EPTso now i have to worry about SAT, SATII, interviews and college essay to achieve my college of choice.
Anyone have any college essay tips? do and don'ts?
[R] college essay
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artofmagic
United States1951 Posts
so now i have to worry about SAT, SATII, interviews and college essay to achieve my college of choice. Anyone have any college essay tips? do and don'ts? | ||
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HULKAMANIA
United States1219 Posts
1) Read the question carefully and answer the whole thing. 2) Use active verbs and include specific details. 3) Support every generalization with evidence. 4) Cut out extra words. 5) Make your introduction and conclusion clear. Use transitions to get from one to the other. If you follow those guidelines, you'll have a hard time writing poorly. | ||
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Prawned
United Kingdom794 Posts
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PaeZ
Mexico1627 Posts
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artofmagic
United States1951 Posts
i really want to have a career on technology and i dont wanna be some minor worker sucking up to their boss. i wanna take action and impact the world.. so yea.. i need to go to some great colleges inorder to achieve that. | ||
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naventus
United States1337 Posts
On October 17 2005 12:58 artofmagic wrote: thanks for tips.. more tips is welcomed.. i really want to have a career on technology and i dont wanna be some minor worker sucking up to their boss. i wanna take action and impact the world.. so yea.. i need to go to some great colleges inorder to achieve that. To have an impact on the world is not tied in any way to what college you go to. Getting a stable/high ranking job may be. But if you really have the balls and personality to be a shaker, where you go for college is highly irrelevant. | ||
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Tien
Russian Federation4447 Posts
Atleast you didn't fail. | ||
Hot_Bid
Braavos36379 Posts
actually, your grades actually matter quite a bit more. my school was highly competitive and i was ranked similarly to you (like #41 out of 550 or so) but got a high SAT score (1550) and predictably didn't get into any of the top tier Ivy's (yale, princeton) but did for the lesser ones (cornell). my essay was really good but i don't think it mattered much. i'd say don't be afraid to write about something out of the ordinary, as long as you put enough effort into the writing... don't write a generic one that they just hear again and again. you won't stand out. obviously don't write about punk rock or starcraft, but definitely something other than "i want to make a difference". | ||
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ZaplinG
United States3818 Posts
I think people take this stuff too seriously. Here is a tip: Write with a thesaurus and replace your dull words with things more vibrant and colorfull. | ||
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Hot_Bid
Braavos36379 Posts
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ZaplinG
United States3818 Posts
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KH1031
United States862 Posts
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Tien
Russian Federation4447 Posts
Depressed? Nah, he would suicide. Lol. | ||
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HULKAMANIA
United States1219 Posts
I went to college to major in classics because I owned at Latin in high school. Then I switched majors to philosophy. Then I switched schools twice and settled on an getting an English major. Obviously foresight isn’t my strong suite, but writing always has been, specifically essay writing. And I’ve been in writing intensive fields of study my entire college career. Currently, I work part time tutoring Samford athletes in English, which boils down to editing a shitload of essays. Those five rules I posted at the start of this thread are the same five rules I give to all my students. If you adhere to them religiously, they’ll transform a weak essay into a passable one, a passable essay into a strong one, and a strong essay into a damn fine essay. But I wrote them for folks who have little to no writing experience. Judging by your academic ambitions (which I support by the way—the college you choose will make a difference as to where you go in life), I assume that you’re a pretty good student. So, I’ll go ahead summarize some more I know about what makes a good essay, and you can learn from it what you will. Here it is, HULKAMANIA’s Brief Guide to Writing like a Champ: Write like you have a pair. OK, let’s face it: we’re not all Bill Shakespeare. You’re not going to wow the world with every essay you write. But you can learn to write clearly and effectively, which will serve you well for the rest of your life. Don’t be one of those dumbasses who try to hide their cluelessness behind complicated verbage. Say what you want to say in assured, plain talk. Here are a couple easy ways to improve the clarity of your prose: 1) Write like you talk; use simple words. When I get bogged down trying to express something in an essay, I like to imagine how I would say it to a friend of mine or to my professor. Most folks communicate much better through conversation than writing because most folks view writing as some strange, esoteric art. Then they adopt some academic vocabulary and stilted syntax and completely botch their delivery. Writing doesn’t require an entirely different diction. It’s more formal, yes. But it’s not all that different from having a slow, deliberate conversation with a friend. If you find yourself writing something which you would never say, chances are that it will sound forced and pretentious. Talk to yourself out loud when you’re writing. See how the words sound. You can even read what you’ve written to someone else, and then see if they can tell you what your main idea was. If don’t have any trouble parroting your point, you’re writing clearly. 