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The Narrowing Down of the Admission Essay
Let me be honest with you from the get-go: there is no single most important aspect of any admission essay. There is no simple recipe for the perfect one. But colleges are trying to help students to be more effective at getting to the heart of a good narrative, and here's how.
The Common Application has significantly narrowed the field of focus in admission essays. With a 650 word limit and four specific prompts to chose from, students have considerable help in shaping the contents of their work. They can then send this same essay to dozens of different schools. So while it functions as a one-size-fits-all personal statement, the Common App gives its student-writers decent guidance.
The trend in college admissions essays is changing. Though most schools still utilize the essay as a vehicle for getting to know a candidate, their questions have become increasingly more detailed. This year for the first time, the University of California is shifting from their two-prompt, one-thousand word model to something very different: a total of eight prompts, from which students must chose four. No essay is to be longer than 350 words.
Students may find it cumbersome to write "more" essays, but the schools who require several are not doing it to increase the volume of information they get from students, purchase viagra online in india but rather the quality of what they are writing. Many universities require a primary essay of around 500 words and often several more within the 250-300 word range.
Shorter essays are often more difficult to write-you don't have the advantage of a long runway for your ascent or landing. But with the tight word limits, they force students to strip away all of the excess and get right to the point. Which is what the essay was supposed to be about in the first place.
Labels: The Narrowing Down of the Admission Essay
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