Describe the unique qualities that attract you to the specific undergraduate College or School (including preferred admission and dual degree programs) to which you are applying at the University of Michigan. How would that curriculum support your interests? (100-550 words)
Strategies for this essay: Its the personal statement 2.0so rinse, lather, repeat! Go through your materials from your Common App essay pre-writing phase, including the list of topics you made originally, and choose the one that almost made the cut for your personal statement. Outline it with the same rigor and attention that you gave the Common App! Although community is commonly thought of as a large cultural or societal group, you have flexibility in defining what your community is. As stated in the question, a community does not only have to be geographic, ethnic, racial, or societal: consider groups to which you belong that share something in common with you, regardless of size. It can consist of various individuals who all have a specific interest in common, like a sport, an academic passion, an extracurricular activity. It can also consist of a tight group of friends who all have bonded over a particular idea or club. You may want to create an impression of expertise in the field by using specialized or technical language. But beware of this unless you really know what you are doinga mistake will look twice as ignorant as not knowing the terms in the first place. Your audience may be smart, but you dont want to make them turn to a dictionary or fall asleep between the first word and the period of your first sentence. Keep in mind that this is a personal statement. Would you think you were learning a lot about a person whose personal statement sounded like a journal article? Would you want to spend hours in a lab or on a committee with someone who shuns plain language?
Put the time and effort into studying what the university has to offer and what opportunities appeal to you. Why do you be a student here? Why is this college different to you from any other university? For as long as I can remember, baking has been an integral part of my life. Thanks to busy parents and hungry siblings, I was encouraged to cook from a relatively young age. Time spent in the kitchen naturally piqued my interest in baking, and that glimmer of interest blossomed into a heart-warming hobby that rejuvenates my stressful days, improves upon even the happiest moments, and brings joy to the people around me. You are not alone, and we are here to help you understand how to write a good essay. Writing an essay could be tough, but a detailed essay writing guide will help you understand its basics easily and properly. I am at home between worlds. I speak both English and Chinese: Chinese is for math, science, and process, but I prefer English for art, emotion, and description. America owns my childhood, filled with pine trees, blockbuster movies, and Lake Tahoe snow; China holds my adolescence, accompanied by industrial smog, expeditious mobility, and fast-paced social scenes.
Example of college proffessor essay - If you find yourself procrastinating and drawing a blank every time you sit down to write your college essay, we get it . . . writing about yourself can be tough! Heres the most important thing to keep in mind: With a college admissions essay, you arent really writing about yourself. Rather, youre writing about how your unique personality and experiences make you well-suited to succeed in the college to which youre applying.
If youre applying through the Common App, an application accepted by more than 900 colleges and universities around the world, youre given a list of approved essay topics for your application. There are seven prompts, one of which is open-ended and gives you the opportunity to use an essay youve already written or develop your own topic. Once you are done with the writing process, the next step is revision and proofreading. Check your essay for grammatical and spelling mistakes. Make sure the information is presented in a logical flow. In our College Essay Clichés to Avoid post, we advised students against writing about moving to America from a foreign country. Too often, such essays are formulaic and uninspiring after all, while its certainly a challenge to learn a new language and culture, millions of people do it every day, so it simply isnt something that sets a student apart. While you can face a number of different types of questions when tackling your secondary and supplemental essays, there are certain prompts and certain genres of prompts that come up again and again. Its a good idea to be aware of the general types of secondary essays that can come up.
Yales residential colleges regularly host conversations with guests representing a wide range of experiences and accomplishments. What person, past or present, would you invite to speak? What question would you ask? We are , native English professional writers. We hold graduate and professional degrees from major universities (Princeton, Stanford, UCLA,Georgetown, Dartmouth, Penn, Northwestern). This is all that we do. We are accountable to our clients, and are proud to serve their needs on a return customer basis. MLA format was created by the Modern Language Associationhence the acronymand is a widely used styling for research papers and academic essays. If youre a college student, youll notice that MLA format is required in liberal arts and humanities subjects. This means youre using your traditional five-paragraph essay tools. Youll need an intro paragraph with a lede or hook of some sort, a billboard paragraph, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion. You will likely want to follow our personal statement model of linking your essay to at least one anecdote or specific story. On the other hand, if you are exclusively science-minded or arts-minded (one of those people who says I dont have a [creative/scientific] bone in my body), you may want to focus on the perspective that a different, but related discipline can contribute to your studies.