2) Don’t do what ZaplinG advised you to do; Avoid the thesaurus when you write. There’s no good reason to use “perspiration” when “sweat” will do. There’s no good reason to write “eudaimonia” when you really mean “gladness.” If you go randomly grabbing words from the thesaurus, you’re likely to use a word with a unexpected connotation or one which fits poorly in the context of your sentence, and you might end up looking like an idiot. Stick to the plain words you know. Again, if you feel like you would use that word in conversation, if you feel like it fits, go for it. If not, close that thesaurus and write how you would write. 3) Use the active voice. Here’s a quick English lesson for you: Active: Hulk Hogan smashed the table. Passive: The table was smashed by Hulk Hogan. In the first example, the subject of the sentence (THE HULKSTER!) acted on the object of the sentence (the table). The subject performed the action. In the second sentence, the subject (which was the table that time), was acted on. The subject received the action. Now you can decide for yourself what you think, but most people respond better to the active voice rather than the passive voice. The active voice strengthens your writing while the passive voice waters it down. 4) Use action verbs. T. S. Eliot called it “muscular syntax.” Basically, verbs can accomplish a lot more than we tend to let them accomplish. They can give a sentence oomph. They make sentences pop. But students tend to neglect them because it is easier to use “to-be” and linking verbs. See? In that last sentence, I could have written: “because they (students) find “to-be” and linking verbs easier to use.” Or “because “to-be” and linking verbs come more readily to mind.” In either case, I could have avoided a form of “is,” which tends to fill a sentence with dead space, and replaced it with a stronger, more lively verb. Don’t say, “The teacher was being forceful with us about our classwork.” Say, “The teacher forced us to do classwork.” Punctuate and spell properly. Now punctuation isn’t rocket science, but you can’t master it overnight, either. But if you take the time to set good punctuation habits, you’ll improve your writing dramatically. Punctuation organizes the words on the page. It helps classify them and makes the ideas they convey more accessible to the readers. The more signs of punctuation that you can employ properly, the more flexible you’ll be as a writer. Sometimes a comma and a conjunction will join two independent clauses just fine, but sometimes you just need a semicolon there. Knowing how to use both gives you more freedom. It’s like Starcraft: the more strategies you can execute flawlessly, the more easily you can rip your opponent a new one. But, like I said, you can’t just flick on the punctuation light-switch. While you master punctuation (which is basically a lifelong process), you should rely on someone else to edit your papers for you, someone who knows more than you do about punctuation and grammar. I don’t know if you know anyone like that so I’ll just make an offer right here. In fact, I’ll make this a standing offer to all TL.net. If anyone needs me to proofread a paper, I’ll gladly do it for you to the best of my ability. Just PM me for my e-mail address and then send it to me. If you give me advance enough notice, I’ll edit whatever you send me. But, back to the spiel, you can practice your punctuation easily. Just make an effort to punctuate every post that you make correctly. If you find out that you don’t know how to punctuate what you’re trying to say, go look it up online. Anyone can google up a decent writing manual. But I can’t overstate how much practice will improve your writing. If you put in the effort and concentration it takes to write properly and effectively, you’ll get better at it; it will become second nature. As for spelling, you have www.dictionary.com. Also, spell check seems to catch most mistakes these days. Just make sure you don’t confuse homophones. And spell “lose” (as in, “Andre the Giant will lose when Hulk Hogan bodyslams his fat ass”) with one “o” for God’s sake. It’s not “loose.” Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Rewriting takes time and energy, but you’ll turn in better essays when the dust settles. For me, this usually means printing the paper out, finding a red pen and a quiet place, and reading through it so slowly and carefully I want to cry. Check your paper for everything. Check that it makes sense. Check that you’ve done your grammar, spelling, and punctuation perfectly. Hunt down passive sentences and eradicate them. Switch out weak verbs for stronger ones. And, in addition to all this, cut, cut, and cut some more. Cut out extra words. If I were to edit this post, I would probably make at least thirty changes. I might make upwards of fifty; some of them might be drastic ones. But the correction I would make most often would be dragging my little, red ink pen straight across a word to obliterate from the record forever. Brevity is the soul of wit. Likewise, thrift is the soul of good writing. Never say with ten words something you could say in five; you’re just giving your reader more room to get lost. Be especially critical of your adjectives and adverbs. Are they necessary? Do they add something to the sentence or do they distract? Like I said before, I firmly believe in straightforward, uncluttered writing. It’s hard to muddle up your essay if you restrict the amount of words you allow yourself to use. You’ll end up keeping only the necessary ones, the good ones. But that about does it for me. I hope you can glean some useful knowledge from this mammoth post. If you have any questions, post them up here, and I’ll try to field them. Maybe one day I’ll go back, edit this post, and actually make it adhere to all the rules I put forth in it. Good writing takes sweat and time, man. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Good luck on your essays. | ||
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Hot_Bid
Braavos36379 Posts
it's amazing how many college students (smart ones, from good colleges) don't follow those basic rules and are just horrible at writing essays. | ||
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HULKAMANIA
United States1219 Posts
