Before you write your first draft read our sample essays to get a few tips on writing your perfect admission essay. This section contains five examples of good college essays. College Essay Sample One. College Essay Sample Two. College Essay Sample Three. College Essay Sample Four. College Essay Sample Five 11/14/ · Writing the college application essay is a daunting task. One great way to get started is to read examples of successful essays. Reading sample college essays gives you great ideas and helps to illustrate what is expected from a good college essay. Check out these college essay examples for inspiration! College Essay Example #1: A Tale of Two CitiesEstimated Reading Time: 6 mins Written by Janine W. Robinson, who blogs about college essays at EssayHell, this book features great sample essays. But it's Robinson's precise and clear explanations of how to use a narrative style in your essay to tell a story about your life that make the book really outstanding. Through long and detailed commentary on each essay, Robinson shows why narrative is exactly the kind of structure that works best for personal essays
College Admission Essay Samples - Essay Writing Center
College Essays. Sure, you might know the theory behind what a college essay is supposed to sound and look like. But where do you find good sources for reading sample college essays? How can you make sure that these resources will actually strengthen and improve your writing? And what is the best way to use the college essay examples that you do find? There are some very good reasons for wanting to check out how other people have handled the college admissions essay.
First, because you'll be able to get a better sense of what colleges are looking for, you will necessarily broaden your own topic brainstorming past your first, easiest, and most c lichéd i deas. It's one thing to hear that a completely mundane topic is way better than one focusing on your greatest sports moment. But once you see other students writing about a family meal, or an obsession with a particular board game, or a love of cultivating cacti, you'll be convinced to find your essay good sample college essays the small moments of your life.
Second, you'll see how your life and writing compares to that of your peers. The great diversity of voices, topics, tones, points of view will show you just how many things you could possibly write about, and how to keep the essay connected to your personality and your voice. Finally, if you really do have a good story to tell about something that gets written about a lot, like divorce, pet death, a community service trip, or winning the big game, you can get ideas for how to approach a potentially lackluster essay topic in a novel and striking way.
First, good sample college essays, the basics. A good sample college essays is good sample college essays as good as its content, so make sure you're reading college essays that worked, from people who actually got into the schools they applied to.
Also, it's best to focus on new essays not older than yearsso you are reading what has worked in the most recent past, rather than seeing outdated ideas and historical perspectives. Next, what you really want is diversity in voice and perspective, good sample college essays.
Make sure the essays featured come from many different kinds of students: either from applicants to both top and lower-tier schools; or from students with different ethnic, economic, and racial backgrounds; or from writers using both formal and more experimental essay techniques. Finally, the best sources of admission essays will feature explanatory material.
This will give each essay some kind of context: commentary on what makes the essay good, explanations of the drafting process, or, at least, biographical information about students. Looking at a bunch of identical koi isn't the best way to learn about freshwater fish varieties. Here are my recommendations for excellent resources, as well as some warnings about resources that I think you should avoid. I've taken a look at many of the books that collect college essays, so here are my recommendations.
I've divided them into three categories:. And even if your library doesn't have a copy, ask them to request one either from another library in the same system or even from the Library of Congress through interlibrary loan.
Heavenly Essays: 50 Narrative College Application Essays That Worked. Written by Janine W. Robinson, who blogs about college essays at EssayHellthis book features great sample essays. But it's Robinson's precise and clear explanations of how to use a narrative style in your essay to tell a story about your life that make the book really outstanding. Through long and detailed commentary on each essay, Robinson good sample college essays why narrative is exactly the kind of structure that works best good sample college essays personal essays.
You can check out sample sections from the book on her blog. On Writing the College Application Essay, good sample college essays, 25th Anniversary Edition: The Key to Acceptance at the College of Your Choice.
Harry Bauld used to be an admissions officer at Brown, so he certainly knows what he is talking about when he writes about how and why to avoid clichés and explains how to find and keep your specific voice. Bauld demonstrates his points with sample essays, showing how they go from first to final draft. The book is easy to read, good sample college essays, uses humor to make points, good sample college essays, and his advice will carry over into your college writing as well.
The Berkeley Book of College Essays: Personal Statements for California Universities and Other Select Schools. This compilation features college admissions essays written by seniors from Berkeley High School which is not affiliated with UC Berkeley. Because the city of Berkeley is economically, good sample college essays, racially, and ethnically very diverse, these essays are about many different interests, perspectives, and experiences, and are written in many different styles and tones.
Although there is no commentary for the essays, this collection is a great way to get a sense of the broad array of essay possibilities. Also, because many of the students from Berkeley High apply to UC schools, this collection separates out UC application essay packages. If you are interested in UC, good sample college essays, also check out our own guide to writing good sample college essays UC essays! Edited by the staff of the Harvard Crimson, this is a great collection of essays from a not particularly diverse group of students.
It is very useful to see how the very top students approach the college essay, as long as their best effort neither intimidates nor stymies you. The contextual material is excellent, with helpful explanations of what makes each essay work well. College Essays That Made a Difference, 6th Edition. This Princeton Review guide is mostly distinguished by its introductory material, which has detailed interviews with many different colleges at many different tiers about what role essays play in college applications, what kind of mistakes are okay, and what to write and not to write about.
