that hooks in readers and prepares them for the emotional college essay about to unfold.

Writing a great college essay should feel like the culminating reflection of someone's life as a young high school student, from their academic experience to their goals, and to how they relate to their family members.

Stay on Topic

Don't worry about skipping over irrelevant events if they aren't related to the topic. Colleges want to see that students can argue a singular, laser-focused point while also making the case for their unique and brilliant internal world.

Authenticity

The best essays written by students strike an emotional chord because they are unrelentingly authentic. Readers can tell when a writer means it and writes with purpose. They can also tell when the emotions and personal reflection in an essay feels contrived.

Students shouldn't be afraid to write about their true feelings, those are the ones admissions offices connect with most of the time.

Being authentic requires implementing certain writing strategies like being specific. Students want to reflect on their experiences by referencing specific events and facts. If those events really happened, students should be able to remember the smallest details and their internal reactions to them.

Another strategic element is never repeating yourself. If a students executes a point, they will only have to say it once because it has imprinted itself on the reader's mind as they go through the essay.

Confidant writing doesn't require constantly reminding the reader what their takeaways should be.

Use Friends, Family, and AI For Editing, Proofreading, Feedback, and Checking for Plagiarism

The more knowledgable people students have reading their work and giving them constructive criticism for improvement, the better. Whether they be friends or family, they should read a student's application essay aloud to see if the language flows and if they can spot any errors.

Students should also be leveraging AI tools to ensure no spelling or grammar mistakes go unchecked. They can do so with StealthGPT's Chat with PDF feature which also offers expert feedback instantly.

Once a student has implemented as much quality feedback as they can and wiped out any errors, they should make sure to pass the essay through StealthGPT's AI checker to check if their work will be flagged for AI or not.

AI detectors read false positives all the time, so getting an early scoop on if the writing will pass our detection or Turnitin's with our Enhanced Scan feature is essential.

Remember, using AI for writing essays is considered AI plagiarism and although StealthGPT offers undetectable solutions to bypass AI detection, the best way to avoid any suspicion is writing with authenticity.