The Common App essays: Breaking down the questions - Part 1 ...

By Emily Herzlin, Admissionado

By Digital Vision

Examining the questions is a major key into figuring out what admissions officers really want.

You?ve made your way through the family history section, test score report, extracurricular activities list. You turn the page, hoping it?ll all be over soon.

Not even close.

You have 500 words to respond to one of six essay topics. It feels like there are too many choices and you just want to go eat some cookies and take a nap.

Grab the cookies, postpone the nap. Take a deep breath and break down these essay questions one by one so that they feel less intimidating and you can get down to the business of writing a gorgeous essay.

Let?s start with the first topic:

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

So here you have a few choices:
1. Evaluate a significant experience and its impact on you
2. Evaluate an achievement and its impact on you
3. Evaluate a risk you have taken and its impact on you
4. Evaluate an ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you

Maybe you can think of more than one fabulous idea to write about, and that?s great, but don?t write about more than one for this essay. The word OR in the question rules that out. OR means you have to pick one.

Okay, so let?s examine the word ?evaluate.? The folks who wrote this question knew what they were doing, as in, they knew what words they did not choose. Evaluate is NOT: tell us about, explain or summarize. Evaluate contains within it the word ?value,? as in, assess the value of something. So whichever topic you choose to write about, you want to look at the topic in terms of the ultimate value of this experience to you.

What does THAT mean? Here are some ideas:
? How did this change your thinking?
? How did this change the way you feel about yourself?
? What did you learn about your personality, or about the world?
? How did this change your perspective on an issue, and what are the short or long-term implications of that?
? How did this affect how you feel about the world, your future, your goals?

Along the same lines, let?s look at the ?impact on you? part of the question. This isn?t impact on your school, impact on the community, impact on the world. This is impact on YOU: the essay writer, the applicant, the guy or gal eating cookies. (The impact it had on your school/community/world can be part of the essay of course, but you need still need to write about the impact of that impact on you.)

You know how they teach you when you?re writing an English or history paper that you can?t just leave a quote hanging in an essay without explaining its significance? That?s what impact on you is. The achievement, ethical dilemma, risk you have taken or significant experience is a quotation from your life, figuratively speaking, and impact on you is the significance explained. A common mistake in this type of essay is to find a great story or anecdote but then never fully explain it.

For example: You write an essay about the ethical dilemma you faced one day when the shy kid started picking on the class bully and you decided to defend the bully. Might be fun to read, but you?re not answering the question. You have to take it further to evaluate its impact on you: Your choice to defend the bully taught you that you value justice, and that?s why you joined mock trial club and decided you want to study law, for example.

Another example. It?s not enough to write an essay about how your achievement of winning the gold medal in track made you feel awesome. But you can write about how that achievement was the result of being open-minded to the ideas of your coach even though she was tough on you; the experience taught you the value of accepting the help of others and being receptive to benefiting from others? knowledge and experience even if it?s difficult.

These questions ask you to contemplate a meaningful moment in your life, but more than that, these essay questions aim to get at how you think about the world. You know you are more than your grades and SAT scores ? and so does the admissions committee. That?s why they ask you to write an essay about yourself. Contrary to what you might be feeling as you stress-eat that bag of Oreos, the essay question is not meant to torture you. It?s meant to help you communicate a clearer picture of who you are and how your mind works.

Emily Herzlin is a writer and teacher living in New York City. She is a graduate of Columbia University?s MFA Nonfiction Writing program and received her BA in Dramatic Literature from NYU. Emily teaches Creative Writing at Columbia University through the Columbia Artists as Teachers Program. Her writing is featured in various online and print publications including The Millions, The Women?s International Perspective, and The Under 35 Project. She is head editor of Crescendo City, a local Harlem literary magazine. Emily is a blogger and editor at Admissionado, a boutique admissions consulting company that helps students navigate the undergraduate and graduate admissions process. As a writing and academic tutor for high school students in New York City, Emily knows how tough the college application process can be, but she promises that you will get through it.

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The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of USA TODAY.

Source: http://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/toolbox/the-common-app-essays-breaking-down-the-questions-part-1

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