The sample essays themselves come without commentary, but each features a very short bio of the student, including test scores, GPA, a list of colleges where the person applied, and a list of colleges where the person got in.
This collection of of college essays that worked, edited by Gen and Kelly Tanabe, has somewhat spare, but insightful, commentary explaining what each essay does well and what it could have done better. It also includes an interview with an admissions officer explaining how good sample college essays are used in admissions decisions and some comments from students about the writing process.
The link above is to a downloadable PDF file. If you like the Tanabes' approach they are the authors of the previous bookthen you will find this one useful as well. The narrow diversity of essay content and the style of commentary thoughtful, but not particularly detailed or expansive is very similar, good sample college essays. Fiske Real College Essays That Work. The "Fiske" of the title is Edward Fiske, who used to be the Education editor of the NY Times, and who therefore has some experience with what colleges want from their applicants.
The book itself features an introduction with some helpful essay-writing tips, a diverse selection of essays built around narrative, but unfortunately has very little commentary to go with each essay. Although there's almost no commentary or discussion of what makes these essays work, this book is a reasonably good collection of essays from students who are now enrolled at Ivy and other top-tier schools.
What's particularly appealing about this college essay compilation is how very new these essays are: all are from students who became freshmen in I'd recommend not spending your time on any of the editions of this collection. The essays are decades old in some cases, the topics are clichéd and boring, and there is good sample college essays to no commentary to make any of them useful.
I'll split my recommendations here into "worthwhile" and "don't bother" categories, good sample college essays. There aren't any truly great collections of sample college essays online. Individual College Websites. There are many essays published online by the various colleges where these students now go. This means these essays are guaranteed to be real, authentic, and to have worked on someone's application.
Some of the essays even come with brief commentary by admissions officers about what makes them great. The link will take you to our list of over essays from more than 15 different colleges. Teen Ink Magazine. Teen Ink publishes all sorts of writing by teens, including college admission essays, which are split off into their own section on the site.
The essays necessary feature a wide range of experiences and perspectives, so this is a great place to get a good sample college essays sense of what other students are writing about. Readers also get a chance to vote on which essays are featured as 1, 2, etc. Watch out for paid websites like AdmitSee, CollegeMapper, and Acceptional, which claim to give you access to college essays for a monthly or fixed fee. Because of the paywall, there's no way to verify the quality of the essays these sites have.
Finally, I would particularly stay away from AdmidSee, good sample college essays, which uses Amazon reviews for other essay resources as a marketing platform.
Frogs piggybacking on each other? Super cute. A company piggybacking its advertising onto book reviews? Really not cute at all. So now that you've rounded up a bunch of sample college essays, what should you do with them? Here are some tips for your next steps. I'd advise waiting until after you've done some brainstorming of your own before you start immersing yourself in other people's work and ideas.
If you're not sure how to brainstorm, check out our guide to coming up with great college essay topics. For example, looking at how other people tackled their life experience can show you:. There are both broad and specific learning opportunities to be found good sample college essays reading other people's work. Broadly speaking, seeing how other people are approaching the problem of writing a college essay can jog your own creative process.
Likewise, reading a diversity of thoughts and voices will show you that even the most normal and boring seeming experiences be made into riveting essays. More specifically, if you find essays from applicants to your target school, you can get some sense of the level of sophistication they expect to see from your writing.
Finally, good context and commentary on the essays can show you how they are put together and what makes them work. You can then put this advice to use when rewriting your essay later. Of course, being surrounded by other people's work, especially when some of that work is much better than what you think you can manage, has its share of temptations.
So what do you need to guard against when looking at sample essays? This one is basic and obvious. Do not copy these sample essays! Admissions officers have seen them all, read them all, memorized them all — you will not get away with it.
Copying and mimicry. Think of this as a softer kind of plagiarism. Let this hand-in-the-alligator's-mouth image pop up in your brain every time you think about stealing someone else's work. In researching this article, I came across books and websites that don't necessarily feature a lot of sample essays, but that give really excellent advice on writing your own college essay.
I strongly recommend you spend some time checking them out. Essay Hell blog. This great resource is written by Janine Anderson Robinson, an English teacher and a journalist, whose book Heavenly Essays I recommended above.
College Essays that Worked (KNOW THE TRICKS TO GETTING ACCEPTED!!)
, time: 4:42Writing A Good College Admissions Essay Graduate School - Free Sample College Admission Essays
Other Sample College Essays. Here is a collection of essays that are college-specific. Babson College. 3 essays (and 1 video response) on "Why Babson" from the class of Emory University. 5 essay examples (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) along with analysis from Emory admissions staff on why the essays were exceptional Harvard. 10 Harvard essays from MIT 11/14/ · Writing the college application essay is a daunting task. One great way to get started is to read examples of successful essays. Reading sample college essays gives you great ideas and helps to illustrate what is expected from a good college essay. Check out these college essay examples for inspiration! College Essay Example #1: A Tale of Two CitiesEstimated Reading Time: 6 mins Written by Janine W. Robinson, who blogs about college essays at EssayHell, this book features great sample essays. But it's Robinson's precise and clear explanations of how to use a narrative style in your essay to tell a story about your life that make the book really outstanding. Through long and detailed commentary on each essay, Robinson shows why narrative is exactly the kind of structure that works best for personal essays
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