Writing a personal statement for college admissions is like running a marathon. It’s an endurance contest. You have to pace yourself so you could produce a really good essay. A lot of students don’t have the discipline to run a marathon so they look at writing this very important essay as a sprint – the faster, the better. If you go this route, you are quickly shooting yourself in the head. You may be on your way to producing a college application essay that does not do its job properly. Remember, this essay is a sort of paper interview. It is your chance (in many instances, your only chance) of breaking away from the herd of faceless and generic applicants for the same admissions spot that you are applying to.
Use your essay to stand apart from your competition. You have to tell a convincing personal story. Sadly, too many students viewing the process as a sprint, place a lot more thought, analysis, and creative writing at the beginning of their essays. By the time they’re winding down the essay, they run out of motivation, energy, or time; or even of all three. Avoid this problem because many admissions committee members read the whole essay. They’re trying to figure out certain personality traits based not only on what you’ve written, but on how you’ve written your essay.
How you write your essay actually betrays a lot of your values. An admissions officer or committee member who sees your essay as having a really polished and flawless introduction, but then quickly deteriorates until the conclusion leaves the impression that you are a person who cannot stick to a certain task and that you have self-discipline issues. You don’t want to give them this impression. You have to write an essay that has a uniform quality throughout. This is the reason it’s extremely important to learn how to wrap up a college admissions essay properly.
If you are trying to leave the right impression, abruptly wrapping up fails to achieve this purpose. Conclusions must sum up what you’ve said but not restate what you’ve said before. You have to sum up all the arguments that you have made before and then lead it to the conclusion that you want the admissions committee to go to, that you are more worthy of admission than your competition. Your conclusion cannot just be a mere restatement of everything you have stated.
The right way to wrap up your admissions essay is to have the conclusion express the implication of your previous statements. What do they apply? What do they mean? Where do they lead to? The conclusion boldly proclaims that. It slightly alludes to what was stated beforehand, but must be able to stand on its own. It must be like a bookmark to the essay. It can’t be a mere extension of everything you’ve stated. Instead, it must boldly state an assertion. If you have made your case earlier, then this assertion would look like it belongs to that part of your essay. This is a key point that many applicants miss because conclusions can’t just pop out of nowhere. It has to have grounding in the bulk of an essay.
This guest post was written by Chris Walker, an expert writer of model personal statement examples for http://www.examplesofpersonalstatements.com If you are having a tough time writing your college admissions essay, get expert help by CLICKING HERE
