Do Admissions Officers Know If A College Essay Is Fake?

Do Admissions Officers Know If A College Essay Is Fake? Since 1996, our goal has been helping students achieve their dreams. Our editors help students craft and edit written work for undergraduate, post-graduate, medical school, law school and business school. Writing isn't something that comes easy to every student-no matter how smart or driven. We work with students to help them convey in words what they are hoping to communicate to the admissions officers. Bridging this gap is often one of the greatest challenges in the college admissions process. For the same reason that architects don’t decide that a house is ready to be built after only one sketch. On subsequent viewings, revisions that you missed the first time around will appear. While you are writing the first draft, you are almost still in the process of brainstorming, at least on the level of the word or phrase if not the general ideas or concepts. When you revisit the work, you will see what you have written and often easily determine what needs to be revised, deleted, or rewritten altogether. Luckily, this process is usually more fun because you can already see what you have accomplished and are now simply “reworking the clay” into a more sophisticated and precise shape. This is one of the most common mistakes that students make. In the pursuit to write the perfect essay, many forget to connect it to the original prompt. While the Common Application prompts for the main essay are general enough to allow students to write about whatever they choose, it still needs to be clear how that essay addresses the prompt. Check and double check that a clear connection is made between the topic or lesson of your essay, and the question the prompt is asking. Admission officers realize that writing doesn’t come easily to everyone, but with some time and planning, anyone can write a college application essay that stands out. Templates can also help you get an idea of how to create a solid college admission essay format. For example, you may want to include a heading with the name and address of the person who will be receiving your letter. If you’re applying to 10 colleges and wait until two weeks before applications are due, you’re going to have a lot of writing to complete in a very short amount of time. Waiting until the last minute leads to stress and rushed essays that don’t accurately convey your message. Give yourself plenty of time to brainstorm, draft, revise, and get feedback on your essays. One way to do that is to work step-by-step, piece-by-piece. The end result should be a carefully designed, insightful essay that makes you proud. Take advantage of being able to share something with an audience who knows nothing about you and is excited to learn what you have to offer. One of the most common struggles students encounter is resisting the urge to squeeze everything they’ve seen, done, and heard into their essay. The writing of admission essays is not a hard task. However, as many students find that they lack the proper writing skills, they often decide to obtain writing assistance from essay writing companies. Your essay is a unique reflection of who you are as a person. Even if your parent or friend is a gifted writer who would be happy to help you write your essay, do not let them write your essay. Your own words are the best way to convey who you are as a student and a person; using someone else's words won't give your essay an authentic voice. Some essay examples below are by students who chose to write about a challenge, while other examples may be helpful if you’re looking to write about yourself more generally. It is certainly okay for parents to help edit their child’s essay â€" with the key word in that sentence being EDIT. They can help catch spelling or punctuation mistakes or help a student better clarify an idea that isn’t fully fleshed out in the early draft. It is NOT okay for parents to WRITE their child’s essay or influence it unduly, however. He or she isn’t a full-fledged literary genius and the admission officers who read the essays are well aware of this. In writing, there are few things as intimidating and insurmountable as a blank page. Templates can give you a good starting point for your college admissions essay. You can browse the Internet to find templates and sample essays to help your ideas begin to take shape. But your application essay isn’t your life story in 650 words. Instead, pick one moment in time and focus on telling the story behind it. Additionally, if you're caught letting someone else write your essay, you may be automatically disqualified from admission. That's exactly the kind of college application help you don't need. They are okay with thoughts and phrasing that sounds like it’s come from a teenager; they understand that not all of the ideas will be fully formed. But the main idea behind any essay is that it should reveal something of the writer’s (in this case, the student’s) character and parents can easily hinder that process if they edit too much. Editing is a part of the writing process, like development and revision, where another person can be helpful. There is nothing theoretically wrong with that person being a parent if they are skilled and sensitive to helping while allowing the student’s own voice to remain dominant. Many times however, when a parent tries to help, they do more harm than good.