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Hot_Bid
Braavos36379 Posts
![[image loading]](http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/7800/essay16al.gif) ![[image loading]](http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/6703/essay2a3hl.gif) ![[image loading]](http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/9636/essay2b7uc.gif) | ||
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Sfydjklm
United States9218 Posts
On October 17 2005 12:58 artofmagic wrote: thanks for tips.. more tips is welcomed.. i really want to have a career on technology and i dont wanna be some minor worker sucking up to their boss. i wanna take action and impact the world.. so yea.. i need to go to some great colleges inorder to achieve that. 86 is no way good enough for a "great" college. | ||
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Sfydjklm
United States9218 Posts
Thats genius!  | ||
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Clutch3
United States1344 Posts
BTW, I could go on for hours about semicolons, but I'll spare you guys. | ||
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DevAzTaYtA
Oman2005 Posts
On October 18 2005 08:00 Hot_Bid wrote: the essay doesn't matter nearly as much as your grades and SAT... i'd study like mad for the standardized test then worry about your essays actually, your grades actually matter quite a bit more. my school was highly competitive and i was ranked similarly to you (like #41 out of 550 or so) but got a high SAT score (1550) and predictably didn't get into any of the top tier Ivy's (yale, princeton) but did for the lesser ones (cornell). listen to this guy. i say screw the essays until you are done with all those tests. they hold much more weight in the selection process. however, an outstanding essay may very well be able to tip the scales in your favor, so don't leave it to the last minute either. | ||
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MaGnIfIcA
Norway2312 Posts
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ingrid
3 Posts
On October 18 2005 16:04 DevAzTaYtA wrote: listen to this guy. i say screw the essays until you are done with all those tests. they hold much more weight in the selection process. however, an outstanding essay may very well be able to tip the scales in your favor, so don't leave it to the last minute either. an essay adds depth and personality. having just a pretty good score (2100+) will not make you stand out from the thousands of other applicants with similar scores. if you dont stand out, you will very likely be rejected. | ||
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-_-
United States7081 Posts
Also, while you shouldn't be verbose just to be verbose, nothing is more satisfying then using a word which fits the situation just right, instead of a more common one (i.e describing a top socom team as a cadre) | ||
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HULKAMANIA
United States1219 Posts
In usage, the dash tends to indicate an abrupt change while the comma tends to indicate a pause. You set a phrase off with dashes much like you would with parentheses, but they make the phrase not so much an aside as a change in your train of thought, after which you can carry on with your sentence. Example: The rescue workers had to deal with many dangers (for which, incidentally, poor leadership left them unprepared) as they picked through the ruins of Hawkesburg. That's more or less an aside. But here the interrupting clause relates more directly to the sentence: The rescue workers had to deal with many dangers--downed wires, flash flooding, stray animals, and the aftershocks of the devastating earthquake--as they picked through the ruins of Hawkesburg. In that case, the dash-phrase operates much like an appositive. However, it provides a cleaner, more forceful break than commas. Look at how nicely the dashes separate that phrase from the rest of the sentence. It lets the reader know that you're chasing down a tangent rather than just giving a short elaboration. But, yeah, the dash has jumped onto the scene fairly recently, from what I've heard. You can feel free to be a little bit experimental in your usage. Just make sure you're using it in a way that a different punctuation mark doesn't already cover. Some final notes on the dash: There is no space before or after the dash. Each dash is actually two hyphens with no space between them. As far as word choice is concerned, I do enjoy a big word every now and then. Sometimes a good old, Latinate compound word is the best word for the job. You just have to make sure you're not forcing it. I think you and I see eye to eye on this one, though. | ||
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Chibi[OWNS]
United Kingdom10597 Posts
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HULKAMANIA
United States1219 Posts
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IntoTheWow
is awesome32277 Posts
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Codditer
United States70 Posts
an essay adds depth and personality. having just a pretty good score (2100+) will not make you stand out from the thousands of other applicants with similar scores. if you dont stand out, you will very likely be rejected. This is exactly right. It may be true that GPA and test scores are important for admission to state universities, but the more selective the college gets, the more critical your essay becomes. Having a 2360 SAT and 4.0 GPA doesn't distinguish me from most applicants at the U. of Chicago or Yale, let me tell you that! | ||
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AiurZ
United States429 Posts
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lil.sis
China4650 Posts
On October 18 2005 20:50 AiurZ wrote: if i have a super good essay but a shitty gpa and a really high sat/act score do i have much chance to get into a good college? maybe GPA is pretty important though | ||
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cava
United States1035 Posts
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Codditer
United States70 Posts
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