A unique college admission essay can be a make or break for your admission to your favorite university.
While the admission process in the West and in the USA is quite different, one thing remains the same.
And that is a college admission essay. After you have filled your admission application and attached your scorecard or entrance tests like SAT, etc.
Like most students, if you also find it hard to write a unique essay, don’t worry as we are going to enlist the steps to write down a unique essay for admission.
Why do you need to write an essay for admission?
There is a race to give yourself the best in your exams and secure the highest CGPAs.
The reason is that the top universities have set a very high benchmark to take up the cream of the world.
Once a top-level university admission committee gets the admission applications, it’s hard for them to sort out the best students.
They can’t go random with the application because in this way they will be depriving the most deserved ones.
Each year the top universities get a slew of high GPA candidates, yet they can’t accommodate each of them.
Moreover, applications along with test scores cannot alone justify that the students are good in character and thought.
That’s why they ask the candidates to write an admission essay on the given topic.
You, as a candidate, are bound to write an essay on the given prompt by the university.
This essay is not a literary or an academic one so you need not add statistics or facts or figures in it.
Instead, it’s a personal statement and more like a self depicting an image of your true self.
The prompt mainly contains a statement like what motivates you? or how you got those leadership qualities?
It is necessary to write because it explains you as a person. Universities want to know how you are as a person and also if you are fit to work in the academic environment.
How to write a unique admission essay?
There are two phases in your essay writing process. First, you have to plan for your essay.
Proper planning requires all of the stuff that you need to do that translates success to your writing.
Prepare yourself beforehand:
Don’t wait for it at the last moment. After you have applied to your desired institution, start sharpening your writing skill.
Research on your college and read some sample admission essays. Start writing an essay of your own on different prompts.
If you don’t practice till the day you are asked to write an essay, you ended up creating a copied essay with a lot of mistakes.
Therefore, it’s better to start earlier so that by the time you start writing your real essay, you ward off any mistakes.
Follow the instructions carefully:
When you get the invitation to write an essay, it is a good sign that at least your application gets noticed among piles of them.
Out of excitement, don’t start abruptly. First of all, read all the instructions carefully.
Go through each section and understand it carefully. If you find it difficult to keep things in your mind, write them on paper.
Then start your essay afresh. Be careful about the word count or prompt’s question. You have to be at par with the requirements first.
Essay quality comes later. The first thing, the admission committee will check is that you have acted on all the given instructions.
It will signal that you can get along with other academic instructions at the institute.
After planning properly, now it’s time to write down your essay. It requires a lot of dos and don’ts you have to follow.
Let’s check out each of them one by one.
Write a unique attention-grabbing introduction:
Most students forget that an admission essay is no less than a real case expression of your true self.
Because the committee is not asking you to write about some social problem. You have to express your true self. How did you get rid of that issue?
Therefore, you need to catch the eyes of your reader. The committee has to skim through a huge bulk of these admission essays received all around the world.
Your’s can be an exception if you work through a solid introduction in your essay. So, your essay must contain some interesting facts or some catchy lines.
In making your intro interesting, avoid cliches in your text. Don’t forget to give vent to run-of-the-mill words and old idioms in your text.
Because it will sound like you have just copy-pasted words from other texts to make it more appealing.
Rephrase an existing essay:
It doesn’t mean you have to copy each bit of that essay in your new one. Rather, you have to get inspiration from that old essay.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, you can find a good essay and change its words to make it unique.
Sometimes, paraphrasing manually will get you into hot waters and you will waste time. Thus, you can shift towards a paraphrasing tool that works automatically.
So, paraphrase some sections of even a whole essay and bring uniqueness to it.
Moreover, The admission committee wants you to bring creativity to your essay, so in that case, you can also use this tool with its AI mode.
Use real-life examples:
No one would read bland words even if they are meaningful. If you ask someone who is into journalism, you will get the idea that better writing comes with real case scenarios.
Source: https://admissions.prepscholar.com/
Unless you connect your ideas will a story, you won’t convince the committee that you are the best candidate.
These you have to sympathize with the story and show your vulnerabilities in it.
The university’s admission committee isn’t looking for someone like a superman, rather they want to see a real person who went through a crisis, faced a challenge, and succeeded.
Nothing would be more human than a real story of your success or failure that taught you something.
Check your content’s plagiarism:
Plagiarism is prohibited in any field that requires writing. It is simply unnatural and unfair.
Because you are employing unfair means to copy someone’s ideas and pasting them in your text.
A university admission essay is not meant to be copied or forged. Because doing this you forget to give your own expression of who you are in reality.
To your dismay, if you plagiarize, you can easily get caught by the committee.
That’s why you need to check for plagiarism in every line of your text to avoid duplicate content.
Final words:
A university admission essay for Nigerian students is not a piece of cake. Because most African students flunk in bad English.
That’s why you need to know some tips to write your admission essay mentioned in this article.
Funmilola Bolaji is a Researcher, Writer and a trained Educationist; she’s the editor of Campusbiz Journal. You may want to reach her via for Campusbiz Journal related inquiries only.
