A College Student's Tips for Writing a College Essay

Writing college essays is one of the most important steps in your college application process. Your essay can be the component of your application that sets you apart from your peers. This is especially true when you are being considered for scholarships and honors programs. It can also be what disqualifies you if you have clearly not given any thought to your essay or if your essay is too stereotypical or bland.

Luckily for you, I gathered a lot of advice throughout my college application process. The advice I am sharing here is a conglomeration of what I learned during my own college essay writing process from my own experience, as well as advice I heard along the way.

Without further ado, here we go!

A college students’ tips for writing a college essay

Stay on top of your writing

Writing your main college essay and the supplemental essays that colleges ask for is a time-consuming task. Showcasing yourself in the best light possible requires that you manage your time well.

Time management is not easy. But these strategies can help you carve out enough time for your college essays.

Start early

Like any other big assignment, it can be easy to let your college essay linger until the final week before the deadline. However, your college essay is not a one-and-done assignment. Your first draft should NOT be saved until the last minute.

You should start your writing process as early as possible to make sure you have time to edit and review your essay. I started during the summer before my senior year of high school so that I could get ahead of the writing process. This meant when the stress of classes started to take hold, I was already on my way to having my essays completed.

Create your own deadlines

Most of your college essays are going to be due around the same time, but it’s a bad idea to put all of them off until that last week. Instead, create your own deadlines along the way to help you stay on top of your writing. You can give yourself deadlines for your first drafts, first edits, reviews, etc until you feel like your essay is the best you can get it. Write your deadlines somewhere you will always see it, like on a sticky note stuck to your computer screen.

Find an accountabili-buddy

We’ve all set a goal for ourselves that we just don’t follow through with. It’s hard to keep ourselves accountable when there are so many other things we’d rather be doing. Writing a college essay will never be my first choice as a pass time.

Something that can help people stick to deadlines is having a friend that is keeping track of your progress with you. Ideally, that friend would also be writing their college essays at the same time you are. You could set deadlines together and then trade essays to review them.

A tutor is another option for an accountabili-buddy that can help you stay on track. They can help you keep to deadlines and offer critiques and advice to improve your essay. We have tutors specifically for college essay writing at Subject Saviors!

Okay, so staying on track is a huge part of being successful during this process. What else do you need to know?

Showcase your value

A key component to writing a college essay is making sure your essay gives the reader a sense of what makes you worth their acceptance. What are your strengths, and how did you develop them? What are some of the pivotal times in your life that made you who you are? How are your strengths valuable to the university you are applying for? Use these questions to find the topics you should focus on.

Make a statement

While in the college essay process myself, I was advised not to be too cliché with my topics. For example, while making a varsity sports team is a big deal (and you should be proud if you did!), thousands of essays are written about making varsity each year. These essays can get pretty boring for the admissions officers to read. A bored admissions officer won’t be as likely to give your essay the attention it deserves if they feel like the topic is overplayed.

Instead of a cliche, choose a topic that is unique to YOU. For example, my essay was about selling cookies at school to raise money for the Sierra Club. This hobby of mine was something that admissions officers weren’t likely to read about all the time.

What is your quirk? Maybe you like going bird watching, maybe you sew in your free time, or maybe you have a really interesting story from your part-time job that you could share. That uniqueness will make you stand out. It will keep their eyes glued to the page long enough for them to learn something about you.

Tell a story

When picking a topic, also make sure it portrays one of your strengths. Your admissions officers don’t want a list of all of your strengths in essay form. Instead, they want you to show them that you possess a strength.

For example, rather than saying you are a hard worker, describe a time that you worked hard on a task, how it went, and how you felt doing it. Stories help people engage in your essay, and they paint a picture of who you are and how you leverage your strengths.

Now that you know what kinds of content you should include, the next section is dedicated to how to create an essay that is clear, concise, and follows rules of spelling and grammar. These next few tips will help you make sure your essays are in tip-top shape before you send them off to colleges

Perfect the form

Write multiple essays

It’s very unlikely your first essay will be a winner. In my case, I wrote 4 essays before landing on the one that I sent to all of my prospective colleges. Each one portrayed me in a slightly different light, and from writing multiple, I was able to choose the light I wanted my colleges to see me in. Another plus is that once I chose the one that demonstrated my strengths the best, I was able to use the other ones as templates for some of the niche essay questions I was asked for scholarship and supplemental prompts.

Revise

I had to revise my essays countless times. Essay prompts have a general word limit of around 500 words, and it’s advised to keep your essays under a page and a half double spaced. That means you have to tell your story concisely and precisely, which can be daunting. Revision allows you to edit your work to make it more concise and powerful. Revision is vital for making your overall essay more effective.

Ask an expert to review it

I asked my high school guidance counselor to review my essays and offer critiques. Your guidance counselor should have a lot of knowledge and experience helping students get into colleges, and their expertise can be incredibly useful when trying to craft your college essay.

Other experts you can consult for your essays are our tutors! We have tutors who can help you check your essays for mistakes and give you tips for more effective and clear writing!

If you have any other tips for writing college essays, share them in the comments below! Also, feel free to leave any questions if you have them. We love to hear from you!