STEP 3: Go!

Are you ready to start writing? Ok. Now just relax about the first draft. Give it some thought but don’t worry about logic, grammar, spelling as all this can be sorted out later. Don’t forget you are already an expert at writing essays. After all, you’ve spent the last 12 years writing them!

• Start by brainstorming. Write down anything that pops into your mind, then look for good connectable ideas. Try to find a theme amongst your ideas.

• Choose your subject. You? Your values? Your thoughts? These will all become one as your essay develops.

• Write a draft. Try to write: an introduction, a main body of work, and a summary. Keep your style simple and flowing. Some people benefit from leaving their draft copy alone for a few hours. Unfortunately it won’t rewrite itself, but next time you look at it, you can view it more objectively.

• Revise the draft. Read your essay aloud. How does it sound? Is it coherent and logical? Does the grammar make it easy to read or are you stumbling over your words. Correct your mistakes, add more detail, remove repetitive phrases and rewrite any sentences you are not happy with.

• Final draft. Proofread the final copy. Better still, ask someone else to proofread because it’s more difficult to spot your own mistakes. Ask yourself "Is this what I wanted to say?" Are you being specific, detailed and vivid? Ask a teacher to read it and pay attention to their comments.

USEFUL TIP: Unless the institution requests a handwritten essay, you should definitely consider typing it. Handwritten essays may seem more personal but a well-typed paper is easier to read.

Here are a few more helpful guidelines:

• Because this is a personal essay the rules for writing academic essays don’t apply quite so strictly here. You can use ‘I’ and you can use a little humor (but don’t try to be Tom Green).
• Try not to be James Joyce. You did not enter this tempestuous world, kicking and screaming, one moonlit night in the early 1980s. You were born November 14, 1982. Eschew ostentatious erudition.
• Don’t enclose chocolate-chip cookies, flowers, balloons, videos, love-letters, or invitations to dinner. Don’t write your whole essay backwards, in red ink, or purple ink, draw cartoon characters on it, or write ‘Britney Spears rocks my boat’ in the margin.
• Avoid cliches like the plague
• Don’t use no double negatives
• Verbs has got to agree with their subjects
• Don’t use commas, which aren’t necessary
• Don’t rely on your spelling checker to be 100 percent accurate because:

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong or write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect in it’s weigh

My chequer tolled me sew.

-- Sauce unknown (from collegeboard.org)

And finally……

Before you send anything ask yourself these questions:

If you’re applying electronically, did you type carefully and check your spelling?

Did you take shortcuts? A partially completed application form clearly indicates that you are not interested.

Did you send too much information? If the college asks for a two page essay, don’t send four. If they ask for two letters of recommendation, don’t send five.

Did you send everything they asked for? Transcripts, test scores, letters of recommendation? Don’t forget anything.

Last but not least – Did you meet the deadline?

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