Has your essay demonstrated change over time, or personal growth? What was the outcome? Who helped you get there? There’s a lot of narration that will be required for Michael to tell us about losing his grandfather—it’s too much to cram into the first paragraph. No need to get precious—no fancy Moleskins here, and no laptops or tablets unless you are physically unable to write by hand. William Zinsser’s On Writing Well is the primer for nonfiction writing basics. Tell the story of an important day or event in relation to one of these topics. There are a few different kinds of loyalty. What notes should your essay hit? Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. They are a place to give the admissions committee a chance to see the you that your friends, classmates, teachers, teammates, and family know. Instead, they’re trying to get to know candidates as humans. Where do you go? He found himself writing a lot about mistakes, public performance anxiety, and the pressure to get a piece just right. And that sentiment is fine—it may have a place at the end of the essay—but it doesn’t belong in the second paragraph, because it doesn’t guide our reading of the rest of the essay. What are you going to write about during those six minutes? If you need professional help with completing any kind of homework, AffordablePapers.com is the right place to get it. If you’ve spent your summer freewriting and then carefully selecting the right essay topic, you’re now in a strong place to start writing—ideally at the end of July or early August. Michael’s reflection on the experience of learning to surf with his grandfather occurs over a decade after he first hit the waves. Michael has settled on his grandfather teaching him to surf: That’s a fruitful topic—not just because it contains two characters (Michael and his grandfather), but also a place (the ocean, or, say, a surf shop), a plot (Michael couldn’t surf in the beginning, then learned in the middle, now at the end Michael can surf and tell us about it), but also because the end includes a lesson and a chance to spin that forward, perhaps by talking about how the sport has taught Michael how to be calm and collected under pressure. Take Anita’s essay, which might open: “I spent my happiest moments lost and alone in the wilderness. Student #2: Anita: Anita has an aptitude for English and history. Telemachus rarely wavers. Let’s take Josh's essay about piano playing. To get more concrete: let’s say Michael wrote about his grandfather teaching him to surf in answer to several of those prompts—about a crucial summer, and an important person to him. An admission essay is an essay or other written statement by a candidate, often a potential student enrolling in a college, university, or graduate school. His grandfather recently passed away. Big or small? You shouldn’t sound like you swallowed a Thesaurus, but you should sound a little more formal than your text messages to your friends would. I have always been loyal to the Patriots…. Prompt 1. What do people in your community or school know you for? 2. If you’re well below that limit, it’s worth asking yourself why your personal statement is so short. The essay he’s going to write is actually about practice, and learning to stop making mistakes. Let’s follow this through with Ramya’s essay on the Patriots. But many students feel that they either have to sound formal to the point of stuffiness (“On a Sunday afternoon, my father would pick me up from my room and take me down to the kitchen, whereupon we would adjourn to Dee’s Sports bar…”) or “authentically young” to the point of disrespecting the reader (“On Sundays my dad’s like, let’s go to Dee’s Sports Bar, and I go okay so I come on down and we get going...”) When you’re staring at the blinking cursor until your eyes cross, it can be easy to fall into one of these traps, and to write in a voice that isn’t yours. Prompt 6. Have you ever been forced to try something you weren’t good at? Whether you are looking for essay, coursework, research, or term paper help, or with any other assignments, it is no problem for us. At the bar, nobody cared what I got on my last math test or which boy was asking my friend to prom. (Tip: the stuff that isn’t always linked to an anecdote or story but is important to you can often be useful for those secondaries.). As the epic opens, Telemachus, about 21 years old, is on the brink of manhood, uncertain and insecure in his potential power, and in grave danger from the suitors who would prefer to see him dead. We are big proponents of starting early—ideally in June. Tell a story of a memorable day during a memorable summer. They’re about getting you in touch with the most authentic and vibrant version of yourself. (This is especially good for Anita because it expands her away from just the hyper-intense mock trial competitor she might come across as.). It’s sweet that she’s small, but there’s a lot in here that we don’t need: we don’t need her height, nor do we need to know that she used to get the games in one particular way or another. They can but need not discuss family, identity, race, gender, or class. Was there a particular time—a summer, or a year—when that place became important? Now, it’s crucial to note that this isn’t enough for Ramya to write an essay about. In order to get into your dream school, you’ll need not only great grades and test scores but also a strong personal statement. And I realized how lucky I was: sports offers my dad and me an inexhaustible topic that we can always turn to. The cover was torn. Tell the story of the first day you started doing that thing. Perhaps you’ve told a story but forgotten to reflect on it. For others, it can be harder than simply getting down to writing. First, you’re going to freewrite using the above prompts as a guide—choose the ones you like, or print them out, cut them up, and put them in a hat; each day, shake up the hat and grab one at random! Therefore, we encourage you to brainstorm your best stories first and then think about which question to answer. But getting going in June after your junior year and committing to a few exercises over the summer will be like spring training for summer athletes. Layers of Meaning in The Odyssey If you would like to learn more about some of the hidden themes throughout The Odyssey, such as spiritual growth, loyalty, perseverance, and hospitality, take a look at this site. So, Tip #6: Don’t treat your early drafts like anything close to final. We talked a lot about whether Josh would do best avoiding writing about piano—it’s the main thing on his resumé and sometimes it can be good to show things off-resumé, as Ramya and Anita plan to. Have you faced a disability, a mental or physical health issue, or other significant challenge while in high school? Focusing in, Josh thought about a specific piece which helped him get over some performance anxiety, so he’ll write about learning that piece and facing the fear. Tell the story of how you figured out you were wrong. The Specific Experience Essay: This module is one of the most flexible and powerful types of essays. Thank you for showing me the importance of loyalty, relationships, and laughter.” That’s a sentiment, but