College Essay Writing Process

September 17, 2015 khm Comments Off on College Essay Writing Process

College Application Essay Consulting

As ivy league and prestigious college admissions in the United States are rather subjective, what you write in your essays often is the tipping point on whether or not you will get admitted. Students from China have demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for test taking and their scores tend to be exceptionally high. As many colleges have quotas for students from each country, other students from China are in effect in competition mostly with other Chinese students. In this respect, there is high pressure to match and exceed the other students’ scores and also to find other ways to differentiate yourself from them. In this respect, there is no better tool than your essays to shine with your individual brilliance and engaging personality.

In your essays, you have to be able to showcase your credentials and interests, while at the same time remaining humble and do all this in an easy to read and engaging writing style. Writing an essay is an art and there are many tricky areas that may be a challenge – the essay content, its poignancy, its focus, its tone, etc. We excel at conveying the form, content and stylistic elements of an essay to our students and enable them to write excellent and winning essays.

One of the difficulties we have singled out in particular for students from China is that the writing style taught in Chinese elementary schools differs from the style expected and revered by the admissions officers. With this in mind, we coach our students from China closely to make sure that they understand well the expected structure and faithfully stick to it during their writing process. This is a transferable skill that they bring with them later when attending their selected institutions.

Finally, we are always amazed at how many exceptional candidates submit essays with their applications which have not been edited and have not been proofread by a native English speaker. This last point cannot be emphasized enough. An essay with good ideas and decent style would still make a bad impression if there are striking grammatical or typographic errors. Every year we have candidates who either failed to obtain admissions in previous years or seek to transfer to a more prestigious institution. While these students still have a chance, and we do have helped plenty of them succeed, they are placed in a much worse position than those who apply for the first time in a certain institution.  For that reason, regardless of whether you choose to engage the services of a college admissions consultant like Ivy Bridges, it is essential to edit and re-edit your essays and to find a trusted native English speaker to proof-read them.

IVY BRIDGES Essay Writing Process:

• Preparation:
  • Active review of your academic and extracurricular activities and interests
  • Learn about your background, mentors, friends, and family
  • Define the scope of essays that need to be drafted
  • Brainstorm with you you to single out some topics and experiences that have shape you
  • Advise you on which life experiences may speak best to each essay
  • Devise a timeline for each essay’s writing and completion based on submission deadlines
• Substantive Phase:
  • Discussion with you seeking to determine which areas of developing the essays would need more attention
  • Relating your experience to strengthen your positioning strategy
  • Defining how the experience was significant and your “take away”
  • Shaping the narrative of your candidacy that must shine and be present in every essay
  • Discussion on what content will be included in each essay
• Drafting Phase:
  • Hold a session on best practices of essay writing: form and structure
  • Collaborate with you to determine outlines for the content of each essay
  • Discussion on channeling your own unique voice through your essay
  • Grammar discussion
  • Ongoing feedback and re-editing of essay drafts
• Editing & Polishing Phase:
  • Re-evaluation on decisions of content and whether essays are engaging enough to the admissions officers
  • Confirmation that the essays respond to the questions posed and that they provide what the admissions officers of the particular institution is looking for
  • Confirmation that the essays included in each application complement each other and work together to enhanse your candidacy
  • Final touches and read-through

Categories: essay consulting

Tags: essay, writing