Freshman Admission Essays

Freshman Admission Essays Focus on what’s important, not on things like this. Since there can be a large variation on the number of words needed to fill a page, most papers are no longer assigned by page count. That is, an assignment, essay or paper will likely be assigned as 1500 â€" 2000 words rather than 3 â€" 4 pages. This way it is much more difficult for the writer to “game the system” by using large fonts and excessive spacing to meet the writing criteria. Parents should always help their child in a positive way as long as they are not writing the ideas for the student. I look at the header, and then I scan the sub-heads to get an idea of the writer’s approach to the subject. If it looks like fluff, I kill the page and move on. But if the sub-headers are interesting, and seem to tell me there’s something worth learning, I’ll read the whole piece. However, you do want the essays to sound like you; it should be your voice. There should be some consistency between the essays and interviews. The emphasis must be on “help” and not, “take over.” Parents, with only the best intentions, will often offer lots of input and comments, which their child will gratefully accept. The danger there is that the essay starts sounding more like a forty something adult, instead of a high school senior. The most common format required for essays is double-spaced, font type Times New Roman, and font size 12pt. With that in mind,1,000 typed words is about four pages.The average person types40 words per minute, so it would take about 30 minutes to finish 1,000 words of writing. Put some virtual blinders on and write your little heart out. Correcting an existing essay is MUCH easier than writing a perfect essay from the gecko. If the parent re-writes or writes the essay the answer is no. Yes, it is perfectly okay to have your parents edit your essays. However, the key is to edit, not to write them for you. They can help with typos, grammatical errors, and help you to be clear, concise and compelling. They know you best, sometimes more than you know yourself so they may have good suggestions. There is a certain “voice” that defines a young person about to start college and if it is lacking in an essay, Admissions Directors will quickly pick it up. But resist the urge to rewrite everything in the way you might express it. My preference (and admissions officers’) would be that parents are minimally involved in the essay. Editing is vastly different from original writing so this needs to be clarified first, as it has to be the voice and personal memories of the applicant not the parent. The sooner the family treats this as a team effort it will be much easier for the 12th grader to feel as though they are not alone in this process. I think it is always best for a student to have an impartial person do the proofing. Is this really something that’s worth complaining about? The important issue is to write the best essay you can, not the length of words. If you’re focus in only on the words and not what you’ve written, your writing is never going to be good. It is difficult for parents to remain unbiased and often it can cause a lot of added tension between the student and parent. It is, however, a good idea for the parents to help the student brainstorm ideas for the essay prior to writing it. If they read through and make light edits, grammatical and typos, yes. My teacher told me that I needed to write an essay that had 2500 words. I got marks off for not writing an essay with exactly 2500 words. That’s completely ridiculous but my teacher refuse to reinstate the point she took off because she said 2500 words and not 2498 words. I could’ve just said that my was 2500 words and she would’ve never known the difference. I don’t understand why I’m being punished for being honest. As a humanities student, I know what it’s like to struggle with the daunting task of writing a 500-word essay. You don’t know where to start, your thesis is nonexistent, you’re dreading the inevitable late-night ahead, and you’re struggling just to turn thoughts into words.