Now that youve generated some ideas, get a little bit pickier. Its time to remember one of the most significant aspects of the application essay: your audience. Your readers may have thousands of essays to read, many or most of which will come from qualified applicants. This essay may be your best opportunity to communicate with the decision makers in the application process, and you dont want to bore them, offend them, or make them feel you are wasting their time. If your schedule and ours permit, we invite you to come to the Writing Center. Be aware that during busy times in the semester, we limit students to a total of two visits to discuss application essays and personal statements (two visits per student, not per essay); we do this so that students working on papers for courses will have a better chance of being seen. Make an appointment or submit your essay to our online writing center (note that we cannot guarantee that an online tutor will help you in time). The options for artifacts are endless there is no need to feel limited by this list. Note that your artifact does not need to be business related. Ask yourself: What are you most proud of from your four years in high school? Specificity is key, and youll need to do your research.
These essays identify the importance of nuanced interdisciplinary fields and will explicitly reproach the fact that similar disciplines do not learn from each other. MLA Style requires that all your body text be double-spaced. This helps your essay look cleaner and easier to read. It also provides space between your sentences, which allows for mark-ups either by you during proofreading, or by your professor during grading. No matter what you write about, the most important thing is how you frame your response! Admissions officers are interested in learning about you, not the details of your activity. Dont waste time explaining your activityeven if it is something obscure like Bridge Club or researching a specific gene. Instead, focus on the specific tasks you performed within your extracurricular or why the experience was so impactful. With moments to spare, I catch a glimpse of the boarding platform for my train. Like a captain frantically seeking port in a storm, I haul myself through the turbulent ocean of people, trying to avoid being stranded or trampled in the dustiest city in the world: Beijing, capital of both China and smog. The good news is that the skills and rhythms you developed while writing your personal statement remain applicable for your supplemental essays.
If you havent worked through our step-by-step guide to writing your Common App Essay or viewed our college essay examples, go do that now, and youll be well prepared for your supplemental essays shortly. On the other hand, you might want to demonstrate your capacity to engage with the world in multiple, contradictory ways. A diverse portfolio can be a good indicator of a mature thinker, capable of seeing multiple perspectives. Some schools may ask you to apply to a specific professional school or track or having declared a major. Others may ask you to indicate an initial preference. Still others may expect no prior thought about majors. Now, look at what youve written. Find the most relevant, memorable, concrete statements and focus in on them. Eliminate any generalizations or platitudes (Im a people person, Doctors save lives, or Mr. Callesons classes changed my life), or anything that could be cut and pasted into anyone elses application. Find what is specific to you about the ideas that generated those platitudes and express them more directly. Eliminate irrelevant issues (I was a track star in high school, so I think Ill make a good veterinarian. ) or issues that might be controversial for your reader (My faith is the one true faith, and only nurses with that faith are worthwhile, or Lawyers who only care about money are evil.
Before you begin writing the first draft of your essay, go ahead
and enter the name, course, and date information. We recommend
giving your essay at least a title placeholder in the first draft
too, so you dont forget to enter a title later on. Now, just as
we used anecdotes and set scenes for readers while writing the
personal statement, we want to do something similar here. But we
dont have time for Ramya to walk us through the room where her
heart pounded as she revealed herself to be a Hufflepuff. We have
to move more efficiently this time, without sacrificing
specificity.
One way to do that is by writing in a list, as Ramya did here:
Writing college essays can be more stressful than writing essays
for class because these essays can make or break your
acceptance into your preferred colleges. Its a lot of pressure,
we know. But dont stresswere here to help you knock your college
essay out of the park. But be warned: this strategy is a risk. If
you dont carefully consider what you are saying and how you are
saying it, you may offend your readers or leave them with a bad
impression of you as flaky, immature, or careless. Do not
alienate your readers.
What kind of teacher do you want to be? Early on as an economics TA, whether inadvertently or by design you will establish what kind of teacher you are. Will your teaching style resemble that of a coach, an instructor or a taskmaster? And will you aim for an informal, friendly relationship with students orwill you establish yourself an authority figure with a degree of professional distance? All this hinges on the choices you make and the actions you take during your first few weeks. Additionally, in a long and idea-heavy essay like this one, you should try to incorporate a distinct voice and a unique writing style. Honors programs are small and close-knit, so you want the admissions officers to enjoy your writing and desire to know you. Williams College: At Williams we believe that bringing together students and professors in small groups produces extraordinary academic outcomes. Our distinctive Oxford-style tutorial classesin which two students are guided by a professor in deep exploration of a single topicare a prime example. Each week the students take turns developing independent workan essay, a problem set, a piece of artand critiquing their partners work. Focused on close reading, writing and oral defense of ideas, more than 60 pre-determined tutorials are offered across the curriculum each year. Imagine yourself in a tutorial at Williams. What topic would you be most excited to study in that setting and why? (No more than 300 words)