College Essay Mistakes

College Essay Mistakes Typos indicate carelessness, which will hurt your cause with admissions officers. That said, don't panic if you aren't a strong writer. Admissions officers aren't expecting you to write like Joan Didion; they just want to see that you can express your ideas clearly. Instead, try to be as specific and honest as you can about how the experience affected you, what it taught you, or what you got out of it. Above all, make sure that you have zero grammar or spelling errors. Use your 650 words to tell a focused story and help the admissions folks get to know you. Your essay needs to be between 250 and 650 words long. Below are the five components of a college paragraph. They follow the order in which they are most commonly found in a paragraph; however, this is not the only possible or even successful order. The information provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. It is intended to provide opinions and educational information. Focus on using clear, simple language that effectively explains a point or evokes a feeling. To do so, avoid the urge to use fancy-sounding synonyms when you don't really know what they mean. We might get compensated for example for mentioning partners, by you, the user, making a clicking, purchasing, or signing up for a product or service through a tracking link. In no way are we responsible for the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any information on these external websites. Write the first draft from start to finish, even if you know your thoughts are out of order. You can re-arrange them at a later time, but the initial run through will be as fluid as possible. If you have a chance to show your essay to your English instructor or academic adviser, do so. You can use the feedback to improve the essay before submitting it. The essay covered everything we wanted to without the need for extra words. If the prompt asked for at least 500 words, we would add another sentence to support one of the paragraphs. Since that was not a requirement though, we kept the essay as-is to avoid sounding wordy or repetitive. Everything in your essay revolves around your thesis. Last but not least, if you're planning on taking the SAT one last time, check out our ultimate guide to studying for the SAT and make sure you're as prepared as possible. At some point, you might even need to rewrite the whole essay. Even though it's annoying, starting over is sometimes the best way to get an essay that you're really proud of. Contractions are fine; slang, generally, is not. This doesn't mean that you should overemphasize how something absolutely changed your life, especially if it really didn't. It is not intended as individual advice and should not be taken as substitute for professional advice. We assume no responsibility for errors or mistakes. We reserve the right to make deletions, additions, or modifications to the content at any given time without prior notice. In some cases we may be compensated on an affiliate basis when users take certain actions. In order to comply with FTC guidelines we want to be transparent that ScholarshipOwl may get compensated by companies and/or partners based on an affiliate or advertiser partnership.