it’s not a thesis. Anita will use a slightly more subtle version of this, but both essays begin with a scene: “I was eight when my grandfather first took me to the water” “The happiest two hours I have spent were on a boulder jutting into a stream in North Carolina…”, Resolving the Specific Experience Essay requires a student to point to some kind of realization garnered as a result of the experience. Is there a problem that comes up over the dinner table with your family regularly? Billboard/nutgraph/thesis paragraph: in the magazine world, they call the second paragraph in a piece the “billboard paragraph” because it broadcasts—loud as on a billboard—what the piece is about. And, it will ironically accomplish the opposite—it’ll cause your essay to look shapeless and meandering, therefore communicating very little about you. What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more? If six minutes doesn’t work for you, or if you think you’re not getting in the zone in that amount of time, try doing three pages in your composition notebook instead. or what do I want the readers to garner from this paragraph?, then you’re probably missing a topic sentence. There is such thing as having too many readers, so we recommend asking no more than 1-3 people to weigh in: an editor/counselor/teacher/consultant should help you with the bulk of your essay, while a friend or parent can listen to you read it aloud at some point, or can read it without the ren pen lifted—meaning, they’re there to make sure you sound like you, rather than intervening and writing it for you, or writing over you. She is a rabid fan of the New England Patriots, despite living in California for most of her life. They say a piece of short fiction is about a moment after which nothing will be the same again. Are you sure you want to remove #bookConfirmation# So what if he started each paragraph with a different mini-moment of him playing piano and making a mistake? Conclusion: now, Ramya will spin the whole thing forward and point our eyes toward that ‘lesson’—the thing that she can put in her pocket, which will serve as a kind of talisman throughout life. The Common App allows you to fill out things like your name, demographics, extracurricular activities, and more, just once for every school that uses it. Removing #book# Are they the same ones today? With the right question, you can use your Common App Essay as a window into who you are, rather than feeling burdened by the belief that you must communicate your ‘whole self’ in your application. What are these mystical college essays, anyway? We discussed one of these themes, hospitality, and the other themes on this webpage are very interesting as … The important thing is to ensure that you’ve fully inhabited each ‘element’ of the successful Common App Essay, as noted in this guide. She loves the outdoors, though she has nothing concretely extracurricular to prove it—she’s never been a camp counselor or a Girl Scout. But wait—it’s not what you think. And he’s very close to his big brother, who recently left for college. Some connection between your past, your present, and your future. Athena, disguised as Mentor, guides and instructs him. Tell the story of the most meaningful time you did this thing—it might be, say, when you won a game, but it also might be when you lost a game, or when you quit the team. A wider relevance or a ‘lesson.’ Your essay doesn’t have to demonstrate that you underwent some great metamorphosis or epiphany as a child or teenager, but does your possible topic have a takeaway to work with? 2. Work in these for the summer. Then the natural place to end it is the time he almost messes up but doesn’t, which shows us how he’s grown overtime. Eureka! Ramya’s essay is going to focus on loyalty: a big theme, one that would sound terribly weak if she introduced it in the first line or even paragraph, but one that is surprising and interesting here because she’s juxtaposed it against a unique setting and seemingly light fare—sports at a bar. She likes writing, but she’s not on the school newspaper, nor has she ever published a piece of fiction or poetry, which makes her nervous about calling herself a writer. Secondary or supplemental essays: these are the essays that schools can choose to have you fill out on top of the core Common App Essay. Women’s role is vital role in the development of this epic. All these point to one thing: this is where you shout, HEY! Don’t get stuck in an endless spiral of copy-and-paste—by printing out your draft, you can keep a draft next to you and then open a new document so that you feel free to rewrite entire paragraphs, or delete sections entirely.) An example might be an essay that discussed a student’s home life, say their parents’ difficult divorce during their freshman year. If you’re a student, you might be reviewing rumors and horror stories about that classmate of yours with perfect grades and a 1500 SAT score who somehow got rejected from every Ivy League school. Why did it matter? This is NOT the only way to start an essay, but it’s a classic one. Fear of the Unknown, Cunning, and Hospitality in Homer's Odyssey Fear 2 Pages Odyssey Although one may not believe it, in our everyday world contrasting to that of ancient Greece, heroic-like trials can be found in the most mundane of events. Think of a day when you are proud of how you handled or carried yourself in the face of this challenge. Good luck! In childhood? Set the scene: what rooms are you in in your house, or are you in your house at all? Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. An Ode to Brady won’t do the trick here—but what will is Ramya’s thoughtful reflection on how spending time watching the Patriots at a sports bar every Sunday with her dad has given her a relationship with her father that most of her friends have never enjoyed with their families. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style is a very slim volume that will help you ensure you’ve dotted all your i’s and crossed all your t’s when it comes to grammar and syntax rules. Who handed it to you? At Dee's Sports Bar in San Jose, with my dad, watching our team… She also tells us about Dee's itself, taking the chance to show the admissions committee that she has narrative skills in just noticing things: By the end of the football season, the staff knew what we wanted to sit… we were loyal to Dee's, just as we had to be loyal to the Patriots, even when they seemed to be letting us down. Many young writers wish to reflect on things like charity, service, leadership, loyalty, friendship, kindness, morality, etc—these are big topics. Your job, if you’ve started this early, is not to start writing your draft immediately, or even to choose which Common App prompt you plan to select. Perhaps a particular summer that mattered a lot? Before you even start writing, think about whether your potential topic is influencing the way you think about the present, and, crucially, the future. But now he’s so excited about that that he immediately wants to turn it into his draft. Now, taking your chosen topic, it’s time to outline it. Tell that story. A Chick-Fil-A every block?

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