6 Tips to Help You Prepare For Your College Essays

college essay

Preparing for your college essays can be stressful. This preparation is stressful because a lot is riding on these essays. Admission into a school and potential scholarships can all ride on your essays. Since these are so important, you should put more preparation into this than any other essay you have ever written. The following tips are things you should do while preparing to write these essays.

1. Proofread

Proofreading is a skill that many individuals develop once they are in college. The ability to proofread your work is undervalued while you are in high school because there are plenty of peers around you to revise your work. If you can develop this tool, then you will be much better off writing your essays.

There are many ways to proofread your work, but you must have a good understanding of grammar to do it effectively. Understanding grammar rules will allow you to properly correct mistakes in your work. The other key to proofreading your work is to separate a part from the whole. Being able to review each sentence on its own is huge. If you review one paragraph at a time, then you are likely to miss small mistakes in your writing.

2. Brainstorm Openers

Your opener is one of the most important parts of your essay. You want to engage the reader in your writing, which is why you need to have a creative opener. There are many unique styles that you can utilize to do this, but they must be unique to your essay.

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Your opener will make the reader want to keep on reading. It will also grab their attention. The evaluators of your essays have read hundreds of essays, which is why you need to make yours stand out. Grabbing their attention will help them remember your essay, which should help you in the overall admissions process.

Here is a list of openers that can help get you started in your brainstorming process.

3. Make it Personal

Personalizing your essay is also important in helping your essay stand out. You want to avoid writing what you think the reader wants to hear. The evaluators of your essay will read many essays that are just telling them what they want to hear. You will want to make your essay pertain to yourself, which will make it interesting for the evaluator to read.

4. Develop Some Kind of Argument/Narrative

This will depend on the prompt of your essay, but you will want to develop a narrative for your essay. This will help you structure your essay, and it will allow you to establish your main points. If you do not have a narrative, then your essay will be all over the place.

You want your essay to flow smoothly from start to finish, and you want it to communicate a clear message to the readers. If you struggle with this in your writing, then you may want to take a college application essay workshop. These workshops go over a handful of things, and they can only help your writing.

5. Analyze the Prompt

The prompt is arguably the most important part of your essay. If you are provided with multiple prompts, then you will want to select the prompt that fits you best. You can do this by brainstorming ideas for each prompt.

You should also try to understand what the prompt is asking you. Understanding the scope of the prompt will help you structure your essay, but it will more importantly help you better relate the prompt to your individual experiences.

6. Write Multiple Drafts

Writing multiple drafts of your essay will help you omit silly errors, and it will also give you options. If you write a handful of drafts, then you may be able to take bits and pieces from each draft and craft them into one essay.

This will take quite a bit of time, but it will improve your writing. So, you should give yourself ample time to write each draft for each essay that is required.

Closing Thought

You should follow all these tips for each essay. These tips will allow you to craft the best essay that you have ever written. There are other things that you can do to improve your essays such as peer revision, but these are six important tools to use while preparing your essays.