Campus in the fall
Writing the Application Essay

WRITING THE APPLICATION ESSAY

START A ROUGH DRAFT YOUR JUNIOR YEAR

Start a rough draft while you’re still a junior. Then set it aside, look at it again in the fall of your senior year and begin to polish it and ask others to review it.

Two additional sites that offer great advice and guidance:

GOOD ADVICE

Here’s what Mike Sexton, vice president for enrollment management at Santa Clara University in California, says about the college application essay:

“. . . the essay is that opportunity after a student fills out all the blanks of an application. They should ask themselves, ‘Is there something else about me that this college should know about that there wasn’t a blank for?’ And if there is, the essay is one of the ways you can create the blank and fill it in. It should be something unique to you; it should give us a glimpse into your personality; it should not just be repeating what’s evident other places in the application. So I think it’s that opportunity for somebody to say: here’s who I am—I’m more than a set of grades and scores.”